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For most of his life, there have been two constants in Mitch Marner’s life— hockey and Auston.
And he doesn’t think he knew just how true that was until the universe decided to show him.
Mitch has never taken hockey for granted, not ever, not once. He wakes up every day knowing just how lucky he is that he gets to do this thing he loves, that he worked so hard to get, that he sacrificed his childhood for.
But he thinks it’s possible, maybe, that he doesn’t give the same consideration to Auston.
He knows Auston is his best friend, knows that his life wouldn’t be as good without him in it, but for many reasons Mitch refuses to touch, he doesn’t make a conscious effort to appreciate Auston every day the same way he does with hockey.
Mitch has started to take Auston for granted, and that’s how it starts.
২
It was a stupid fight all things considered. A classic example of Mitch projecting his issues from elsewhere onto something he knew was safe, someone he couldn’t scare off, and Auston, like always pretended that Mitch’s words didn’t hurt him, but Mitch could see it in his eyes.
Mitch wasn’t really upset with Auston, he just happened to be what was closest when everything Mitch had been avoiding all day bubbled up and over. But this time, Auston just happened to be as pissy as Mitch. They’d gotten in late the night before so they were both tired and grouchy, and they’d lost a game they really should’ve won
So when Mitch snaps at him, Auston hits back.
“I don’t know why you’re acting so pissy with me,” he throws over his shoulder as he tears recklessly through his suitcase. “I’m not the one who was tripping all over himself at the end of the third when we were trying to tie it.”
“No,” Mitch says through gritted teeth. “You were just the one who let in both goals in the second. You were right there, and you just watched.”
Auston huffs. He spins around to glare at Mitch, hands fisted at his sides. “Well, at least I managed to score tonight. When was the last time you could say that?”
“At least I’ve been here.” He knows it’s too far the second he says it. It’s been eating away at Auston, how much he’s had to sit out this year, his first as captain, and Mitch knew it would hurt, and that’s why he said it.
Auston’s face has gone a shade paler, and he’s biting at his bottom lip. “If that’s how you feel, I don’t know why you’re bothering to talk to me.”
His entire demeanor has shifted, red-faced, spitting anger replaced by his expressionless face and cold voice, but it only serves to make Mitch madder.
“Honestly, I don’t know either,” Mitch snaps. “It’s not like having you around is helping. Sometimes I don’t know why I waste my time with you.”
“Then don’t.” Auston bites out, voice quiet and dark.
And Mitch only hesitates for the briefest of seconds before he’s throwing his things in his open duffle and hiking it up onto his shoulder, doing his best to slam the door behind him despite the stupid hotel doors designed specifically to prevent that.
The door slides slowly shut behind him, and Mitch doesn’t turn around to see Auston standing stricken between their beds.
Instead, he stalks down the hall and knocks harshly on Willy’s door because he knows there’s a spare bed there.
“Can I crash here?” he asks when Willy, somehow already looking like he’d been asleep for hours, answers the door. He’s silently ushered in, and Mitch doesn’t even bother changing into more comfortable clothes. His slacks catch around his ankles as he twists out of them and tosses them on the floor at the foot of his bed along with his dress shirt.
A long crack stretches across the ceiling from just above the window out into the middle of the room, and Mitch traces the lines with his eyes. His phone vibrates, a harsh, jarring sound on the nightstand, so he reaches out and tucks it under a pillow.
Willy has already fallen back asleep, his soft snores muffled by the blanket he’s pulled up over his head.
Mitch feels nauseous as he rolls over to face the far wall of the room, hugging one of the spare pillows to his chest in the vain hope that the pressure could dispel the growing tightness in his chest.
He counts the rows of stripes on the curtains and ignores the buzzing of his phone because he’s terrified of what he’ll feel when he opens it and none of the notifications on it are from Auston. When he reaches the bottom of the curtains, he jumps back up to the top, continuing his count and hoping that eventually sleep will come for him.
২
Mitch wakes up in bed to the feeling of fur pressed up under his chin. He knows something’s wrong before he’s even lifted his head. Zeus’s fur isn’t that long, the hairs shouldn’t be going up Mitch’s nose and making him feel like he has to sneeze.
A single eye cracks open, squinting against bright light filtering into the room.
Mitch shoots up then. Their flight was meant to leave pretty early. If it’s that bright out, he’s got to be running late. He doesn’t think Willy would let him be late, but who knows. Maybe Auston got to him this morning and convinced him they should leave Mitch behind.
As he blinks his eyes, Mitch quickly realizes he is not in Willy’s hotel room. He’s not in any hotel room at all actually.
He’s in a bedroom, though not one he recognizes. The walls are painted a pale blue. There’s a dresser and TV across from the bed, with picture frames scattered over the top that Mitch can’t make out from the bed. There’s also a cat, clearly jostled when Mitch had sat up, staring up at him with baleful green eyes.
“Well, hello,” he coos down at the animal, reaching out to scratch under her chin. “And who are you?” The cat chirps back at him, batting at his hand playfully before turning away from him and leaping off the bed. Mitch gets with the program when she pauses in the doorway and glances back at him clearly expecting him to follow.
