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San Jose and Ontario have weather so different from each other that Sam almost finds it disorienting. There’s something about living somewhere that doesn’t get snow, somewhere that rarely has temperatures in the negatives, that throws him off kilter.
Don’t get him wrong, he loves the warm weather, the fact that California seems to reach the sweet spot for warm weather (in his opinion) earlier than Ontario ever would is certainly a blessing. It also means that he’ll get to skirt around the hot hot summers, with their season ending before the temperature can begin to average out to something so blisteringly hot he thinks he’s going to die. It’s like living in an endless summer, getting to skip over the frigid winters and polar vortexes and the risk of snow in March that always plagues Ontario. The regular season helps him skip over a chunk of April, leaving only the small, very rare risk of encountering snow in May. It’s a pretty sweet gig if he has anything to say about it.
Point being: Spring in San Jose reminds him of summer in Ontario. The temperatures are relatively the same, and the temperature most days makes him yearn for days at the lake. Objectively, they live near the ocean, they could just go swimming there, but there's a difference between the ocean and a lake. Even if there wasn’t, the energy of the ocean just isn’t the same. There's something special about the countless hours spent out at the cottage, swimming in the lakes and playing bocce ball on the lawn and throwing around a frisbee or a football or a baseball and trips to the nearest golf course and fishing and kayaking and stand up paddleboarding and barbeques and tubing if someone there has a boat and fires and smores and laying on the lawn looking up at the stars.
He’s currently in the Toffoli household, sprawled out on the couch with Michael. Sam is reclined on the arm, legs sprawled out and pressing against Michael’s thigh where he’s sitting at the other end, leg spread out over the ‘L’ shape of the couch.
They’re doing something he’s pretty sure is called parallel play (he read it on the internet once), the two of them sitting comfortably in silence, scrolling on their phones. It’s not Sam’s first choice for an activity, but he’d come over early and Michael can be such a sourpuss before 11AM, so he doesn’t push that much.
There’s a small beam of sunlight striped across his arm, and it warms his skin, stirring up a sense of yearning within him like silt on the bottom of a lake. It’s almost noon now, and the small patch of sun is calling to him like nothing before. He swipes up instagram (not that there had been anything particularly interesting there, mostly just photo dumps from people he once went to school with that he—admittedly—does not really care about.) and checks the weather. (He has to google it, because the weather app frustrates him and half the time he can’t even find it on his phone.)
He’s wearing all black, which definitely won’t help it feel any cooler outside, but he doesn’t ever bother to check the weather when leaving the house. (Sue him. It’s not like he’s ever at much of a risk to be freezing, not with the permanent California heat. He’s a strong Canadian boy anyways, he can handle “the cold” better than any Californian could.)
Sam pressed the arch of his foot into the side of Michael’s thigh. “It's so nice out Mis. We gotta like, go outside.”
Michael raises an eyebrow at him from across the couch. “You wanna go out?”
Clearly, he’s had enough time to wake up, considering he doesn’t try to bite Sam’s head off. Not that Sam minds.
“No, just like.” He waves his hand towards the sliding glass doors that lead to the Toffoli’s deck. When he gets nothing more than the same exasperated look as before, he elaborates, “Just in the backyard. We could take Stella with us.”
Michael peers at him across the couch, as though his still-tired brain had yet to understand what Sam was putting down. “I guess?”
That’s a good enough answer from morning-Michael for Sam. He pulls himself up from his sprawled out position. Michael doesn’t move.
“Come on dude.” Sam only half hauls him up from the couch, before pushing him towards the door. “I’ll go find Stella.”
“Don’t forget to tell someone we’re taking her.”
Sam rolls his eyes even if Michael can’t see him anymore. “Thank you Mis, I wouldn’t have thought to tell Cat that we’re kidnapping her dog.”
“Dick.”
Sam decides to be intentionally obtuse, turning around to bat his eyes at Michael. “Yes?”
“Just go find Stella.” Michael's lips are pressed into a thin line—the one he gets when he’s trying not to smile at something.
Sam salutes and trudges off into the Toffoli household.
Stella is easy enough to find—considering that she comes bounding up to him the second she hears him approaching, jumping up at him (definitely clawing his legs a little bit, but Sam can cope.) He scoops her into his arms, presses a kiss onto the top of her head before continuing his search for Cat (or Ty. But mostly Cat.)
