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Troy gets up quietly, takes Chiron on a run. Starts the coffee maker before he leaves. Checks his phone three times before he makes it out the door, though he doesn't know what message he's expecting. He puts his headphones in, but he doesn't turn on any music. It's too loud, too cacophonous, inside his head already.
Harris is up when he gets back, yawning and dumping sugar into a cup of coffee that's already been turned beige with creamer.
Troy pours lukewarm coffee into a cup and gulps it down black.
Despite still being bleary-eyed, Harris squints at him. "You okay?" He waves a hand at the coffee cup. "You're not usually that anti-joy."
Troy looks down at the dregs at the bottom of his mug without seeing them. "Sorry. Didn't sleep well."
Harris frowns, brows knitting together. "You don't need to apologize for drinking your coffee like it's paint thinner. Can I do anything?"
Troy shakes his head. "No. Just gonna be in a weird headspace today, I think." He knows. At least it's just practice, not a game. "Probably won't be real chatty. Sorry." He rinses out the cup before loading it into the dishwasher. His fingers twitch as he sets it down, running over the rainbow stripes circling it.
It makes something in his stomach lurch.
"You don't need to be sorry." Harris's frown has deepened, worry starting to skitter across his expression. "I get it. Some days you just don't wake up feeling human."
Troy nods. He definitely isn't feeling human.
"Want me to make breakfast today?"
Troy's stomach rolls; he's not sure he can handle food. Pretty sure going to practice on an empty stomach is a bad idea though. "Just some eggs and rice, maybe? My stomach's still in bed too."
"Okay." Harris doesn't look like he's buying it. Troy only hopes he doesn't push. He won't lie to Harris, can't lie to Harris, and he wants to confess to what's bothering him about as much as he wants to eat a bowl of ground glass for breakfast.
The dream is still clinging to him, like a cobweb he'd walked through. Dallas Kent, grinning, arm around Troy's shoulders, steering him toward a bowling lane with a promise to fucking annihilate him.
What am I doing with you? Troy had thought. I know what you are. I know what you did. I don't ever want to be near you again.
But dream-Troy had followed along, and when Troy had tried to open his mouth, to shout that he wanted nothing to do with Dallas, now or ever, all that had come out was a dream-logic question, saying they couldn't go bowling because they hadn't rented shoes. Dallas, don't you know the rules?
And Dallas had been so thrilled to see him, every second. Grabbing Troy, dragging him around, slapping him on the back and telling a girl at the bar this is my best friend, not as great a catch as I am, but still pretty fucking awesome.
And Troy had kept following, saying his dream-lines, while the part of him still tethered to the waking world had tried and tried to scream, tried to throw off the arm, until Troy had jerked awake with a shout dying in his throat, grateful that Harris was a heavy sleeper.
He can still feel Dallas's hand on the back of his neck, a phantom heat that he feels like should be turning his skin red, like Harris should be able to look at him and see Dallas's handprint there, marking out Troy as...
Something. He can still feel the guilt like a puck in his chest cavity, rooted there by the idea of innocently following Dallas around a bowling alley like it's old times.
Had he and Dallas ever even gone bowling? He doesn't think so, thinks the last time he went bowling was some team bonding thing in high school. He'd sucked at it, and thought it was boring as shit besides.
They ride to the rink in silence, Harris not doing a great job at being subtle when he glances over at Troy with concern etched all over his expression. "You're sure you're okay?" he blurts out as they turn into the parking lot. "Because if we need to lie and say you're puking your guts out or-"
"I wouldn't ask you to lie to your boss, Harris-"
"Or we could say I'm puking my guts out and being really pathetic and you need to stay home with me because I look like I'm dying-"
"Harris!" It's enough to make Troy laugh, as shaky as it comes out. "I'm okay, I promise. Just too in my head. Being around the team should help. Shake it off, you know?"
"Bad dream?" They've parked, but Harris hasn't turned the truck off yet.
Bad isn't exactly the right word, but Troy still doesn't want to talk about it, doesn't want to pull at that tangle of thread, so he nods. "Yeah. Just a dumb one, but you know how dreams can mess with you. I'll wear myself out at practice, nap when I get home, and I'll reset."
