Page 37 of Game Misconduct

Singer, eyes narrowed a little suspiciously, said, “What?”

“Say that again?”

“You tried...apologizing...and your friend won’t accept your apology?”

Mike stared at him. And stared again. “Cap, I...”

“You didn’t apologize, did you,” Singer said, resigned.

Mike swore, and pushed around him.

Danny wasn’t sure how to feel.

At first, Mike had given him some space and didn’t say anything. Then he tried to act like nothing had happened and the messages came as fast and as many as they usually did, except Danny didn’t answer them, so the one-sided conversation eventually petered out. And then Mike just stopped, except occasionally sending one sentence here or there.scored a goal tonight, it’d say, or.that was a damn good fight.Danny didn’t answer those either.

At first Danny had been hurt; angry, even. Now he just felt numb. It felt like he’d been before Mike barreled his way into Danny’s life, except maybe with more alcohol and more team involvement.

And also somehow worse, because he missed talking to Mike, really. He missedMike. He didn’t realize how little he smiled on a day-to-day basis until Mike wasn’t around to drag it out of him. That was a pathetic thought, but the absence of that mercurial presence really highlighted how empty his life had become over the last few years. When he felt this shitty about someone he’d only really known a few months. Sure, it had been a year or two he’d known him, granted, but it was only recently that Mike had done more than knock his teeth out.

After a while, Mike stopped messaging him, and that was better, too. Better that Danny didn’t have to look at it and talk himself out of answering. It wasn’t even that he was angry anymore, it was just...the whole thing with Mike. It was stupid; it was better to just let things end in their natural course. He couldn’t offer Mike anything and he’d been fucking nuts to think he could.

He concentrated instead on the team. His actual team. They didn’t havethatmany rookies, but a bunch of the guys were twenty-five or under and for whatever reason they’d latched onto him as like. Not a mentor, exactly, because what could he show them except what not to do? Maybe that was enough. He ended up spending a lot of time with Gears, especially, because he was also a defenseman. They didn’t always play on the same pair because they were both right shots, but if he had to have an adopted hockey child, there were worse guys than Gears, who worked his ass off and kept his head down. Marty would be proud, Danny thought, aware of the irony of it all.

Lévesque watched it all with his cool black eyes and Danny shrugged off the stares whenever he noticed. Some captains he’d worked with got weirdly protective at any suspicion someone else might be interfering with the team, but for all that he was a weird-as-fuck perfectionist, Lévesque seemed genuinely invested in making everyone better and didn’t mind when Danny spent time with the rookies.

There was only so much he could do with Landry, though.

That situation came to a head on the road in Toronto. It was the third period and Danny was on the ice for a penalty kill. He was exhausted. He couldn’t think of anything except the hotel room, longingly, and a drink—whiskey, maybe. Enough painkillers to quiet his throbbing knee and let him sleep. He pushed through it, mucking and grinding along the boards, keeping the puck away from Blomquist’s crease.

Then he heard Landry chirping Wolf, one of Toronto’s d-men. He wasn’t being particularly quiet about it, because Landry never did anything quietly on the ice. It started off with the usual shit.I’ll be there all night, you fuckin’ duster.Or more vicious, considering Wolf had been called up only this season,Enjoy the game, you stupid fuck, you’ll be back in the A before you know it.Danny tuned it out the way he usually did.

He used to say shit like that himself, because it was easier to start fights when the other guy was pissed off. But as he got older, the less he saw the point in it. It was just extra effort. If he needed to fight, it was easier to cut out the middleman.

When Landry saw that he wasn’t getting a rise out of Wolf, he switched it up. Foul shit about Wolf’s mom, then on to the personal, the emasculating, the things Danny had heard him say before but had bitten his tongue every time.You fucking pussy, you sure as fuck don’t got any balls, you fucking fa—

Danny wasn’t sure when he’d started moving, but he was pushing off the line and shoving his way in between Landry and Wolf, which wasn’t hard because neither of them were particularly big and Landry had that rangy look like he was still growing. He saw Wolf’s eyes widen in surprise when it happened, but he was moving too fast to stop, too pissed off to shut his goddamn mouth and stop himself from doing something potentially really stupid.

But he was getting older, and he only had two years left if his body didn’t give out on him before then, and he kind of didn’t give a fuck anymore.

“Cut it out,” he said to Landry. His voice was very flat and very even. Like talking to a naughty child.

“What the fuck, Garcia?” Landry spluttered, caught off guard, almost losing his balance when Danny’s weight pushed him away from Wolf.

Danny’s hands curled into fists in his gloves, but he kept them on. He felt that cold, sick fury that was nothing like what he felt when he fought Mike. He’d just felt like shit the entire week, everything piling up on him. And then Landry had said one stupid thing, probably without even thinking about it. And that thing was the last straw. One last little piece of straw on his back. The crowd was going nuts, like they were half expecting him to drop gloves against his own teammate, like they were clamoring for it. No one could hear what had been said on the ice. None of them were mic’d.

He knew, though.

He knew, and Landry knew. Wolf knew.

“Cut it out,” he said again. His voice sounded like it was someone else’s. Cold and grim.

One of the linesmen, confused, had blown a whistle. Play had stopped around them. The rest of the team was watching, the forwards skating in from the other end of the ice. Lévesque, on the bench, looked like he was about to go over the boards and pull them apart, and the only thing stopping him was a too-many-men call. It was hard to tell if he was angry or not. Nothing ever showed in his face.

“What the fuck do you care?” Landry sounded wounded. Like Danny had hurthisfeelings. “It’s just chirping, I’m just trying to get a rise out of him. You do it all the fucking time.”

“Say shit like that where I can hear you again and I will fucking drop them,” Danny said quietly, only for Landry’s ears. Pushed his glove against Landry’s chest. It was almost gentle, given what he’d felt. Even given the kind of hell he’d previously unleashed on Mike for less provocation. “Go on and say it again then, buddy.”

Landry was staring at him like he’d never seen him before. But that was fine, because he probably fucking hadn’t.

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