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Mane doesn't know Minute particularly well. This isn't really unusual — are are rivals after all. Except for the fact that Mane is probably the one person who knows Minute best.
Or at least among the people Mane would be willing to have a conversation with.
Mane gets to see Minute flustered and confused, pumped full with adrenaline, downtrodden from a loss, grinning like a fool and smirking victoriously.
Mane had met him as he clawed himself up from what should have been a career-ending injury, as he pulled the worst team in the league up to not be that bad. Mane knows Minute doesn't drink and seen him drugged because one of the rookies decided to be funny and spiked his glass of sparkling water. He's taken Minute to his apartment so he wouldn't have to make the hour drive to his team's hotel.
Mane has leaned on the bathroom door while Minute puked his guts out, has seen how Minute looks in Mane's clothes. He's seen Minute unconcious and concussed, has heard him scream at broken bones and dislocated joints, has seen him laugh, has woken up to Minute making breakfast and pretended not to hear him cry.
As Minute's rival on and off the ice, Mane sees a wider range of emotion than Minute ever seems to display anywhere else.
But its not like they're friends, no matter how Mane might sometimes wish differently.
So Mane probably shouldn't worry all that much. And he hadn't, in the beginning.
But five games into the season, Minute still isn't on the ice. His team hasn't put out any statements as to why their captain has vanished like morning dew in the sun.
Minute hasn't posted anything, though that admittedly, is usual for him, he ahdn't replied to Mane's text, which is less so, and hasn't picked up a single call, which Mane doesn't know how to categorize because it's his first time calling Minute.
And even now, after beating the Chungpire with an atrocious score of 5-0 and finally getting to question them in person, Mane hans't managed to get a single answer out of them.
He can't decide whether they actually don't know anything or refuse to tell him what they do know, but it doens't matter anymore when later that eveing Mane scrolls through social media and finds and picture of, undeniably, Minute. Hooked up to at least three different wires in arms and nose, unconcious.
The picture is taken down in real time, barely half an hour later, the Chungpire's official account makes a post about how specualting about private medical data is bad and yada yada
Mane stops reading it half-way through.
His hands won't stop shaking. The last time Minute looked that bad was before Mane ever met him, and that, Mane knows, where the worst months of Minute's life.
Mane knows more about that ime then he is truly comfortable with, from a drugged Minute crying on his shoulder.
What does it say about their relationship, Mane wonders, that its entire foundation is one big, terrible, horribly invasive, joke?
Though perhaps that is unfair.
Mane has admired Minute's play from the moment he saw his first game and has only grown to admire him more as he got to know him personally. He likes to think the same goes for Minute, who laughs at Mane's jokes more than anywhen else, who doesn't pull away when Mane throws an arm around him.
Mane puts his phone away and closes his eyes.
He doesn't fall asleep for a long time.
---
Mane is eating breakfast when his phone rings.
His thump hovers over the reject button while mskt his focus lies with his cereal, but stops before he presses it.
Minute's name greets him, the writing glowing white against the dark background.
It's been a week since he saw that terrible picture, and two since they last spoke.
Enough time for the Blindfold Bandits to lose their shot at play-offs, lose their chance at winning the Dragon Egg this year, enough that Mane's streak of bad games is beginning to deaw serious attention.
It felt like an eternity, this moment of resolution surreal.
He blinks once, to make sure Minute's name on the screen is truly there.
Mane steels himself, then accepts the call with a shaking thumb.
"Hey Minute", Mane greets, mouth still full with the cereal he completely forgot to chew while lost in thoughts.
"Mane", Minute replies, his answer little more than a desperate exhale. His voice sounds shaky in a way that makes Mane want to cuddle him close. "Do you...", Minute trails of, hesitance obvious in his voice, or rather his silence.
Mane hears rustling as someone takes the phone away from Minute. A new voice pipes up, stern and too cold for Mane's taste. "Mr. Pear? This is Mr. Tech's doctor."
Oh. That was probably bad.
"Mr. Tech needs a place to stay for the forseeable future."
Mane's mind runs through the options a hundred miles a minute as he hears Minute weakly say, "You don't have to!"
But Mane is already speaking over him, his mouth saying what his mind hans't processed yet, "Of course, he can stay with me."
