Page 18 of The Trade Deadline
Chapter 12
Ryan
Professional teams were a weird beast. You trained together, sweated and bled together, celebrated together. You were a unit, brothers in arms who supported each other through a grueling schedule where you thrived or struggled based on how well the team worked cohesively. And for most of his team, that was it. That was how it worked.
For Ryan and the other outsiders looking in, there was more. For the newer players with their two-way contracts, for the players whose contracts were ending or those without a no-trade clause, there were fractures in that “we live or die together” mentality. They had to compete with their teammates for ice time, for a spot on the roster, for everything. The team’s success didn’t necessarily equate to personal success and stability, and team losses weren’t “oh, maybe next year” but the possibility of getting shipped out to another team like spare parts.
Ryan couldn’t lie: he was thrilled to get moved to the first line. It had rarely happened, and though he didn’t think he had the stamina to compete with Lars long term and maintain the spot, he’d do his best to make the most of it. “Look at me, I can do this if you need me! Keep me so that if your real first-liner is sick or injured, I can fill in and do fine!” But it also made him nervous. Yeah, there was pressure on him to perform, but he was nervous because of Lars. When he’d been promoted over other players in the past, it had meant tension and hard feelings. Ryan had liked being friendly with Lars (so much so that he’d managed to put Juniors behind him), and he selfishly didn’t want to lose that.
Equally selfishly, he didn’t want to just throw away this chance. His career versus a maybe friend? Ryan couldn’t afford to be sentimental in his priorities.
So he fully expected Lars’s enthusiasm to dim and his demeanor to cool. It didn’t, and Ryan wasn’t sure what to do with that.
He still texted Ryan. Still chatted with him at practices. He asked if Ryan had any updates on how the Mites did in their first scrimmage. Brought an extra protein shake to the gym, a double chocolate with banana just like Ryan liked (not the strawberry monstrosity Lars favored, thankfully). During the last two games of their home stand, he continued to praise Ryan’s play on the bench and in the locker room, and seemed genuinely happy when Ryan scored.
No one had ever done that for him before. No one had let Ryan take center stage without any sign that he was jealous or annoyed or secretly thought Ryan didn’t deserve it.
It wasn’t until the flight to Ohio that Ryan finally acknowledged why. Ryan took his usual, lonely window seat with the expectation of listening to music and maybe napping, and soon Lars plopped down in the empty seat beside him with a wide grin.
“I downloaded some episodes of Lassie. Want to watch?” He held up his phone in one hand, a spare earbud in the other, and Ryan finally understood.
Somehow, Lars Nilsson was his friend. An actual friend, not just a friendly teammate.
“Isn’t that show from the ’60s?” Ryan asked as he accepted the earbud. He had to say something otherwise he’d have to address the warmth spreading through his chest.
“Maybe. It’s in black and white.”
They watched Lassie save Timmy from a bear, a fire, and a minefield, Lars’s phone screen so small they had to lean into each other’s space to watch. By the fourth episode, Ryan couldn’t even pretend he was following along: he was too absorbed in watching Lars as he stared intently at the screen. His face was so expressive, from his concern for little Timmy to his delight at Lassie’s heroics. He was devastatingly adorable, and the thought was like a bullet to Ryan’s heart.
Shit.
He nearly jumped out of his seat, muttering something incoherent about the bathroom, and practically ran away to escape the butterflies in his stomach.
“I’ll pause it for you!” Lars called after him cheerfully and that did not help the growing panic.
Ryan locked himself in the bathroom and scrambled to wash his face with trembling hands. This was bad, right? He couldn’t have a crush on a teammate. He shouldn’t fall for a guy who’d slept with him and then promptly forgotten he existed. A guy who didn’t even know his name for weeks! Shouldn’t he be immune to Lars Nilsson’s charms after Geneva? Was he really so pathetic that he caught feelings for the first person who treated him like he mattered?
The answer to that last one seemed to be an unequivocal “yes.”
It was awful. The few previous times when he’d found teammates attractive, he could easily talk himself out of a crush. They probably weren’t into dudes anyway, so why bother? But he knew Lars liked men and that they were extremely sexually compatible. It was harder to ignore the attraction when he had vivid memories of what Lars’s hands and mouth could do.
He’s probably gotten better— Ugh, NO.
You were safe to fuck because you weren’t teammates. He’ll never look at you that way, and if you’re smart, you won’t either.