Harris does look a little reassured at that. It's a totally rational line of thought, and it isn't really a lie, he's just leaving out that part where some animal in his chest is now rolling Dallas Kent back and forth, back and forth, pulling up memories of the two of them spilling into their favorite bar, Dallas ahead of him, the bartender saying, "Hey, Kent, where's your shadow - Oh there you are, Barrett, your usuals, boys?"
He'd thought he was done missing Dallas. He should be done missing Dallas. That bridge isn't just burned, it's immolated. It's been bombed. Torn down for scrap. It's just his subconscious, scraping at a wound that would be healing a lot faster if he could just leave it alone.
Harris kisses him and they make their way into the rink, split off as Troy heads for the locker room. Troy misses him almost instantly. It's a dumb thing to play sick about, but he sort of wants to anyway, to have a day where he just lies in bed curled up against Harris's side and...
He doesn't know. He feels like he's in mourning, though Dallas is still very much alive and well and out on bail pending his trial and-
Troy changes into his gear maybe a little more forcefully than is necessary, like tearing off his shirt will let him send the dregs of the dream with it.
When the guys start to file into the locker room, Troy hears Dallas in the clamor of voices. When Ilya claps him on the shoulder to emphasize some joke Troy didn't catch, he flinches.
Ilya frowns at him. "You okay, Barrett?"
Troy shakes his head and waves him off. "Slept like shit. Been out of it all morning."
Half the locker room takes a step back. "You're not sick, are you?" Bood asks warily.
For all that they are inherently insane, to strap knives to their feet and go out on the ice and beat the shit out of each other, everyone knows you don't expose the locker room to whatever virus you've picked up. That's a great way to have half the team out sick for a week.
Troy rolls his eyes. "I'm not that much of an ass," he says, because that's the line. He's always been good at following a script. "I had a bad dream, all right? Woke up in a weird mood. I'm fine." He thinks his voice comes out too harsh on the last word. Too aggressive. Too much like the man he was less than two years ago, the man his father raised, the man Dallas Kent went damn near everywhere with.
But if anyone else hears it, they don't say anything, and Troy draws a little bit of comfort from the knowledge that Ilya, at least, has never hesitated to call him out on his shit. If Ilya isn't glaring at him, he can't have come across too badly
"We'll wake you up on the ice, huh?" Ilya says, and he flashes Troy a grin that's meant to have Troy groaning dramatically, like Ilya's just announced his execution. He doesn't have that much acting in him though, barely manages a weak smile that feels more like a grimace.
Ilya's grin stiffens on his face, and Troy knows his captain's noticed that there's more going on than a bad night's sleep. Mercifully, he doesn't say anything here, in the middle of a packed locker room.
Troy doesn't do as badly during practice as he'd worried he would. He's used to playing hockey on autopilot, he supposes. He's had plenty of bad nights on the ice, nights where guilt over what he'd said to Price or Hayes or whoever else was eating at him. Nights where he couldn't stop remembering that Dallas would hate him if he knew him. Nights after a fight with Adrian where all he'd wanted was to complain about his boyfriend to a friend and known he didn't have any.
Practice after a nightmare that wasn't even a nightmare is fine.
Wyatt skates up next to him while they're both taking a breather, just a little past the usual line for personal space. That's pretty usual for Wyatt, always has been. Dallas - with Troy as his ever-present echo - had made plenty of 'jokes' about it. When he'd first arrived in Ottawa, Wyatt had hung far back, watching Troy with the same sort of intensity he had on the ice, ready for an attack. Troy had been stunned the first time Wyatt had crowded up next to him to show him something on his phone, had never expected to be forgiven, to be allowed into the inner circle by someone who'd known, up close and personal, what he'd been like in Toronto.
Guilt rolls in his gut. Wyatt's eyebrows are knitted together, well aware that something's eating at Troy, concern for a friend written all over his face, and Troy wishes it was something, anything, bothering him that wasn't I woke up really missing that guy who once spent fifteen minutes making fun of you for not cheating on your wife.