He rolls out of the bed and hurries after the cat who’s slinking down the hall, almost indistinguishable from the shadows. Mitch has to jump not to trip over her as she stops in front of an empty food bowl on the kitchen floor.
“Oh,” he exclaims. “You’re hungry.”
The cat blinks up at him, slowly, and Mitch thinks if she was capable of the movement, she’d probably be rolling her eyes at him.
“Let’s find your food then.” He opens the cabinet directly next to them on instinct and is greeted with stacks of wet food tins. The cat twines around his ankles as if she’s trying to trip him as he opens the food and moves to put it in the bowl.
Cat sufficiently distracted, Mitch takes advantage of the opportunity to look around.
It’s painfully obvious as Mitch looks more closely at the space around him that this is his apartment. It’s not the place he lives in now, but the things scattered around the living room and kitchen are undeniably his.
Mitch wanders through his apartment feeling like he’s moving through a dream where it’s only sort of right. Some things are the same, but more are different. There’s plenty of Leafs gear, but when he looks closely, none of it has his name on it. There are pictures on the walls of his family and friends and plenty with Auston, but Mitch can’t place any of them. There’s a bag of hockey gear by the door, and that at least seems familiar until Mitch kicks it open and realizes he doesn’t recognize anything as his own.
The sharp sound of his phone ringing cuts through his daze, and Mitch sprints back into the bedroom. A not insignificant weight lifts off his chest when he looks down at the screen and is greeted by Auston’s name and a picture of them laughing, faces pressed together.
“Dude,” Auston says the second Mitch picks up. “I’ve been waiting for like ten minutes, we’re going to be late.”
“Umm,” Mitch says stupidly, still trying to get his arms around the situation.
Auston groans. “Please tell me you didn’t just wake up.”
“Well, I could tell you that, but it would not be true.” This, at least, is familiar.
“If you aren’t down in five, I’m leaving your ass to catch the bus.”
Mitch drops the phone onto the mattress, diving towards his closet, only to be greeted an overwhelming amount with button-ups and polos and sweaters. He thinks he sees a sweatshirt or two on the far end, but that’s about it.
Whose fucking closet is this? Mitch wonders as he grabs a warm looking sweater. The dresser situation isn’t much better with neatly folded slacks next to a couple nice pairs of jeans. Mitch stumbles down the hall as he tries to pull on his pants and drags his fingers through his messy hair when he catches sight of himself in the mirror hanging by the front door.
There’s a backpack propped up in the entryway, his keys thrown carelessly on top, so he hikes the bag onto his back and ducks down to pick up the hockey duffle as well.
His cat— obviously it’s his cat because this is his apartment and there’s at least a dozen cat toys scattered about the living room because he’s nothing if not a push-over— stares balefully up at him as if his leaving is a personal affront.
“I’ll be back,” he says, leaning down to scratch between her ears, but he doesn’t know if that’s true. Is he coming back here? Does he want to?
He shakes his head to clear it and is careful not to look back at the cat as he pulls the door closed behind him.
He makes it downstairs in four minutes flat, but he stands confused on the sidewalk searching for Auston’s car until a high pitched honk comes from the beat-up green car idling by the curb.
What the fuck? Mitch thinks for at least the tenth time since he woke up.
Auston immediately makes fun of him the second Mitch pulls open the door (that makes a frankly alarming creaking sound) and slides into the passenger seat.
“And what exactly did you get up to last night that made you sleep through all of your alarms?”
Mitch sighs as Auston puts the car in drive and lets his head drop against the window.
“You wouldn’t even believe me.”
When they reach their destination and Auston pulls into the parking lot, they’re at a school, and the way Auston is acting this is a perfectly normal part of their routine.
Mitch trails after Auston as they walk in through the side doors and veer off into a room Mitch would guess is the teacher’s lounge. Auston scans in with a badge pinned to his waistband. He looks back at Mitch, clearly expecting him to do the same, and Mitch freezes because he has no earthly idea where he’d even have a badge like that. Patting at his pockets frantically, Auston just sighs before reaching around him and plucking something out of the side of Mitch’s bag.
He drops the badge into Mitch’s hand, the smallest crease forming between his eyebrows.
“Seriously, what were you doing last night?”
Mitch just shakes his head and scans his badge.
“I really don’t know.”
Auston leads them down a different hallway than the one they came in through, chatting away about how the girls on the volleyball team are coming in early to take his test since they have to leave before fifth period for their away game. Mitch stares down at the badge still clenched in his hand that identifies him as “Mr. Marner” under a picture of him grinning at the camera in a hideous orange polo.
Auston’s a teacher, and apparently Mitch is too.
Who the hell would want us to teach their kids?
Auston pauses outside a classroom that Mitch quickly realizes is his.
“See you at lunch?” Auston asks, peering at Mitch like he can sense the strangeness Mitch can feel clinging to him like a second skin.
