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“It's knowing that this can't go on forever
Likely one of us will have to spend some days alone
Maybe we'll get forty years together
But one day I'll be gone
Or one day you'll be gone”
-- Jason Isbell, “If We Were Vampires”
Spring 2036
Chicago, Illinois
Adam
Kirby’s hand is heavy on his hip when he finally slides into bed behind him. His hands have always been huge, but this is a heaviness that feels like it comes less from the bones and more from the heart.
“Another bad night?” Adam whispers into the darkness of their bedroom. In front of him, the clock has already ticked past midnight. They have morning skate in less than nine hours.
“Go back to sleep,” Kirby responds. The hand slides up to grip him more firmly, pressing a kiss into the back of his neck. Adam doesn’t listen, though, and turns toward Kirby and onto his back. He looks up at him, the slice of moonlight from between the curtains making his pale face even paler. Adam can’t resist putting a palm to his cheek, thumbing toward the darkness under his eyes.
“You know I could never sleep without you around anyway,” he says. He gives Kirby a worried little smile around the lump in his throat. He just wants his husband to get some sleep.
“Well, I’m here now,” Kirby replies softly above him. He leans down for a kiss, sipping at Adam the way you’d sip at a glass of water on the bedside table. Adam hopes he’s quenching something. He pulls back, though, and for a moment they simply search each other’s eyes. They seem to decide that whatever they see in the dark, it will be a little more visible in the morning. “I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow,” Kirby says. “Promise.”
“Well, only since you promised.”
Adam can tell nothing in Kirby has settled, but it's late, and he needs him to get some sleep. So he lets it go, for now. Still, after pressing one more peck to his lips, he pushes Kirby to the bed. Arranges them so Adam is the big spoon, curled around Kirby like a shell. Clings to his back, holds his chest until it steadies, listens to the breathing even out before letting his own eyes flutter shut.
***
Jonny
Jonny has someone waiting for him when he arrives home, too. Although waiting might be a little generous--his blonde is on the couch, not the bed, conked out in front of the blue light of a Forensic Files rerun. Jonny smiles when he sees him. He always does, even like this. He sets his bag down gently, crouches down next to the couch. Places a kiss on Kaner’s nose. His eyes flutter open, recognition stretching into a smile.
“Hey, babe,” Patrick says. His voice is creaky with sleep. “Long night?” Jonny nods. “Kirb again?” Jonny nods again. Patrick just yawns and stretches, unbothered, and lets Jonny tug him up so they can make the long trip to the bedroom. “Too bad,” Patrick says. “You’ll have to tell me all about it in the morning.”
***
Adam
They get up the next day, go to practice. Kirby looks good, almost up to his form from that record-setting season he had a couple years ago. They feel good. Afterwards they pick up the baby from Stromer’s, and Adam sits on the floor laughing while Kirby tries everything to get Maja to run to him. She’s barely old enough to sit up on her own. Eventually Kirby gets tired of the game and scoops her up to run around with her himself, which, of course, is too precious not to post to Instagram.
And then night comes. And Adam is waiting again. He lies in bed, sweating through the sheets, and cycles back through their memories. If he can’t dream, this feels like the next best thing.
It's funny, how a dozen years of building a franchise will make you comfortable. Confident, cocky even, cornerstones of the ever-shifting construction that is a hockey team. It had taken a while, but they’d established themselves, their relationship, their team, and they’ve been riding that same wave for the last ten years. Seasons changed, there’s been highs and lows--cups, weddings, a baby. But Adam kind of looks at the last decade as one long highlight reel. Things have been so… stable. Each step was a natural progression, a string of delights if not surprises. But now, things have begun to change. Now, it's like they’re kids again. The ground has started to wobble, their knees shaky, and here Adam had thought he’d only have to learn to skate once.
He remembers their first year playing together. The whirlwind season, the injuries, the call-ups, the bubble. Being scratched, then coming back just to get crushed by Vegas. He goes through the long stretch of his second season when it seemed like he was going backwards, getting less confident every game and waking up to articles urging the Hawks to move on from him every day. Starting to get his feet under him, then turning around and getting sick. He turns it over in his mind, smiling when, like a bright spot, he remembers how even from off the ice, Kirby still managed to be more there than anyone else.
He’s only half-asleep, so he half-dreams of the start of the 2021 season. They’re so young, and Adam is so skittish about not just hockey but everything, everything but Kirby; Kirby seems so self-assured in everything but the shy smile he gives to Adam. That smile should be the one good thing about this year--this shit year that already has him feeling overwhelmed, defeated, like a bust--but Adam so rarely gets to see it these days. So nights like this are special.
The guest bed is right across the hall, and yet, somehow they both end up in Adam’s anyway. They’re lying on their sides, whatever movie they were watching rolling credits, facing each other with Kirby’s stupid cast on the bed between them. That little piece of plaster keeping them apart. Adam remembers how much he wants to lift it to his lips and kiss the broken bits it covers. They’re not together yet, but it feels like they are, and even though Adam doesn’t hate himself for that, he does hate himself for lying here swallowing tears when Kirby’s the one who can’t play.
