Work Text:
Can I kiss you?
Mickey’s been staring at the blue text bubble on his screen incessantly throughout the entire flight. He switches back and forth from an open tab playing Avatar: The Last Airbender to his messages like he’s expecting the four words to change.
The last 5 months in Florida have been some of the best 5 months of his life. He truly thought he knew exactly what it would feel like, but–being in the NHL is so much more different than just being a prospect. He’s skating on some of the same ice with some of the same men and yet nothing about it is the same. It’s exciting, honestly. Which is a word he wouldn’t have used this time last year. A foreign development. But every shift on that ice makes him less and less anxious. Less bitter. It makes him feel less undeserving. He skates like he means to and he smiles when it pays off and he gets to look up at thousands and thousands of faces mirroring it, and he knows that this is what he was made for. Not just the game–but the love of it.
And to the bottom of his core, Mickey knows that he has Hartland to thank. He knows that without the Royals, he wouldn’t be nearly as content with his life as he is right now. He’d just be another number on a jersey and not even the James III on the back would solve it. But the Royals gave him passion. He feels himself reclaiming hockey for himself for the first time in a long time. He started the Panthers season with a real reason to enjoy it and has been playing like it ever since. His dad calls it the rookie effect. Mickey calls it living.
But in spite of how well it’s been going, there’s some things that will always be present, a shark ready to snap at his ankles the moment he hangs them off the boat. And one of them is Cauler. Everyday it’s Cauler.
The two of them knew long-distance was going to be difficult. Mickey knew that going from seeing him every single day to just having him over a screen for an undetermined amount of time would be tough. But the physical ache of missing him was unexpected. It was unexpected how often Cauler was the cure. Mickey didn’t predict how many questions he’d have that he knew Cauler would have an answer for, or all the clothes he’d instinctively buy a size larger to fit them both, or all the times Mickey would take his frozen hands out of his pockets just to realize there wasn’t anybody there waiting to hold his fingertips into warmth. Remembering Cauler wasn’t there to look to after every sweet play Mickey made. Recalling he couldn’t feel Cauler’s hands on his shoulders telling him to breathe. Chasing the sensation in his stomach every time Cauler’s voice came through the speaker of his phone, the whip-quick thought he might be nearer this time. It ached knowing he was so far. Knowing it would be so long until Mickey saw him again. Mickey doesn’t miss having a boyfriend. He misses having Cauler, himself, and nothing but.
It’s currently 1:45am on December 24th. Mickey’s plane has just landed in Boston and not a single seat is empty, so off-loading takes an excruciatingly long amount of time. There’s an infant in the row behind him that has not stopped screaming since they started their descent and he’s so tired it’s beginning to sound more like a lullaby.
Can I kiss you?
It’s been five months since Mickey has kissed Cauler. He’d never thought himself to be that kind of person, the gross and sappy kind that operates like a Hallmark, but he thinks about kissing Cauler every single day he can’t. He loves so many things about Cauler, but in the absence he’s noticed just how much he loved the feeling of his lips. The shared breath and the shared smile and the teeth pulling on his lower lip. Mickey thinks that it could be the only thing he ever does again. Cauler could command him never to lay a single hand on his skin again and Mickey would still live the rest of his life pleading to kiss him. Mickey is certain that his hands could be bound and his skin be cursed cold and he wouldn’t even notice the loss over the burn of his lips.
But the thought of kissing Cauler in an airport full of people that might or might not be entirely strangers scares him. And the thought of it scaring him angers him and he presses his hands over his eyes and feels both so tirelessly. The baby wails behind his seat.
Fear is not a new ghost to loiter in their relationship. Being queer and playing professional hockey is a nightmare kept at bay with nothing but a static wall. Yet Mickey knows that Cauler knows this too, and he asked anyway. Because Cauler has accepted that this part of them won’t ever be easy, so he tries so hard to live like it’s not hard at all. He looks pessimism and hatred in the eye and lets it blow right over him like it’s but a breeze.
Mickey’s been tearing himself apart trying to adopt the same mindset. But the reality is he won’t ever be able to mimic Cauler’s confidence when it’s not his to begin with.
Mickey looks at the text again as he’s exiting the plane onto the jetway. He won’t ever be able to mimic Cauler’s confidence–but he can use it as a crutch, a prescribed drug shaped like faith. He can use it as a promise that even if he himself can’t get over every hill, there’s someone with a rope at the top. When they both have something to lose, it’s not just their own burden at all.