Troy knows he doesn't deserve to be forgiven for what a shithead he was in Toronto. Most days, he can accept that he has somehow, implausibly, been forgiven for it anyway. Most days, he doesn't feel like Dallas is right beside him, ready to lean on his shoulder and ask if any of the guys who are actually fun are coming back to his place tonight.
"You look like shit," Wyatt says, and somehow he's friendly enough that it doesn't even sound like an insult. "You sure you're okay?"
Troy shrugs one shoulder, starts fiddling with his glove like it's the most interesting thing in the world. "I'll be fine."
"Hmm." When Troy looks up at him, Wyatt is giving him a hard, searching look. Fucking goalies. "You look like you did when you first got here. You know, when you were dealing with a bunch of shit by yourself."
Troy shrugs again. "Couldn't exactly tell a bunch of guys who had good reason to hate me what was going on, could I?" That's still a miserable, bitter memory, despite how much good had come out of the trade. Mourning his first - and what he'd expected to be his last - real romantic relationship. Limping around the hurt of finding out that Adrian had been seeing someone else for months. Mourning his friendship with Dallas and hating himself for mourning it. Angry and bitter about being traded to such a shitty team.
At least only one of those hurts is pricking at him today.
He realizes too late that his answer has pitched him perfectly into Wyatt's trap. The goalie nods pointedly and says, "Exactly. You've got all of us now. So." He punches Troy lightly in the shoulder. "What's eating at you, and why are you trying to pretend you're fine?"
Troy doesn't think any amount of time is going to be enough to get him used to the culture of this team. Checking in on each other because they care, not because they're just worried about the outcome of the next game. Dallas was the best friend Troy had ever had, once, and if Troy had shrugged and said, It's no big deal, I'll be over it by tomorrow he'd have dropped it, no problem. Troy would have dropped it too, in the other direction.
But Wyatt's not going to. And if he gives up, it'll only be to say something to Bood or Roz and sic them on him next.
"It's stupid," Troy attempts, knowing it isn't going to work. "I told you, bad dream. Having trouble shaking it off, that's all."
"Want to bitch about it?" Wyatt asks. "Might help get it out."
Troy shakes his head and looks out over the rink without really seeing anything. It's better than looking at Wyatt and feeling the tug of guilt over and over. "It's stupid. It shouldn't be bothering me."
"No offense, Barrett, but it doesn't look like that's stopping it."
Troy manages a half-hearted glare. Wyatt doesn't even have the decency to pretend to be intimidated by it. Most days, Troy is glad that Wyatt's forgiven him, that he's decided he can be Troy's friend with no hard feelings between them. Today, it just makes him feel like an imposter. It's bad enough that he's convinced Harris that he's something better than he was. How had he conned Wyatt?
"Woke up thinking about Toronto," Troy finally admits, though he carefully steps around any mention of missing, of this stupid, ugly part of him that still thinks he had a friend worth missing back there. "About Dallas."
"Ah." Wyatt looks out across the ice, where Shane and Ilya have started bickering about something, with a distressed looking Young standing between them. "You and him got drafted together, right?"
"Yeah." Troy sighs heavily. "He's a lot like my dad. Following along with him... It was easy. Hell of a lot easier than trying to be a decent guy."
"Especially in Toronto," Wyatt points out, and he flashes Troy a smile. Like he's trying to say, it's okay, I still forgive you.
"Yeah." Troy rolls his shoulders. "Been trying to shake it off all day, but I guess I... I can't stop feeling like that guy. The one who stood by and laughed while Dallas ran his mouth." Sitting downstairs on Dallas's couch, sharing beers with the other guys, completely unaware of what Dallas was doing to women upstairs in his bedroom.
"Pretty sure that guy wouldn't be sitting here looking all gloomy about it. He definitely wouldn't be mooning over Harris every time he comes over to film us."
"I don't moon over him." Frankly, Troy isn't certain he knows what 'mooning' is even supposed to mean. He'd just prefer any sort of normal banter over sitting alone with his thoughts. Which, now that he thinks about it, is probably exactly why Wyatt came over.
"You so do. You know, I used to think I was totally obsessed with Lisa, and then I met you and those two-" he nods his head towards Shane and Ilya "-and now I feel like I've gotta step up my game."
