Page 18 of Breakaway Goals

The game was just as brutal as Morgan expected it would be.

It was fast and hard and physical, two fights breaking out in the first period, including one where one of the Canadian assholes thought it was okay to push way too far into the crease and try to fuck up Braun.

Morgan could do it, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to let some other guy try it. Not on his watch.

But Danny had it before he could even do anything, shoving the guy back, leaning over him as he went down to the ice.

The refs broke it up pretty quickly, separating Danny from the other player, but as they skated back to the bench, Danny leaned in and said, muffled through his mouth guard, “That fucking dick. I’m going to kick his ass.”

“No, you’re not,” Hayes said, skating up next to them, swinging his leg over the wall to get to the bench. “You’re gonna cost us a penalty and I don’t want to fucking have to deal with killing their power play.”

Danny grumbled, but he kept it together—something Morgan hadn’t ever thought he’d be grateful for. During any other game, he’d have been pushing Danny’s buttons, trying to get him to explode. Trying to get him a minor, or even a major, because he couldn’t control his goddamn temper.

It was so weird to be trying to do the opposite now. Calm him down, not work him up.

“Hey,” Hayes said, leaning over and nudging Morgan midway through the second. They were up 1-0, and Morgan was tense. It was looking more likely than theoretical that Canada was going to get something too, and then they’d be tied.

“What?” His temper was fraying now. He could feel it. From the tenseness of the game, being as close as it was, to the forced intensity of the game exhausting everyone, to the way the other team kept pushing and chipping at him. Not just him, but Hayes too.

They knew to beat the US team they had to get to the first line, and they’d been doing it all game.

Danny had been a pretty decent defense mechanism, which was another reason Morgan had campaigned for him to be on the line with him and Hayes, but he was only one person and he’d been doing his utmost to fight back without actually getting a penalty for it.

It was inevitable. Danny would push back a fraction harder than he should and then one of the refs was going to call a penalty and then Canada would go on the power play.

“You gotta keep calm,” Hayes said. “We have this. Freaking out about it isn’t gonna make it any better.”

“I know,” Morgan muttered. “But they—”

“Let me handle them,” Danny interrupted from his other side.

Danny probably saw the apprehension that crossed over his face and added. “Not like that, bud.”

“Danny’s fine,” Hayes said. “You’re the only one who looks like he’s five seconds away from fucking imploding out there.”

“Earlier—”

“Dude, it gets heated once ,” Danny complained.

“Nobody’s blaming you,” Hayes said, legit leaning right over Morgan like he wasn’t even there to pat Danny on the thigh pad.

“Mo was,” Danny shot back.

“For fuck’s sake,” Morgan complained.

“I saw the way you shoved TK. And then you did it to Bennett too,” Danny said.

“Bennett’s an asshole.”

“Hey, I’m not arguing with that.” Danny probably should. Sam Bennett was his freaking teammate normally.

“We’re telling everyone to keep their shit together,” Hayes said. “Danny and you.”

“Fine,” Morgan said.

He didn’t lose his temper; he wasn’t that kind of player. He wasn’t Monty, avoiding fights like his life depended on it—which, that was probably fair—but he didn’t usually seek them out.

To win this game, and he wanted to win it, so fucking bad, he could ignore TK’s exaggerated protestations of faux-innocence and Bennett’s shitty elbows.

Except then his next shift started and Bennett slammed him right into the boards before he could barely get his skates under him.

The puck was all the way on the other side of the ice, Hayes threading his way between Makar and Toews, but Morgan wasn’t going to be there to get the pass, because Bennett had taken him out at the fucking knees, leaving him reeling.

Then Bennett stood up and smirked, and all Morgan saw was red.

He didn’t think; thinking was overrated. He swung once and then twice and felt himself get swarmed on all sides, blue and red melding into one swirling mass around him.

Someone yelled in his ear and he thought it might be Danny.

Someone else grabbed the back of his jersey and he fought back, arms flinging out as he tried to avoid being dragged out of the scrum.

Morgan saw a flash of blue and then the white of a number. Shit. That was Hayes. He’d dragged Morgan out with a surprising amount of strength and then instead of keeping both their distance, he was in there, gloves gone, doling out hits on Bennett like he fought all the fucking time.

“Holy shit.” That was definitely Danny screaming, right into his ear.

