Page 44 of The Trade Deadline

Chapter 30

Ryan

They were at Lars’s condo, their usual on the day after a home game. His place was closer to the arena and the practice facility, while Ryan’s was closer to the airport, and to the rink where they’d volunteered again in mid-February. It was a pragmatic way to share the time, to fill otherwise lonely nights and empty spaces with someone who brightened the space. Definitely not about anything other than convenient logistics.

It was perfect, honestly. Ryan couldn’t remember being so content. It was helping him play better, and he was hopeful about negotiating a new contract at the end of the season. Especially if they could get their foot in the door for the playoffs. He wasn’t by nature optimistic, but he’d been doing well. He didn’t dare consider the team going all the way—he wouldn’t be able to get through a single game with that kind of pressure riding on him—but he trained with the hopes of putting up a fight.

He should’ve known things were looking too good, that he’d been too happy for things to last.

His mistake was ignoring the date. He’d been so focused on the game schedule, he’d forgotten it was March. When had he ever been able to forget March? He’d been terrified of it since his rookie year when he’d seen more of the AHL than the NHL. This year of all years, he should’ve been wary and known not to take anything for granted.

And yet when he was called into the GM’s office before practice on March 5, he hadn’t realized what was happening until the door shut behind him and he saw Monroe’s grim face.

Time froze for a moment, the knowledge of what was to come weighing him down with the understanding that it wouldn’t just disrupt his career, his life. It would fucking ruin everything.

Not seeing any point from running from it, he decided to dive on the grenade.

“Where you sending me?” he asked and didn’t bother masking the accusation in his tone.

Monroe looked briefly surprised, then apologetic. “Cincinnati. I’m sorry, Ryan.”

He gulped. How many years had he spent trying to put on a brave face and not burn any bridges? God, that felt so stupid now when it was always someone else hacking it to bits. “Why?” he asked quietly. “I’ve been playing well. Really well. I’ve got career highs across the board?—”

“Which is why this move is happening,” Monroe explained gently. “You have been doing an exceptional job. I’ve had a lot of teams interested in you for months. Some of their offers were quite honestly too tempting to ignore. You’ve done a lot for us over the past couple years, but when I get offered two picks and two players for one guy who’s going into free agency and will be asking more than I can afford to give him, well…” He shrugged, some of his sympathy gone.

Because sure, this was Ryan’s life and to Ryan this was absolutely devastating; to Monroe, this was just business. A variable in an equation he needed to balance. Ryan was a commodity that was more valuable to him elsewhere than on his roster, so they were done.

If he’d just made it past today, this could’ve been an actual conversation. Ryan could’ve made his case, begged to stay, and maybe taken less money than he was worth to secure a longer contract. But he hadn’t. There was no amount of arguing or pleading that would do anything now. From now until July, he belonged to the Otters.

“When do I head out?”

Again, a slight flash of sympathy in Monroe’s eyes. “Tonight. They’ve got a hotel lined up for you until you find something more permanent. I’m sure they have people who can help?—”

“I know the drill,” he said. “Not my first trade.”

Monroe nodded. “They play tomorrow night and want you on the ice. Obviously go home and pack. Let me know if there’s anything we can do on our end to make things go smoother.”

As if that were possible. As if a few kind gestures could erase the complete tornado that had blown through his life.

“Great,” he said, with so little enthusiasm Monroe flinched. “Is that all?”

“Actually, I need to get back to the Otters. What number would you like?”

Ryan startled at the question. What number would he like? He hadn’t been asked that since…since Juniors, maybe. Every team had picked one for him, even when he was in the AHL. He’d shown up at some new rink and they’d handed him a jersey, ready to go.

“Six,” he said, throat thick.

Before he left, he lingered in the doorway. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer, but this was his last chance to ask. “If I hadn’t played so well this season,” he said, “if teams weren’t trying to sign me, would you have re-signed my contract this summer?”

Monroe sat back in his chair and gave him a considering look. “I don’t know,” he said eventually. “We can’t afford you now, obviously, not what you’re worth. And at the beginning of the season, Thompkins and I had discussed it but hadn’t made a firm decision. We wanted to see how you’d do. Honestly, the Otters can do more for you than we can. They’re first in the Metro, definitely making the playoffs. They’ve got two centers retiring at the end of this season who’ll need to be replaced. You do well for them…”

“Right,” he said. “Got it.” This was supposed to be mutually beneficial. No one knew this had royally fucked up his shit.

He barely saw anything as he walked down the hallway back to the player area. Practice had already started; he could hear the occasional whistle. He ignored the windows into the rink as he walked by. He hadn’t even made it to the locker room before he’d been pulled aside; there was nothing for him to do here except arrange for his gear to be sent over. No loose ends at all.

When he got to the parking lot, he was forced to recognize there was one very big loose end: his car wasn’t there because Lars had driven them to the rink today.