“Yeah,” Mitch agrees. It’s strained, but Auston doesn’t question it.
He panics once Auston has walked away because how on Earth is he supposed to pretend like he has any idea what’s going on once the kids show up.
Mitch ends up showing a movie to each class, a total cop out, but while the kids sit in the darkened classroom, he takes it as an opportunity to properly freak out.
He’s not dreaming, of that he’s fairly certain. It’s all too real to be a dream, and before the kids had started trickling in before the first bell, Mitch had hidden out in the office connected to the back of the classroom and pressed a push-pin into the tip of his finger until a small dot of blood bloomed bright, damning red.
So, not a dream, but that’s the most he’s been able to conclude.
All he knows is something is truly, deeply wrong.
Auston teases him about the movie while they eat lunch together because apparently that’s something they do every day too.
“All my students that had your class first were talking about how weird you were being.”
His tone is light, but Mitch can see the unspoken question in his eyes, can see it for the opening that it is, an invitation for Mitch to tell him what’s going on, and Mitch desperately wishes he could if only because it would mean that he knew what was going on.
The rest of the day rushes by in a blur, and when Auston leans against the doorway to Mitch’s classroom, his chest feels so light he could float away.
But when they climb into Auston’s car, he doesn’t drive them back the way they came this morning, back toward Mitch’s apartment. Instead he drives until they’re pulling into the lot of a small indoor rink.
Auston tosses Mitch his bag, and when they make their way inside, he pulls stacks of cones out of his bag that he starts setting up around one end of the rink.
Mitch can’t help but laugh to himself.
Teachers and coaches. Who would’ve guessed?
It’s not long before the kids start showing up, kitted out in hockey gear and none of them older than ten. They all call him Mr. Mitch, and it’s easily the high point of Mitch’s otherwise mess of a day.
Auston takes control of the practice easily, and Mitch hopes he’s normally more help than this because he feels kind of useless hanging out at the edge of the ice as the kids tear off.
They’re doing warm ups mostly, nothing crazy, but you can tell just from the simple stuff who’s really good at this, and Mitch’s eyes instantly land on one small boy.
“Charlie,” Auston murmurs as if reading Mitch’s thoughts, and they both watch the kid skate circles around his friends. He ducks under the arm of another kid to make a particularly impressive shot, and Mitch can’t help the small sound of excitement that slips out from between his lips.
Auston grins over at him, nudging Mitch with his elbow, and Mitch laughs because this– This could be normal. Him and Auston and hockey.
Uncrossing his arms, Auston’s hands fall down by his side, and his knuckles brush against the back of Mitch’s hand.
The second their hands touch, there’s a tugging sensation just behind his navel, and Mitch gasps as he’s yanked away from the rink.
His vision goes black, and for a second Mitch is throwing his arms out wildly, worried that he’s about to pass out and hit his head on something on the way down.
He blinks to clear his vision, and suddenly he’s in an office he doesn’t recognize with a bunch of Leafs posters and photos plastered on each wall.
The desk is a mess, and there’s a picture of– Mitch gapes.
It’s him and Auston, and Auston’s wearing his hockey gear, but Mitch is wearing a jacket that looks a hell of a lot like the ones the coaching staff wear.
He peers more closely at the papers on the desk and it sure looks like coach’s shit. But why would he be–
“Hey!”
His head whips to the sound of the voice to find Auston, in street clothes and hair wet like he just got out of the shower, leaning against the doorframe.
“Still want to get lunch?”
Mitch nods dumbly, searching for his keys on the desk before stumbling out of the office and after Auston.
What the fuck is going on?
২
When Mitch gets his bearings this time, he’s on his couch, a thick cast covering the entirety of his right leg from hip to ankle.
This is new, he thinks to himself.
He had figured out the pattern after about the third alternate reality he landed in. If he touches Auston, he gets yanked out of that reality and into the next. Part of him hoped this was just a really bad dream, a manifestation of his guilty conscience over the fight with Auston. He’d given up on that hope around the twelfth version of his life.
This one is strange though.
He’s wearing a threadbare Knights t-shirt, and he kinda smells gross. Mitch runs a hand through his hair and cringes at the greasy feeling of the strands between his fingers.
Glancing around the space, Mitch can tell this is his actual apartment, and there’s enough pictures of him and the team on shelves that he can guess he still plays for the Leafs in this universe.
He shifts on the couch, and shooting pain lances up his leg.
Well. Maybe he played for the Leafs.
This isn’t real, Mitch tries to reassure himself as he finds his phone on the coffee table and pulls up Google. He types in his name, and when the first headline he sees reads “Mitch Marner placed on long term injury reserve due to broken leg”, that’s all he really needs to know.
He closes his phone, and decides that with the way everything else has gone, he just needs to wait for Auston to show up so he can get out of here.
It doesn’t take long at all before there’s the sound of keys in the door.
Auston kicks off his shoes, brown paper bags of groceries balanced carefully in his arms, but there’s a harsh set to his shoulders, and if Mitch had to put a name to it, he’d say Auston looked kind of pissed.
