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It happened sometimes. Even to veteran players. A string of away games starts to feel like a string of hotels starts to feel like a lot of standing in line at airports or swaying distractedly on yet another bus.
Sure, they’re all grown men getting paid to play a game, but that didn’t make every moment glamorous. And it did nothing when the long days in semi-foreign places started to end with nights that felt lonely.
Letting out a yawn he thought might crack his jaw, Eric leaned his head back against the elevator wall. Eyes closed as he listened to the machinery that hauled the metal box upwards. Just out of date enough that he could hear it, as opposed to that place in Vancouver that whizzed guests between floors like they were on a ship in Star Trek. Happy, honestly, for the reminder that there were other things in his life that creaked as much as he did these days.
Next to him, standing up straight and watching the numbers above the door change with the intensity of a seven-year-old, Scotty probably hadn’t noticed the elevator noises. It had been a solidly middling string of games so far this trip, and while losses made everyone cranky, the middle ground made Scott Hunter…emotional.
That weird, ironically middle ground of “how do I make it stop” that usually results in staring at a blank wall for half the night instead of getting any actual sleep.
So it was probably good there was already a plan in place for tonight, if not Eric’s usual strategy for shaking his friend loose from a mood.
“You don’t have to do this.”
Eric yawned again. “I know. But,” he sighed, “I made the dubious choice of liking you some years back, and now I’m afraid I care about your happiness.”
Scotty laughed, quietly, like Eric had known he would. “Sorry to be a burden.”
“Lightest burden I carry,” Eric said, because while Scotty was joking tonight, he wasn’t always. And if Scott was going to go out of his way to make sure Eric was doing OK after Rozanov got another godforsaken hat trick off of him, Eric was going to make sure Scotty didn’t suffer under the delusion that being captain meant he wasn’t allowed to lean on his friends.
Luckily, sometimes, Scotty was prone to be oblivious. “Only because we’ve got Valkez on the team. What’s that guy, six-nine?”
“I don’t think they let you play hockey at six-nine. The basketball gods appear and zap you onto the nearest court.”
“Pretty sure that guy’s four feet wide, too.”
“He’d make an excellent goaltender. You literally wouldn’t be able to see the net.”
Scotty laughed again, a little louder this time. “He’d make a terrible goaltender; he’d never be sure where the puck is.”
“Good thing we put him on defense.”
A third, real laugh. “Do not tell him that.”
“Scotty,” Eric said, opening his eyes and looking at his friend, hurt. “I would never.”
Scott raised an eyebrow.
“I would never do it again.”
A younger, less-mellow Eric had once been perhaps too honest with a now former teammate, as said former teammate still reminded Eric of every time they played.
“I know,” Scotty said, offering his usual olive branch. Always happy to tease and move on. “Besides, I think he’s getting traded.”
“No.”
“Yeah.”
“No.”
“Pretty sure.”
“God, that sucks,” Eric said, shifting his shoulders against the elevator wall. “He was really starting to gel with the team.”
“I know.”
“Does he know?”
“No idea.”
“Fuck.”
“Maybe the other team will stay in nicer hotels.”
“Pretty sure the NHL puts us all up in the same hotels,” Eric said, pushing off the wall as the elevator came to a stop on their floor. “Makes for easier planning.”
For management and goaltenders inclined to be sneaky.
Stepping off the elevator, Eric turned left. Hands in his pocket, his walk the easy saunter of a man who is sure which room he’s staying in.
“Aren’t you that way?”
Scotty was standing in front of the elevator, pointing to the right. Which was fair, because Eric’s room was indeed at that end of the hall.
“Nope,” Eric said and kept walking. “Come on, I got something for you.”
“We’re doing gifts on random Tuesdays now?”
He could hear Scotty following him and allowed himself a small smile. “Yup.”
“Benny.”
Turning to walk backwards, Eric shifted his smile into the kind of grin only Scotty or Carter ever got to see. Because Eric Bennett was a boring old goaltender who never made crazy choices and certainly never got his hair dyed once in San Francisco after losing a bet playing Skee Ball.
Scotty’s steps slowed, but he didn’t stop. Those dark eyebrows did furrow, though, that clever mind that made him so good as a Center abruptly going to work on what Eric was actually up to.
A risk, but one worth taking.
“Benny, where are we going?”
Eric held his grin. “My hotel room.”
“I’m really sure your hotel room is back there.” Scotty pointed with his thumb. “In fact I’m sure of it, because Carter was making jokes about passing notes through some kind of connecting vent and Polaski was threatening his neighbor about having to listen to bad sex again.”
“Love that Polaski’s more irritated it was bad sex than that he had to listen.”
“Benny -”
“Oh, look, it’s my room.”
Stopping in front of a door that looked identical to all the other doors in this hallway, Eric fished a room key out of his left pocket. The amount of energy he’d spent remembering which pocket was which, because if he had to check the little paper card that came with the key, this would have been even harder to sell. And Scotty wasn’t buying it as it was.
“Benny,” Scotty hissed, finally catching up, “what are we doing? Whose room is this?”
