You Could Make a Life Page 14

  *

  Management hires Eric Payne, who is a dick.

  That's not fair. Eric Payne is a fat, balding, constantly yelling windbag who managed two years occasionally making third pairing D in Detroit before getting sent down and spending the rest of his career bouncing from minor team to minor team. He's defence first, which not what they need right now, since they can't win when nobody's scoring, and the D's been the best thing going for them, but he drills them on defence, defence, defence, like the key to breaking a losing streak is to have five defencemen on the ice at all times.

  And he's a dick.

  The first day he singles out Marc, advancing on his stall after practice, a smile on his face that reminds Dan of every single bully on the ice who mistakes Marc's size for weakness. Marc eyes him impassively, and Payne looks down at him with an ugly twist of the mouth.

  "You're the golden boy, huh?" he says. Marc doesn't say anything. "Toronto's meal ticket? I haven't seen you do anything lately."

  Marc raises an expressive eyebrow. He probably shouldn't have, because people like Payne can't stand when people aren't afraid of them, Dan knows these guys, but he's never seen Marc back down from a challenge, and it isn't like a position of authority is going to stop him.

  "Listen," he says. "You're not a golden boy to me. You're just a spoiled, lazy little Frenchie who thinks he can get away with playing like shit because he's got a no-trade clause. I'm not going to let you get away with sucking your boyfriend's dick instead of playing hockey."

  Marc blinks at him, then his chin juts out, stubborn. Dan closes his eyes in preparation.

  "At least I know how to play hockey," Marc says. "But what is the phrase? Those who cannot do, teach. Evidently you cannot do that well either. May I suggest front office?"

  That probably seals it for the both of them, right there and then.

  *

  "Are you fucking insane?" Dan asks, when they get in his car. Marc hasn't said a thing since Payne went apoplectically red and then stormed off, just got undressed, headed out, quick enough that Dan had to jog to catch up, remind him that Dan's the one with the keys, which at least made Marc slow down long enough to let Dan catch him.

  "He is a bully," Marc says, jaw still set, like he's ready to fight Dan too, if he has to.

  "Yeah," Dan says, "and you just made yourself his target."

  Marc shrugs jerkily, looks out the window. Dan rubs his face while he waits for the light to change.

  "You can't even keep your mouth shut when it'll save your ass, can you?" Dan asks. It's fine that Marc keeps looking out the window, doesn't say anything. They both already know the answer.

  *

  They don't get any better, though Dan doesn't know why the fuck management thought they would with Payne at the helm. Dan plays the same as always, because Dan's trained to play the same as always. He's a grinder, and that doesn't change, not with the team, not with the linemates. Everyone else got spoiled by having an awesome captain and an excellent coach, though, and they don't seem to know what to do with an idiot coach and a captain who has practically made himself invisible.

  Marc isn't the worst case, but he's close, shows up to every practice with a defensive look on his face. Doesn't fit into the 'sacrifice the body' mindset Payne is set on. He's meant for speed, precision, has a shot like a bullet, but he's never going to be the guy throwing his weight around, and Dan doesn't think Payne even knows what to do with a dangler, with one as good as Marc is, seems to wash his hands of him and leave him with his assistant coaches, who at least try to keep Marc sharp.

  When they're twenty games in, Dan has six points and Marc has five. Dan gets bumped up to the third occasionally because his style, his size fits in with the new plan. Marc's been dropped to second line, and Payne looks like he'd be happy to bump him right off the roster if Marc didn't have that pesky no-move clause.

  *

  Game twenty they lose, which is no surprise, and Dan follows Marc to his hotel room, They're barely through the door before Marc's spinning around and punching the wall, a vicious jab that he aims, thankfully, at a load-bearing wall and not one of the ones that he would have gone straight through. Dan wraps his arms around him from behind, gets his wrists caught, and for a second it seems like Marc's going to fight him, his whole body going tense and furious in Dan's grasp, before he deflates all at once.

  "Hey," Dan says, soft, tries to turn Marc around. Marc won't go, and when Dan gently but firmly insists, he won't meet Dan's eyes. Dan raises a hand to curl around the back of Marc's neck, waits.