“I can’t do this, Kirby,” he whispers, voice straining to keep it together.
“Yes, you can.”
“No I can’t. Every time I step on the ice I panic, and it just keeps getting worse. I’m a liability. I’m less than zero. They just walk through me like I’m nothing--”
“Stop. Adam, stop.” Kirby grabs his face, makes him look. His fingers are softer than he expected. “You can’t think like that. You’re not nothing. You’re so far from nothing. You’re everything, how can you not see that?”
Adam just blinks at him, willing his eyes to be clear enough to tell him this is too good to be true.
“What?”
“You’re everything, Boqy. I don’t even know how to tell you how good you are, how good you’re gonna be. How much you mean to… to this city,” he says, clearing his throat and lowering his eyes.
“This city means a lot to me, too.”
He feels sure that they’re talking about something else, but he’s too terrified to lean into the certainty, even when Kirby looks up again and offers up a tiny smile. It’s the kind of smile you could spend a life pursuing, the kind of smile that can make a man stupid enough to fall for a best friend.
“I don’t know how to do this without you,” Adam whispers. He’s not sure he’s still talking about hockey.
“Yes, you do. You’ve lit it up everywhere you’ve been before, and you’ll do it again. You’ll adjust. And then next year you’ll be light years ahead of me when we’re back together again.”
“Nah,” Adam gives his confident smile. “We’ll light it up together.”
“We just have to get there.”
Years later, they’ll discuss how much they wanted to kiss then, but they don’t. They fall asleep, still curled toward each other, nothing between their fingers but an inch of space and Kirby’s stupid cast.
That was so long ago now. Adam had been so afraid then--afraid of failing, afraid of what it meant to be gay in the NHL, afraid of being traded away from Kirby, afraid of his fucking feelings. But Kirby had assured him they would grow into it all, and they did. Now he has a family, and a legacy, and security, and he knows who he is and who he loves. Now, Adam wants for nothing. Though that isn’t totally true--he wants what he has. It just seems like what he has doesn’t particularly want him right now.
Adam knows that’s not fair. He knows that what’s going on with Kirby isn’t about him. But the bed still feels like an awfully big question mark without him in it.
Adam’s sleep shifts, and the sweetness of the memory gives way to the uncertainty he’d thought he’d left behind him. He’s built the life he wants. It’s not supposed to be like this anymore. He tosses and turns, comes in and out of dreams, clings to the mattress like it's going to disappear from under him. But he can’t get comfortable. He can’t get established. He’s gravitating toward a space that’s just empty air.
Kirby’s a big guy. That’s no secret. And part of him being a “total package” player is the fact that he’s never been afraid to use that to his advantage. He’s always throwing his weight around, “playing the body”--a phrase they’ve whispered to each other in giggles a hundred times, pressed up against lockers or showers or the kitchen counter. They joke about it, but they both know Adam finds it sexy, the way he moves on the ice. What Adam hopes Kirby knows is that it isn’t really about hockey at all. It's about the way he moves through the world--fearlessly, as though it could never hurt him, even when it has. He loves the way Kirby has always fought to forget pain, to choose happiness.
It kills Adam to watch Kirby have to make that choice every week, sometimes every day. Pain gets a little harder to forget when it stops letting up. Kirby’s 35 now. He’s been slamming into the boards at the UC for 17 years.
It's his back that’s giving out on him--vertebrae can only crunch into unnatural shapes so many times before they stay that way. It’s the same injury that forced out Seabs, and at the same age, too. He’s fighting it, of course. They both are. Kirby had surgery last year and that smoothed things over for a while. They’ve got a special mattress and a special brace and special massages that are decidedly clinical and un-sexy. But with each passing week Adam can feel the fight going out of Kirby, melting like an outdoor rink come springtime. He’s been lingering in Jonny’s office more and more after practices lately, talking with Seabs on the phone multiple times a week. The other day, Adam had heard through a cracked door as Kirby asked Seabs, how did you know it was time?
And suddenly Adam was twenty again, looking at Kirby and thinking, I don’t know how to do this without you.
And then he took that thought and shelved it, permanently. Because how do you tell your husband that you need him when he’s the one who’s hurting?
In many ways, Adam will never be the perfect husband--he still shuts down when he’s upset, he still spends more time posting about their life than living it, he still spends too much money and forgets the dishes and occasionally puts Maja’s shoes on the wrong feet. But this, he can do. Most days Adam doesn’t know what to do about the pain Kirby’s in, but he knows he can do this. He can be quiet and be there. He can sleep in this bed alone, if that's what Kirby needs. Never tell him that though his back might not be breaking, injury to the heart can end a career, too.
***
Kirby
Kirby spends a lot of his time looking backwards these days, whether he wants to or not, and that doesn’t change just because he finally gets into bed.
When he closes his eyes, the first thing Kirby sees is the gray suit he wore to his wedding. He dreams of flecks of sand in Adam’s hair and the smell of almonds and lemon in the cake he smushed in his face.