“I told you,” Eric said. “It’s mine.”
“Bullshit.”
“Scotty -”
“I am not toilet-papering some rook.”
Door unlocked, Eric laughed as he turned the handle. “Are we still doing that to rooks?”
Leaning into the door, Eric ignored Scotty’s scowl. The man could chirp, and the man would tease, but Scott Hunter had never been into the usual pranks that came with putting a bunch of young guys in a hotel together and letting beer get involved. Which was fine, because Eric had outgrown that inclination before he’d been old enough to legally drink, but mostly because that wasn’t what Eric had in mind anyway.
“Benny, what are we doing -”
“Hey,” Eric said, all feigned innocence and repressed glee. “Did you enjoy the game?”
Looking up from where he was scrolling on his phone on the bed, Kip smiled. “Yeah! This arena’s crazy, though.”
Behind him, Scott finally quit worrying about whose room this was. “Kip!”
Stepping out of the way, Eric tugged his friend into the room and closed the door behind them. Nobody else had been in the hallway and most of the guys who were in their rooms were asleep or distracted. Still, it wasn’t the end of the season yet, and some things were still underwraps.
Even if Eric had decided it was worth the risk to blow it all tonight.
Sliding off the bed, Kip grunted as Scott wrapped him up in a bear hug. Mumbling something against Scott’s chest that Eric didn’t catch before pulling back just enough to grin up into a kiss.
Something inside Eric’s chest squeezed as Scott kissed him back. Not because he wasn’t happy for his friend - God, Scotty needed someone to greet him like that when he got home from the grocery store, let alone a string of lackluster professional hockey games - but because Eric couldn’t remember the last time he’d kissed Holly like that.
Like he’d forgotten how to breathe and didn’t realize it until he’d had her in his arms again.
Breaking the kiss, Kip looked over to where Eric was still standing. “Thanks, for this.”
Eric watched Scott all but shake himself, remembering there was someone else in the room. “Benny, did you…plan this?”
“If we had a game tomorrow it might have felt irresponsible,” Eric said. “But we’re off for the next two days, and you mope.”
“I do not.”
“You do. It’s sweet.”
“I do not,” Scotty insisted, even as Kip beamed at the confirmation and kissed his cheek.
Eric nodded his head, gracious in victory. “Of course not.”
Scotty, however, had a knack for loving people with a mischievous streak, and it appeared Kip Grady was no different. His arms around Scott’s waist, Kip smiled like the angel Scott kept saying he was. “Eric, did you want to hang out for a bit?”
It was a new expression on Scotty’s face. Caught between affection and lust, and the sudden urge to throw something.
Eric tossed the room key onto the nearby dresser and put his hands back in his pockets. “Thanks, but I have my own plans for tonight.”
“Really?”
“Yoga and yogurt.”
Scott snorted. “You are not.”
“The yoga, maybe.” Eric shrugged. “But not the yogurt. The stuff is foul.”
Even with the love of his life in his arms, Scotty frowned. “You eat the stuff every day.”
Eric nodded. “The things we do for this team.”
It hadn’t been such an ask in the beginning. But there were only so many combinations of fruit and nut a man could put on top of a dairy product.
“Well…thanks,” Scotty said, and Eric knew the softness in Scott’s voice had nothing to do with yogurt.
Turning on his heel, Eric didn’t bother to hide his happiness for them. “I’ll see myself out. Scotty, bus leaves at nine.” Scott nodded. Eric nodded in return, then to Kip with a knowing smile. “Mr. Grady.”
“Mr. Bennett.”
“You two watch Pride and Prejudice one time,” Scott said as Eric opened the door and peeked out.
“Maybe you shouldn’t have slept through it.”
“I’ve slept through every movie.”
“Yeah, but maybe I find it charming when you snore through a chase scene.”
Eric stepped out with a chuckle. It was a truth, fairly unknown, that Scott Hunter was not a film kind of guy. Eric couldn’t name the last movie Scotty had stayed awake for.
Closing the door behind him, Eric headed back the way they’d come. Past the elevator, waving silently to a yawning Anderssen as he stepped out. Down the right side of the hallway to the room he’d been assigned. Fishing the key card out of his right pocket, he unlocked the door and let himself into a room with a yoga mat and mercifully lacking in yogurt.
None of their away games had been worth the effort so far, and there was the chance that the rest of this series would be just as average. But, fishing out one of the “bizarre Japanese snack packs” he brought along for nights when there was nothing good on the Food Network but he knew he’d be watching it anyway, Eric thought maybe his would be net gain as far as trips went.
No rules broken about overnight guests in a player’s room. No one trying to sneak out of the room people knew was Scotty’s. Hopefully a string of smiles from the team’s captain that would keep the gossip on the bus tomorrow running for hours. That Eric would of course know nothing about.
Settling on his own bed, Eric turned on the TV he would only be half watching, opened his seaweed-snack-of-choice, and after a moment, picked his phone up off the side table. He dialed the number without thinking, muting the latest beach-themed drug commercial as the voice he loved picked up on the other end of the line.
“Hey, Holly.”