  "Je suis cassé," Marc says, finally, so quiet that Dan barely catches it.

  "Are you going to make me pull out my phone and translate?" Dan asks. "Because I will. I totally know 'je suis', so I'm already half—"

  "Broken," Marc snaps. "I am broken."

  "Marc," Dan says, helpless.

  "Don't," Marc says, pulls himself out of Dan's grip and goes to lie down on the bed, facing the wall.

  "What can I do?" Dan asks, finally.

  "Go away," Marc mumbles, and Dan goes back to his own room, calls his mom so he can hear something that sounds like home.

  *

  They win three straight by the skin of their teeth, and the mood in the locker room lightens up just enough for a mortifying home-and-away against the Habs to destroy them. The game in Toronto is bad enough, the crowd dead silent as they watch seven goals go past Jaworski, but Montreal is far worse, six goals this time, Keewatin replacing Jaworski in net, and Keewatin receives sarcastic applause every time he stops an easy save, Marc getting mocking cheers every time his stick makes contact with anything.

  Dan follows Marc to his room again, won't let himself be turned away this time, trying to find a suitably pretentious movie on demand to distract Marc while Marc seems to drown himself in the shower. After twenty minutes of staring at a looping hotel menu Dan knocks on the door. When Marc doesn't answer he opens it, finds Marc sitting in the tub under the shower spray, curled up in a miserable ball, hair sticking wet to his skull and arms wrapped around his knees.

  Dan doesn't even think about it, just climbs in there with him, pulls Marc in until Marc's sobbing into his shoulder, clutching onto Dan's shirt like a lifeline.

  "Fuck this city," Dan whispers. "The only good thing to come out of it is you."

  Marc keeps sobbing, and Dan just holds on, knees aching, clothes plastered to his skin. When Marc pulls away, he's embarrassed, won't look at Dan as he turns the spray off,

  "Marc," Dan says, catches Marc's chin, which wobbles a little. Marc's eyes are red, eyelashes sticking together, skin pink from the water he'd set just under scalding. An absolute picture of misery. Dan kisses his sharp jaw, his cheekbone. "I'm here," he says, finally, because he can't make any promise except that one.

  *

  They get a little better, because it isn't like they could get worse. Payne's style starts sticking, and even if it's a style that doesn't fit the team at all, it's better than shell-shock. It's like Vargas is the central pillar of it, the new Leafs, brute force and nothing else to speak of. Marc sticks out like a sore thumb in the layout, and while most of the media is savvy enough to know Payne's style isn't doing the team any favours in the long run, it's easier to just point at the face of the franchise, at his lack of production, and diagnose him as the problem, as if Marc's slump is a contagious.

  Marc's gone anti-social in the wake of it, and Dan follows him there, because at the end of a shitty game, a shitty road trip, a shitty practice, it's easier to just go home with Marc, curl up on the couch and zone out in front of a subtitled movie, easier to go over to his parents and have his dad cook them something homey, his mom engage in low, gentle conversations with Marc that leave him looking lighter, for a little while at least.

  It doesn't feel like Dan's missing much in going insular. Vargas is becoming an installation in the locker room, as much as he's Payne's example on the ice, and Dan doesn't really want to have anything to do with it.


  Vargas has other plans in mind, apparently, comes up to Dan after practice. "The guys are going out for a drink," he says. "You should come."

  Dan looks up at him, then goes back to unlacing his skates. "I was just going to go home," he says.

  "Come on, Riley," Vargas says, "I should know my linemate, and everyone says you used to be fun."

  Is that seriously his strategy, grade school dares so that Dan has something to prove? He doesn't think Vargas has matured past grade school bullying, so probably.

  "No thanks," Dan says shortly, starting work on his other skate.

  "You can even bring the little lady," Vargas says, eyes flicking over to Marc, who's engrossed in conversation with Tremblay, or he'd inevitably have something to say about gender roles and how femininity should not be considered an insult. Hell, Dan almost wants to do it for him, but instead he sets himself to unstrapping his shoulder pads.

