And then, in a blink, it was over. Nick was alone, the only thing in his future the endless sands of the Nevada desert and thousands of furious fans who felt robbed of the “Greatest Rivalry of Modern Hockey” and who held him responsible.
Nick scrubs at his face and tugs at his hair, leaning against the wall of the elevator up to his apartment as the memories threaten to overwhelm him.
He kind of hates Connor for coming backnowof all times, right as the media is starting to jump on Nick for “losing his touch.” It’s not Connor’s fault, but itfeelsintentional. Like he’s been waiting in the wings for Nick to slip, so he can swan back in and reclaim the crown he never should’ve lost to begin with.
But hell, at least it would mean Connor’s been thinking about him.
“You’re pathetic, Tiernan,” he grumbles to himself as he unlocks his front door, bracing for the tiny ball of fluff that launches itself at him. “Pathetic. Right, baby?” he reiterates, holding the cat up nose-to-nose with him. She stares back, unblinking.
It’s embarrassing how little progress he’s made in getting over Connor in the last five years. Even more embarrassing, how quickly any hopes he might’ve had were shattered when they met again—barely ten minutes into their reunion lunch in some diner in Montreal. Connor was twice as handsome as he had been as a teenager, finally having grown into those awkward limbs.
“I’m seeing someone,” he said, and Nick’s stomach sank through the floor. “I mean, like, a therapist,” Connor clarified right after, his pale skin flushed pink, but the damage was done. He’d seen how those words made Nick react, and it becameabundantly clear to Nick that he was an idiot to think this would go any other way.
He’s glad, truly, that Connor is back. Not only because a player like thatdeservesto be in the NHL—he’s glad for himself, too. Connor’s absence has been a gaping chasm in his chest for the last five years, and Nick is just self-aware enough to know that he never would’ve begun to start healing that chasm without closure.
ButGod,the process fucking sucks.
Nick has tried to be mad at Connor. But he’s never really been able to do that. So he said yes and agreed to start over. He pulled on every ounce of the laid-back facade Vegas had forced him to build and mentioned with a laugh that they never would’ve worked out anyways. They parted ways with promises to keep in touch and a long hug that Nick swore he could feel in his bones for weeks afterward.
Nowhe’s mad. He’s furious—irrationally so, but at himself. Here he is, feeling butterflies around a hot guy for the first time inforever, and the second he’s alone he starts feeling the itch of betrayal. Guilt over a relationship that hasn’t existed in years.
He’s even more mad that this is taking up so much of his thoughts at all when his hockey career is in the state it’s in. No one cares that his stats last season werebarelyworse than they were the season before—they weren’tbetter, and the team didn’t get evencloseto a cup, therefore he needs to get it together or he’ll be searching for a new team come summer.
That’s the problem with Nevada hockey fans—so many of them joined because it was a winning team that stayed winning, and no matter how statistically impossible it is to keep doing that forever, their expectations are high. As the star of the team, Nick is the first one they’ll blame.
Thelastthing he needs on top of all that is a stupid crush on some boy in a band.
Nick is mostly prepared for the adrenaline crash that comes the day after a home opener. He’s a seasoned player, he knows how to pace himself, but there’s just something about the extra ceremony and pressure surrounding the first game that leaves him aching and fuzzy-headed.
Thankfully, it’s a rest day; there’s optional skate, but he’s senior enough to skip that without reprimand, so he’s perfectly at ease to stay in bed. At least until Dolly hops up on the bed and digs her tiny paws directly into all the sensitive parts of his abdomen, yowling for food.
“Okay. Come on, baby girl,” Nick sighs, scooping the little black and white cat against his chest and rolling out of bed. He drops a kiss to the space between her ears, shuffling towards his kitchen and humming under his breath.
Breakfast is followed by an easy workout in his home gym, stretching muscles that ache from a harder night’s hockey than he’s had in a little while. His phone is used only for music; social media has a tendency to ruin his off-days first thing in the morning, so it’s a personal rule not to check anything but texts until after lunch.
All he’s had so far is a picture from Lindsay of a bottle of Dayquil captioned with a frowny face, so it doesn’t sound like Marco is going to be around for the day. That’s fine. Nick’s a big boy, he can entertain himself.
There are always re-runs ofGrey’s Anatomy.
The rest of the day stretches listlessly ahead of him, and he finds himself wishing for the kind of mid-season schedule where almost every hour of his week is accounted for.
Nick doesn’t do well with boredom.
Hoping he doesn’t regret it, he sprawls out on the couch and grabs his laptop, opening Twitter, wincing at the maxed-out notification icon. Most of them are tagged tweets of people talking about the game, his goal, his abs—he’s half-naked in the back of some celebratory locker room pictures again. Well, may as well get it out of the way early. There’ll be plenty more where that came from, internet.
Taking comfort in the fact that he put up a good enough show that his mentions aren’t full of abuse, he filters to check notifications from accounts he follows. Right at the top, there’s a picture from the team account of him and Marco posing with the band. It’s got over five thousand likes already, and he opens the replies—and immediately closes them again.
Homophobic hockey fans are the fuckingworst.
Tearing his gaze away from the angle of Matt’s jaw as he grins in the picture, he clicks through to the band’s profile. The header is a photo of all of them playing, and that’s how Nick learns that Matt is the lead singer of the band; he stands in the very center, guitar hanging from his neck but his hands wrapped around a microphone. His hair is spiked up, the red even more vivid than it was in person, and his eyes are rimmed with black liner.
Not just a rockstar, but a frontman.God.
The rest of the band look great, too: Spencer sits behind a drum kit with his shirt off, Joel holds a black and silver guitar, and Casey strums a hot-pink bass that matches both her hair and her platform boots.
Nick opens Spotify. Hedidpromise to listen to them, after all.
Sticks+Stones have two albums and an EP. Nick sees the title of the EP—Penalty Minutes—and grins. Perfect. He clicks play, and immediately an upbeat guitar riff kicks in.