"Harris deserves it." Troy says it reflexively, because it's true. It's more than true. Harris deserves everything. He deserves a hell of a lot better than Troy, that's for sure, but as long as he's willing to settle, Troy's going to do whatever he can to convince Harris to settle just a little longer.
A phantom squeezes his shoulder as his stomach twists with guilt again. Selfish fucker.
Wyatt laughs. "Yeah, I know, man. You love your boyfriend, we get it." He leans over and knocks their shoulders together. "See what I mean? That's not Dallas Kent's best friend talking. That's the new and improved Troy Barrett. The one who loves the shit out of his boyfriend, and only ever uses pride tape, and hurled a guy into the boards last week for tripping Haas."
Troy scowls reflexively at the memory and Wyatt laughs again. "You're all right, man. You were young, you were stupid, you were surrounded by macho hockey players and you didn't want to become their target. It's okay. You've grown and shit."
Troy doesn't know what to say to that. He's grateful but it also sets the feeling in his gut to a boil, makes part of him want to drop to his knees and scream that part of him wants his friend back, just with the shitty parts removed. And there's the guilt that Wyatt thinks he means woke up feeling guilty for how shitty I was in Toronto when what he'd meant was woke up missing Toronto even though there's nothing there worth missing and I wouldn't go back if you paid me.
Before he has to figure out how to respond, Ilya whistles them back onto the ice. He's still bickering with Shane, speaking rapid-fire Russian, and Shane's grinning ear-to-ear about whatever it is, so Troy guesses Shane's won their argument.
Troy switches back onto auto-pilot and loses himself in the routine of practice.
By the time they're done for the day, Troy is feeling better. The familiar ache in his muscles is comforting, and having Ilya and Shane both talking strategy gives his brain a workout too. There's still an ache in his chest, but he feels marginally less like he's going to throw up. He'll nap when he gets home, he's already decided, and hopefully have the last of this thing shaken out of his system by the time Harris gets home. Troy'll cook dinner, to make up for being such unpleasant company this morning.
Ilya bumps their shoulders together as they leave the ice without looking at him, and Troy knows him well enough to understand the quiet I can tell you're still not okay in the gesture. Ilya's always been a tough person to figure out, and he's only gotten marginally easier to understand since the reveal of his and Shane's relationship. He's incurably nosy, more than happy to insert himself into the personal lives of his teammates, but he also seems to have some innate sense of when it's time to back off, when someone doesn't want to reveal any more than they already have.
Sometimes, when he's feeling reflective, Troy wonders if it's Ilya's father's influence. They've always talked around the idea of their fathers, rather than talking about them, but it's enough for Troy to know that he and Ilya were raised on the same sort of education - learn what language is being spoken in the room and then speak it. Or else. It's morbidly, selfishly comforting, to think that those scars might be good for something. Though Troy doesn't think he's anywhere near Ilya's level of turning things around into something that improves the lives of those around him.
"Practice helped," Troy says softly, even as he pauses, lets the rest of the team file into the locker room without them. Shane glances briefly between them and keeps going, and Troy is certain he'll make sure no one will come back out looking for them. "Wore me out some."
Ilya's look is... skeptical? Knowing? He and Troy are too much alike sometimes, knowing all the other's tricks for dancing away from conversations they're not ready to have.
Ilya's been not-so-subtly hinting that Troy should follow his lead and start seeing a therapist. Today, especially, Troy thinks maybe he's onto something. But so far his father's imagined sneer has been larger and louder than any of the possible benefits. And it sits heavy in his stomach, the idea of sitting in some office and saying I actively chose to be shitty, to make a target out of people like me, please wave a magic wand and make me stop feeling guilty about it. Like maybe he deserves this, deserves to carry this silent, cutting guilt for the rest of his life, the way Price will always remember how he was treated, the way those women will always carry what was done to them.
