Page 25 of Game Misconduct

“I know. Keep walking.” He groaned. Squinted up at the lights of the hotel’s entrance and valet parking area. It wassofar. “I’m at the hotel. And also, you know, I fucking hate you.”

“I know, Mike.”

“I hate you and Ireallywanna fuck you, I wanna fuck you up, like—Jesus fuck, I wanna make you feel as shitty as I feel right now. I...”

“Shhh, babe, just get through the door, all right?”

Mike did what he was told, although it was taking a lot of effort to take his attention away from the conversation and smile at the front desk agent. “Hello!” he said, and then realized he sounded extremely shitfaced. Hewasextremely shitfaced. “I’m really drunk, sorry,” he apologized, and he could hear Danny’s husky gasp of a laugh over the phone. “You, shut up. No, no, not you,” he said hastily, when the guy looked up at him, offended. “You’re fine.”

Somehow, he made his way down the hall to the elevator, checked his door key for the room number. Sixth floor.

“You still there?”

“Yes.I was just in the elevator, I’m not an idiot. And now I’m in the room. Any otherorders, Your Highness?”

“Maybe drink some water and sleep it off, huh?”

“You know, I was drinking so I could fucking forget you, and I fuckingcan’t.”

“I...look, Mike, maybe we should talk about this when you’re sober.”

“Fuck,” Mike said, and belly-flopped on the hotel bed, on top of the comforter. “I fucking hate when you’re right. It makes me like fucking madder than anything. It makes me wanna—”

Danny exhaled sharply. “You’re good, yeah? So I’m going to hang up now, okay?”

“Fine.”

“Night.”

“G’night, Danny,” Mike slurred, and knocked out before he could hear whatever Danny said in response.

Danny opened his eyes around six in the morning. The ceiling of his bedroom was white. He’d spent a lot of time looking at it and had all of the cracks and spidering sections of paint memorized. At some point he needed to repaint it, along with most of the house. It had never really seemed like a pressing priority when he was only in there maybe half of the year at best. And the cracks gave him something to look at while his brain was slowly recalibrating itself. Some days it took longer than others.

Today was one of those days. He was a little hungover, but probably nowhere near as bad as Mike. Danny closed his eyes again. He was a shit excuse for a person, but he had some morals, so he knew he’d done the right thing making sure he got Mike back to the hotel and not taking advantage of the situation.

But he’d dreamed about it, about Mike’s voice, slurred but full of heat and promise,I’d let you bite me there. Right where it fucking hurts, about doing that, about the way Mike kept telling Danny how much he hated him but still liked being told what to do. It was a lot. He was hungover, sure, but part of it was just the fact that talking to Mike sometimes felt like having a sledgehammer taken to the side of his head.

Not always in a bad way.

Danny folded his arms over his chest and thought about all of the things he needed to do that day—groceries, cooking, yard work, making it to the CEC for a home game, sleeping early because they were going on the road tomorrow—and thought about Mike again. He was starting to piece together what was going on. It was...it was pretty fucked up, actually. It was one thing to be in Danny’s position, unable to play the way he wanted to because of old injuries, because his body simply couldn’t handle it.

It was another thing entirely to have someone like Mike, the raw clay there for sculpting, and the coaches were just apparently too fucking stupid to see it. No wonder he’d been so upset. Danny knew exactly what he’d been getting into, knew what he was capable of. He’d had literal years to get used to the idea that he wasn’t going to win the Defenseman of the Year award or even move up the lineup anytime soon, anytime ever. He’d known pretty much as soon as the doctors told him the broken hip could be career ending. It probably should have been, he just hadn’t let it.

He was very aware of his body’s limitations and his play style had adapted to hide them. At this point there wasn’t anything he could do about it. Even surgeries could only do so much.

Mike had probably gotten used to that idea too, except he didn’t have the fucked-up hip or knee or any of the other shit Danny had to balance every day. What Danny didn’t understand was why no one had figured this out before him, why no one had thought it worthwhile to put in the investment into developing Mike as a player. Pure enforcers were on their way out of the league and even someone like Danny, who had some skill and good hockey IQ, even if his body couldn’t keep up, even if everyone mostly knew him for his fists, wasn’t going to be able to stick around much longer.

But it was like everyone had looked at Mike’s play style, at his size, at the bad habits he’d developed all the way back to juniors to compensate for the fact that he was on the smaller side, and completely written him off.

Danny stared up at the ceiling and entertained a completely insane idea.

He was going tomakeMike a better player. Somehow, he was going to mold him into the kind of d-man Danny couldn’t be. Mike was still young, only twenty-five, and if Danny had managed to play for ten years after that, then Mike still had the chance to make a real career for himself. He couldn’t fix his own broken body, he couldn’t change the past, but he could do something for Mike’s future.

If Mike would let him.

He’d just have to recalibrate how he approached things.

How’s your head, he asked.

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