He dreams of the lake where he grew up skating. He feels the wind at his cheeks, sees the wall of trees behind him and no horizon to the front. He dreams of the UC, and of the game-clincher Adam made in their Cup win while Kirby was pinning a defenseman to the boards. He dreams of flying, and he dreams of dropping like a ton of bricks.
He dreams of the sound Adam’s phone makes when it hits the floor of the locker room, just after he gets the news that their surrogate is in labor. He dreams of ugly hospital floors and the feather-soft hair on the top of his baby’s head. He dreams of ugly hospital floors and Adam’s feather-soft touch on his scar from the back surgery.
He dreams of the day when he can no longer get out from under the pain. When it keeps him down, on the surface of the ice, while Adam looks down at him and realizes that he’s not the man he married anymore. He dreams of having to watch Adam skate away.
He dreams, and he dreams, but Kirby doesn’t get much sleep.
***
Jonny
Jonny has been a coach for almost ten years now. Eventually, he knows that his years coaching will overtake the years he spent as Captain, and then the years he spent in the NHL, and then the years he was able to play hockey, period. He fully expects that someday, when he’s really old and gray, he’ll have to be carted out of these rinks on a stretcher.
And yet, he still somehow gets surprised by how stupid hockey players can be.
“Jesus Christ, boys,” he calls from where he stands by the boards, “can we wait until after the game to injure each other? You think I won’t bench whoever did it, but I will.”
Brinks skates up next to him, pointedly spraying him with snow, signature wide smile in place.
“Can’t scratch us all.”
“Like fuckin’ hell I can’t. I’ll send the whole Rockford squad out there. I’ve seen next year’s draft class, might be a good idea to tank anyway. Replace some of you old men.”
“If I’m an old man now, what does that make you, Taze?”
“You’re never gonna call me Coach, are you?” Jonny asks, wiping the snow from his eyes.
“Oh, fuck no. Not as long as you still call me your rookie .”
“You are still my rookie. Forever. Until you and Stromer have grandchildren. That’s the law!” Jonny’s calling after Brinks, but he’s already skating away. Jonny mumbles something about fucking horseshit, but he’s grinning; he’s grinning right up until his eyes catch the other side of the rink, where quietly, mid-drill, Kirby slips off the ice and down the tunnel. One hand on his back.
Shit.
He starts toward that side of the rink, about to put the assistants in charge, when something stops him. Maybe it’s the nights spent with Kirby in his office, waiting for him to talk about it. Maybe it’s how Kirby always stops just short. Whatever it is, Kirby will come when he’s ready. He hopes.
So the show goes on. He runs practice. He yells, some, but mostly at guys he’s coached for years and known for longer. The guys who yell right back at him, but who also take it in stride and actually make the changes and then pass them down to the young kids in the locker room. Later they’ll come to him with questions, and that’s how he knows they respect him.
After that he spends more time with the young guys, his favorite part of the job. He likes being approachable, building the team’s future, helping guys make their dreams a reality. And he gets as much from them, too. One kid, a third-rounder from Detroit, has the most surprising shot he’s seen since the first time Patrick fired a backhand at him. Jonny is fascinated by it, and the kid seems like he’s going to have a heart attack when he asks him about it, but once they get going they end up picking corners and talking shop for twenty minutes. What’s life if you’re not always trying to get better, to learn? Jonny still believes that. He’s still always looking ahead, even now.
Finally he calls practice, gives a cursory speech, assigns homework in the form of opposition players to study. Takes a call from Sharpy in his office while the guys hit the showers. He’s just queuing up the game tape for himself when he hears a soft knock at the door.
“Hey, Cap.” Kirby smiles bashfully from the doorway.
“Hey, Dacher! You doing alright? I haven’t talked to the trainers yet, but I saw--”
“Yeah, I’m good. Just a tweak, got it massaged out. No problem.” Jonny doesn’t believe that for a second, but Kirby is still smiling, leaning against the door like his body is still pliable, so he makes a reluctant mental note to come back to it tomorrow. Kirby gestures at the chair in front of Jonny’s desk.
“Mind if I join you?”
“Sure, sure.” Jonny kicks out the chair. “I mean, it's just tape of the Red Wings, I know you’d rather be watching your highlight reels again…”
“Hey, at least I’m not watching Kaner’s highlight reels, eh?”
“Jesus fuck, that was one time-- ”
And then they’re chirping, and Kirby is laughing, and Jonathan almost doesn’t notice Adam walk past the open door and keep going home.
***
Kirby
Kirby gets in relatively early. It's only 11:30 when he climbs the stairs to bed.
It doesn’t happen often, but by the time Kirby’s head hits the pillow he’s already left Chicago. He gets hit with a wave of sunshine, and then a wave of seawater, and when he coughs up salt he’s laughing. He’s twenty years old, jumping off the hull of Rasmus Dahlin’s rented boat, floating off the coast of somewhere. None of the specifics matter. Nothing in him thinks to question it, because he’s exactly where he’s meant to be: treading water with Adam. Not a thought in his head, not a pain in his body except for the strain of Adam's gravity begging Kirby to touch him.