Suddenly, achingly, he wants to go home. Home to Harris and Chiron, yes, but more than that - home to some nonexistent place where life is easier. Where he never befriended someone like Dallas Kent, or never found out what a monster he really was under that easy grin. Where he never had to acknowledge the cruel, petty man that his father really was and could keep up the easy hero worship of childhood forever. He wants his mom, and her easy acceptance of all his fuck-ups, and he wants to never look her in the face again. Never have to think about how he'd grown into such a shitty person that she'd expected him to choose his father over her.
He's tired, in more ways than one. "Do you ever miss Russia?" The question tumbles out of him before he can stop himself. "Despite all the..." Troy waves a hand in the air between him and Ilya and doesn't even try to find a word that can sum up all the reasons Ilya shouldn't miss Russia, all the reasons Troy shouldn't miss Dallas.
Ilya looks away, off into the distance. Like maybe Russia and all it represents is visible on the other side of the rink. "Parts," he admits quietly. "I miss having everyone speak my language. I miss being able to get my favorite foods without having to hunt down special stores." His hand comes up, fingers idly fiddling with the cross around his neck. Troy isn't sure he even knows he's doing it. "I miss my niece. Wish I could have gotten her out too." He shakes his head, harder than necessary, like he's trying to shake off the same cobwebs of memory Troy feels trapped in. "Would not go back for anything though."
Troy nods. "Yeah. Me neither." There doesn't seem to be anything else to say. They shouldn't miss things that hurt them. They miss them anyway. Life's shitty like that.
"Shane still misses Montreal sometimes," Ilya says softly. He's still looking away from Troy, his eyes distant. "Garbage team, never deserved him." He shrugs, visibly shifting back into his usual carefree persona. "They were still his." He tucks the cross back under his jersey and moves toward the locker room. "We are glad you're here, and not in Toronto," he says. "The team. Harris. Chiron."
Troy snorts a little at the way Ilya flashes him a mischievous grin as he says Chiron's name, somehow resetting the mood back to an easier one, a lighter one. Troy doesn't know how he does it, but he knows it's one of the reasons Ilya's such a damn good captain. "I am too," he says. "I just..."
Ilya nods. "I know. Come on. Shower. Take a nap. Fuck your boyfriend. You will feel better."
Troy tries his best to cling to that as they enter the locker room. That two years ago it would have been impossible to imagine his captain telling him to go home and have sex with his boyfriend. That two years ago he'd been certain that the snatches of time between him and Adrian were the closest thing to love he'd ever get.
He tries not to wonder what it says about him that he's more fucked up about losing Dallas than about losing his first boyfriend. He'd like to say it's because of Harris, because he's upgraded so massively, but his choice of friends has improved just as much. The stupid wound still won't heal.
"Shane?" he manages to ask. "Can I... talk to you a minute?"
Shane looks baffled that he'd want to - Troy doesn't take it personally, Shane always seems surprised when people want anything from him that isn't expressly hockey related - but he nods. "I was just going to hit the gym until Ilya's done with all his captain stuff. Want to join me?"
In a lot of ways, Shane's even easier to talk to than Ilya. He's simple, straight-forward. When he's not on camera, putting his media-trained foot forward, what you see is what you get. He's a good refuge at parties too, when Harris has been pulled into a conversation with a dozen other people and Ilya's charming the pants off everyone who gets near him. The two of them often find themselves leaning against the same bit of wall, watching their partners socialize like it's nothing. He's not like any other friend Troy's ever had, in the best possible way.
The two of them hop onto treadmills side-by-side and run in silence for a few minutes as Troy tries to figure out what to say. Shane doesn't say anything. He's not one for pushing.
"I've been thinking about Toronto a lot," Troy finally says. He's not good at dancing around a topic, and he knows Shane isn't one for trying to follow it. "Can't get them out of my head today."
"Oh." Troy can practically hear Shane thinking. "I have days like that, with Montreal."
"It feels so stupid," Troy says. "I know I'm better off here than I ever was there. I didn't know it was even possible to be as happy as I am here. And I don't - God, I don't ever want to see Dallas again. But-"
"But he was your friend." Shane sounds miserable. Troy watches the readings on the front of the treadmill to avoid looking at him.