He walks straight into the kitchen, practically slamming the bags onto the counter, and Mitch flinches.
“Are you finished being a dick?”
It’s not like Mitch has had a real grip on what’s going on in any of these universes, but he feels more than just a step behind right now.
“I don’t…”
Auston sighs, still not meeting Mitch’s eyes, knuckles white where he’s gripping the counter
“I can’t pretend that I understand how you’re feeling right now, but fuck Mitchy, don’t you get that everyone’s just worried about you.”
Mitch sinks down guiltily into the couch despite not having actually done whatever Auston is chiding him for because it feels painfully close to a follow up of their own fight, with his Auston in his world.
“I know that,” Mitch murmurs into the blanket he’s pulled up over part of his face.
“Do you?” Auston asks, voice fierce and steady, and when Mitch looks back, Auston’s eyes are practically glowing with all the emotions building there. “You gotta stop trying to push us away.” He moves around the counter and into the living room, and the lack of space separating them now makes Mitch nervous. His leg keeps him from moving away, so instead he curls further into the couch, hoping the blanket will be enough to prevent any errant touches.
Auston crouches on the ground, his face level with Mitch’s, and Mitch is suddenly missing just a few moments earlier when Auston wasn’t meeting his eyes because this— this intense, tunneling gaze that Auston has fixed on him— makes Mitch slightly nauseous.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Auston whispers into the warm, almost stale air of Mitch’s apartment. The afternoon sun has started to slant through the windows, and Mitch can’t help but watch the specks of dust dancing in the golden light, anything so he doesn’t have to meet Auston’s gaze.
“I know,” Mitch repeats, the words barely an exhale.
“I’m being serious.” Auston pauses, waiting, and Mitch finally caves, dragging his eyes back up Auston’s face. His cheeks are still a little pink, probably because he got tired of waiting for the horrifically slow, ancient elevator and took the stairs, two at a time, instead. The shadows under Auston’s eyes are more pronounced than Mitch thinks he’s ever seen them.
Mitch wonders how he got hurt. Was it during a game? Did Auston have to see it? Mitch wants to reach out and run his thumbs over the bruise-colored skin, but he tucks his hands under his thighs instead.
“You can do whatever you want,” Auston continues now that he knows he has Mitch’s attention. “You can say nasty things. You can throw shit. You can be as pissed as you want at me and everyone else, but that isn’t going to stop us from caring. And it’s not going to stop me from hauling my ass over here every day to make sure you’re still alive.”
Auston’s hand flutters at his side. Mitch pushes himself further into the cushions, and Auston seems to notice the movement and wraps his hand around his own knee instead.
This isn’t Mitch’s injury, not really. He knows that the second he reaches out and takes Auston’s hand in his, he’ll be launched forward into another version of his life. He doesn’t have to live with the consequences of what this injury would mean, but still–
There’s a question poised on the edge of his tongue that Mitch desperately wants to know the answer to.
“What if I never play again?” The words seem to shatter as they hit the air, and Mitch flinches as he watches Auston’s face crumple.
“Mitch.”
So many different emotions flicker across Auston’s face, Mitch can’t keep track of them, and he suddenly feels stupid for asking. When he opens his mouth to say as much, Auston cuts him off.
“That doesn’t matter to me. I mean–” His mouth twists, and Mitch can feel his heart beating in his throat. “Obviously, it matters because I know how much you love it. But Mitch, you could be a fucking hot dog vendor, and I’d still be here.” Auston smiles then, just the smallest hint of it at the corners of his mouth. “I’m always going to be here because I–”
Mitch’s hand darts out from under his blankets, scrambling for Auston’s hand. He manages to wrap his hand around Auston’s before he can finish his sentence.
When he lands in the next universe, he tells himself it’s the jump that is making him feel like he’s going to hurl all over his sneakers.
২
In most of the versions of his life Mitch finds himself in, he’s still in Toronto. And in the ones where he isn’t, Auston is usually still there with him.
But in others, they play for different teams.
These are the ones Mitch hates.
There’s one where Mitch is in Toronto, but Auston is in L.A. There’s another where Auston is in Toronto, but Mitch is in Pittsburgh. The one Mitch finds the funniest is the one where Auston is in Dallas, and Mitch is in fucking Edmonton.
Yet in all of them, even the ones where Mitch and Auston are on different teams from the start, they’re still, inexplicably linked. Even when Mitch is drafted by Toronto and Auston by the Kings, when they are almost as physically far apart as two teams in the league can be, they somehow manage to find each other.
It shouldn’t happen like this, Mitch thinks as he sits across from Auston in a Los Angeles cafe, getting lunch before they play each other tonight. Auston’s eyes are bright, smile wide as he teases Mitch, picking up their conversation like they’d seen each other yesterday, and when they separate so Mitch can go back to his hotel and get ready for the game, he scrolls back through their texts and finds that they text almost every day.
A deep dive into each of their social media shows Mitch that they visit each other during every off season, every break that’s longer than a couple weeks.