Yes, is what Mickey messages back, and then he slips his phone into his pocket.
The airport is horrifically busy. Mickey’s flown more times than he can count but he’s sure this is one of the most full airports he’s ever seen on account of it being the middle of the night. Boston’s airport is probably double the size of where he departed in Fort Lauderdale, and there’s garlands strung and lights blinking and a massive Christmas tree in the central lobby before security where families are physically crushed whilst attempting a photo and it’s all such a wonderful reminder of just how much Mickey hates crowds. Two people run frantically past and almost clip him in the shoulder. A man dressed as Santa and two elves are walking around and saying hello to kids, the bells on their costumes constant even when they are yards and yards away. For a minute Mickey lifts onto his toes to see around people’s heads and towards the entrances where crowds of people are standing around waiting for arrivals, but it’s too packed to find if Cauler's there. He looks at his phone while walking and texts, I’m outside terminal 3, and Cauler responds almost instantly with I know, so am I.
Mickey looks up again and fully stands on his toes. His backpack is rustled and a woman shakes her head at him for stopping and the proximity of everything makes Mickey so uncomfortable he almost just walks outside the doors alone. But then he looks a little to the left, and there he is, standing apart from the crowd.
Mickey’s been excited to see him. That much was a given. But there was a part of him that seemed to have been processing all this as fictitious. Like it was just a trial of time where Mickey would realize he’s not really there and fly right back to Florida, and facetime Cauler to find familiarity in a pixelated version and shake his head at ever being so hopeful. He’s been excited, though there’s never been certainty in this excitement, not really.
But 30 feet away is Jaysen Caulfield, right in front of Mickey’s very eyes, and he’s smiling from ear to ear, watching him already as if he’s been doing so for a minute or two. He is here and he is real and Mickey almost trips over his own feet running towards him.
Cauler looks so much the same and so much different simultaneously. He looks like he did 5 months ago, looks like he did through the screen 5 hours ago, and still Mickey is taken aback by how unused to him he is. He looks taller and his hair looks shorter and his smile looks brighter. Mickey is so abruptly aware in this moment how enraptured everyone at this airport must be at the sight of him. He is so violently aware how blessed he must be to have something so beautiful to call his own.
He skirts around people and swings his bag off his shoulders and drops it right before he reaches Cauler. Mickey launches himself at him and wraps his arms around his neck and he can’t even hear the holiday music blasting over the beat of his heart. Cauler lets out a breath of a laugh and winds his own arms so tight around his waist and Mickey takes back anything he said before about giving this up to kiss him. Damn the soliloquy. It seems he wishes for Cauler, every last bit of him, and it’d be stupid to settle for anything less.
They stay like that for an eternity. Mickey shoves his face in his neck and breathes in the smell of his skin, his cologne, a scent he’s been preserving in a hoodie he stole that he wears the nights he can’t sleep. Cauler is so warm around him and Mickey could cry with relief at how right it feels. How perfect. One of Cauler’s hands has snaked beneath Mickey’s hoodie and he wants the path to burn like iron, tattoo like ink and remain forever.
“I almost couldn’t find you,” Cauler says with his mouth pressed into the side of Mickey’s head. “You blended in so well with Santa’s elves.”
Mickey shoves him away at the shoulders in rebuttal and Cauler snickers, then immediately uses the momentum to grab Mickey’s forearms and pull him back in for a kiss. Mickey tilts his head into it and can’t help the smile that forms. One of Cauler’s hands comes up to hold the back of Mickey’s neck and warmth blooms across Mickey’s entire body. Cauler devotes himself to it fully, instilled like an anchor to the ocean floor, and it feels as blissful as a plotline in a movie. The passionate scene in a historic feature film that strikes the audience into sitting through the credits. But this isn’t a scene with a cut, nor even a movie with an ending. Cauler kisses him once and then twice and then goes back again. It’s Christmas eve, and Mickey gets to do this for the rest of his Christmas Eves if he so chooses to.
Their noses brush together and Mickey doesn’t care about anything around them. He feels no fear in having Cauler before him. He couldn’t give less of a fuck if people can see it. Let them see it. Let them see that he’s here, and he’s home. Cauler squeezes his left hand three times.
He’s here, and he’s home.