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“No, sir,” Jack lies.
“Good.” The general manager of the Las Vegas Aces claps him on the back. “This isn’t official, you understand. Just a friendly conversation.”
“Well then: no, pal.”
The GM laughs. Jack smiles like you’re supposed to. There’s a phantom pill stuck in his throat. He knows it’s not real, because the last one he took hit his system ten minutes ago, but it’s comforting anyway.
Two days later, that same cigarette-worn voice calls Jack’s name.
He slips his hand into his pocket on the way down to the stage, running his fingers over the familiar oblong shapes. He can’t take more; couldn’t even if there weren’t six hundred cameras pointed at his face, because he knows now what his limit is.
*
His first game, Jack puts money on the board before any of the veterans have a chance to start clearing their throats. He gets a goal in that one, and two assists in his third, and another goal in his fourth. He sets up a regular appointment with a cleaning service, and stocks up on pasta, and makes friends with the equipment staff. After every home win, he joins all the single guys heading out to hit the Strip. The Aces play in Montreal, where his dad pays the team a visit, and everyone pretends not to be starstruck while Jack quietly puts another couple hundred on the board.
It’s going well. On and off the ice, he’s earning as much respect as an eighteen-year-old rookie can. It’s all he could have hoped for.
And he’s not even close to running out of meds when his trainer from the Q texts to let him know which Aces trainer he should talk to about getting more.
*
He’s riding a four-game goal streak the first time he plays Kent. Both their teams are sagging in the standings already, but the two of them are in the Calder conversation--are the Calder conversation, so far. Jack personally thinks San Jose’s rookie D-man deserves a lot more attention than he’s getting, but he understands how it works. The best-friends-to-rivals narrative is impossible for the media to resist.
The Aces get creamed. The fifth goal against comes on a questionable onside, assisted by Kent, and Jack drops the gloves the second his peripheral vision goes red. He doesn’t want to, but he understands how this works, too.
“Can I come over tonight?” Kent asks, grabbing Jack’s jersey by the sleeve and taking a swing that barely clips his helmet.
Jack punches him in the teeth and says, “Yeah, okay.”
*
“I thought maybe you’d stop after the draft.”
Jack considers the idea of asking what Kent’s talking about and discards it in favor of ignoring him entirely.
“What’s it gonna take?” Kent stretches out naked on top of the covers, unselfconscious as ever. “The Calder? The Cup? A contract extension? Surgery to extract that banana blade from your colon?”
Jack rolls onto his side and bites Kent’s lip, reopening the split he put there on the ice. He’s not going to be able to get it up again, but there are plenty of ways to shut Kent up without using his dick.
Kent whispers Jack’s name against his lips, breath catching on the vowel, and turns the bite into a kiss.
If Jack could walk away from this, he’d have every single thing he’s ever wished for.
*
thinkin about coming out, Kent texts. Jack deletes it with practiced thumbs.
“Who ya talkin’ to that’s more interesting than us, huh, Jack?” Sutter yells over the music, stumbling up against Jack and trying to get a peek at his screen. “A laaaady friend?”
“Just checking the time,” Jack yells back. “I think I’m gonna head back to the hotel. Stay safe, hey?”
He hits two more bars and winds up passed out just inside his room, head propped up on the one shoe he managed to pry off. But he wakes up in plenty of time to shower before bus call, and no one notices anything, which means he’s still okay.
*
“I don’t know why you’re even talking to me about this,” Jack says impatiently into the phone. “I know I can’t stop you. You know I’m not gonna hold your hand on Ellen. What else is there to say?”
Kent sighs. “If people start poking around, you’re the one they might find. It would be a risk for you.”
Jack’s pretty sure that if Kent came out, the media would have no trouble squeezing quotes out of whatever college guys he’s been boning in his spare time, but he doesn’t bother saying that. “So what, you want my permission? No. You don’t have it. I’m not enabling this shit.”
Kent laughs. It sounds weird, like he’s forcing it but at the same time can’t help it. “Enabling? Seriously? Fuck, Jack, did you know I can tell when you’re swallowing pills by the sound? I used to lie in bed listening to you pant like you were running fucking marathons until your shit kicked in, ‘cause I knew if I went over there while you were still panicking you’d freak out even worse.”
Jack tosses back two at once. He tries not to make any noise.
“Yeah,” says Kent. “Like that. Enabling, Jesus fucking Christ.”
*
Jack wakes up hungover next to a girl he’s pretty sure is a prostitute, both of them fully clothed. The last thing he remembers is sending Kent a bunch of texts about the Aces brass quizzing him on his sexuality before the draft, and then deleting them all from his sent-messages folder.
He sends Kent another text, making sure they’re deleted on that end too, and wakes up the girl.
“Don’t you want me to sign an NDA or something?” she asks as she’s leaving.
Jack shakes his head and pops a pill.
*
“Aren’t you gonna congratulate me?” Kent asks after the awards, fake-hurt and real hurt all bundled up together so no one can tell the difference.
Jack shrugs. “Shoulda gone to that kid on the Sharks.”
“Blow me,” says Kent, and Jack does.
Kent always says things he doesn’t mean when he comes. Jack’s used to it by now.
He waits until he thinks Kent is probably asleep, breaths long and even on the other side of the bed, and then he whispers into the darkness, “I overdosed last summer. Don’t know how I survived.”
It’s a few minutes before Kent whispers back, “I would never have fucking forgiven myself. Ever.”
Jack starts to shake. He tries not to breathe loudly enough for Kent to notice, but he knows better than to believe he’s succeeding.
“You want me to get your pills?” Kent asks softly.
“Yeah,” says Jack, and then, “No. Just... come here.”