Chapter Text
“This is our night!” Leno crowded as he bounced around the green room, drumsticks twirling around his fingers. “I can feel it!”
Misa scoffed, shaking his head. “You say that before every show,” he pointed out, hands steady as he did his eyeliner in the cracked mirror hanging on the wall.
“Well, this time it’s real,” Leno said. He threw himself onto the couch next to Minty. “I bet there’s some hotshot venue owner in the crowd, looking for the next best thing! And it’s gonna be us, because we’re gonna kill it.”
Misa privately thought that of all the places that they might be “discovered”, a shitty dive bar in the middle of the hood was probably close to the bottom of the list. He didn’t say that, though. He liked Leno’s optimism.
“Anyway,” Leno took a swig of beer. “Is Collie coming tonight? I feel like we haven’t seen him in ages.”
“He has work,” Minty replied, anxious fingers peeling the paper away from his water bottle. At least Misa wasn’t the only nervous one. He loved Leno, but his energy could drown a room if they let it. “Said he’d swing by after to catch the end of our set.”
Misa fiddled with the pegs on his guitar for what must have been the millionth time. He wondered if it ever got easier, going out on stage to face a bunch of drunk, screaming randoms. Most weren’t even fans of theirs, just people who were bored and looking for cheap entertainment. Still, a crowd was preferable to the opposite. At least a crowd meant they were getting paid.
He heard the openers going on, some all-girl teenage band. They were good, even if they’d had to borrow Misa’s distortion pedal after theirs broke. Leno stood up, chugging the last of his beer.
“That’s my cue to leave.”
Leno was probably the reason it was so easy to find bands who wanted to play shows with them. For every band that played, Leno would go out and do his best to amp up the crowd. He’d take his shirt off, flirt with the band, try to start a mosh pit, anything to get people on the floor. It was a self-appointed role, but an important one. No one liked playing to a dead crowd.
It also had the added bonus of giving Minty and Misa some quiet time to calm down before their set started.
“I think he’s right, you know,” Minty said, swigging more water.
He was their singer, which tended to surprise people, because Minty could hardly order his own food at a restaurant without turning into a stuttering mess. He was soft, too. Tall, but with messy curls framing his face and big round glasses that made him look younger than his 22 years. Too sweet to be singing in a grunge band in a dirty bar on a Thursday night. But then, Misa supposed, none of them really had the right look. Leno looked like a fucking linebacker (apparently he’d been crazy good at hockey in high school, but never quite had the money to make it big), and most of the bars they went to didn’t even want to let Misa through the door. Before settling on “Tooth and Tail” as their band name, Leno had joked about calling themselves “The After-Breakfast Club”.
“Leno’s never right,” Misa mumbled, fiddling with his strings. Then, because he was curious: “Right about what?”
“Tonight feels different.”
“Good different or bad different?”
“Hm,” Minty considered it, tilting his head. “Good different, I think. Got a good feeling.”
Misa shrugged, sipping at the shitty beer the venue had provided. He wasn’t supposed to be drinking; he was only nineteen, but Leno and Minty didn’t care and besides, this stuff was so watered down he probably could have downed the whole pitcher and still been good to drive.
The band onstage switched to their next song and Misa started to tune his guitar again. Maybe his friends were right.
They had this.
“This is our night!” Reavo yelled, wrapping an arm around Sam’s shoulders and shaking him as they exited the ice after warm-up. “I can feel it!”
Sam laughed, squirming his way out of Reavo’s grip. “Yeah? Tonight’s the night?”
They’d been on a bad losing streak for a couple weeks now, what with Smitty being out with a shoulder injury and Mack pouting about it. Still, it was a home game, and they were playing Vancouver, which made a win within reach if they played it right.
“Tonight’s the night,” Reavo agreed. “I’m calling it now; you’re getting a hatty.”
Sam scoffed. “I’m a D-man, Reav,” he tugged off his helmet, running his hands through his sweaty hair. “If I’m the one scoring the majority of our goals, we’ve got a problem.”
“Just you wait,” Reavo said as they entered the locker room. “I’ve got a good feeling about tonight.”
Sam laughed him off, half-way listening to the coach’s pep talk, and then they were lining up to get on the ice. As soon as he hit the ice, he could feel how alive the crowd was, roaring as they skated a lap around the ice. Sam’s first stop was Yaro in goal. He always tapped Yaro’s helmet before they played a game. He wasn’t sure if it was good luck (sure hadn’t been working lately), but it was routine and it was a way to remind himself of what his job was. Protect the puck. Protect the net. Protect the goalie.
“Have a good game, Dickie,” Yaro said, tapping Sam’s helmet with his glove. “We’ve got this, right?”
“We got this,” Sam agreed, because positive thinking was useful. “Stop ‘em dead, Asky.”
He skated back to the blue line and watched as a little girl came out to sing “O Canada”. She waved at him. He waved back
Yeah, they had this.