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“Are you okay?” Aiden asked, more because he wanted to know what Matt would say than because he didn’t already know the answer.

“It’s not great today.” Matt grimaced. “The game and then the weather...”

“You’re old enough that you have a bad-weather knee?”

“Always going to be younger than you, though,” Matt said, and winced again when he pushed the heel of his hand against the knee.

Aiden frowned and slid out of bed, walked around to settle on the floor between Matt’s legs. “Can I try something? This helps sometimes, when my knee’s bad.”

“What, a blowjob?” Matt asked, dryly. “I knew you were flexible, but...”

“Oh, you’ve got jokes tonight, eh?” Aiden’s fingers were on Matt’s knee, rubbing gently across it. “It’s just a massage the trainers showed me. For scars and shit. And ligaments. Can I try?”

“Couldn’t hurt,” Matt said, finally. He let Aiden rearrange his leg for better access, clenched his teeth a little as Aiden started, but slowly, steadily relaxed under his hands.

Aiden didn’t work around the knee for too long—the trainers had said five minutes at most—but he moved his hands to press against Matt’s thighs instead, his calves. When he started, he could feel how tense Matt was, how knotted up every single muscle happened to be. His skin was hot and tight. By the time Aiden finished Matt had sunk into the pillows, liquid under his hands.

Matt’s eyes were closed, and when Aiden paused, for a minute, he mumbled, “Jesus, that’s good.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, I mean—it’s different than at the rink because it’s...it’s you.”

“Did you tell them it’s still bothering you this much, Matty?”

“No, I don’t want it to be a thing, because of next season, my contract...”

Aiden looked down at him in the bed, his solid body, usually so strong and full of tension, completely relaxed. Aiden rested his head on Matt’s thigh and rubbed his cheek against it. “I could do this for you more often. If you want.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“I’d... I’d like that.

“But you should—we should—sleep.”

“Get up here, then.”

And he did, and as he drifted off to sleep bracketed by Matt’s body, he did not think about next season.

It was a Saturday night at l’Arène, and the Royal had dropped a trap game against Utah. It had been the kind of game where nothing had seemed to go right: not Matt’s passes, not his judgment, not anyone else’s shots. Even Jack, with his normally lethal wrister and deceptive release, had been firing muffins into the Utah goalie’s chest pads. The kind of game where Coach Roy came into the locker room immediately during the intermission rather than waiting.

Matt took the lashing stoically, the way he always did, but no matter how they tried to rally in the third, it was just too late. Afterward he rounded up Crane and Koskinen and Cormier, gave them a little chat about every team having a few bad games in the season. How you had to leave them behind and move on to the next one. They would have to internalize the lesson, particularly because they were playing the next night, a back-to-back before they had a break and then a travel day. In the major league, you couldn’t afford to let a previous night’s failures follow you to the next game. He thought about one of the sentences from Meditations and shared that with them, too: that time’s a river, glimpsed once and already carried past us, but he wasn’t sure if they really appreciated it for what it was.

By the time he was finished with everything, it was getting late, and Matt knew Aiden was probably waiting up for him at home. He was seized by the almost feral need to just get out of the building. To go home. To bury his face in Aiden’s hair and close his eyes and not think about the loss or the next game or his aching knee or the contract he hadn’t been offered or signed yet.

“Cap,” Jammer said from behind him, “can we talk?”

“Yeah,” Matt said, blinking. “Anytime, of course. You know I’m here for all of you.”

“That’s actually kind of the problem,” Jammer said. His usually serene face was creased a little bit with a frown. “Let’s walk and talk, huh?”

“Sure,” Matt said, and followed him toward the players’ exit to the garage level. They walked in silence: it was one of those cool October nights where he could feel winter trembling in the air already. Some of the guys complained about the harshness of the Montreal winters, but Matt had always liked them. They were bracing. Down here, they were sheltered from the worst of it.

“I was just thinking, you know?” Jammer said. “That you’ve been kind of, ah, disconnected. Is it the contract stuff? What’s the deal?”

The only reason Matt didn’t bolt immediately was because his car was right here. He could easily end the conversation whenever he wanted to by opening the door and getting in, no matter how rude it would be. “I don’t know what you mean,” he lied.