“What the fuck are you waiting for?” Morgan growled. “Get him out of there!”

Danny shot him a strange look and shoved his way in, right next to the refs who were unsuccessfully trying to break it up.

Less than a minute later they had, and to Morgan’s shock, they dragged only him and Bennett to the box.

Positive: his stupidity hadn’t meant the Canadians got a man advantage. Negative: he had two minutes in the box to try to calm down which also meant two minutes for overthinking.

Yeah, Bennett’s hit had been unquestionably shitty. Not surprising, but still shitty. He shouldn’t have reacted. Clearly Danny and Hayes had noticed he was riding the edge of his temper on the bench which was exactly why they’d warned him.

But if that was true, if it was only his frayed self-control, why had Monty jumped in like that? Monty, who was known for avoiding fights, had pulled him out of it only to put himself in with gloves off.

Morgan didn’t have a chance to say anything to him during the rest of the period, once he was out of the bin, because when their line wasn’t on the ice, the trainers had him down on the opposite end of the bench, giving him ice for his knuckles and patching up a little cut on his cheek that seemed to be persistently bleeding.

He thought, when we get to the locker room, I’m gonna read him the fucking riot act for that bullshit , but then he couldn’t because Coach was up there, diagraming out some new plays for them to try, to get that extra goal or two.

Talking up the defense, reminding everyone that they all had to be two-way players to win this game.

On the way back to the ice for the third, he tried catching Monty’s attention. “Hey,” he hissed under his breath, but Hayes only glanced back at him briefly before turning his attention back to the end of the tunnel and the ice at the end of it.

“Don’t be pissed at him,” Danny said to him in passing as they skated on.

“I am pissed at him,” Morgan said, but the truth was, his feelings were a hell of a lot more complicated than just anger.

Morgan wasn’t stupid enough to bring it up once the game started again. They needed to be locked in, and Morgan didn’t need to say a word about that, because he didn’t think he’d ever seen Hayes’ expression so intense.

Midway through the third, Danny passed Hayes the puck, and Hayes just put his head down, and Morgan, playing interference with Makar, saw exactly what normally made him such a stellar first line center.

He just took the puck and made the play, skirting around another Canadian defenseman and then shooting it, maybe half a second before Morgan would’ve done it.

But if Morgan had shot it, he was pretty sure Binnington would’ve blocked it, but the goalie wasn’t in position yet, and Hayes slid it right past him.

It was a sick goal—the kind of goal people would talk about forever.

Didn’t win them the tournament, but it won them the game, even when the Canadians managed to get a last-minute goal at the end of the third.

“That’s fucking right,” Danny yelled in the locker room, pounding Hayes on the shoulder. Hayes grinned up at him. Morgan knew he should go over. It had been a great goal, and the way he’d pressed against Hayes when they’d cellied about on the ice hadn’t been enough.

But there was a part of him that was still pissed. That, that beautiful fucking goal, was why Hayes was on the fucking team. Not to take punches. Not to dole them back out, in Morgan’s honor.

He was just about to go over to Hayes and say exactly that. Good fucking job but what the fuck were you thinking? when one of the PR staff showed up with a dozen reporters in tow.

Of course there was no way around it but to just do it.

That wasn’t his only job as captain here but it was a big part of it.

As much as Morgan hated it, he couldn’t avoid it.

He had to wipe the sweat off his face and go stare down reporters.

Answer their stupid fucking questions. Try not to say anything that would play into one of the annoying narratives they liked to harp on constantly.

He couldn’t stop them from making up shit, but he could make sure he never said anything that made it easier for them to do it.

By the time it was finally, finally over, Hayes was nowhere to be seen.

“Mo’s gonna tear you a new one,” Danny said to him as they walked to the bus.

“I think it’s a little more complicated than that,” Hayes said. Hoping that he wasn’t lying to himself. He’d seen flashes of Morgan’s face throughout the third, ever since he’d waded into that fight for him. Then after, when he’d scored the goal.

Danny shot him a dubious look. “If you think so.”

“I hope so,” Hayes said. If Morgan asked him what the fuck he’d been thinking in the second period, when he should’ve let Danny and the other guys who were much more experienced in these kinds of fights handle it, Hayes still didn’t know how he was going to answer.

Danny sent him another baffled look and settled into his seat.

What had he been thinking?

The thing was, thinking had not really entered into the equation.