It shouldn’t happen like that, Mitch thinks.
They meet in Toronto. They meet playing for the same team. That’s the only reason they’re in each other’s lives, and if that didn’t happen, they wouldn’t be mitchandauston the way Mitch knows them.
But the text lighting up Mitch’s phone as he lays on the hotel bed staring up at the popcorn ceiling reading “can’t wait to kick your ass tonight ;)” says otherwise.
Mitch isn’t sure how they manage to touch with all the padding separating them, but when Auston smirks at him before checking him into the boards, Mitch feels the familiar swoop in his stomach.
২
If Mitch thought he hated the ones where they’re separated by geography, he truly can’t stomach the one where they win it all.
There’s a flash of silver hoisted above Auston’s head when he makes eye contact with Mitch, when he mouths “love you” to him across the ice.
Mitch throws himself into the middle of Auston’s chest in that one, desperate to not have to see anymore.
He doesn’t know how he’s going to move on from that one after he’s seen it, seen everything he wants but can’t have offered up to him, wrapped in a neat bow.
Even when he lands in the next world, Mitch feels unsteady on his feet for hours.
২
There’s another one Mitch tries not to think about much once he’s left it, one with a little girl with bright blue eyes and wild dark hair that pokes out from under her helmet in two incredibly messy braids as she rockets towards him on the ice.
The air is bitterly cold, but Mitch’s chest just feels warm as the small girl barrels headfirst into his sternum. Despite the helmet fixed firmly on her head and the pads covering the rest of her body, Mitch frantically pats each of her limbs.
“Are you okay?” he asks, voice thready. He doesn’t know why he’s so worried considering he took all of the impact, he just knows a fierce need to protect this small being feels woven into his very DNA.
Her laugh is clear and bright, echoing across the pond. They must be in someone’s backyard, a big house up on the hill behind them, but nothing else as far as Mitch can see.
“Of course I’m okay,” she exclaims. “You caught me!”
The girl clambers to her feet, brushing the snow off her chest.
“Come on,” she says, practically wiggling out of her skates as she moves back and forth across the ice, a tightly wound ball of untamed energy that feels startlingly familiar. Her eyes reflect the overcast sky when she looks down at Mitch, and suddenly Mitch knows who this little girl is. “We gotta keep practicing if we’re gonna beat Dad next time.”
Before Mitch can say anything, she’s off again, and he can’t help but grin.
Eventually he has to beg off as the little girl continues to tear back and forth across the pond. He doesn’t know how old his body is here, but he knows no matter how young he was, he wouldn’t be able to keep up.
Chest heaving and cheeks starting to go a little numb from the cold, Mitch collapses against the trunk of a tree on the bank. He sits and watches the girl with barely concealed awe on his face. Every now and again, a short glance over her shoulder followed by a small smirk has Mitch thinking he’s not going to be surprised when “Dad” shows up.
Soon enough, the sound of boots breaking through the icy crust of the snow grows closer and warm breath rushes over the side of Mitch’s neck as he hears a familiar voice.
“How long’s she had you out here?” Auston asks, and Mitch just smiles, shifting ever so slightly away from Auston.
“Too long,” Mitch huffs, and when he looks over at Auston, he isn’t looking back like Mitch is so used to. Instead, he’s staring out over the ice, watching their little girl pull corners so fast it takes Mitch’s breath away.
There’s lines on Auston’s face he doesn’t recognize, especially at the corners of his eyes, and Mitch understands why when the little girl yells out, “Dad! Watch this!” and smacks the puck into the net and Auston grins, eyes crinkling.
“Nice one, baby,” he calls back before turning his smile to Mitch. “Let’s get you two inside to warm up, huh?” Auston reaches down to grab Mitch’s hand in his, to haul him to his feet. Ice settles in Mitch’s stomach, and he croaks out a broken, “Wait–” but it’s too late, Auston’s hand closing around his.
It takes him multiple jumps to shake the gap in his chest, the spot that small hands and messy braids and bright eyes are supposed to occupy, so Mitch does his best not to think about it.
২
Hockey and Auston. Auston and hockey.
Mitch feels like he’s been jumping between different versions of himself for years. He stays longer in some than in others, but no matter where he’s living, no matter what he’s doing, there’s always hockey, and there’s always Auston.
Sometimes they’re together while in others, they haven’t quite figured it out yet, but it doesn’t matter because Auston is just as present in Mitch’s life in every version of their lives together.
“I think I’m the biggest idiot ever,” he says to this Auston.
It feels like the end of summer as they sit out on Auston’s balcony. The air is undeniably warm, but growing cooler with every minute as the sun dips down toward the horizon, the sky painted with wide brushstrokes of orange and pink and purple. Auston must have just gotten back from Arizona, because his skin is tanned and golden, like he went to the desert with the express purpose of trapping the sun beneath his skin to bring some of that warmth back with him.
Mitch’s fingers ache with the urge to reach out and touch, but he doesn’t want to leave this one quite yet.
Auston hums quietly, eyes closed.