"I've never been the friendliest guy," Shane says after a few more minutes of no sounds other than the beat of their shoes and the whir of the treadmills. "I wouldn't say I was ever - close with any of the Metros, besides Hayden. Even JJ, like we were friendly, but we don't have a lot in common. But I was still - I mean, I was there for a decade. I went to their weddings, met their kids. I was Uncle Shane to a bunch of kids I'll probably never see again now. It's... weird."
"Yeah." Troy hadn't attended many weddings or met many kids - and he has a weird moment of feeling like Shane is a lot older than him all of a sudden - but teams live cheek-by-jowl for most of the year. He'd known them. Except he hadn't, really, and they hadn't known him. "That's pretty much the only word for it."
"I wouldn't change anything," Shane says. "I mean, how it happened wasn't ideal, but the Centaurs are great, and Ilya's so much happier now that we don't have to hide anymore. But sometimes..." He leaves that hanging for a long time. Troy doesn't speak.
"Sometimes I catch myself trying to convince them to... react differently, I guess. In my head, I mean. Thinking about how I handled it. What I'd say if we met off the ice and they'd listen. Like if I could just get the words right, I could get them to realize I'm still me. That we can still be friendly, that I'm not some - some different person." Another long pause. "Like I could fix them, if I could just... Be better."
Troy thinks about Dallas, that first game against Toronto after his trade. You were my best friend! "Yeah. I..." He chokes for a second, the words a physical thing fighting in his throat. "I know that feeling."
They're quiet for nearly half an hour, until Shane starts winding down the treadmill. Troy follows suit and makes a mental note that he needs to take it easy - he can feel the willingness to push his muscles as far as they'll go and then some and knows he'll hurt himself if he isn't careful. He already had the long run with Chiron that morning, plus practice, and now this - he should probably be done.
"I try to remind myself they could be better," Shane says, as though there hasn't been any sort of break in the conversation. "Without me, I mean. Plenty of guys are. Hayden never misses a chance to chirp Ilya, but he was with me one-hundred percent once he knew about us. JJ took a while to pivot, but he put in the work. The Centaurs' culture -" He waves a hand through the gym, like the team was there. "That isn't all Ilya. That's everyone. Montreal - they're shitty because they keep choosing to be."
As someone who used to choose to be shitty every goddamn day, Troy can't really argue with that. "Yeah. Thanks, Shane."
"Yeah." Shane visibly hesitates, clearly about as tapped out on talking about this shit as Troy, but with one final thing to say. "Have you talked to Harris?"
"No. Don't really want to admit to him that I miss them."
"He'll be more worried if he can tell you're upset and you don't tell him why."
Troy rubs at his temples. "Yeah, yeah, I know. Is this the kind of wisdom married life gives you?"
"It's the kind of wisdom you won't make it to marriage without." Shane looks a little smug at that. He and Ilya turn into peacocks whenever someone mentions they're married. Troy supposes he can't begrudge them that, after they spent a decade fighting to get to the altar.
Troy has a few hours to kill before Harris is done for the day, and he knows he's still too off to spend the rest of the day killing time in Harris's office - Harris will want to talk about what's bothering Troy and Troy won't want to tell him while he's at work and Harris will be distracted. Besides, they didn't bring Chiron with them today, so Troy had already planned to go home and let him out.
He still misses Harris pretty much immediately. He doesn't know how Shane and Ilya managed long-distance for so long. It also makes it astoundingly clear how little Troy had cared about Adrian - he'd never really missed him. Wanted to have sex and be around someone he didn't have to fake being straight around, but never missed him. It was a little bitter, realizing he'd never really loved Adrian, that he'd been so starved for anything that resembled love that he'd thought what the two of them had was enough.
Troy resists the urge to work out again. He carefully keeps Chiron's afternoon walk as a walk and lets Chiron meander about and stick his head into patches of tall grass all he wants. When they're home again, Chiron pads around after him as he finds things to clean.
"What do you think we should have for dinner, boy?" Troy asks once he's been forced to recognize that the kitchen can't get any cleaner. Chiron looks toward his food bowl with a hopeful swish of his tail. "Well, not you," Troy says. "You'll get your usual. Not counting the table scraps we definitely don't give you."
Chiron thumps his tail against the kitchen floor a few times. Troy gives him an ear rub.