“Shit,” he hissed under his breath. He ordered an Uber like a coward and went right to his apartment. The flight details had already been sent to him, along with a message from someone on the Otters who’d be helping him in Cincinnati. He felt sick as he packed, not even sure what ended up in his bags and what he’d have to deal with later. Would he come back in the summer? Maybe Tanner could help him arrange for his stuff to be packed and shipped.

It wasn’t something he wanted to ask Lars to do. It felt…cruel.

He almost laughed out loud at that. Cruel. Word of the day.

Three hours before his flight out, Lars arrived. He knocked tentatively at the door, nothing to give him away, but Ryan knew. Who else could it be?

Ryan carefully closed his bedroom door to hide the suitcase and duffle bag, overfilled and leaning precariously against each other to stay upright, a suit bag draped over them with his two best suits. All the evidence of his departure tucked away to hopefully buy him an hour of pretending it didn’t happen.

“Where’d you go?” Lars asked when Ryan opened the door, and like a coward Ryan pulled him inside and smothered their lips together. No time for Lars to get a good look at him, no risking a wobble in his voice when he answered, nothing but one last time where things were still uncomplicated.

He pinned Lars against the door and kissed him again and again. Lars was slow to return the kisses at first, obviously still curious about why Ryan had disappeared earlier, but he gave in. He probably assumed there’d be plenty of time to talk after.

Ryan slipped his hands under Lars’s shirt and brought one to rest on his chest, the thumb rolling over a nipple, while the other stayed at the small of his back and kept Lars firmly in place. When he nudged his thigh between Lars’s legs, Lars groaned but spread his legs to make room for him. Ryan broke the kiss and ignored the way Lars leaned forward to chase his lips, instead dipping his head to kiss a line down his neck and then suck at his pulse point. Normally so mindful not to leave a mark, he did the opposite now: he wanted there to be a bruise tomorrow.

Lars gasped and then groaned loudly, melting against the door. He was rock hard against Ryan, more than willing to follow Ryan’s lead, and Ryan took full advantage. After the telltale reddish purple mark had started to show, Ryan grabbed Lars and manhandled him to the couch.

“Wha—?” Lars squeaked when he fell backwards onto the not-quite-long-enough couch, looking up at Ryan with wide, blue eyes that were so damn beautiful.

Ryan didn’t answer. He pulled off his shirt, his pants, kicked aside his briefs. Lars took the hint and had just managed to wiggle out of his pants and underwear when Ryan straddled him. He’d already opened himself up while he was waiting, the last thing he’d done to prepare for this awful goodbye, so it took barely a minute to go from rolling the condom on Lars’s dick to sliding down until he was fully seated. God, he didn’t even want the damn condom, he wanted to feel Lars fill him up but he couldn’t stand having to talk about what came next with come leaking out of him.

“How are you—? Why—? Fuck—” And then Ryan started moving, and Lars didn’t say anything coherent or English, mostly sounds and babbled Swedish.

Even though he’d planned not to rush, he couldn’t stop himself. He rode Lars at a brutal pace, losing himself in the steady rhythm of fucking himself while Lars held onto his hips in a tight grip, panting like he was barely holding on. Ryan could feel the strain in his muscles already, the tight coiling deep in his gut, his balls tightening, each exquisite sensation of pain or pleasure driving him heedless towards the edge, an edge he was almost scared to reach because what happened after?

Then Lars managed to change the angle and hit his prostate, and “after” became too abstract of a concept to care about. All that mattered in the whole world was this: the man beneath him, inside him, and sharing this.

“ Jag kommer ,” Lars gritted out. One of the few pieces of Swedish Ryan had actually picked up. I’m coming.

“Me too,” he said, then leaned down to kiss him again. Lars got a hand on Ryan’s cock, his hold perfect but his movements sloppy as he got closer to the edge. Not that it mattered; Ryan was sure this was the closest he’d ever gotten to coming untouched, and the added friction nearly ripped the orgasm out of him.

Ryan came first, hot streaks across Lars’s shirt they’d somehow never gotten off him, and he could feel the moment Lars came, a few more thrusts and then he held Ryan down as his cock twitched inside him.

“That was…” Lars looked dazed. Ryan shamelessly took advantage. He tucked Lars’s hair behind his ear and pressed a kiss to his temple before he got to work cleaning them up. He’d have to find Lars a new shirt; hopefully there was something decent he hadn’t packed.

By the time they were cleaned up and dressed, Lars’s expression was pensive.

“Why weren’t you at practice?” He said the words slowly, like he was weighing them out and worried what they’d add up to.

Ryan’s heart skipped a beat. “Because I’m not on the team anymore.” Even though he knew it was true, saying it out loud hurt. He wasn’t on the Blue Crabs. He never would be again.