Ryan stared at his reflection, miserable and terrified, and sighed. Things were looking up for him with his nearly completed contract looming over him, and he wasn’t going to jeopardize things with an inconvenient crush. Maybe, if they were both under contract for a few years, he could consider it. But they weren’t, so he couldn’t; he needed to lock his shit down and get a handle on things.
“You can’t,” he warned the mirror, pointing sternly at himself. “Don’t do anything stupid. You said you wanted a friend, so stay friends.”
Feelings acknowledged and decision made, it became easier to take each piece of inconvenient longing and lock it away. He watched his expression smooth out, the worry melt away as he slowly replaced it with a calm disinterest. He tried smiling, the way he did for the media and fans. It didn’t reach his eyes, but it was friendly enough he’d be able to fool people. Just until he’d had more time to get his shit together.
He walked back to his seat, hands in his pockets. He nodded to a few teammates who happened to look his way; they nodded back but barely noticed him. Good.
He very carefully slipped past Lars into his window seat, paying extra attention to smoothing out and securing the buckle before he forced himself to look at Lars.
“Think we have time for one more episode before we land?” Ryan asked. His voice didn’t sound any different to his ear, and as long as he didn’t high five Lars or something, Lars would have no way of knowing how clammy Ryan’s palms were.
“Sure,” Lars said happily, handing back the earbud and getting the video ready. He hadn’t noticed anything different, hadn’t thought anything odd about Ryan’s abrupt disappearance, which solidified in Ryan’s mind that he’d made the right choice. Whatever Lars felt for him, it was platonic and surface-level.
Ryan forced himself to pay attention to the episode and ignore Lars as much as he could, even if Lars’s knee was pushed right against his, their shoulders were jammed together, and he smelled vaguely like citrus.
* * *
The Blue Crabs faced the Ohio Otters roughly three times a season. There was nothing particularly noteworthy about the game, usually. The teams weren’t rivals—they hadn’t faced each other much in the postseason (at least not in either franchise’s active memory)—and currently it was so early in the season, neither team was desperate for points. Ryan had made the mistake of assuming this game would be like the previous ones; when they were bombarded by press as soon as they landed, he got the sinking feeling he’d been very wrong.
Reporters lined every walkway they could manage to squeeze into, phones and cameras out as they tried to get a good shot of Lars. They screamed questions at him, all about his brother and some jabs about him being on the second line. The press were hard to ignore, and soon Otters fans were joining in as they yelled taunts to the Blue Crabs in general and Lars specifically. The rest of the team watched with wide eyes, Ryan included, but Lars serenely ignored them all, barely acknowledging anyone unless it was to give them a wink and a wave.
On the team bus, finally in their own bubble of peace as they headed to the hotel, they sat there awkwardly. No one wanted to address the elephant in the room, and it didn’t seem like Lars was in a hurry to broach the subject either.
“You, uh…you okay there, Nilsy?” Thompkins eventually asked when they were on the road and had left the circus behind them.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” he asked.
Ryan, who’d followed Lars like a lost puppy and tried to put himself between Lars and the media whenever he could, had ended up once again in the window seat next to him. Despite his resolution to keep his chill, he stared openly at Lars now; everyone else was, and given the circumstances he didn’t feel the least self-conscious about it.
“Well, that was…” Thompkins made an aborted motion with his hand, clearly as much at a loss as the rest of them. Nothing the Crabs had ever done had warranted that kind of attention. “You good to go against the Otters tomorrow afternoon?” He very pointedly stepped around mentioning Lars’s brother.
Lars smirked, a manic glint in his eye that Ryan didn’t recognize. “Don’t worry. I can handle Anders.”
Ryan actually got goosebumps. He’d heard about the famed Nilsson brothers’ rivalry—he didn’t live under a rock—but the person sitting next to him was a stranger. He didn’t know this version of Lars at all.
This Lars was…intense. Ryan had heard the phrase “dialed in” before, had even felt it, but he’d never seen such a blatant example of it. It was like the friendly, sometimes goofy Lars who passed on his turn to pick music in the locker room and who downloaded episodes of Lassie to watch was gone. Instead was a hockey machine, intent on the game in front of him and nothing else.
Is this what he was like when he played for Team Sweden?
He spoke so little during practice and at the hotel that Ryan gave him his space. The rest of the team gave him a wide berth, too, like his strange mood might claim them, too. Ryan went to bed early, worried about the matinee and the drama the team would find themselves in because of the Nilsson brothers.