Work Text:
“Did you know hedges don’t look like that all the way through?”
Georgie jerks out from the half slumber he’d fallen into. He’s half-expecting Tessa to be peering at him from half a foot away, even though it was Robbie said it, the words rumbling through the chest Georgie was currently using as his pillow.
Which was likely on purpose — seeing each other got significantly easier once Georgie and Mel finally agreed on a nanny, but while some late nights are in her job description, staying the night isn’t.
“I’m awake,” Georgie says, mostly meaning it, then, “What about hedges?” He doesn’t know if it was just whatever popped into Robbie’s head, or if it was something important, and either way, he doesn’t want to miss it.
“My ma made me watch these gardening shows with her last time I was there,” Robbie says. “One of the places she’s looking at has a garden, and she’s already freaking out about how she’d ruin it if she moved there, and now she wants me to go to a greenhouse to look at fucking pansies with her next time I come visit.”
Georgie snorts, and then Robbie does, the laugh reverberating through him in a way Georgie takes as a sign to get up, one he reluctantly obeys, but not before pressing a kiss to Robbie’s shoulder, his throat, his mouth when he turns, expectant, murmuring, “I told her she can’t say that shit—“, laughing even as his fingers are twisting through Georgie’s hair, pulling him back down into his arms.
*
It’s much later when Georgie’s getting herded out the door, Robbie yawning as he hands him leftovers. Georgie doesn’t know how there’s anything left — he had two generous servings, and Robbie did too — but he takes it gratefully. Georgie’s pretty sure Robbie would be more pissed than pleased if he told him he was already giving Mrs. Lombardi a run for her money, so he doesn’t say it. It’s been years since he’s had her cooking. She probably got better too. You do with most things, except the ones with an expiration date.
It’s just past eleven when Georgie gets in the door. No later than Georgie would get home after some games, though people respect ‘I’ve got a sitter waiting’ a lot more than they ever respected it when you replaced the word ‘sitter’ with ‘wife’. Leave the wife waiting around for hours while you pound down a few drinks, that’s alright, but the sitter? You have to respect her time.
“Sorry,” Georgie says again, because he told her ten, and he meant it, swearing at the phone and sending her a text the second he got out of bed. “Lost track of time.”
“No worries, Mr. D,” Claire says. He can’t get her to call him Georgie, though she calls Mel exactly that. He doesn’t know if Georgie feels too familiar, or childish, or what, but for whatever reason, he’s Mr. D, and Robbie is downright gleeful about it. “I’d just be studying at home instead.”
She holds up a heavy book that looks vaguely familiar, or maybe something in him just thinks it should be. Though she’s probably just brought it around before. Finals are coming up. Same time as the postseason. He doesn’t think he’d even know it was coming if it wasn’t for the slow thaw around him, the sun creeping out a little longer every day — at a certain point he thinks he figured this season just wouldn’t end, or maybe just hoped.
And it hasn’t, yet. One more game before the postseason. However many games that ends up being — as few as four and as many as — Georgie isn’t sure what the maximum is, but he bets Finn does, though he’d give him that little frown as he told him, like he didn’t appreciate Georgie testing the hockey gods for asking, and he really didn’t appreciate him even acknowledging the possibility of a sweep.
Robbie was like that too sometimes, would literally knock on wood after Georgie said something, looking scandalized, like Georgie had just spit on the face of god by acknowledging their team could ever lose a game. Georgie’s never gotten it, that faith, though he thinks part of it is, deep down, they worship the game, and whatever part of Georgie that still did probably died somewhere in Cleveland.
But it’s funny, how knowing it’s almost over has started putting a warm gloss over everything. How the most recent road trip, last of the regular season, Georgie grumped along with everyone else about wanted to be home — and he did, missed the kids, liked Robbie’s voice in his ear but liked it best shoulder to shoulder, reverberating through him if it could.
But he found himself smiling goofily as Cap and Finn discussed the statistical likelihood of their possible opponents over breakfast, pulling out sugar packets to represent each of the eastern conference seeds. Ended up judging an arm wrestling contest, though he’s not sure why he was given the honor, other than seniority, and maybe a little fear he’d sprain something if he competed.
He even joined Chaser and Logan at the card table on the flight back, lost a couple twenties, learned all about a some polar expedition Logan was listening to a podcast about, which he recounted as he fleeced everyone at the table. Georgie forgets, sometimes, that Logan isn’t Finn. But then, Georgie’s pretty sure Finn would fleece them all too, if he bothered to play, but he was talking strategy with Cap again. Georgie probably should have been there instead. Would have, previous years, but he’ll just slow them both down, on and off the ice, and they all know it, even if Finn would never say it.
Claire’s finished gathering all her things when Georgie finally thinks to open his his mouth. “Let me get you an Uber,” he says, and while they wait for it she tells him about how everything went after he left for Robbie’s — Toby took to Claire right away, and Tess has too, after a show of reluctance, but she’s stubbornly refused to let Claire read her bedtime stories, at least, until tonight.
“She asked for three!” Claire says, throwing her hands up, and Georgie laughs. He knows a bedtime delay tactic when he hears it, but she would have picked a different one if Claire hadn’t genuinely passed the test, whatever it was.
Georgie gives it a week, tops, before Tess informs him Claire tells stories better than him. He’s already bracing himself for it. Mel’s always been far above him, along with her side of the family. His side of the family. Claire, probably already. Georgie bets Robbie’s going to shoot up the list when he finally gets a chance.