“Come on,” Jammer said. He extended one heavy hand to rest on Matt’s shoulder. Matt, who wasn’t a small guy, was still dwarfed by Jammer’s height and width. “I’ve noticed. Fourns has noticed. We’re just concerned about you, you know?”

Matt didn’t push his hand away, but he had to push down the sting of bile in his throat. “It’s kind of complicated, Jams. A personal-life thing.”

“Okay?” Jammer said. “I thought we were friends, though. If there’s something I can do to make this season easier for you, I wanna know.” So you’ll stay was the unspoken undercurrent to the words.

“All right,” Matt said. “You want to know? My ex-boyfriend who I hadn’t spoken to in a decade moved in with me a few months ago and came out publicly even though that was pretty much at least half of the reason we broke up in the first place and I haven’t fully gotten used to the idea that he’s back and we haven’t talked about the future at all and I was hoping he’d be feeling better by now but it doesn’t seem like that’s the case and I’m half expecting at any minute that he’s going to bolt right back to New York.”

Jammer blinked. “Well. That would explain things, certainly.”

“I was trying not to let it affect my play. I don’t think it is . Or at least, it’s not the only thing. The contract negotiations are...”

“Not fun,” Jammer agreed. He’d been to arbitration before, back when he was an RFA, and in a lot of ways that experience was even worse than what Matt was going through right now. In arb, you had the team laying out all of the reasons you sucked, and they didn’t want to pay you before a judge. This was just a GM stonewalling Matt’s agent. Jammer’s dark eyes looked Matt up and down, like he was considering both the contract and the ex-boyfriend information. “Came out...you don’t mean...”

“Yeah. Aiden,” Matt said. “And he’s not dealing with retirement very well. I was thinking about inviting him to karaoke night. Not that I have any idea if he’d like that. Not that I have any idea if the team would be okay with that.”

Jammer’s eyes crinkled at the edges in a little smile. “Cap, if it makes you happy? You know the team would roll out the goddamn red carpet for this guy.”

Matt snorted. “Probably not the ones who were around for the first time. You think?”

“I don’t know how to explain it to you, Safy, but all of these guys would go to war for you. I’m pretty sure they’ll be chill if you want to bring your boyfriend to a team night.”

They stood awkwardly, Matt’s arms folded over his chest. “Ex-boyfriend.”

Jammer rolled his eyes. “Come on. The guy’s been living with you for months ? This isn’t a roommate situation, really, is it?”

“No.”

“Then that’s not your ex -boyfriend, man.”

Matt wondered whether Aiden had realized this, or would agree with it, and thought that the chance was probably pretty slim. He sighed and ran his hand through his damp hair, pushing it away from his forehead. “I mean, maybe not. I guess that’s part of why I’ve been so distracted. It’s great. It’s been...great. But it’s also... I don’t know. The whole thing is kind of overwhelming if I stop to look at it too long.”

“My solution is usually to look at it as long as necessary, until it ceases to become overwhelming and merely becomes a fact of my life,” Jammer said, his eyes crinkling up into a smile.

“Thanks. Very useful help. Will be implementing this one shortly.”

“But seriously, Safy. If you were worrying about the team, I’ll help make sure it’s not an issue. Because it’s not.”

“Thank you.” Matt was struck momentarily by an almost physical pain at the thought of having to play somewhere else, without the team he’d built up around himself over the years. “It means a lot more to me than I can really say, Jams.”

“You don’t need to. That’s not why I said that shit. It’s because we love you, you idiot.”

Matt hugged him, briefly, one of those bro-type hugs where you pounded the other guy on the back. It was easier than trying to further discuss his feelings, even with someone as generally tuned into feelings as Jammer was. But Jammer didn’t let him go when it was over, and Matt was forced to mumble into his shoulder, “Okay. Thanks. Listen—I’m fucking wiped, okay? I gotta go before I fall asleep at the wheel.”

“See you at the rink tomorrow,” Jammer said, and released him from the hug.