“Well that’s hardly news,” he chirps, and Mitch laughs. This is always consistent in every universe too.
“No, I think I–” He sighs, tipping his head back on the deck chair. “I messed something up. And I want to fix it. But I don’t know how.” Mitch’s voice breaks at that final admission, and Auston cracks open his eyes to peer over at him, brow furrowed.
“What’dya mean?”
He breathes in deeply the sticky summer air, his ribs threatening to crack under the pressure.
In all the versions of Auston he’s met and talked to, Mitch has never actually explained his situation, but something about this one, the simplicity of it, makes him feel comfortable. He doesn’t know yet what’s different about this universe compared to his own, but maybe if he doesn’t look too closely at anything, he can pretend there’s nothing.
“I’m not actually supposed to be here,” he confesses to the sunset.
“Like… at my apartment.” Auston sounds confused, but there’s still a smirk in the edge of his voice, clearly entertained by Mitch.
Mitch huffs out a nervous laugh. “I’m gonna sound crazy.”
“What else is new?” Auston’s smiling at him, that soft and delicate shape of his mouth that Mitch swears is different for him than for anyone else.
“I’m, um– I’m from a different universe. At least, I think that’s what’s been happening.”
“A different… universe?”
Mitch nods. “Something happened, and I woke up in some other version of my life where I was a history teacher and you taught English, and we coached a kids’ hockey team.”
“But you’re here now?”
“I’ve been to so fucking many versions of my life,” Mitch admits, verging on hysterical. He laughs a little as he says, “And it was kinda fun at first, but now I just really want to go home.” It’s like he’s slowly deflating, all the energy falling away from his limbs as he curls up in the chair, knees to his chest.
“How do you– I mean, do you just get randomly put in a different world?”
“It happens when I touch you.”
Auston’s eyes go wide.
“I’ve– Have I been in all these worlds too?”
And that makes something warm spread across Mitch’s chest even as the sky grows darker and the night gets colder.
“Yeah,” he breathes out. “You’re always there.” He breathes in. “No matter what, you’re always there.”
Auston doesn’t say anything, but Mitch can feel him staring.
“And you know what, I think that was the point,” he whispers, mostly to himself. The sun falls below the horizon, the last golden fingers of sunlight clinging desperately onto the edge of night and reaching into the dark. “Are we together here?” he asks unprompted.
“Are we–” When Mitch looks back over, Auston’s face has gone bright red, and Mitch delights in his obvious embarrassment. “What do you mean together?”
Mitch rolls his eyes and grins. “You know.” Auston struggles to form words, and Mitch takes pity on him. “Aw, come on Matts. None of this is real, so, come on. Have you worked up the balls to kiss me yet or not?”
“Not yet,” Auston murmurs. “Thought about it, but–”
“But it’s never the right time?” Mitch finishes for him. Auston nods, and Mitch nods back. “Yeah, that’s what I’ve been telling myself too. Just wait until after playoffs, I tell myself, but then I’m putting it off until you’re back from Arizona, and by then it’s too close to training so I might as well wait, and then I don’t want to do it during the season and–”
Despite his encouragement to Auston that this isn’t real, the way he can feel his heart throwing itself against his ribcage feels pretty damn real. His breathing is shaky, but he pushes on.
“I think the truth of it is that I’m worried that telling you how I feel will scare you off. That I’ll lose you. And that’s the one thing I wouldn’t recover from. A rejection on its own, I could handle, but the idea of losing you.” There’s something building in his throat, but Mitch swallows it down and ignores the pressure behind his eyes. “You’re easily the most important person in my life. I wouldn’t survive it if you left. But…”
When he looks up, small pinpricks of light are popping up across the sky, the stars fighting to be seen through the light pollution of the city.
Mitch thinks about the universe where he and Auston had lived in some small town he’d never caught the name of. They’d been bundled up in jackets, a blanket thrown across their laps in the bed of Auston’s truck, hockey gear visible in the backseat through the rear window Mitch was leaning against. Auston had been pointing out the different constellations, a story attached to each.
“And that’s Lyra,” he’d said, squinting up at the sky. Mitch hadn’t ever seen a sky so clear, clusters of stars and trails of dust spiraling through the night in unrecognizable patterns, at least to him. “That’s the harp Orpheus played that let him into the Underworld.”
“Why’d he want to go there?” Mitch asked, consciously leaning away from Auston’s reach. He wanted to stay here a little longer.
The starlight reflected in Auston’s dark eyes as he turned to Mitch, his own personal constellations trapped in his gaze.
“Because he had to get Eurydice back, his lover. She’d died, but he was determined that he could convince Hades to let her go.”
“He must have loved her a lot,” Mitch murmured, burrowing his face further into his coat.
“Yeah,” Auston breathed out. “She was it for him. He couldn’t imagine going on without her.”
And when Auston went quiet, and Mitch glanced over, he was leaning across the carefully measured space between them. Mitch didn’t even get to feel Auston’s lips on his then because the idiot had reached up to cup Mitch’s face in his palm, and that familiar sensation of a hook catching him just behind his belly button yanked, sending Mitch careening through the universe.