“What?” Lars bolted off the couch. “What happened? Are you hurt?” He gave Ryan a once over with a truly heartbreaking amount of concern. “They can’t end a contract mid-season?—”

“Lars.” God, why couldn’t he just figure it out? As neutrally as he could, he said it, pulled the band-aid right off: “I was traded.”

Ryan watched as understanding dawned on his face. The shock, the devastation, the hint of anger that Ryan had fucked him before he’d explained.

“When?”

“Today. I fly out at five,” he said. He checked his phone. “I’ve gotta be at the airport in about an hour.”

“An hour ?” Lars’s hands went into fists and a whole string of Swedish poured out, none of it sounding particularly happy. “What the fuck? Why did they do this?”

Ryan didn’t want to get into it. He didn’t want to rehash his conversation with Monroe, and didn’t think it was a good idea to give that sort of baggage to Lars. He was staying, after all, and having a grudge against his GM wasn’t a good way to move forward.

“They thought this would be a good move for me,” he repeated, because he thought Monroe meant that part. Yeah, he’d traded Ryan to help the Crabs, but he wasn’t sending Ryan to a bad team or one that would completely ruin his career.

“Where?”

He’d known that was an obvious question. He’d been prepared for it, or had been up until he had to say it. He cleared his throat, made himself look Lars in the eye as he said, “Cincinnati.”

The change was instant. Lars had been distressed before, but that was nothing. The color drained from his face and his jaw went slack, like he’d found out Ryan was dying, not changing teams.

“The Otters?” He looked absolutely pissed. He started pacing in the small space between the TV and kitchen, nearly bumping into the coffee table with each pass as he spewed angry Swedish and the occasional English like “What the fuck?” and “How could that asshole do this?” and “The fucking Otters.”

“Lars,” Ryan pleaded. “Please. I have to go soon. Could we not…” Fight? Were they fighting? Not really. “...waste time?”

Lars glowered. Guess not, then.

“This is such shit,” he said, his accent thick. It made him sound like he was going to cry. “How could they do this?”

“Let it go. There’s no point getting upset. It’s not like we can change anything.” I control how I respond had been his mantra when he got traded, his way of surviving the hurt of not being wanted or needed by a place he’d come to want and need.

“Let it go?” Lars all but shouted. “How am I supposed to let this go? Why should I?”

So easy for him to get angry, to be all self-righteous about how Ryan had been treated. He’d never had to experience a mid-season trade. Yeah, he’d left Portland, but he’d at least made a choice. He decided to leave and decided where to go.

“It’s just I don’t think you get to be the upset one here,” Ryan said patiently. “You didn’t lose anything. I’m the one who has to leave.” He ran a hand down his face in frustration. "I play badly, I get traded. I play mediocre, I get traded. I play well, guess what? Still traded. I’m the one no one wants on their team, and you’re the one who’s upset.”

All this time Lars had been saying Ryan was worth something, and Ryan had believed him. How could he not understand how much this gutted Ryan? Shouldn’t he, of all people, get it?

“Didn’t lose anything?” Lars looked like he’d been slapped. “I’ve lost you !”

Ryan went rigid. “Lost me? I’m moving. That’s only losing me if you let it.” A long pause. “Lars. Say something.”

“This”—Lars motioned between them—“only worked because we were on the same team. How is it supposed to work when you’re in Ohio ?”

“It’s not the moon, Lars. There are phones. Text messages. Video chat?—”

“And those might work for couples, but that’s not us.”

The words hung between them, the final bombshell that Ryan hadn’t expected, even though he should have.

“Ryan,” Lars started apologetically. “I didn’t?—”

“No, no, it’s fine.” It wasn’t. “Better to know before I leave that there’s nothing left for me in Baltimore.”

“That’s not…” Lars huffed in frustration. “You know it’s not that simple.”

“I knew it wouldn’t be simple,” he agreed. “Keeping this going long distance would definitely not be simple. But if you’re not willing to even try, then it actually is really fucking simple.”

Lars flinched at the curse. His shoulders sagged and he looked like a scolded child. “Maybe if it weren’t Ohio,” he started, and Ryan had heard enough.

“Nope. That’s it. Go home, Lars. I have to finish packing,” he lied.

“I could drive you to the airport,” he offered miserably. An hour ago, Ryan would’ve said yes, but he couldn’t deal with dragging this out. Whatever they had, it was apparently more fragile than he’d thought.

Though he shouldn’t be surprised. They hadn’t been able to talk about it, to say the words to give it more shape and stability. If their relationship couldn’t survive a conversation, how could it possibly have survived this?

“Tanner’s driving me,” he said. He hadn’t asked, but he was sure Tanner would. “Please go.” Then, conciliatory, “I’ll text when I land. If you want to talk then, we can.”

Lars nodded glumly. The fact that he didn’t put up a fight wasn’t a great sign. He left without a word, without a kiss goodbye, without a look back. When the door clicked shut behind him, Ryan doubted very much that they’d ever be in the same room again.