The next thing he knows they’re below deck, and Adam’s back is to him, and Kirby's followed him here but he doesn’t know why. He doesn’t need to. Adam is pouring him a glass of wine but doesn’t touch it; he'd rather taste it in the echo on Adam’s lips. His chest looks so bare here, indoors and out of the sun. Kirby's nervous, but he trusts him. He trusts him enough to tell him, I don’t want to wait until next year’s season for it to be you and me. I want it to be you and me now .
He thinks he hears Adam swear low under his breath, but it's hard to tell when immediately after that Adam’s mouth is on top of his. His brain only short-circuits for a moment before he starts kissing back, knocking over a glass as his hands scramble for purchase when Adam pushes him back into the counter, but when his skin hits the marble a pain shoots up his back--
And then Kirby wakes up.
It’s 2035 again. He’s in his bed, and his back is on fire. He rolls over in the dark, trying not to hiss in pain as he reaches for his pills. The clock reads four. Outside, it's snowing. He swallows two pills dry and lays back, eyes scrunched as he waits for them to work. Next to him, Adam sleeps. He’s got hair over his eyes, the beginning of a blonde shadow on his lip, a 77 Hawks t-shirt rumpled over his chest. Kirby wants to reach out for him. He’s so much more beautiful like this than when they were twenty and jumping off of boats. He wonders in a panic if Adam feels the same. But then the pain hits another wave, and he can’t make his hand cross the space.
It’s okay. He probably won’t remember in the morning anyway.
***
Adam
He does. He thinks Adam doesn’t notice when he starts his day with three pain pills. He does.
When noon hits and Kirby hasn’t mentioned any of it--the dried tears on his face when he woke up, the pills in the morning, the leaving practice yesterday, his conversations with Jonny--Adam thinks he better go for a run.
***
Kirby
By that afternoon, the pain has dulled to a background simmer while he tries to do normal things. He thinks about taking another pill, but they're almost gone and he knows the docs won't write him prescriptions forever. Mostly at this point he's just irritated--irritated that he hasn't slept, irritated that it'll affect him in practice, irritated about all the things he won't let himself be afraid about. Irritated that he's irritated. He should be happy .
Kirby has just put Maja down and is sorting out laundry, trying to plan for a road trip that somehow includes both Tampa and Boston, when Adam comes in from his run. Sweating through his Gucci t-shirt, Adam is a ridiculous sight, but a sight all the same. When he kisses Kirby on the cheek, he feels the tension melt out of his shoulders. He really doesn't want to be in a shitty mood. He wants to be happy. And suddenly, what would make him happy is getting in Adam's post-run shower, peeling off that stupid Gucci t-shirt, and throwing it somewhere they’ll forget it until the water runs cold.
“Just put Maja down for a nap,” he says innocently as Adam sorts through the dresser for a clean shirt.
“You should take a nap, too. You need rest.” Neither of them says why, but Kirby is prepared to lie about it anyway.
“Don’t need it. I slept pretty good last night anyway.”
“Yeah?”
Adam turns around, looking pleased. He seems to catch the way Kirby is looking at him, pulls him in by the belt loops so Kirby’s pinning him to the dresser. Somehow, even when Kirby’s on top of Adam, even with the five inches he has on him, it still feels like Adam’s in control. And when Adam's in control, Kirby can finally let go of everything else.
“Yeah.I had a dream about you,” Kirby says, smiling into the minimal space between them.
“Oh?” Adam asks, starting to nibble up Kirby’s throat.
“Mmhmm. About that time, out on Rasmus’ boat, think we were in Greece?”
Kirby inhales sharply at the sudden use of teeth, but it’s soothed away pretty quickly by Adam’s soft laugh.
“You’ll have to be more specific, älskade. There were a lot of times out on Rasmus’ boat in Greece.”
“The first time.”
“Ah. Why didn’t you just say so?” Adam kisses him on the mouth then, the kind of kiss that never gets old, as his hands wander to the front of Kirby’s jeans. “So what’s better, dream or reality?”
Kirby is about to answer when suddenly a wail rings out and--oh, yeah. Fatherhood. That thing they had to get a million forms and a surrogate for? He’s not sure they really thought it through.
“I think she’s done with naptime,” Adam says as Kirby sighs and plunks his head on Adam’s shoulder.
“ I wasn’t done with naptime,” Kirby grumbles back. But Adam just laughs, scratching the back of Kirby’s neck before giving him one more kiss and slipping out from under him.
Eventually Kirby trails after him, standing in the doorway as Adam bounces the baby, soothing her almost immediately.
“You ever think about it?” Kirby asks suddenly. “The way we were back then?”
“Of course I think about it,” Adam says, smiling. “I think about it all the time. You couldn’t pay me to be twenty again, though.”
“Really? You never wish you could go back?” Kirby says.
