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It was certainly a point in favor of moving to the suburbs. Not that he would have objected. Hamilton was hardly New York City, and Eric had fond memories of his childhood. Even when things weren’t ideal, they’d been good.
Having a loving family could do that.
These days, he enjoyed his house in the city. It wasn’t at all the kind of house Holly would have wanted, and maybe that was just another clue, looking back. Though she would have tapped the back of his wrist with a spoon for thinking of her on a day like this. “Move on, Eric. We’ll always be there for each other, but you don’t need me.” Her smile was sad. “Maybe you never really did.”
Maybe he never really had.
Because he knew, now, what it felt like to need the people in his life. Looking around the Hunters’ backyard, Pike’s daughters tumbling into each other while Carter lobbed water balloons from the temporary safety of a bench. Gloria laughing as Jackie sipped her beer, Carter’s firstborn napping in his carrier between them. The sunlit part of the yard full of energy and laughter while the shade was occupied by quieter souls. Scotty with his nose buried in the latest murder book he’d tried to tell Eric about while Kip finished up a novel, both of them oblivious to the world even as they leaned against each other on the back steps. Pike’s only boy, Arthur, working his way through a picture book on dinosaurs on the grass nearby, pink tongue between his teeth as he dragged a finger along one of the big, latin-esque words.
His own reading material open on his lap, Eric propped his chin on one hand and observed the life around him. Safe from the potential chaos that might find the ones on the stairs by securing one of the rocking chairs on the back porch, because of course Scotty was one of those people who believed that rocking chairs existed to be on back porches. Happy to watch the family he’d found with the same quiet contentment his grandfather had been worried Eric would never have. And maybe, back when his grandfather was still around, that fear had been founded.
But not now.
A hand landed on Eric’s shoulder, the ice in Kyle’s glass tinkling against itself as he took a drink. Plain old iced tea today - no fancy bartending tricks, even of the non-alcoholic kind. The Kingfisher had, among its evolutions, become known as a great bar for those who like cocktails but didn’t like alcohol in them. Something Kyle hadn’t been sure what to do with at first, but had quickly decided that if it could be a gay bar and a sports bar, it could be a parttime non-alcoholic bar, too.
With excellent vegetarian and vegan options on their menu.
“Never figured I’d be a Sunday afternoon kind of guy,” Kyle said. Mostly to himself, but Eric hummed in agreement. Earning himself an amiable smile from his partner for his efforts. “You?”
“Sundays were rest days,” Eric said, chin still balanced on his hand. “The last thing I wanted was a bunch of people coming over.” One of many excuses never to play host to his teammates, and only reluctantly to Holly’s friends.
Nobody could beat a hockey team for rambunctious, but between retired Admirals and their families and Kyle’s own bunch of friends, there’d been more than a few rowdy nights at Eric’s house. Not being a boardgame man himself, he hadn’t realized there could be so much shouting over tiny plastic pieces and a couple of dice.
“Is Arthur still threatening to teach everyone how to play that dungeons game?” Kyle asked. He took another sip as Eric huffed a silent laugh. “The one with graph paper?”
“We encourage creativity,” Eric said. He didn’t have to look up to see Kyle nod and open his mouth to speak. “Even when it involved elves and cat creatures.”
“I’ve got nothing against cat creatures.”
Keeping his voice low, this time Eric tilted his head to look up, earning a moment of confusion for his grin. “You sure you don’t just like furry cuffs?”
The confusion melted into something distinctly self-satisfied. “I didn’t hear any complaints.”
“Not quite the same as a cat creature,” Eric said, steering the conversation back into waters that little ears could overhear, “but I’m all for adventures in the woods or…whatever it is Arthur has planned.”
“If he ever succeeds in getting Ilya to play, you have to let me sit in.”
“He won’t,” Eric said, watching as Scotty’s little girl tore across the backyard toward her fathers, “but Katie will.”
“Daddy!”
Looking up from his book, Scotty smiled as Katie crashed to a stop in front of him. “Hey, sweetheart. What’d you find?”
Beaming, the little blonde girl held up her hands.
“Where does she even keep finding them?” Kip asked, peering at what Eric knew, without even getting up from his seat, was yet another toad.
“I’m sure we don’t want to know,” Scotty said. Like a good father, he nodded approvingly at his daughter’s find, then suggested, not unreasonably, “How about we go put her back where you found her?”
“First, I want to show Uncle Ilya.”
Scotty pursed his lips even as Kip fished out his phone. “What if Uncle Ilya is busy?”
“He’s never too busy to look at one of Katya’s toads,” came Arthur’s unhelpful observation.
Kip laughed as Scotty sighed and Katie moved over to her dad, holding the toad up for optimal viewing once the FaceTime call went through.
“The great and terrible Ilya Rozanov,” Kyle murmured, “brought low by the whims of half a dozen kids.”
“Pretty sure he’s never been so happy,” Eric said, fighting a smile at the chirp of a successful connection. There was a moment of confused Russian, followed by the desired enthusiasm.