"We and Mr. Tech especially are grateful for your time", the doctor says. More shuffling comes through the phone as the doctor must be handing the phone back to Minute. Mane's cornflakes are soggy and his milk lukewarm as he takes another spoonful to busy his hands.
"Mane...", Minute trails of again, sounding very lost. When he doens't continue, Mane interrupts the silence for him. "Should I come get you, where are you, even?"
"No!", Minute exclaims, then repeats more quietly, "No, no need, I'm in the hospital by the rink."
Mane's brain needs a moment to understand why that's relevant. "Wait! You're here?!"
Why? Minute lives a ten hour drive away, why would he come here? Is it something with his back? Returning for some other round of treatment he can only get where he was treated the first time? Does that egen amke sense? Mane doesn't know enough about medicine to feel sure either way.
"Yeah...", Minute admits, sounding embarassed.
"I really don't mind coming over, dude, it's like, not even ten minutes."
And to think that Minute has been so close the entire time. Something in Mane feels guilty for not recognizing the hospital in the picture, another is mad that Minute didn't say anything. If he's good enough to leave now, he must surely have been good enough to call ages ago.
Mane expects Minute to protest his offer again, but to his surprise, he doesn't. "You really don't mind?"
"No!", Mane protests, "I'll be there in 15", he rushes to say before Minute has time to change his mind.
"You mind I stay on the line? You scared me so badly...", Mane asks, trying to play it off with a laugh. He really doesn't want to leave Minute alone, not with how vulnerable he sounds. He must be feeling really shitty if accepts any kind of help.
Minute answers with a guilty tone that tells Mane Minute thinks they're staying on the phone for Minute's sake, something Mane can't even protest.
The cereal is left behind on the countertop, only getting more soggy as Mane rushes out. He fills the drive with emaningless cahtter about his past few games, the new rookies this season, the first ethiopian restaurant Mane has ever seen, and "right across the street too, bro!"
It's less than fifteen minutes later that Mane pulls up in fornt of the hospital, where Minute is waiting for him, phone in one hand, the other stuffed into his hoodie-pocket. The hoodie in question is much too large, Minute drowns in it, his face almost completely pulled underneith the hood.
It looks strange. Too big to be practical, red, unlike anything else in Minute's closet, and, Mane realizes with a startle, something he has never seen Minute in, though he startles more from the fact that 'Have I seen Minute in this' is a question he has seen Minute often enough to ask himself than the fact that the answer to that question is 'No'.
"Hey Minute", Mane grins as Minute open the passenger side door and carefully lowers himself into the seat. "Hey", Minute breathes almost silently as he refuses to look at Mane. "Thanks for coming."
"Always, man", Mane replies and menas it.
The drive back to Mane's apartment is silent for around three minutes before Mane can't take it anymore. "Is you back acting up, Is that why you were here?"
Out of the corner of his eye, Mane catches it as Minute flinches. Mane sees from everything about it that right now, this very moment, Minute wonders whether he should try to lie.
"No", he admits in the end, and opens his mouth as if to continue. He doesn't.
They sit in silence for a longer time. It's Mane again who interrupts it. "Did you get that hoodie at the hospital? I've never seen you in it."
From the way Minute's entire body jerks as if he just touched a working electric fence, it probably isn't the safe topic Mane thought it was.
Mane takes care to look straight ahead, depsite feeling Minute's wide-eyed stare bruning into his skull. He only relaxes once Minute does too, and turns away again.
"It used to be Clown's", Minute whispers like a shameful secret. An painful one, too, knowing Minute's history there.
"Oh, Minute", Mane can't help himself, horrified.
Minute draws his shoulder up to his ears, his feet come up onto the dark leather seat as he hugs his knees to his chest.
"I know it's stupid", Minute whispers. Mane thinks he can hear the tears Minute is fighting.
"It's not stupid, Min", Mane says after a long pause.
Minute's only answer is a disbelieving hum as they pull into the parking lot and get out of the car.
Mane leads Minute into the building and to the elevator without asking. No matter what's up with Minute, walking up stairs for twelve stories is unlikely to help.
Mane had left the door open when he rushed to the hospital, so he awkardly puts his keys away as it simply swings open at his push.