“No. Why would I? I have everything I need.” It’s sweet. Or it should be. He’s smiling down at Maja, pecking the top of her head as he adjusts her sweater. They look so perfect together Kirby could almost melt, and then he feels ungrateful, and then Adam bends to pick up the sock Maja dropped without any pain and something in Kirby shifts again. Kirby doesn’t have everything he needs, because what he needs is a working body.
“Well, it's not like I’m not happy now,” Kirby says, and if the bitterness he feels leaks into his words, well, He doesn’t stop it. Adam frowns.
“Who said you’re not happy now?”
“Nobody.”
“It sounds like you’re saying you’re not happy now.”
“I literally said the opposite.”
“Well.” Adam is still frowning, but he’s looking at Kirby differently now, like maybe he’s going to go off, like maybe he doesn't know him at all. But Adam is Adam and Adam hates conflict, so he just says, cautiously, “Good, then.”
Kirby should let it go. He should enjoy an afternoon with the family who loves him. But he's so tired of being tired, and to be honest the pain hasn't mostly dissipated, and he's afraid the doctors are going to stop writing him prescriptions soon even though he can’t sleep or go on runs or bend over any more at all. And Adam can. Adam is happy and Kirby is supposed to be, too, but he's not and it's fucking lonely. And maybe some part of him thinks that making Adam feel as shit as he does will make him less alone. So he doesn’t let it go. Instead, he says, shrugging almost casually,
“Just that maybe I had more to be happy about back then.”
As soon as he says it he knows he shouldn’t have--it’s objectively untrue, and the implication that something as stupid as hockey could be more important than their little girl makes him feel sick. But it doesn’t make him feel better, so he doesn’t take it back.
“I know you don’t mean that,” Adam says, but his voice says he doesn't. Kirby guesses a lot of nights in an empty bed will do that to you. He guesses the way he doesn’t respond will do that to you. When he doesn’t, Adam puts Maja down and straightens. “Unless… you want something else?”
“No, I want what I had. ”
He’s been trying to hurt Adam, and it works.
"And tell me, Kirby, what did you have before that you don't have now?" he says quietly. He's trying to look angry, but it doesn't come off, with Adam it never does. Kirby can see the panic in his eyes, see the hurt and the question, the real question that maybe Kirby hasn't been with Jonny those nights and maybe he doesn't want--and even at his most frustrated Kirby doesn't have the heart--he panics, and accidentally says something real instead.
“I had a future, Adam! I had a career! I had a body that fucking worked!”
And then he's leaving, out the door and into the car because he doesn't know what he'll say if he doesn't, and he doesn't want to hurt Adam anymore. He’s so sorry. He wants to be happy. He really does.
***
Adam
Kirby leaves, and then it’s just Adam shushing the baby again, though this time she doesn’t quiet down quite so easily.
"Me too, baby," Adam whispers. "Me too."
***
Jonny
At practice, Jonny isn’t the first to notice that Adam and Kirby aren’t speaking.
They’ve always been professional--they’re both on the leadership team for a reason--and they don’t make a scene. But they don’t talk to each other either, don’t talk much at all to anyone; not even Brinksy can get a word out of Adam. Adam looks, for a 36 year-old, remarkably like a kicked puppy; Kirby’s face is a swirl of emotions mostly resembling a storm. It’s not a problem until he fires a slapshot in the scrimmage that nearly takes off the head of a recent Icehogs call-up.
“Am I going to have to start talking to Stan about trade options for one of you?” Jonny asks in a low voice as Kirby skates by.
“Don’t know what you’re talking about, Cap,” Kirby responds, face suddenly impassive.
“Hey,” Hagel calls out, much less tactfully than Jonny, “who gets the team in the divorce?”
If murderous looks could win hockey games, Kirby would be hoisting the Cup.
**
“I don’t know what to do, I think they’re gonna kill each other,” Jonny says into the phone. Practice has just ended, the guys hitting the showers, so he expects Kirby to appear soon.
“Why do anything?” Patrick asks. “Did Q ever step in when we were about to kill each other?”
Jonny sits back in his office chair, puts his feet up. He has a point.
“No, I guess he didn’t.”
“Yeah, or he would have had to intervene every time we were on the bench together, at practice, in the hotel rooms…”
“Hey, we had a lot of fun in those hotel rooms, too.”
“Exactly. We figured it out, so will they.”
“Yeah, I just hope they do it in time for us to face Dallas.” Patrick laughs and Jonny hears him say something to the kids. He wishes he was there. Suddenly he really wishes he was there. “I think I’m gonna be here late tonight, though.”
“Oh,” Patrick says. “Then you better intervene. All my love to Dacher but I’m tired of going to bed alone, yeah?”
Jonny laughs again.
“Yeah, okay. I’ll do my best. Put the kids on then, so I can say goodnight? And hey. I miss you, too.”
***
Kirby
It’s another one of those nights.