She’s at the kitchen table, eating some sort of rice bowl. It honestly looks really delicious, but that's not Sam's mission here. "Hi Cat."
She looks up from the bowl, a little surprised by still smiling. “Hey Sam!” She squints at him a little. “Where’s Michael?”
"He's outside. We were just thinking of taking Stella out to enjoy the nice weather and play."
He flashes her his winning smile, not that she needs it to be convinced, but Sam thinks it helps anyways.
“Oh! Sure. You didn't need to ask though.”
"You're the best!" Sam bounds off towards the backdoor, before slipping outside to the Toffoli backyard.
Michael has grabbed one of Stella’s rope toys, a ball, and a hat for himself and is now standing barefoot on the grass, waiting for the two of them.
Stella lights up when she sees him—and the toys—and only claws Sam’s arms a little bit trying to scramble out of them so she can run down the stairs to get to Michael. Sam can only imagine how crazy she’d have gone if he’d been sitting down, his face even remotely in her licking range.
She beats him there (obviously) jumping up at Michael, half trying to get at one of the toys and half trying to get at him.
The grass is getting long and it tickles Sam’s ankles and he wonders if sometime he should mow the lawn for Cat and Ty, just to be nice or whatever. He knows that if he offered they wouldn’t even accept, he’s not even their rookie and Ty probably doesn’t mind doing it but still. Sam probably owes them from all the food they’ve fed him. Plus he kind of likes it. It’s easy to throw his headphones on underneath the earmuffs and get lost in the repetitive motion and Sam likes feeling helpful and useful and likes the way that his sweat and the slight burn of his muscles remind him of that.
That’s an issue for another day.
Stella seems to have focused all of her attention onto the rope for the time being, considering the way she keeps trying to catch it between her teeth every time she jumps at it. Michael’s face scrunches up with something akin to worry as he sits down, holding out the rope for Stella to tug at.
They stay like that for a moment, Stella trying to take the rope away from Michael, tugging and shaking her head aggressively back and forth. She’s not strong at all, she’s a tiny dog, especially compared to a hockey player. Eventually (because Michael isn’t trying that hard to win against her) she manages to tear the rope from him. Then she’s bounding over to Sam who for some reason had stopped a few metres away from where the two of them were playing. She looks up at him, rope still tucked in her mouth, and shakes her head back and forth.
Sam laughs and drops down onto the ground as well, attempting to take the rope away from Stella. Her tail wags like crazy as they go back and forth trying to take the rope away from the other. Eventually she tears the rope away from Sam and goes bounding back to Michael, repeating the process.
They go on like this for a while, until one time when Michael reaches out to take his end of the rope, Stella drops the rope entirely and noses at the ball now resting in Michael’s lap.
“You wanna play fetch?” He uses the kind of baby voice that Sam only ever hears when Michael is talking to Stella—or the few times they've ran into cats on the street.
Stella yips at him and jumps up into his lap, her attention torn between the ball and attempting to shove her tongue as far down Michael’s throat as possible.
“Stella.” He’s giggling as he attempts to push her away without hurting her or accidentally flinging her across the yard. He manages to push her away, before throwing the ball in Sam’s direction. The ball hits the ground a little over halfway between the two of them, and Stella goes barreling after it, chasing it through the grass.
It reaches Sam before she can get her mouth around it, so he picks it up, tosses it straight up into the air once, then leans back on his palm and fires it back towards Michael.
They sat on the grass throwing the ball back and fourth, Stella running between the two of them with her boundless amounts of energy. At one point, Michael had given the ball more oomph than required and it had gone sailing over Sam. He had to stand up to retrieve the ball from the concrete patio behind them, and elected to stay standing, tossing the ball in an arc to Michael. It devolved further from there, and eventually the two of them were standing, passing the ball between the two of them while Stella ran between them.
“Do you think we’re like, tormenting her doing this?” Michael spoke instead of returning Sam’s pass.
“Dude. What the fuck are you talking about?” Sam is used to Michael’s questions, which are sometimes outlandish and almost always about something he either has no clue about or has literally never thought about in his life but this seems to take the cake for both.
“It’s like Monkey-in-the-middle. But worse because she can’t reach the ball at all. Do you think it’s mean?”
Sam shrugs. “I think that if she was bothered by it she would have let us know.” Sam crouches down to where Stella had stopped at his feet, ruffling at her fur. She jumps up and licks his face in response.
“I can’t believe you let her do that Dickie. That’s so weird.”