Minute hasn't said another word.
Mane closes the door behind him and gestures towards the pull-out coach in the living room. Minute obliges and sits without another comment, Mane following after him.
"Soooooo...", Mane drawls slowly, buying himself time to think, "Is there anything I should know about?"
Instead of answering, Minute gets up and closes the blinds, plunging the room into darkness. Minute settles down again, their legs barely brushing agaisnt eachother.
"I'm sorry", Minute starts, "For bothering you."
Not a good start, Mane thinks, a protest ready at the tip of his tongue before Minute terrifies him even more. "I wished I wasn't here, too. I should have just done it better."
"Minute", Mane asks, seriously alarmed, "what exactly are we talking about here?"
And is it what he thinks it is?
"I'm sorry", Minute repeats himself, voice trembling and hoarse. On the verge of tears, if they aren't already streaming down his cheeks. Mane can't see either way, which was probably Minute's goal in darkening everything up.
"Did you...", it's Mane's turn to trial of, hesitance or maybe cowardice robbing him of his words.
He clears his throat.
"Minute", he starts again stronger, "Did you try to kill yourself?"
Mane's fists clench as he fights the urge to crush Minute in a hug.
"And if I did?", Minute asks wetly.
Mane's cheeks are wet with tears, his shoulder shaking silently. "I would tell you that you would be missed, probably by many people, but especially by me, and that", Mane chokes on a sob, "that I'm selfish enough to want you on the ice and off the ice and I want you sick and I want you sad and happy and angry and any way I you'll ever be, and that— that I'll always want to be there for you and— fuck, Minute, can I— I really want to — Can I hug you?"
Minute whimpers and throws himself onto Mane's chest, Mane's arms clenchinga round him. He never wants to let Minute go, he doesn't want to risk that.
"I tried to drown myself in the river by the rink", Minute confesses through his crying in a shattered voice. "It was the anniversary."
The anniversary of his injury, he means, the culmination of his teammates, his best friends, leaving him alone on a team that was all around hell — and Mane would know, it's his team now, and he's the one who knocked it into shape — and checking him into the boards the very next game they played against each other, hard enough that his spine almost snapped, all for money they didn't even need.
Some days, Mane doesn't understand how Minute gathered himself up through the PT and the transfer to the worst team in the league and every one else deeming it an accident — and Minute, apparently, doesn't know either, if what he tried to do has anything to say about it.
All of those things, Mane never would have figured out without that stupid rookie spiking Minute's drink. This very moment, he feels almost grateful for it, it means he knows the context.
All those things, Minute professed crying into Mane's shoulder, on this very couch, eerily similiar to right now.
Just like then, Mane doesn't know what to do. What to say except for the sweet nothings he once whispered to calm Flame's nightmares. Meaningless and so insufficient in the face of Minute's pain, as Minute clings to him and his tears soak through Mane's shirt the way Mane's do into his hair.
"It's gonna be alright", Mane whispers, "I'm here", he promises, "I've got you", he breathes into Minute's curls, "I love you", he repeats, over and over again.
Eventually, Mane's tears dry to salty tracks on his cheeks, his nose stops leaking snodder all over the place and Minute's heaving sobs die down into quiet sniffles.
"Thank you", Minute says, his warm breath brushing against the sensitive skin of Mane's throat. That very moment, Mane decides, worst team in the league or not — and it's not, hasn't been since Minute seasoned the stew — Mane is going to requst a transfer.
They'll be together.
They fall asleep.
---
The worst team in the league isn't so bad when Mane and Minute paly on it together, their cooporation feels better than rivalry ever had.
Things can get better, when you aren't alone anymore, things can get better, when your mind is given the chance to heal, not only your body, things can get better, and when they don't, Mane is there to catch the fall.
Things can get better, and they do.
The higher you soar, the cooler it looks when I catch you.
---
Mane gets to hear Minute's heart as he sleeps, stand between Minute and Wook and Pierce, staring them down on the ice, hold Minute as he weeps, laugh with him and hear him complain, that season and for all to come.
It was alright, he stayed here, he's got Minute now and forever, and he loves him still.
Perhaps it isn't so meaningful after all, when it comes true.