He and Jonny have finally made it through the entirety of the last game’s tape--all sixty minutes, not just Kirby’s shifts, rewinded and discussed in painstaking detail--and they’ve been shooting the shit for the better part of an hour. Empty styrofoam coffee cups litter the desk, they’ve been exchanging new dad stories, and he knows Jonny knows he’s stalling when he stops laughing and lets out a long-suffering sigh. Shit.
“Oh, jeez,” Kirby says. “Here it comes.”
“Listen,” Jonny says, and Kirby knows he’s gearing up for the Big Speech, the one he’s been working out how to give him all this time. He starts to protest, but Jonny stops him. “No, I just want you to listen. Don’t try to say you haven’t been thinking about this, I know you have, you think I don’t still talk to Seabs?” He silences Kirby with a look, and really, Kirby knows on some level that if he didn’t want this, he would’ve gone to someone else. He listens. “Okay then. I always thought Patrick and I were going to retire together. We came in together, won cups together, signed matching contracts, and then when we were up for the next one, he signed and I didn’t. I hadn’t thought about it the fifteen years we played together, but it was always going to be that way. It didn’t come out of nowhere. It was just how we played. His way was sustainable, mine wasn’t. But I’m not sorry I played that way.”
Kirby thinks of himself, rocketing around to where he is now. He thinks of every hit he can’t remember. The thought hurts more now than it ever did on the ice. Jonny goes on.
“I’m not sorry because I did it for the team. And more often than not, I did it for Patrick. You? You did it for Adam. You don’t think about it when you’re playing, but every time you check someone who’s coming for him, or you drop the gloves with someone who got to him before you could, you’re shaving a few days off your own career and giving them to him. You’d do it for any of the guys, but let’s be honest. You did it for him.”
“I never thought of it that way,” Kirby says. He feels nineteen again, being schooled by his captain, who just looks at him with those lazer-intense eyes.
“So,” Jonny says. “Was it worth it?”
“No question.”
“Thought so.”
When Kirby looks at Jonny’s desk, at the walls, there’s pictures of Jonny with everyone--Jonny and Seabs, Jonny and Sharp and Bur, Jonny with Crow, Jonny with his parents and kids. There’s only one picture of him with the Cup. It's the one of him and Patrick holding it together, where Jonny isn’t even looking at the camera, or the cup, or the adoring crowd. He’s looking at Patrick.
“Y’know,” Jonny says, “I realized a couple years ago that what I was upset about when I retired wasn’t the extra couple years that Patrick got to play. I love coaching, and I got to establish myself in a new way while Patrick was still playing. What I was really jealous about was that he got to choose. When I retired I felt like I had to start from scratch, like I was thrown into some great unknown against my will. But when Patrick was done, I was waiting for him, and he got to say, this is the life I’ll have and now I’m ready for it. He got to decide. And I held onto that for years, you know? What a stupid fucking thing to be mad about, that I was able to be there for the man I loved.” He’s looking at a picture that Kirby knows from experience is a shot of his wedding. Jonny looks back up at him, eyes focused again. “I took for granted all the ways that Patrick was there for me, too. Kirby, I think you need to look at the life you’ll have on the other side of this and whether or not you’re ready for it.”
When Jonathan stands, his smile is sympathetic.
“And you have to go the fuck home.”
“I do?”
“Yes. I want to see my husband. You have to go home.”
It's late when they finally exit the arena. Jonny offers to drive him, but he declines--he and Adam are still pretty metropolitan, and it's the opposite direction from Jonny and Patrick’s life in suburbia. He usually just gets a car home if he stays past Adam; it's not exactly walking weather in Chicago this time of year. For whatever reason, he wanders out to the L train anyway. Pulls his hat down low and his scarf up high, hopes he won’t be recognized. He boards a train home, happy to let himself be taken by something bigger than him. A car is a singular thing, but a train is constant. A stream running through the city, it moves, with or without you. It goes without you needing to tell it where, and Kirby could use more of that in his life right now.
He puts his headphones in and watches the neighborhoods go by in the dark. They’re mostly just little gold orbs of light in the snow, a blur of moonlight on roofs and the occasional lit window. Chicago is pretty at night, every single neighborhood. He wonders if Adam will want to stay here, someday when they’re both retired. That’s a question for another day, though. Adam’s body is going to last forever.
Maybe Jonny’s right, though. Maybe he played a small part in that, and maybe that’s something to be proud of.
When he gets home, he still doesn’t go to bed. The clock has ticked past two at this point, and he prays that Adam isn’t still awake. He probably is. He really can’t sleep without someone else in the house, all the way back to when he stayed with Brinks. It's part of the reason Adam has never lived alone. He just needs people, the way a ray of sun needs something to shine on. Still, Kirby doesn’t feel ready to go in.
So he hangs up his coat slowly. Dusts the shoulders of snow. Goes to the kitchen, turns the light on over the stove, warms a bottle in the microwave. He climbs the stairs and thanks God they’re carpeted as he slips into the room of his baby girl. She’s getting to the point where she mostly sleeps through the night, but not always, and if he can keep her from crying and let Adam rest a little longer, well. It's not like he wouldn’t be up anyway.