Sam rolls his eyes, even if Michael can’t see from where he’s standing. He’s sure Stella has lots of gross dog habits—he’d definitely pick a cat over a dog any day if he had the choice—but what Sam isn’t consciously aware of can’t hurt him.
“And obsessively cleaning your cat's eye crusties totally isn’t weird, dude.”
Michael’s nose scrunches up at that. “It’s not that weird. Plus whatever this is, is like… Infinitely weirder.”
Sam huffs in fake offense. “Fine then. I’ll leave. You can entertain her all on your own.” He’s pointedly ignoring the way Stella has abandoned both of them in favour for sniffing around the garden. In his fake indignation he retreats to the deck.
Sam had only been planning on hiding on the deck for a couple of minutes—maybe slipping inside to get a drink of water—but he, honest to god, had fully intended to go back to rejoin Michael and Stella. But he’s warm and just a little bit tired from playing with Stella because she might be small but she can be full of energy and the sun is so warm on his skin and the dark wood of the deck is just as pleasant so sue him if he lays down. The wood burns but in just the right way and the sun beats down on him and warms his skin and it’s like feeling all of the tension tucked in the sinew between his bones and muscles dissipate and melt away under the heat of it all. It feels like being out on the dock, when he was too bored to fish or had just come out of the water exhausted from swimming and just lay down to recover. The hard surface beneath his back is the same, even if the sway of the water is missing.
They need to go to the beach sometime. Sam doesn’t think they go nearly enough. Especially with the offseason looming and the fact that either one of them could go back home to Ontario. (Realistically, Sam knows that if they both go back they’ll both be in the Toronto area and nothing is really going to stop them from hanging out and possibly even training together. But still. Beach time.)
The warmth of the sunrays makes him think of high school, of the girls who he’d vaguely known getting into heated discussions with their English teacher about UV rays and how his exam prep interfered with their ability to be outside in the sun.
He gets it now, a little bit. He doesn’t understand the UV aspect, he doesn’t care if he tans or not (although he prefers if he can avoid burning), but there’s something about stretching out in the sun that’s so rewarding and soothing to him.
“Dude. What are you doing?” Michael's voice snaps him out of his thoughts. He hadn’t heard Michael come up onto the deck, and for a split second Sam wonders if he should worry about Stella licking his face—but he knows that he would have heard her nails against the wood—she is anything but quiet.
Sam opens his one eye to look at Michael and hums in lieu of a response. He has to squint in order to see anything, the bright San Jose sun beaming down almost directly into his retinas. Michael is crouched over him peering down at him with some kind of look of exasperation on his face. Sam stretches out, feeling the familiar pop of his shoulder as he moves his arms above his head, arching his back slightly to feel it down his spine as well.
“Stop basking.”
Sam could protest. Say ‘I’m not basking.’ but the thing is, he totally is basking. And that is a really good word.
So instead he holds up his fist and says, “Nice word.”
Michael leans in a bit more in order to fistbump Sam better, obscuring the sun slightly. Sam makes the split second decision to grab Michael by his wrist and yank him downwards instead of actually letting him fistbump him like a normal person.
It works—probably a little too well—and Michael is unable to fight the sudden onslaught of force from Sam and the Earth. Unfortunately for Sam, Michael had been mostly peached above him, so he gets a knee to his stomach and ribs before Michael flops down the rest of the way onto the deck.
He hadn’t thought that through enough.
Michael is heavy on top of him, and Sam is definitely still winded from Michael’s knee driving into his stomach and the rest of his weight promptly slamming down onto his ribs. It’s suddenly significantly warmer than it had been seconds ago, Sam’s skin feels excessively gross and sticky and it seems to burn in the places their skin makes contact with each other. The weight, in a way, is soothing. It would probably be better if they were both laying the same direction, instead of Michael sprawled across him in a diagonal. Like a weighted blanket—a living, breathing, talking weighted blanket who happens to be his best friend.
“What the fuck.” Michael groans, pushing himself up onto his hands and knees. Sam almost misses the weight of him, the line across his torso that was warmer than the rest of him where their bodies had been pressed together. “You’re such a dick.”
Sam can’t help himself from making the joke, but really Michael should know better than to give Sam any kind of ammunition. “And you’re Misa.”
Michael shoves Sam as he stifles a giggle, half rolling him over in the process. Sam lets gravity pull him back down, landing on his back with a small thunk. “I hate you so much.” Michael might be smiling (he probably is) but Sam can’t look up without the sun burning into his retinas.