“Is it weird that a guy I barely know comes to all of our holiday parties?” Kyle asked.
“He’d come even if we didn’t invite him,” Eric said, slipping a bookmark into his book. “He really likes Scotty.” When Kyle raised an eyebrow at that, Eric considered. “I don’t think he ever liked him that way. But I know Scott wasn’t the one who showed up in Rozanov’s bar for three years before working up the nerve to ask him to help on a project.”
“Scott wasn’t part owner of the Kingfisher back then,” Kyle said. Then, “I’m glad their charity worked out. Hollander and Rozanov’s.”
He’d never really be a hockey guy, but helping kids was something everyone in their group took time for. Especially a head bartender who knew what it was like to have support from a family that didn’t really support him.
“How’s your mom?” Eric asked.
“Dying,” Kyle said, and Eric wondered if anyone else would hear the sadness under the disinterest. “The cancer’s back.”
Taking the hand on his shoulder in his, Eric pressed a kiss to the back of it. “I’m sorry.”
“She’ll be fine.” More of that hidden hurt. “She’s too proud to die.”
Maybe. But cancer was merciless in a way no Defensemen could ever be. So whatever happened - whenever that day came - Eric would be there. If Kyle wanted to go back to his home town for the day. If he wanted to cry on their couch in New York for a weekend. If he wanted to burn pictures in the bathtub and snarl profanities over what might have been. If he wanted to go out and get blackout drunk.
Eric wouldn’t drink with him, but he could keep him company. Get him home safe. Call up friends who could drink and get them all home safe.
“Because that’s your job.” Kyle leaned forward to get a better look at the painting in front of them. Blue eyes peering through thick-rimmed glasses. “Guarding the net.”
Kyle’s hand found his chin, tilting Eric’s face back up to his. The mask his partner had perfected over the years traded for easy, if sad, affection. “Hey. Don’t worry about her. That’s my job.”
“I’m not worried about her,” Eric said, and that thing inside the man he loved that still didn’t know what to do with such declarations flared. Kyle’s blue eyed gaze dropped to the floor as cries of distress erupted at the foot of the stairs.
“No! Daddy! Catch her!”
Kyle turned to see what was happening, and Eric took advantage of the distraction to tug the younger man down into his lap. It risked spilling the iced tea, but Kyle was good at balancing drinks, and he laughed as he landed, even as Katie and Arthur took off after the toad while Scotty, looking unrepentant, sat exactly where he was. Leaning into his side, Kip narrated the chaos to a cackling Rozanov, and Kyle sighed as he let himself relax into Eric’s embrace.
“I could really get used to Sunday afternoons.”
To their left, the back door to the house opened, George Grady emerging with an armful of condiments and grill tools as a teenage Thomas followed behind with a platter of hot dogs and hamburgers, a container of Eric’s vegan ‘dogs tucked under his arm.
Out in the yard, the rest of the Pike children had noticed the chase, abandoning Carter en masse to help harass what was turning out to be a determined and agile toad. Their dad, who had been helping in the kitchen, stepped out on the back porch with a large bowl of potato salad and immediately reconsidered his options for getting safely to the dinner table. Eric thought it incredibly reasonable that Hayden opted to wait where he was until his wife arrived, Jackie having a far better track record for not being tackled.
“I’ve never really wanted kids,” Kyle said, leaning his head against Eric’s as they watched the assorted parents decide how to wrangle their kids.
“Me neither,” Eric said, and it was his turn to ignore an old ache. “Move on, Eric. We’ll always be there for each other, but you don’t need me.”
“And I never wanted to get married,” Kyle went on.
Eric adjusted the arm wrapped around Kyle’s waist. “Turned out it wasn’t my thing either.”
He caught Kyle’s faint smile. “But…I like this.”
Eric felt his own smile as he watched Carter climb down off the bench, attention on the temporarily distracted hoard while Gloria quietly got to her feet and found one of the discarded water balloons. “I like this, too.”
The wet yelp distracted the kids, allowing the toad to make her escape and for George Grady to play his grandfather card and call the chaos to order. If only to ensure the folding tables got set.
“Think they mind?” Kyle asked. “That we’re doing things a little differently?”
Eric thought about his best friend, who’d spent the first three years with the love of his life hiding from the world. And his good friend, who’d spearheaded a campaign to make it “less cool” in the NHL to be racist or sexist or homophobic, tradition be damned. About his newest friend, who’d uprooted his life and moved his family to a different country because the other option was to stay with a bunch of assholes who’d turned on his best friend. And then there was the man currently manning the grill, who’d spent his life being there for people, even when that meant walking away from the life he’d thought he’d wanted with the woman he’d always love.
“I don’t think they care at all,” Eric said as Kip signed off the call with Rozanov. Another man who’d turned his life upside down for the people he loved, and would no doubt happily do so again if a certain Ottawa Centaur asked him to. The arm around Kyle’s waist squeezed as Kyle tried to get up, keeping him exactly where he was so Eric could tilt his head up and kiss him. “Not at all.”