Of course, he’s not mad about spending time with his favorite person. Second favorite? He’s always thought Adam had the edge on just about everybody, but it's still early for this one. And she’s just so pretty. He knows that pretty much all babies start out with blonde hair and blue eyes, but it seems like Adam’s coloring is gonna stick around on this one. Kirby’s eyes are sharp, icy and clear, but Adam’s are warm and liquidy like the sea in Sweden. He thinks Maja is gonna turn out like that, relaxed and sandy-colored with an open-mouthed smile. She’s already such an easygoing baby, as long as you pay attention to her. He smirks as he picks her up, thinking that that’s like Adam, too.
She’s already awake and blinking up at him when he gives her the bottle. She takes it easily, little head tucked into the crook of his arm, and it makes him smile to think that this is one thing his body can still do. He can still support his girl. He can still be the solid-but-soft thing she rests her head on. He settles back into the rocking chair they have set up in the corner. The motion feels a little like the rocking of the train earlier, and he finally starts to feel like he’s settling himself.
“Hey, baby girl,” he whispers. “I missed you. I miss you all the time when I’m not here. I know your dad does, too.”
He knows this as much as he’s ever known anything. It’s part of why he picked Adam in the first place, beyond all the obvious stuff like his hair and his arms and his wicked shot. He could just tell, right away, that nobody loves like Adam does. And he’s been proven right, every time.
What he doesn’t know, though, is that Adam is standing just outside the door. He’s leaning against the wall in the hallway, listening to the low low voice, just like that day when Kirby had been talking to Seabs. The only change is that this time, there’s a very small smile on his face.
“I can’t wait to spend all my time with you,” Kirby goes on. “Watching hockey, teaching you to skate. Or not. Whatever you’re into. I can’t wait to find out all the things you’re into someday. Maybe you’ll learn the violin or something. Or like, play polo. Is that a thing? Maybe basketball. Although if you’re short like dad you don’t really have a prayer, eh?”
Adam almost jumps out of hiding right there-- he’s still above average height in America!-- but stops himself when Kirby keeps going.
“Y’know,” he whispers so quietly Adam has to strain to hear, “maybe Tazer is right. If this is what I have to look forward to when all this ends. Maybe that’ll be okay, huh? You gonna be waiting for me? You and Daddy? Don’t tell your dad I called him Daddy. I mean, in this context. I call him Daddy all the time. But that’s a pretty weird thing to say to your daughter, eh?” He laughs, and it sounds like she gurgles back. “The three of us against the world. Guess that’s not so bad.”
Adam has to go to bed then, because he’s loud when he cries and he would give anything not to crack the spun glass of this moment.
When Kirby finally comes to bed, the clock has now marched past three, but Adam is only pretending to be asleep. Kirby’s body feels warm and pliable when he gets there, not like it usually does on nights like these. In the morning they’re going to have to deal with, well--all the things Kirby said. But in this moment, thinking his husband is asleep, Kirby just wants him. He nuzzles into the back of Adam’s neck. He breathes in the scent of conditioner lingering on hair probably too long for his age. He throws a leg over his waist, right below where his arm is protectively squeezing his middle. If he could be holding him any closer, he doesn’t know how. Hockey, glory, the boys might not be forever. But some things are. His family is. And right now, he wants nothing more than to cling to this one steady, forever thing and let it make him forget that time can ever pass.
***
That night, Kirby doesn’t dream at all.
***
Jonny
Jonny has never been a morning person. This is a well-documented, well-known fact, mostly having to do with how difficult sleep has always been to come by. Maybe that will change someday when he retires-retires, but if anything, being a coach has just made the nights longer, and without the benefit of a pre-game nap. So most mornings when they have breakfast, Patrick’s chipper smile shines on two grumpy kids and Jonny, who looks, if anything, grumpier. But when he’s woken up at 6:30 by a call that the roads are impassable and the kids have a snow day, he can’t help but think, that sounds like a good idea.
He turns off their alarms. He lets the kids sleep. The sky is absolutely clear in the way it only can be when a storm has just blown through. When Patrick wakes up Jonny is standing in front of the window, sipping his coffee and letting the morning sun shine on his bare chest.
“You’re up early,” Patrick says curiously, but not unhappily.
“Got a call this morning. Snow day.”
“Ah. Kids will be happy.”
“Yeah. Y’know,” Jonny says, “I was thinking. They might be onto something. The school, I mean.”
“You think so?” Patrick sits up on his elbows, blankets pooling around his stomach.
“It does seem like it snowed pretty heavily out there last night.”
“Uh-huh,” Patrick says, grinning.
“Roads look pretty bad.”
“Do they now?” Jonny puts down his coffee, wanders to the edge of the bed where Patrick knee-walks to meet him.
“And y’know, we don’t have a game until Saturday. I would hate to put the boys in danger for no reason.”
