Page 22 of Game Misconduct

“What the fuck?” Mike snapped when he picked up.

The tension in his shoulders he hadn’t realized was there released and Danny sagged down a little in the chair. “Hi.”

“You can’t just fuckingcallme,” Mike said, and Danny could hear the scowl in his voice. He could also hear the faint tremble, the uncertainty, that underpinned all of Mike’s bravado.

“You didn’t have to pick up.” He put the book down on his lap and stared out at the street. His neighbor, an ornery old man who complained about Danny’s lawn no matter what he did, was out front raking leaves but wasn’t watching him. “Bad time?”

There was a long pause that said more than any excuse he might have made, and Danny knew the truth: Mike wanted to talk to him, but he didn’t want to admit it. He wondered how much of the hatred was genuine, how much of it was just Mike’s personality, and how much of it was for show at this point. If they were ever in the same place more than a night at a time, Danny thought, he could figure it out, he could chip away at Mike’s spiky exterior. He realized it was probably not normal to want to know everything about someone so fucking badly, but he was starting to admit to himself that the Mike thing was more than a problem and was now a full-blown situation.

“Is there ever a good time?” Mike grumbled, so put upon that Danny had to bite down a laugh. “But seriously, I want to know why the fuck you’d even say something like that to me in the first place.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Because I’m the last man on the fucking depth chart, dude, always have been, always will be.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Oh, fucking thanks, Coach, so glad I have your fucking encouragement.”

“Easy, kid,” Danny said, and he heard Mike’s sharp little intake of breath. He filed that one away as bothinterestingand assomething to explore later. “Look, I’m not trying to be an asshole about this. I’ve—watched you play.”

“You’ve seen me fight and you were pretty busy for most of that.”

He didn’t want to admit that he’d watched Mike’s games, that he’d analyzed them, that he’d spent the time just...wanting to know him. Know how he played, know things about him from how he played. Somehow, he suspected that it wouldn’t be taken well, but he’d put himself out there before, and Mike had more than surprised him, so. Danny took the plunge.

“No. I’ve watched your games. Like, ones you haven’t played against me.” He had shocked Mike into silence, maybe, but he pressed doggedly on. “And I think—I think you have potential that you aren’t using. You’re fast; you’re strong. You have good ice sense. You’re not an idiot—”

“Oh,thanks—”

“Let me finish.”

“Fuck you,” Mike said. There was a weird panic threading the words, and Danny wished like hell he could see his face. Just to figure out what was going on with him.

“I was going to say, you have everything you need to be on the second pair atleast. Why are you wasting your potential brawling all the time?”

“Daniel ‘the Goon’ Garcia tellingmenot to fight.”

“It’sDaniel,” he said, annoyed, correcting Mike’s pronunciation. Even now, everyone still defaulted to the English pronunciation. “Or Danny, if you absolutely can’t manage that. But I’m just—it’s really fucking frustrating watching you throw it away.”

“Garcia,” Mike said pointedly, “if I had what it took to be anything but a goon, don’t you think someone besides you would have fucking told me by now?”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

Mike’s voice cracked when he answered, too high, almost shrill. “Do you think I haven’t been fucking trying? Do you think I don’t want to be here more than I wantanythingfucking else in my life? What the fuck do you think I was doing in the A for four fucking years, just fucking around?”

“No, that’s not what I—”

“You fucking asshole, how dare—”

“Mike,stop.”

Silence again. Then Mike said, very carefully, “I’m going to hang up now, and you can go fuck yourself.”

The call dropped, and Danny looked up to see Mr. Thomas staring at him, rake frozen in his hands.

He closed the book and went inside.

The phone call pissed Mike off like nothing else he could remember. It pissed him off almost as much as Garcia humiliating him during his first game in the show, kicking his ass so badly that Mike ended up missing three games in concussion protocol. Because of course the two worst things he could remember involved that fucking asshole. It pissed him off so much he didn’t talk to Garcia for two whole days.

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