Harris has completely converted him to being a dog lover. Any time he has more than a few days off in a row he starts thinking that maybe they should get a second one. He hasn't said as much to Harris yet, on the grounds that it would be Harris's job to look after both dogs whenever Troy's out of town, and that's hardly fair. Still, it's tempting.
He chooses one of his mom's recipes, because they're the only thing he's any good at making besides his trainer-designed meals, and if he's going to have a conversation with Harris that he very much does not want to have, he's at least going to provide them both with the comfort of having actual spices in their food.
Chiron makes a sad noise when Troy's choice becomes clear. He's smart enough to have worked out that spices dramatically reduce his chances of being snuck anything off the table.
A knot is his chest that Troy had stopped feeling comes loose as the kitchen starts to smell like biryani. Last off-season, he'd grown determined to spend more time with his mom and, more importantly, make amends for what a disappointment of a son he knew he'd been to her for a while. They'd fallen into weekly sessions of cooking together, and even when his mom and Charlie go traveling, they schedule in a time to cook together over facetime. Not just cooking - specifically, they've been cooking Indian dishes. The same dishes Troy grew up turning his nose up at alongside his dad. Some days, something in him still twists at it, feeling like he hasn't earned the right to do this, to share this, but tonight's not too bad. Mercifully, tonight it reminds him that despite how long it had taken him to get his head out of his ass, his mom hadn't given up on him. That sets off a domino effect, reminding him that the Centaurs, even Wyatt, had given him a second chance he'd done nothing to earn. Reminds him that even Ryan Price had given him another chance, had suggested a double date (which had turned into a 'all the queer players and former players and their partners' date) during the hockey camps last summer.
He breathes a little easier. The weight of Dallas's arm slung across his shoulders lessens.
"That smells fantastic," Harris announces as soon as he opens the front door, before Chiron can even finish scrambling to his feet to greet him.
"You've got good timing," Troy tells him. "Should only be about ten more minutes."
Harris comes up and hugs him from behind. "You spoil me."
"You deserve to be spoiled," Troy says, because it's true, even if making dinner doesn't feel like spoiling to him. Feels more like the bare minimum required to not turn into another Curtis Barrett. Another Dallas Kent.
"Are you feeling better?"
"Yes," Troy says, pleased that it's true. The shadow is still there, the memory of the cobwebs the dream had tangled him up in, but they're easier to swipe aside now. Especially now that Harris is home, transforming the space from the place Troy lives to his home.
Not for the first time, the image of wedding rings flashes through his mind. He beds that thought back down - not right now. He still needs to give Harris time for the honeymoon phase to wear off, to decide he can do better. The idea that he won't has been occurring to Troy more and more often lately, but he's still determined not to get legal paperwork involved until he can be reasonably certain Harris won't regret it.
"Do you want to talk about it?" Harris asks, with just enough edge to the words to convey that he would like to talk about it.
Troy chews on it for a moment, warring with himself. He still doesn't, now as much because the worst has passed as because he doesn't want to admit what had sent him spinning so badly that morning. But he knows Harris will be much less sympathetic to the first excuse that he would be to the second, and he knows Harris isn't going to stop watching him like a concerned hawk until Troy confesses.
"I had a dream about Dallas last night," he says, intently focusing on pulling plates out of the cabinet and cutlery out of the drawer. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Harris twitch like he's going to come help and then pull back again, presumably realizing that Troy needs this focus because he doesn't want to think about the conversation, rather than because he's that concerned about the plate situation. "Woke up... missing him." He has to pull the words out of himself like they're an infected tooth. "Or... I don't know. The idea of him? Something like that." He sets the plates down on their kitchen table and stands there a moment, staring at them.
There's something wrong with him. That's hardly news, but it's felt raw and impossible to ignore today. The disorientation he'd felt that morning has lessened, faded, but there's still the hollow awareness that he shouldn't be feeling like this. That nobody worth anything would ever miss Dallas Kent.