He props himself up slightly, angling himself away from the sun and towards Michael. “Awww. You love me.”
Something flicks across Michael’s face, some emotion Sam can’t identify, but it makes him want to dig in, to plant his heels in the dirt and pull until the answer he’s looking for comes out. He doesn’t have the time to start before Michael rolls his eyes. “Unfortunately.”
“Love you too Mis.” It’s softer than he intended it to be, more raw and honest and less teasing and bro-like. The expression returns to Michael’s face, but it’s no longer fleeting, instead it lingers on his features. And his hair is sticking out from the sides of his cap forming into ‘wings’ like most hockey guys’ hair does. And it doesn’t necessarily look stupid and Sam would be a hypocrite for saying that because his hair has definitely done something similar when it was long enough to poke out like that but Sam really just prefers when Michael let’s his hairs natural volume and curl-wave things take over instead of messing with it until it runs straighter than usual.
Sam doesn’t even think before leaning up—using his core strength to bring his face upwards and closer to Michaels—and licking him up the cheek.
He tastes mostly of salt—because they’ve been outside in the heat and Michael doesn’t like to shower in the mornings when it’s warm unless he absolutely has to—but there’s a lingering taste of something else, something that Sam couldn’t begin to describe as anything other than just pure Michael. It’s almost nauseating, the wave of wanting that rushes over Sam, he wants to do that again, and again and again and again, and he wants to do so much more.
The next feeling that crashes over him is something closer to shit, why did I do that?
You don’t just go around licking your best friend, no matter how close you are, because that’s just plain weird. Especially on the face. That’s like. Ultra-weird.
Michael hasn’t moved since Sam licked him. Instead he’s just sitting there, legs tucked beneath his thighs. “What was that?” It’s not the freak out Sam expected. Even if Michael wasn’t going to make things weird between them, he still should have freaked out a little more to having Sam’s tongue on his face.
Sam watches Michael press the pads of his fingers into his cheek. It’s a valid question, a really valid question. What was that indeed? He doesn’t think saying something like ‘I wasn’t thinking and I just wanted to lick you and also you taste really good and I’d like to do that again more times than is ever socially acceptable and-.’ Instead he very eloquently says, “Um.”
This seems to snap Michael out of whatever daze he’d falling into, because he leans in a little more and forces eye contact with Sam. He’s searching for something in Sam’s eyes.
Neither of them speak.
Whatever he’s looking for he must find, because he leans in closer, their breaths mingling together, making the warm air between them warmer. “Is this ok?”
Sam doesn’t think he has the breath or the ability to speak without his voice cracking so instead of embarrassing himself by saying something like ‘This is more than okay. Beyond okay.’ he just nods and adjusts his forearms so they’re bearing less weight and he’s sat up a little bit straighter and a little bit closer to Michael.
Michael closes the distance between them, pressing his lips against Sam’s. Their mouths stay closed, and it probably classifies as a painfully elongated peck rather than a kiss but Sam feels warm all over and like something inside of his chest had cracked open and everything hidden inside of him is now spilling out. He wants to knock Michael’s hat off and thread his fingers through his waves and he wants to never stop kissing him and he wants to pull Michael back onto him and feel his weight pressing him down into the deck and he wants to press open mouthed kisses into his neck and have them be returned and he–.
Sam wants.
He wants so badly, so overwhelmingly, that he thinks he’s going to explode.
He doesn’t die, or spontaneously combust, or even wake up or any of those other horrible things that could happen in place of letting this reality exist—the reality where Michael Misa is kissing him and he’s kissing back. Instead, Michael pulls away, hand now cradling the back of Sam’s head.
“Hi.” Sam thinks it's more of a breath than a word at this point.
“Hi.”
“Um. Wow.”
And Michael laughs again, his lips tugging into the small curling smile that makes Sam’s heart jump so aggressively it feels like it's trying to escape from his chest and run away.
“That was ok?”
Sam is sure he looks like a shark at the moment, with bait being hung out directly before him, his smile mischievous and hungry and flashing.
“I don’t know.” He says, letting his smile consume his face. “Maybe we should try again.”
And Michael rolls his eyes again but he leans in again regardless, threading his fingers through the short amount of hair Sam has managed to grow back out.
They kiss again, and Sam would say that it was pretty fucking awesome.