Page 68 of Goaltender Interference

“Aidy,” Matt said, and rolled Aiden off of him so they were lying side by side on the couch instead. He knew his face probably looked stupid as hell. Way too fucking soft. Aiden couldn’t meet his eyes. “Really, you’re...doing just fine. From my vantage point. From one person who should probably have it figured out by now to another.”

“Thanks. Matt. Thank you. I—really.”

He didn’t say anything, just looked down again and tried not to think about how badly Aiden was going to break his heart, when the time came. It’d have to be enough that he had him now.

The first roadie that the Royal went on after Aiden got back to Montreal was only to Toronto. An hour plane ride was barely even a road game, particularly when it was a matinee; Matt would be back at the condo by seven p.m.

Functionally, the day wasn’t even really that different from a home game. The second roadie was to Vegas and Utah and St. Louis; Matt would be gone almost three days. Aiden helped him pack, even though it was the last thing he wanted to do.

He visualized the things he would do during the time Matt was gone: reorganize his clothes in Matt’s closet, clean Matt’s condo, rearrange Matt’s entire library, go to the gym almost every day, run, work on getting his bread recipe to rise properly.

Hecouldmake this a positive experience. Hecouldbe alone with his own brain, and it would be absolutely fine.

Eventually it was time for Matt to leave for the airport. He crowded Aiden against the door, kissing him until the goodbye Aiden had wanted to say was completely forgotten. When Matt pulled away, Aiden looked down at him, his intent dark eyes, his familiar features, and he felt—whatever the feeling was when your heart jumped into your throat and choked you.

“You going to be okay?” Matt asked.

“Oh, yeah. Be nice to have some time alone.”

Matt just looked at him, even-keeled and so kind that Aiden wanted to facewash him. “Good. Hey, I’ll call you when we land, okay?”

“Sounds good,” Aiden said, and took a step back so Matt could actually open the door.

And then it was just him, alone with his thoughts.

It wasn’t so bad, at first.

Aiden killed time watching a movie and throwing together some dough for an overnight rise. Matt actually had a stand mixer, surprisingly. He’d said it was a wedding gift, but Emily never used it and didn’t want to take it with her when she left.Aiden still preferred to knead the dough manually, just because it was calming to force it into shape with only his hands. To feel the roll of his muscles as he pushed it into existence.

His mother texted him to ask how he was doing, and what he was doing, and he guiltily muted their message thread. It was funny: he and his dad had bonded over hockey, and they were able to spend time together in that context, without ever talking about anything beyond those careful parameters. It was as real as anything else, but it was safe. His mom had been different, always eager to talk about his plans for the future and his personal life and how he wasfeeling. And now he didn’t have hockey and couldn’t talk to his dad about that, and he couldn’t tell his mom anything about how bad that made him feel.Funnyindeed.

By that time Matt had landed in Missouri, so that text conversation killed another couple of minutes as the team headed to the hotel before they went to the rink. Once that was done, Aiden made himself dinner.

There was still time to go before the game, so Aiden went out for a long run. He got back in time, aching and exhausted, to flip on the TV and watch the Royal lose in overtime.

“Sorry, Matty,” he said to Matt, sometime around midnight, after Matt had gone through the usual postgame routine of exercise and shower and was safely back in the hotel. His eyes were already drooping, exhausted, and Aiden had a brief, sharp stab of wishing he was there in the hotel room, too.

“Win some, lose some,” Matt said, yawning.

“Okay, you need to sleep. I’ll let you go.”

“G’night,” he mumbled, out almost before Aiden ended the call.

Aiden spent most of that night awake, staring at the ceiling.

The next day was harder. He burned the bottom of the bread in the Dutch oven, and it was a rest day, so he couldn’t evenpush his body beyond exhaustion at the gym or on a run. By the end of it he felt like he was practically vibrating out of his skin, furious and frustrated with his inability to keep himself occupied, with his inability to ignore the noise in his head.

By the time Matt came through the door, after two a.m., Aiden just happened to be awake, rolling out of bed as soon as he heard the key in the lock. He felt a momentary sense of disgust with himself—waiting for the door, like some kind of eager dog. Another moment after, the bone-deep relief when he went to greet Matt, who dropped his bags to take Aiden in his arms instead.

Disgust aside, he had the first good night of sleep since Matt left. And that had to be enough.

Matt had been playing games at l’Arène for a decade and a half. Even now, he hadn’t gotten tired of it. The routine was the same every time: he got to the rink several hours before the game, worked out with the boys, made sure the rookies were doing what they needed to do and that he was there to answer any questions if they had them, made sure his knee wasn’t going to give out on him in the middle of the game. Even though the equipment managers made sure that his gear was ready for him, he still checked all of it anyway, cut down his sticks the way he liked them, taped them to his specifications.

By the time he was ready to go out onto the ice for warm-ups, he’d been there, focused on hockey, for long enough that it was easy to drown out the rest of the noise in his head. But even with that focus he would always look up at the banners hanging over the ice: the numbers the team had retired, the banners from the twenty-six times the Royal had won the Cup. It was impossible not to play here and feel the weight of history.

He always stayed behind after the team filed off of the ice when they were done, heading back to the room to run through their final pregame routines. Another last moment to take in the atmosphere of l’Arène and the smudgy blur of fans in the stands. Usually he was the last one out here, but he had the little tingle at the back of his neck, the sense of someone behind him.

“Cap?”

---