In the blink of an eye that occurred between Auston’s touch and Mitch landing in another version of his life, he’d started to figure it out.
“But…” The Auston sitting next to Mitch on his balcony prompts.
“But.” Mitch grins over at Auston. “You haven’t yet.” Auston tentatively returns his smile. “I don’t know how many different versions of you I’ve met, but you’re always there. And not just in a tangential way. We’re friends. In every version of every universe I have been to, we’ve been best friends and sometimes even more than that. Even in the ones where we absolutely should not have found each other, should not have ended up together, you’re there.”
“So, what are you gonna do about it?”
Mitch has no fucking clue.
In a perfect world, he’d reach out, grab this Auston’s hand and, having had his grand confession, he would be sent back into his original universe. He’d go and apologize to Auston, and tell him how he feels, and they’d have hard moments, but for the most part everything would just fall into place.
His pulse picks up, the back of his neck going cold.
But what if that never happens? Maybe he fucked up so bad that he’s going to be skipping from one parallel universe to the next for the rest of time, being shown what he could’ve had but is never going to get.
A sob builds in his throat, leaving him short of breath when he tries to answer.
“I don’t know,” he croaks out, trapping his tears behind his teeth.
The way Auston’s attention snaps into focus on him is palpable, and Mitch can’t help but look back at him despite the way his eyes are burning. He’s sure he looks a mess, but Auston doesn’t seem to care, his face soft and open as he slides out of his chair and walks on his knees over to Mitch, their eyes never leaving each other. Something wild is fluttering in Mitch’s chest, a dangerous hope that he can’t put into words yet.
“Mitch.” Auston’s voice is soft, so incredibly soft and fond, and despite everything he’s seen, Mitch still struggles to believe he deserves to have that type of fondness directed at him. “What was the dumb thing you did?”
Mitch stares at him blankly, and Auston huffs, shifting closer. On instinct, Mitch squirms backwards. He has his suspicion, but he isn’t ready for it to be proven wrong.
“You said you messed something up. What was it?”
His mouth feels dry, lips sticking together when he tries to speak.
“You. I was— I pushed you away.”
“Did we have a fight?”
“I–” Mitch’s eyebrows draw together as he searches for answers in Auston’s eyes. “Yeah. Yeah we did.”
“We’d lost the game,” Auston says. “You were upset. And I asked why you were still there if you were that mad at me. And you said–”
“Don’t,” Mitch begs, despite the hope expanding behind his ribs. He doesn’t want to have to hear Auston say his own words back to him.
“We were in St. Paul.” Auston’s words are quiet, with little inflection behind them, like he’s worried that Mitch will disappear if he talks too loud or too fast. “And we fought, and you left, and we didn’t get a chance to talk about it.”
Mitch manages to move his leaden tongue around the words he desperately needs to say.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said it. You–” He breathes in, short and unsteady. “I wouldn’t be me without you. You’re part of me. You’re like–” His hand shakes as he presses the tips of his fingers to the center of his chest. “You’re here. Always. And I took that for granted.” Tears build in his eyes, blurring his vision, and Mitch rapidly blinks them away. “But I’m never, never, going to do that again.”
Auston is staring up at Mitch from where he’s still crouched next to him on the ground. Mitch shivers under the intensity of his gaze. He swallows down the rest of the tears threatening to fall.
“Can you forgive me?”
It’s a small thing, and harder to see in the dying evening light, but Auston’s mouth lifts into a soft smile.
“Yeah,” he whispers. “You don’t even have to ask.”
Mitch sobs out a broken gasp. He digs the tips of his fingers even harder into his sternum in an attempt to unravel the tightness there.
“Hey,” Auston chides, reaching forward and wrapping his hand around Mitch’s to keep him from hurting himself. “None of that.”
His stomach flips, but he stays firmly fixed in his chair, in this reality. Mitch stares in awe as Auston laces their fingers together and pulls their joined hands down to rest on Mitch’s thigh.
They’re touching. Auston’s touching him.
He drags his gaze away from their hands, and when he looks up at Auston, Mitch is treated to the dazzling glow of his grin.
“Getting kind of cold out here,” Auston says, squeezing Mitch’s fingers and tugging on their joined hands. “Let’s go inside.”
Mitch follows him in a sort of daze through the familiar layout of Auston’s place.
This is real, he thinks as Auston leads him to the bedroom, focusing on every point of contact where their hands are touching. Auston rifles through his dresser until he finds enough clothes for each of them to wear to bed. A small noise of complaint falls from Mitch’s mouth when Auston drops his hand, and he would be embarrassed if not for the way Auston smiles up at him as he falls to his knees in front of Mitch.
He taps Mitch’s calf, wrapping his hand around his foot.
“Come on. Off.”
Mitch steps out of his pants as Auston guides them over his thighs and helps him step into the pair of sweatpants that are definitely going to be too big on him. He says as much, and Auston just grins.