"Oh," Harris breathes out. Troy can't bring himself to look up at him. He'd thought talking to Wyatt, to Ilya, to Shane had been difficult. Harris is worse. He'd gotten comfortable, let Shane and their workout get him out of the worst of his head, had distracted himself with Chiron and with cooking, and now that the words are out he's been violently reminded of how deeply he hadn't wanted to have this conversation. Hadn't wanted to look up and see Harris frowning at him, visibly lessening his opinion.
Troy doesn't realize how far he's retreated into his own head until he feels Harris's arms around his middle, Harris's temple gently resting between his shoulder blades. He hadn't even heard Harris stand. Chiron's head bumps against his thigh a moment later and he drops a hand to dig his fingers into Chiron's fur. "Sorry."
"You don't need to apologize for your emotions," Harris says, softly but firmly, and turns his head so his chin digs into Troy's shoulder. "He was your friend for a long time. It makes sense he'd still mess with your head sometimes."
That feels like giving Troy too much credit. Like this is something Dallas has done to him, rather than the product of his own fucked up head.
"I talked to some of the guys," Troy says. "That helped a little. They're better friends than he was." Not that that changed how Dallas had been the best friend he'd ever had before then. Didn't change the mornings of test driving sports cars or the nights of shouting themselves hoarse to talk over the music of a nightclub.
"I'm glad." Harris kisses Troy's shoulder. "And thank you for telling me."
"I'm trying." It comes out small, broken. He is. It never feels like enough. It always feels like this time would be one time too many, that Harris would get annoyed and say, Trying isn't good enough, Troy, I want results.
He forces himself to breathe out. That isn't Harris's voice talking.
"I know," Harris says gently. "And you're doing really good. I'm proud of you."
"I felt like I was moving backward this morning."
"You're not." Harris presses a kiss to the side of his neck. "Come on, let's have dinner. It smells fantastic."
They sit down, dinner a little quieter than usual, Harris leaving space for anything else Troy wants to say. Harris is too good for him. More than Troy could deserve in a lifetime of trying.
"Sometimes I worry I wouldn't have believed them," Troy blurts out, shoving the words out as soon as they came to him. If he waits, if he bites them back, they'll get buried again. And they need to get out, this messy tangle he never dares to look too closely at. Never wants to show anyone else, least of all Harris.
But today he's raw and tired and yet he's safe and loved and Harris is so, so good-
"Believed who?"
"Dallas's victims. If I hadn't been having such a shit week anyway, hadn't already been so... So cynical, I guess. If I'd been having a good week, that maybe those accusations would have come in and I would have just rolled my eyes and gone on with my day like everyone else in Toronto." He pushes his food around the plate absently, trying to will up an appetite.
Harris's foot presses gently against his own. "I think you would have. Maybe it wouldn't have been so explosive, maybe you wouldn't have been as sure, but I think you would have. I think you would have ended up here eventually no matter what."
Troy isn't sure if by 'here' Harris means Ottawa, or if he means 'someone who believes Dallas's victims over Dallas'. The two things are so linked in his mind, he isn't sure he can untangle them. "I hope so."
"You're a good person, Troy. Plenty of people have better parents and better friends and easier childhoods and end up way worse. You're choosing to be better. I think you would have made that choice no matter what. Later, if not right then. And I think that's what matters."
Troy remembers Shane, saying that the Metros chose to be shitty, chose to turn their backs on him, when Hayden and JJ and some of Ilya's old Boston teammates and most of the New York Admirals had all proven that they didn't have to. That it wasn't the end of the world to push back against the vitriol the league found so acceptable. "Thank you." Too small, those two words. They don't encompass even half of what Troy wants to say, how much he appreciates Harris's eternal patience, his willingness to be somewhere soft for Troy to collapse. Sometimes even I love you gets choked in Troy's mouth, because how could three syllables even come close to conveying what he means, how Harris had become Troy's tether to a better life, a tether that had now added so many people to it Troy was regularly overwhelmed by his phone blowing up with messages from them.
"Any time." And Harris smiles like he means it.
Troy breathes out, a little easier, a little more of that lingering ache easing away. The weight of Dallas's phantom arm on his neck dissipates.
"Come on," Harris says, after they've finished eating and dealt with the dishes. "Let's get you too tired to think about that guy tonight."