Aiden was asleep when Matt got home, and he took a second to look at him in the bed, peacefully asleep and illuminated only by the sporadic lights from outside. Some of the dark circles under his eyes and the hollow shadows in his face had started to fill in, and he was just so fucking beautiful, long eyelashes fanned out against his cheek. Matt stripped as quietly as possible in the dark, trying not to wake him, but Aiden’s eyes opened groggily when he got into the bed and peeled the covers back so he could get under them, too.

“Matt?”

“Sorry, baby,” Matt mumbled, pulling the covers back over both of them, “I was trying not to wake you.”

“Mm, don’t apologize,” Aiden said, still half-asleep, shifting in the bed so he could wrap his arms around Matt’s body, tuck his head into the hollow of Matt’s throat. “I was trying to wait up for you, but...”

“I’m here now.”

“Yes.” It was more a sigh than a word, the heat of his breath against Matt’s neck.

Matt did what he’d wanted to do so badly earlier: bury his face in Aiden’s hair, inhale the familiar, comforting smell of him. It didn’t matter whether his knee fucking hurt, whether he was probably going to have to do another injection before practice tomorrow, whether the contract situation was uncertain or whether he was going to broach the topic of introducing Aiden back into team activities. All that mattered was Aiden in his bed, a warm, comforting body against his, the only anchor he’d ever needed.

He was asleep before he even realized it.

One of Aiden’s promises to Dr. Gauthier was that he would try to give things a chance without immediately dismissing them, which was probably at least three-quarters of the reason he ended up outside of a karaoke bar on the Main, his hands shoved in the pockets of his jacket like that alone could protect him from the awkwardness he could already feel heavy on his shoulders.

The other reason was that Matt had looked at him, with an expression so hopeful it was almost sweet, and asked, “Will you please come?”

And Aiden, even though his brain was yelling, no! no! absolutely not! had nodded, dumb, and said, “Sure.”

“Thanks for coming with me,” Matt said, as he tried to blow some warmth into his hands. “It means a lot to be able to, you know, bring you to team stuff again.”

“Yeah, of course,” Aiden said. He was still staring at the door like it was the barrier to a pit of lions. In some ways, it was. The one positive note was that Saarinen was one of the few guys still on the roster who knew Aiden back before he and Matt broke up, before they had to deal with the aftermath. So most of them probably didn’t want to kill him on sight the same way the majority of Matt’s teammates that year probably still did. That didn’t mean he was looking forward to it.

“All right,” Matt said, “it’s just a team bonding night, no pressure.”

“Of course. Do your thing, Matt. Don’t worry about me.”

It was dive-y inside, dark with only paper lanterns above the grimy tables to illuminate the space. The tables themselves were sort of crowded in the small space left between the bar, the wall and the fairly large stage in the background.

Matt squeezed Aiden’s shoulder, and murmured, just loudly enough for him to hear over the din of the crowd, “Thanks, baby.”

Aiden waved him away and wandered a little deeper into the bar itself as Matt went to greet a crowd of the rookies, lurking awkwardly near one of the tables.

Aiden looked around. He never thought he’d be glad to see Aatos Saarinen, but his life had taken him to such weird places that it was almost a relief when he caught sight of him by the bar. He nudged his way through a crowd of regular bar patrons and Royal. He recognized a few of the older guys—Morozov, Lee, Fournier, Singh, Ayer, the Morin twins—and their young superstar in the making, Jack Crane. He didn’t know any of them as well as he knew Saarinen, though, so that was where he made his beeline.

“Buddy,” Saarinen said, and pushed a shot glass toward Aiden. “Here, take this. I can order another one. You look like you need it more than me.”

It was clear liquid. Aiden took it and drank. Just vodka, neat. “Thanks. I got the next round for you.”

Saarinen raised his fist and tapped it gently against Aiden’s. “Deal.”

“Whose idea was this?”

“Oh, it was all Safy. We do this every year, around the beginning. It’s not as expensive as the rookie dinner, but same thing, you know? Humiliate the rookies, let some of the old guys have their day with the songs of their youth. If you can get Fourns to stop singing Backstreet Boys, I’ll buy your drinks for the rest of the night.”

“ You’re an old guy.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty sick. Just wait ’til Safy and I take our turn.”

Aiden tried to imagine Matt doing karaoke every year. “ Does he sing?”

“Not until the end of the night when we bully him into it.”

“I don’t think I’m drunk enough for this.”