  "Pass, Vargas," Dan snaps. Waits for him to go away, but of course he doesn't, because he's an asshole who thinks he found a sore spot.

  "C'mon," Vargas says, leaning in, conspiratorial. "There'll be girls there who'll suck your dick better than that stuck up Frenchie. Boys too, if you need that sort of thing. I get you sticking with him, the kid was an all-star, but he's not now, so you should get some now before his stock drops and nobody gives a shit if they can say they fucked Marc Lapointe's boyfriend."

  Dan stands, and Vargas raises his eyebrows at him like he's just offered a proposition that can't fail. Dan doesn't know what Vargas thinks of him, what fucked up idea of Dan's been put in his fucked up head, but he actually looks surprised when Dan's knuckles are glancing off his cheek.

  Of course, he doesn't look surprised for long, more than used to this game, and Dan gets a jab to the nose before he can get another punch in, can watch Vargas' teeth clack together and feel a dim sense of satisfaction under a haze of anger so strong it hurts.

  He feels someone's arms come up around him, tug him back, and fights against it until Marc gets between them (Vargas grabbed by O'Connor, who looks outmatched) grabs his chin, bruisingly hard, forces Dan to look at him. Dan settles, slow. He can feel blood dripping from his nose, and when the guy holding onto him lets go—Tremblay, it turns out—he wipes at his face with the back of his hand, smears it with blood.

  Dan can't remember the last time he got into a fist fight off the ice. He doesn't think he ever has, honestly. And just looking at Vargas, who bit his tongue, judging from the way he spits blood onto the floor, makes Dan want to go back and finish what he started. Vargas notices him staring, grins at him with teeth stained pink.

  "Guess it's you taking his dick, huh Riley?" Vargas says, and Dan would start for him again if Tremblay hadn't immediately grabbed him again like he knew exactly what Dan was thinking.

  "Dan," Marc says, low. "Let's just go home. Please."

  Dan undresses the rest of the way, mechanical, the locker room quiet, everyone looking like Dan like he's a bomb about to go off. He follows Marc to the car, hands over the keys when Marc demands them, even though Marc drives too aggressively for Toronto, drives like he's still in Quebec, where everyone has a death wish.

  "You should ice that when we get home," Marc says, once they've pulled out, and Dan nods. The blood's stopped, but the last thing he needs is a black eye that didn't come from a game.

  "Are you going to tell me what he said?" Marc asks, after Dan's spent half the ride staring out the window.

  "No," Dan says shortly.

  "Well, I'm sure he deserved it," Marc says peaceably, and reaches a hand out so he can thread their fingers.

  "You're supposed to have both hands on the wheel," Dan says, but he doesn't let go.

  *

  They muddle through half the season, and the only bright spot of that is that at least the season's half over. They're not the worst in the league, but they're scraping the bottom of the Eastern Conference, and everyone's already going on about the Cup being a fluke, Marc's talent gone, Buchanan the only magic that held them together. Half their Cup roster's gone, traded away, off to greener pastures and better salaries, and it's like everyone has forgotten that small detail because then there'd be no one to blame.

  Reporters crowd around Dan after a tight win against Edmonton. O'Connor had scored the lone goal with two minutes left on the clock, and Jaworski managed a shutout, but they come to Dan first. Dan looks at them suspiciously, has to back up to avoid getting a microphone right in the mouth. Dan guesses that with Marc out with the flu they're at a loss without their favourite punching bag.

  They all look at him expectantly, like they're waiting for something specific, and when he doesn't say anything, the reporter for the Toronto Sun speaks up. "I was wondering if Lapointe's play this season is related to your relationship. Could you comment on the rumours that the two of you have broken up?"

  "Are you serious right now?" Dan asks, and the faces all around him say that yes, they are.

  "We play hockey for this city," Dan snaps, "that doesn't give you the right to know about our relationship, which is none of your business. But no, you fucking vultures, we haven't."

  Dan should probably care whether any of those interviews was live, but he doesn't, shoves his way out of the fray, and then, when they follow him en masse, into the showers, where they can't follow. Hides like a fucking child.

  When he finally gets home Marc's bundled on the couch under literally every single blanket they have in their apartment.

