Page 46 of Game Misconduct

The cat glared at him, and Danny said to it, “You’ve got a long way to go before you can really hurt me, buddy.”

He ran his thumb over the kitten’s skull. It howled with fury.

Once it had worn itself out attempting to rip him to shreds while he washed it in the bathtub, the cat slept on his chest on the couch, and he just had to hope for the best.

Mike wasn’t an idiot, and even he could sense that things had changed after the last game. It wasn’t that it was bad, exactly. Some of it was actually really fucking good. It was justweird. The more he talked to Danny without the pretense that every single conversation was a fight, the more he found that he just really liked talking to him. Danny was—really smart, and funny, and thoughtful, and all of that was wrapped up in the kind of reserved exterior that made Mike feel like he was constantly tugging on Danny’s shirt, trying to get his attention, trying to get any reaction he could. Needing it.

He’d started like. Not quite keeping a running tally of the times Danny smiled at something Mike said or did, but it was pretty fucked up, the kind of shit he’d started thinking about, and that was one of them. Fuckingsmiles.

The problem was that it was pretty hard to get Danny to smile. Every time he did, it was reluctant, like he felt bad about doing it. Somehow Mike got the idea that he didn’t do it often. That sadness that had bothered him before was still there, just distracted. Mike was a distraction. So was the hellcat that Danny had literally found in the garbage, a cat that still didn’t have a name but was already extremely spoiled, with a cat sitter who came to feed him and keep him company for a few hours a day whenever Danny was on the road.

But the sadness never wavered.

He thought about asking sometimes, but he got the sense that Danny wouldn’t tell him anything. Like, it probably wasn’t his business anyway, but he wanted it to be? He thought about the fact that Danny was almost always drinking when he was at home, or in hotels, or when he’d come home from the occasional night out with the rest of the team. He thought about the fact that Danny never really seemed drunk, but once Mike started keeping an eye on how often the glass was refilled, and how Danny tried to do it casually, half-hidden when he thought Mike wasn’t looking, it bothered him.

One night he was in Calgary and Bee had already left to go hang out with Mäkelä, so he FaceTimed Danny to catch up. Danny was in San Jose, so the time difference made it awkward, and Mike really should have tried to sleep anyway. He’d wanted to see Danny first. They caught up about the games: the Cons had won and the Hornets had lost. Neither of them had fought. Mike had scored a goal, which brought his season total up to seven, a career high.

“You’ve been doing so well, buddy,” Danny said, with a kind of possessive pride. He had a glass cradled in his hand and Mike tried not to look at it.

“Haven’t been doing your drills,” Mike said, pressing his fingers against a new bruise on his thigh. It hurt, but not that bad. It wasn’t too deep. “Coach found out and made me stop. But I’ve been working with the coaching staff.”

“As long as you’re working. We can talk about some of the other stuff during the day, if you want. The mental stuff.”

“Yeah.”

“What’s wrong?”

Mike gnawed on his lip. He knew he wasn’t great at hiding what he felt, but this was new ground. This wasn’t just trying to figure out his feelings, it was trying to figure out someone else’s. “Are you...you know...like...good?”

“Am I good?”

“Yeah, I mean. Like your hip, your knee. And shit.” Maybe that was too much?

Danny looked at him with the kind of blank expression that he hated seeing. Danny should always be smiling, because he had a great fucking smile. Danny had the kind of eyes that crinkled shut when he was really happy, before he realized he was doing it and looked a little ashamed. Danny shouldn’t look so empty like that, Mike thought, furious, unable to do anything about it.

“I’m fine,” Danny said, and then, “Look, let’s talk about moving the puck, huh?”

Mike frowned. “Let’s talk about you.”

Danny was silent for what seemed like a long time but was probably only a minute or so. “I don’t want to,” he said, finally. He wouldn’t look Mike in the eyes.

“But you want me to talk to you about me, like, all the time? And about what I want,” Mike said. It didn’t really seem fair, even though he was kind of getting the impression that Danny had a lot more going on inside his head than Mike usually did. “Is that usually how this shit goes? What if I want to talk about you?”

“I don’t know. It’s been a while since I talked to someone like this. Hey, Mike, I have to go. The cat needs to be fed.”

“That fucking cat,” Mike muttered, but Danny had already closed the window, and his screen was silent. Mike might have been getting used to having feelings, even if he couldn’t always put them into words, but this felt distinctly bad.

Still, he didn’t have time to indulge the bad feelings. Even though the coaching staff weren’t anywhere near as intense about stuff as Danny had been while kicking Mike’s ass into gear, it was still a lot of extra work on top of the extreme amount of work he already had to do in order to keep in shape. And that wasn’t even counting the games. But he kept turning it over and over in his head. What he should do, could do. It was a weird shift from hating Danny to worrying about his drinking habits and his sadness, but Mike was trying to roll with things now. Fighting it hadn’t gotten him anything much except a long stretch of being miserable alone.

It was in that spirit that he slouched back to his apartment after optional skate. He hadn’t even taken the car, just the subway, and he was crossing JFK Boulevard when he looked up and realized that the woman waiting at the crosswalk for the light to change looked really familiar. She was wearing black leggings and a huge black parka, the kind of coat that you wore to go, like, serious mountain climbing in the snow. She was as tall as he was, but her curly hair was swept up in a high bun, and she wore high-heeled combat boots, adding a few inches to her height. When she turned and he caught a glimpse of her face, he knew for sure.

He had been aware Danny’s sister lived in Philly, but he hadn’t really expected to see her here. It was a small city in the sense that you could walk across the entirety of Center City in like half an hour, but he didn’t know where she worked or where she lived. It was definitely her, though, and he had a moment’s agonized indecision trying to figure out whether he should approach. In the end, like always, it seemed like his body acted without his brain, and he was walking forward to catch up with her as she entered the intersection.

“Dr. Garcia?” he said, and she turned. People moved and flowed around them. It was rush hour, and people in suits fled Center City like rats from a sinking ship.

He was struck again by how much she looked like Danny. And then again by the look she gave him, like if he tried anything she was going to reel back and punch him in the face. That also reminded him of Danny. Well. That wasn’t surprising. As far as she knew he was just a tattooed stranger who’d stopped her in the middle of an intersection.

“What do you want?” she asked. Behind her, the crossing light had flipped from white to orange. She didn’t ask who he was or how he knew who she was, and Mike realized she’d recognized him. From her expression, she felt pretty much the same about him as he’d feel about some dog shit on the bottom of his shoe.

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