Which is — he doesn’t know when, honestly. Robbie wants to, that’s clear by the handshakes he’s tried and scrapped, the not so subtle inquiries his mother's been making. And it’s not like Georgie doesn’t want Robbie to meet them — he thinks he wants it even more than Robbie does, and not just because Tessa, for some reason, has refused to drop the subject of that promised new handshake and taken to reminding Georgie about it almost every chance she gets. He’d introduce them tomorrow if he could. Re-introduce. Whichever.
Except it isn’t just him in the equation. Mel still hasn’t introduced her boyfriend to the kids, and given they live together — it doesn’t feel right. Or maybe right wasn’t entirely the right word: fair. It doesn’t seem fair, and after the shit Georgie slung at her — he owes her a little fairness, he thinks. And then some.
That’s one of the side-effects, Georgie’s noticed, of clarity. Or maybe not a side-effect, just a less enjoyable part, which isn’t quite the same. He’s gotten enough distance now to see himself properly, or just better, and as much as Vittoria says that’s a good thing, sometimes it’s hard not to hate himself more, seeing it all laid out behind him, landscape scarred by his mistakes.
But most days he just — doesn’t. It’s not like he’s learned to love himself, or whatever the fuck they say. It isn’t even that unselfconscious awareness Tess seems to have, at all times, that she is doing the exact right thing, even when that exact right thing is almost prematurely ending her father’s season by ambushing him at the top of the stairwell.
“Couldn’t sleep?” Georgie asks. He didn’t feel her listening when he was talking to Claire, but honestly, she’s gotten better at it, and Georgie remembers how many nights he went completely undetected, straining his ears to hear every single detail his parents were saying, everything they were doing that made the burden heavier. Will’s silence, Dicky’s grades, Georgie’s pensiveness. He had to look that one up, after. Tried to do the exact opposite, but things catch up: Toby’s silence, Tessa waiting at the top of the stairwell in the exact spot Georgie used to sit, though he supposes spying is less her style than a good old-fashioned mugging.
“Want me to read you a book?” Georgie says, already expecting the headshake he gets. “Want to hang out while I get ready for bed?”
Tessa deems that acceptable, burrowing under the covers on what used to be Mel’s side of the bed while Georgie washes his face in the master bathroom, out for the count by the time he’s finished brushing his teeth. She’s dead weight in his arms when he carries her back to her room, shuffling slowly so he doesn’t wake Toby or either of his knees. He goes back as slowly as he comes, is out as quick as Tessa was, as far as he can tell.
If he dreams, he doesn’t remember it.
*
Their last game of the season doesn’t matter. Their seed is locked up, their opponent yet to be decided. They thrash a listless Islanders team, eliminated weeks back, playing the particular sort of game you play when there’s nothing left to play for, except maybe your pride. Though if the Isles have any pride left, they don’t show it tonight.
It’s hardly a game for the ages. Georgie plays third pair minutes, touches the puck a few times, gets a couple blocks in. Six goals on the scorecard at the end of the night, but his name isn’t on any of them. None of his family in the crowd — why bother, when there’s a postseason to play in? Four to however many games. He knows better than to ask Finn. Thinks Robbie would know, but he’d give him shit for it. It feels like something he should probably know after all these years, something he should have gathered along the way. It wouldn’t even be hard to do the math, but he doesn’t. Four series, seven games a series max. It’s sitting right in front of him.
Playoffs, they always say, is a different game, and they’re right about that, so it probably doesn’t translate anyway. A series can be a nightmare, an eon, the blink of an eye. There are postseasons carved into his skin and ones he hardly remembers at all. It’s impossible to know what they take until it’s already gone.
The media doesn’t bother to dance around it after the game. Ask how he feels, going into what’s probably his last postseason. He says it’s something he never gets used to, and means that as much as he ever means anything he tells them. Says it still feels surreal, and that’s true too, though it isn’t quite the word.
He doesn’t find one until later, hunched over in the front seat, trying to figure out how to answer a text from his mom, a no doubt well-meaning, How does it feel? sent around the same time he was answering the media. He doesn’t want to give her the same answer, so he looks it up. Sends her like a dream, because she’d like that, and it’s truer than surreal was.
He calls Robbie on the drive home after his one obligatory post-win drink at the bar, waits for Robbie to ask, the real words already waiting on his tongue.
Thankfully, Robbie doesn’t make him wait for long. “You know when you’re moving, and you’ve packed up, but you’re going through the place, looking for anything you forgot,” Georgie says, and Robbie’s ‘yeah’ is immediate, this tone in his voice like he’s already caught on.
“And you’ve seen it a thousand times before,” Georgie says. “But it’s just a room now. They’re all just rooms now.”
“Yeah,” Robbie says again, and the way he says it, Georgie knows he doesn’t have to say another word. He says them anyway. Talks until he gets home, sits in the driveway because he doesn’t want to deal with the headache of switching Robbie from the car speaker, the cold dark house he'll be walking into. Mel has the kids tonight. It made sense, that timing. Same as an anticlimactic game ending on a Tuesday night. Robbie’s got work in the morning. Said he could come out anyway, but Georgie told him not to bother, and it was the right call. Hardly covered himself with glory tonight, did he? Though he didn’t embarrass himself either, and that’s the best he could ask for.
“Find out who you play tomorrow,” Robbie says.
“Eh,” Georgie says. “I’m not bothered. Pretty sure the guys have it either way.”