“There’s still time, buddy.”

Aiden ordered them another round and slid one of the glasses across the bar to Saarinen.

“Holokynkolokyn,” Saarinen said, lifting the glass to him.

“Hol—”

“It’s like cheers. Holokynkolokyn.”

“Holo—”

“ Holokynkolokyn. ”

Aiden lifted his glass, too. “Holo—holo—fuck it,” he said, and did the shot.

Saarinen laughed and drank one, too.

Aiden could do this. Aiden could definitely do this. He just needed to drink more.

By the time Aiden was drunk enough to process the fact that he was at a karaoke night with Matt’s teammates, everyone had loosened up a bit. True to Saarinen’s warning, Fournier had been monopolizing the mic. His voice wasn’t bad, exactly, it was just—a lot. But it was at least the kind of music everyone could dance to. There was a drunk couple in the crowd singing along, and Fournier directed his attention toward them, serenading them from the stage, dipping the mic forward.

The nice thing about being drunk at a karaoke night with a bunch of Royal was that Aiden could mostly lurk on the fringes and watch, and no one really bothered him too much. He did shots with Morozov. He did shots with Lee. He avoided the Morin twins as much as possible.

He tried not to think about all of the places he’d rather be right now. He watched Matt and the rookies, three of them in addition to Crane, all huddled around him—three on chairs and Crane sitting on the table—hanging on every word he said. Aiden sidled a little closer to try to hear what he was saying over the din of Saarinen attempting to forcibly take the mic from Fournier. He could only catch fragments.

“...you know, the first playoffs is, you really can’t prepare yourself for it.”

“What’s more difficult, the mental or the physical aspect, because I hear the grind—”

“I’d say both equally, although my first playoffs were unusual—”

“Oh, yours were—”

“Yeah, although it wasn’t that bad, really, I was just excited to be there, but the grind is real—”

It was kind of cute, the way all of their big, rangy bodies, still not quite done growing, angled in, their faces turned toward him, like sunflowers. Just soaking in everything he had to say. It was nice watching Matt in his element, although it did make Aiden miss his own team and the way he used to be able to talk to Gabe during team events like this.

Matt looked up and smiled when he saw Aiden, like Aiden wasn’t lurking at the edges of the bar like some sort of serial killer. “Aiden,” he said, raising his voice, “think it’s time for the rooks to take their turn, eh?”

“Oh no,” one of them—Cormier?—said. “Cap, I don’t think I can—”

“You can do it in a group,” Matt told him, kindly but firmly, a smile on his face that reminded Aiden more than a little of some of his old captains, “but unfortunately, you gotta do it. It’s the rules.”

Cormier looked a little green, but Crane slung an arm over his shoulder and said, “No worries, bud. We’ll all go, eh?”

“That’s the spirit,” Matt said, “knock ’em dead, boys,” and as they headed en masse for the stage, Matt gestured for Aiden to come to him.

Aiden didn’t even think about not following the instruction; he weaved his way around a few of the Royal defensemen, and slid into the seat Cormier had vacated. On the stage, the rookies staggered their way through some Top 40 radio hit that Aiden vaguely recognized from hearing it everywhere over the summer but couldn’t name. Crane was in the front, letting Cormier hang behind him. One of the other children—Koskinen?—hit the falsetto part with an exaggerated gusto that set the hair rising on the back of Aiden’s neck. Like hearing dogs howling in the distance at night.

Aiden glanced back at Matt, who might have looked completely sober to someone who didn’t know him well. Aiden could tell from context clues, like the flush high on his cheeks and the easy smile and the little slump to his shoulders, that he was shitfaced . Matt slid a shot glass sideways across the table to him and then his arm over Aiden’s shoulders.

“Oh, very smooth,” Aiden said, and rolled his eyes.

Matt grinned, his fingers squeezing Aiden’s bicep. “Having fun?”

“Uh—yeah,” Aiden lied.

It wasn’t as bad as he had thought it would be, but fun might have been a step too far. It was just a reminder of the things he had lost; the things Matt had that Aiden had given up, the reminder that he was holding Matt back just by being here. The knowledge that Matt belonged here, with these guys, and that Aiden was at best an interloper. He leaned into Matt’s side anyway, and Matt shifted in the chair to accommodate Aiden’s weight against him. It felt so fucking good that Aiden almost pushed him away on reflex.