  "You were supposed to go to bed after the game ended," Dan says tiredly. "You promised."

  "We broke up," Marc rasps, and waves his phone like evidence. "Everybody is saying so. And you are probably going to get fined for swearing."

  "Fucking great," Dan says, fights the blankets for a minute to carve out a spot.

  "Contagious," Marc reminds him.

  "Really don't give a shit right now," Dan says, pillows his head in the vague vicinity of Marc's lap. It's hard to find under four blankets.

  Marc's hand drops into his hair. "Hockey's Golden Couple Gone For Good?" he recites.

  "Pretty sure we're hockey's only couple," Dan mumbles. "At least as far as they know."

  "Hush," Marc says, then, "We may have found a reason behind Marc Lapointe's subpar season: heartbreak."

  "God, don't read that shit," Dan says, turns to look up at him. "And you should go to bed."

  "You should," Marc retorts. "You played hockey. I slept all day."

  "Well, come to bed with me," Dan says, sits up slowly, feeling drained.

  "Contagious," Marc repeats.

  "Good, I need a vacation," Dan says, and drags Marc to bed, mountain of blankets and all.

  *

  The media's obsessed with that storyline while Marc's recuperating, paint Marc as some sort of victim, getting a quote from an unnamed source saying, "Riley goes out with us all the time, gets guys and girls on his dick just by mentioning Lapointe. Everyone wants a piece of Lapointe's boyfriend." The only reason Dan doesn't beat the shit out of Vargas the next time he's forced to be in a room with him is because Marc laughs about it until there are tears rolling down his cheeks, and it's the first time Dan's seen him laugh like that in awhile.

  When Marc gets back in the room, the story dies, because it's hard to spin it when their stalls are side by side, just like always, Marc's acting the same as always, and Dan has his hackles up enough to defiantly perform some PDA.

  "I am not sure if you are aware," Marc stage whispers. "But you are holding my hand. In public."

  "Fuck off, Lapointe," Dan grumbles, ducking his head to hide his smile.

  *

  Of course, as soon as the media can't make Marc the victim, they go back to making him the villain. The Sun spends a whole article discussing the best ways to get around a no-trade clause, as if they hadn't been the first ones painting Marc as the franchise saviour in his rookie year. As if they hadn't done a textual jump for joy when Marc got locked in that NTC.

 
; It hasn't even been two years, but the Sun suggests the best course would be a buyout, to drop him like dead weight at the end of the season, because "He doesn't fit the direction the Leafs are going in, and he's no longer good enough for us to look the other way.", as if Payne's idiotic way of running things is a direction they should be going in, as if it's doing any more than sticking a finger in a dam and hoping that'll do.

  They've got short memories. They talk about how Marc's sexuality distracts from the sport like there hadn't been a fucking Pride Day they'd declared was showing the 'new, better' face of hockey. They talk about how Marc's holding the team back, as if any player's currently doing more than treading water. It hasn't even been two years since the Stanley Cup, and they talk about a 'struggling' team, declare they're not pointing fingers, but...

  It's sickening. And the worst thing is they say it to Marc's face too, ask him if he feels like he's letting the franchise down, ask him if he wants to be a gay role model more than he wants to be a hockey player, ask him if his good days are behind him, as if he isn't twenty-two fucking years old.

  Marc answers them, polite, even-tempered, easy as you please, and then goes home and drowns himself in the shower, or hides under the covers, and Dan's at a loss for what to do. He's there, he's always there, just like he promised, but he's never going to be enough to make up for the fact their city's trying rip Marc into shreds. That their city's succeeding.

  *

  February drags on slow, and Marc starts disappearing once in awhile. He's never gone for more than a few hours, and the last thing Dan is going to do is press him about it when Toronto's collective population has him cornered. He always looks tired and a little sad when he gets back, but he looks tired and a little sad all the time now. Dan's taking the season one game at a time at this point, and he's never been so happy about the idea of missing the playoffs. It doesn't even make any sense to think that the end of the season is going to be anything but a brief reprieve, but Dan's trying to hold onto some of that Lapointe faith in things because Marc doesn't seem to have any left.