“Wanna go without them then?” Mitch’s face burns as he shakes his head. Auston lets his touch drag up Mitch’s sides as he stands, pinching at the hem of Mitch’s shirt. His hands circle Mitch’s wrists.
“Up,” he commands softly, and Mitch lets Auston manipulate into whatever position he needs.
His fingers dance across Mitch’s ribs as he pulls his shirt up and over his head. The shirt he replaces it with is one of Auston’s as well, loose at the collar and a hole in one of the armpits, but it smells like Auston’s detergent so Mitch is hardly complaining.
Auston is quick to change into his own pajamas before he’s dragging Mitch alongside him into his bed.
Mitch slots himself easily next to Auston, and for as much as he’s been deprived of this as he’s been dragged across the universe, nothing could change how natural it feels to mold himself to the shape of Auston’s body.
He runs the tip of his finger down the column of Auston’s throat.
“Promise you’ll be here when I wake up.”
Auston presses his lips to the top of Mitch’s hair. Everything is rapidly catching up with him, and Mitch is fighting sleep with every breath.
“Promise.”
He sighs softly and lets the gentle rise and fall of Auston’s breathing lull him to sleep.
When Mitch wakes up, it’s in a different room than the one he fell asleep in, and it’s like he’s slipped into an ice bath. His whole body tenses.
No, he thinks. This can’t be happening again. I fixed it.
The bed shifts next to him, and an arm slides around his stomach.
“Mitchy? You okay?”
Mitch flinches at the sound of Auston’s voice and instinctually tries to slide away from his touch.
“Woah, hey. What’s up?”
Hands are on Mitch’s face, gently stroking over his cheek and under his eyes. Mitch is shaking, he realizes, eyes screwed shut. His heartbeat slows with each touch of Auston’s hands.
He’s touching him. Auston’s touching him, but Mitch is still here.
“It’s okay. It’s okay. You’re okay.”
His ribs ache as he tries to breathe, and Auston keeps murmuring quiet reassurances in his ear, his hands never leaving Mitch.
They brush across his shoulders and down his arms. Auston tangles one of his hands with Mitch’s while the other traces patterns over his collarbone, pausing above his heart. The heat of Auston’s palm feels tangible as he presses it to Mitch’s chest, like he can track its movement as it seeps down through his skin and disperses through his bloodstream.
Mitch chances to crack one eye open. Auston’s eyes are wide, a deep crease between them and his mouth turned down.
“We’re in the hotel,” Auston reassures. “We’re okay.”
“You remember?” Mitch is terrified. Terrified that this had all been some awful fucking nightmare because he knows that it wasn’t. His body hurts, more than just from playing hockey last night. His feet ache like he walked all day and maybe through the night too, and his mouth is fucking parched. He blinks slowly against the blue morning light creeping its way into the room, his head pounding.
He doesn’t know how long he was hopping from one world to another, but Mitch knows he didn’t just make that up.
“Yeah,” Auston says, and Mitch crumples into his chest. His ear pressed to Auston’s chest, Mitch can hear each steady beat of his heart, and he times his breaths to it. “Not like. You said you were in a bunch of different worlds, and I don’t–” He smooths his hands up and down Mitch’s back. “We were sitting out on my balcony, and you told me about everything, and we went to bed and– And now we’re here.”
Mitch laughs, wet and ugly against Auston’s t-shirt.
They stay like that as the hotel air conditioning kicks on underneath the window, and Mitch uses it as an excuse to burrow even further into Auston’s arms. Auston seems more than happy with this arrangement, tightening his grip on Mitch and pressing messy barely-there kisses along his hairline.
Once Mitch’s central nervous system catches up to the fact that he’s safe, that he’s not going to be launched suddenly into another reality, he pulls back just enough to look up at Auston.
“I’m sorry,” he says again. Mitch thinks he might be saying it for a while. He tries to pour all of his guilt and regret into those two words, because right now, he just doesn’t have it in him to find any others.
“It’s okay.” Auston still has that soft, gentle look on his face that makes Mitch want to kiss him. And then Mitch supposes there really isn’t any good reason not to, so he takes Auston’s face in his hands and leans forward to slot their lips together.
Auston’s mouth falls open in a gasp beneath Mitch’s kiss, and he thrills at that, nipping at his bottom lip before running his tongue along the same path. Mitch shivers as Auston’s hands catch his hips and press his fingertips into the soft skin there.
White lights dance behind his eyelids, and Mitch resigns himself to pulling away so that he can catch his breath before he passes out.
“I love you,” he murmurs, lips moving against Auston’s because he’d only separated enough for the air to get in and nothing else.
“I love you, too.”
Mitch doesn’t think they have much time before they have to get up and get ready to head to the bus.
But for now, he rests his head on Auston’s chest, the steady beat of his heart a familiar rhythm under Mitch’s ear, and lets his hands roam the wide expanse of bare skin, learning how to touch without being afraid it will be ripped out from between his hands.
Auston tightens his arms around him, and Mitch hums against his skin.
He thinks he can be a quick study.