Aiden added, “Not entirely drunk enough to appreciate Fournier’s singing.”

“No one is, really. Take the shot, then.”

“Holokynkolokyn,” Aiden said, lifting the glass. It was easier to get the entire word out, drunk.

“Bless you?”

“No—holokynkolokyn. It’s like cheers.”

“Oh, you’ve been talking to Saari? Good, I’m happy.” Matt beamed at him, incandescent and so handsome that it felt like a punch in the chest, before he knocked back his own drink.

Aiden looked at him from the corner of his eye, watched him swallow, the movement of his throat.

Matt caught him at it, grinned slow and lazy: “Aidy, you haven’t gone yet.”

The thing was: Aiden might have been introverted and quiet, but he wasn’t shy . He didn’t care if he was in the net in front of twenty thousand fans or playing guitar in front of an entire team. Hobey used to make fun of him for it, egg him on if they were in a hotel lobby in some shitty city and the guys were bored, knowing Aiden didn’t really give a shit about who heard him. Aiden had always shrugged and just gone for it, even if he knew that Hobey was laughing both at him and with him. It was fine being the butt of the joke when it was your team. Drunkenly singing in front of a bunch of Royal was no different, really, but—

“You’re the captain, Matthew,” Aiden said, digging his elbow into Matt’s side. “Think you should go first.”

Saarinen dropped into the table across from them, eyebrows up. “Well, you two look comfortable, but Safy, you’re up. We’re gonna do a duet.”

Aiden let him go, not sure what to expect.

The two of them stumbled up onto the stage. It was a study in contrasts: Saarinen was the kind of guy who was a natural entertainer, unafraid to make a fool out of himself, anytime, anywhere. Matt was reserved and earnest, but willing to take one for the team.

Together, they managed a truly terrible rendition of some pop song Aiden didn’t really recognize but must have been popular, considering the crowd reaction it got. Watching Matt singing was surreal enough, considering Aiden had never seen it before this. His voice was not very good, and he knew it, but he belted it out anyway with such a serious, almost martyred expression.

Saarinen was also not very good, but he was doing an improvised, exaggerated dance, completely uncaring that he looked ridiculous. The rookies were laughing; Morozov and Singh wolf whistled as Saarinen finished with a flourish, down on his knees, arms thrust out toward the audience.

Matt half-jumped and half-slithered off the stage when they were done, loped over to where Aiden was sitting still and hauled him bodily from the seat. “Your turn” was the only thing he said.

“Fine, fine,” Aiden grumbled, pulling himself up on the stage. He flipped through the selections, some of which he recognized and some of which were foreign to him. Finally he picked an easy one, something he could do in his sleep or, in this case, swaying-on-his-feet drunk. An old standard, one of the first songs he’d ever learned how to play on the guitar: the Foo Fighters’ “Everlong.”

Aiden took a breath and launched into the song.

About a verse in he realized it was a huge mistake, because the lyrics were a little too on the nose for him to handle right now, and the mood was not a party mood, and all he could think about was how he didn’t want this to end but that it was going to, one way or another. He couldn’t really see much beyond the spotlight shining in his face, couldn’t see what Matt was doing, kept pushing through the lump in his throat.

This whole thing was a mistake, really, that he thought he could do this and then, finally: the song was winding down and he was done. Aiden carefully set the mic down on the stool and made a break for it.

“Buddy,” Saarinen said, when Aiden stumbled back to the table. “ Buddy. I didn’t know you could sing?”

“Like—a limited amount of things,” Aiden mumbled, embarrassed.

“That was kind of a bummer of a choice, though. Wow, man, you got some stuff you need to talk about?”

Maybe it was just the drinking catching up with him, but Aiden was suddenly very tired, and he put his head down on the table while he watched Morozov and Singh butchering “Livin’ on a Prayer.”

This wasn’t his team. This was Matt’s team. Matt belonged here, with them, whether that was this season, or next season, or any season after that.

“Hey,” Matt said, hand between Aiden’s shoulder blades, “you wanna get out of here?”

He did. So they went.