And then Patrick’s laughing and pulling him down to the mattress, because they can still do that, and Jonny can’t help but think that maybe, just maybe, mornings are alright. Particularly if they’re spent with Patrick Kane.
Some things never change. Sometimes they do.
***
Kirby
When Kirby wakes up, he knows that it's late in the way that all internal clocks do. The sun is shining through open curtains, Adam noticeably absent from the bed-- fuck, he still hasn’t apologized to Adam, and a million possibilities run through his head, none of them good. And shit, they’ve got morning skate, like, yesterday, shitshitshitfuck, and for a moment he panics and rushes to get up and--
He’s silenced by Adam appearing in the doorway. On the contrary to being panicked or angry, he looks calm. He’s freshly showered, hair still wet, all the lines on his face smooth. He’s nudged the door open with his hip, and he’s got Maja in one arm and a steaming mug of coffee in the other. He strolls over all casual, like the world waits on them, and simply drops a kiss on Kirby’s forehead before setting the coffee on the bedside table next to him.
“What...?” Kirby trails.
But then Adam leaves again, returning just a moment later with a plate of waffles. They’ve got peanut butter on them, the way Kirby likes but never has time to make. Adam sets them on the table as well, then carefully hands Kirby the baby, then picks the plate back up and sits down on the bed in front of him. He starts cutting up the waffles, popping a bite in Kirby’s mouth before he has the chance to speak.
“Hush,” Adam says. “Eat.”
Kirby swallows. It’s just waffles, but everything tastes better when Adam’s made it.
“But--” he doesn’t know how to say I’ve been an asshole, so he settles for, “but morning skate--”
“Cancelled today. Snow day. Coach called while you were asleep, said the roads are too dangerous, important to rest, yaddah yaddah. Fucking Chicago, right?”
Fucking Tazer, more like, Kirby thinks, and spares a moment of thanks for his coach. His friend.
“Anyway,” Adam says. “Guess you’re snowed in with me, baby.” He smiles nervously, using his thumb to wipe a smear of peanut butter from the corner of Kirby’s mouth. His eyes are fond when he says quietly, “Or I guess I should say we’re snowed in just the three of us. The three of us against the world.”
“You heard that?”
“I hear a lot, älskade. I see a lot, too.”
Kirby looks down at Maja guiltily. He can’t believe he’s spent so long shutting his family out of this when they’re the one thing that’s going to come out constant.
“Adam, I’m so sorry--” Kirby starts, but Adam quiets him.
“ Hey, ” he says. “There’s nothing to be sorry about. You’ve been perfect. You are perfect. Getting frustrated once doesn’t change that.” He pauses for a second, and Kirby hates the uncertain face Adam makes, hates that he put it there. “As long as that’s all it was?”
“Yes, babe, yes. I love our life. I love you. ”
“I know. I know.” And just like that, Adam looks confident again, but he’s always been confident in the things that matter. “You’ve been so strong through this whole thing. I want you to know that I see it, yeah? I see you trying so hard to be happy. But you don’t have to pretend. I know how strong you’ve been.”
Kirby is 35 years old, but he has to wipe his face on the back of his hand, or he’s going to drip snot and tears on his baby’s head.
“I’m scared, Adam,” he finally admits. Instantly Adam has set down the plate and pulled the three of them together. He doesn’t say anything, just lets Kirby cry into his neck. Cards his fingers through his hair while his chest shakes. It finally sinks in that, yeah, his hockey career is over after this year. It's done. It’ll be okay, but it is done , and Adam just lets Kirby mourn it. Take his time, get used to it, safe in the circle of his arms. They don’t part until Maja starts making noises from where they’re holding her between them. They each let out a shaky laugh.
“How is she the only one of us not crying right now?” Kirby says, wiping Adam’s face with his shirtsleeves while he rocks her.
“I don’t know, älskling .”
For a moment he just watches Adam with their little girl. He’s so good with her. Just the right combination of soft and strong. After a second Kirby takes a deep, if still shuddering, breath.
“Adam, I…” He doesn’t know how he’s still scared to say this, but he is. “What if I’m not the person you fell in love with anymore? What if I’m all broken and used up? Will you still want me when I’m watching you from the sidelines?”
It takes a lot to say it, but Adam just smiles indulgently.
“ Hur valde jag någon så vacker och så dum samtidigt? ”
“ Vänligen upprepa, ” Kirby replies. “You know I’ve been slacking on my Duolingo this month.”
“I said, how did I choose someone so beautiful and so stupid at the same time? I love you, not your hockey, not your body, not even all of the things you’ve accomplished. Those things are nice, but they’re not why I married you, yeah?” If Kirby is feeling nearly whole again, the soft kiss Adam gives him seals the deal. “I want you. Every version, happy, not happy, young, old. And I want you to have everything you want.”
“I do, baby,” Kirby says, kissing him again, not so soft this time, eyes squeezed shut. And there, in their sunlit bedroom with snot on his shirt and coffee going cold and the knowledge that this is his life, not the rink but this , all of it, for better or worse, in sickness and in health, he means it. “I promise. I really do.”