CHAPTER SEVENTEEN #2
Apparently, memory issues were common and so was blurting things out without thinking first, so Leif was trying to understand. He bit his lip rather than tell Tanner there were things he could be doing to help himself.
Because part of the reason Leif kept hesitating was what if he was wrong. Tanner had been tested as a kid, right? So who was Leif to think that he knew better than the experts? And what if Tanner got mad?
Okay, the likelihood of him staying mad was small. Tanner just wasn’t a grudge holder. Which actually sort of fit with the idea of him not having ADHD because according to what Leif had read, people with ADHD tended to ruminate over things.
“Leif?” Tanner said.
“Uhh, yeah.” He focused back on the screen.
“You were saying there was something going on with the team?”
“Oh.” Leif shifted, sighing. “It’s not really the team. It’s where I fit.”
He told Tanner about the situation with Nicky and finished with, “I feel like I’m being a terrible teammate. Aren’t I supposed to be happy that my captain is back?”
Tanner, who had been surprisingly quiet through the whole thing, said, “Well, you’re not, like, unhappy he’s back, right?”
“No. No, I’m happy for him. I’m just … selfishly thinking about how it impacts me.”
“Well, I think it’s bullshit that we’re not supposed to ever be selfish on a team,” Tanner said. “I mean, okay, so maybe we do have to put the team first for most things, but we still have feelings. We can’t just … magically turn them off.”
“No?”
Tanner shrugged. “Well, I can’t.”
“You have all of the feelings all of the time.”
Laughing, Tanner pushed his hair out of his eyes. “Pretty much.”
“So how do you balance that?” Leif asked. “I just start thinking about how I was on this great path. I was centering the top line, I was getting the A at times, I was … I felt like I was entering the next part of my career, you know? Becoming a leader.”
“Okay, well, I think you can be a leader without having a letter,” Tanner said. “Like, Crawford and I don’t have letters but we sure fucking hype that room up. I’m in charge of music and I get the energy going and Crawford fires the boys up to battle. So not to brag but—”
“You’re totally bragging,” Leif pointed out.
Tanner gave him a crooked smile. “Fine. To totally brag, I’m a leader too. And maybe not in the way Connor or Graham or Mickey do it. Or even Jesse. But it doesn’t mean I’m not important in that room. That Crawford’s role isn’t important.”
Leif scowled. “Yeah, his role is taking out our captain with dirty hits.”
“Not what I meant.”
“It’s what I meant.” Leif tried not to smile, because he was trying to be serious here, but he could feel the corners of his mouth creeping up anyway. “But I get what you’re saying.”
“So what’s your role in New York? And I don’t mean on the ice. Not the A, not what line you’re on, or how that line is deployed. What’s your role in the locker room?”
Leif shrugged. “A guy who sits there quietly and takes it all in?”
Tanner made a face. “Of course you are.”
“I never—I never know what to say,” he admitted. “I’m not a big speech guy and I—I’m not good at finding common ground with people or starting conversations.”
“Oh man, that sucks.”
Leif had expected Tanner to chirp him, and the sudden understanding made his throat tighten. “Sometimes,” he agreed. “I mean, I love playing. I love being on the team, but I always feel—I don’t know. Like somehow I don’t quite fit.”
“How come?”
“I don’t know.” Leif sighed. “I always wondered if it was because of my dad. Like, I’m not blaming him, but he—he was such a big player, had already accomplished so much by this age, I always wonder if I’ll ever live up to his legacy. I start to wonder if people think I’m already a bust.”
“I never thought about it that way.”
Ugh, Leif was being done in by Tanner’s big, earnest eyes and he had to clear his throat. He never talked about this stuff but it was like he suddenly couldn’t stop.
“But I’m not sure that’s it exactly. I wondered if it was, I don’t know, the fact that I have this life outside of hockey too. With my modeling. Or that there aren’t—well, there aren’t a lot of queer guys in the room.”
Nicky was gay and the team and management knew it, but he wasn’t publicly out so Leif didn’t want to tell Tanner and have him worry about accidentally outing him.
“I hear that.”
“I just always feel like I’m standing on the outside looking in,” Leif blurted out.
“Could definitely be the queer thing,” Tanner said. “Guys aren’t jerks about it, right?”
“No,” Leif said. “Not obviously, anyway.”
“But un-obviously?”
Leif shrugged. He wasn’t sure that was really a word, but he’d go with it.
“I mean, Mirsad … he was born in Albania and he came over here as a teenager. That’s a pretty socially conservative area.
I don’t think he’s really an ally or anything.
I think it goes against his religious beliefs.
But he’s never said anything to me about it.
I’ve brought guys to team events and it’s been fine. He’s been polite.”
“Okay, but there’s a difference between being tolerated and being, I don’t know, welcomed.”
“Sure,” Leif said, although he’d always sort of wondered if people just tolerated him in general.
“I wish you could play for the Harriers.” Tanner sighed. “You’d love it here. We’re so fucking queer.”
Leif snorted. “Well, I had hoped to play for Boston, but they didn’t draft me.”
Tanner winced. “I am sorry about that.”
“What are you apologizing for?”
“I did goad you into drinking the night before the scout was there and—”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Leif admitted. “It was mine.”
“Yeah, but if I hadn’t—”
“It wasn’t just that night,” Leif admitted, feeling weirdly emotional. “Or that game. I was struggling and I didn’t know how to ask for help, and I was the one who blew my shot at getting drafted by Boston. Not you, not anyone else. And I’m sorry I blamed you for it until recently.”
“Wow,” Tanner said. “Is this character growth for us?”
Leif let out a startled laugh. “Uhh, I guess so?”
“I really wish you weren’t in New York right now,” Tanner said with another big, heavy sigh.
“Yeah, you just said that you wished I played for the Harriers, I get it but that’s not—”
“No. I mean yes. I wish you played for a team like the Harriers because I think you’d love having a bunch of other queer players around you.
And like, holy shit would we be amazing if we added you to the roster but then again, I don’t have a fucking clue where we’d even fit you into the lineup.
That’s not what I meant. I mean …” Tanner hesitated.
“Right now I really wish you weren’t all the way over there and I wasn’t all the way over here. ”
Leif nodded because he got that. It would have been nice to have Tanner here, in person. So he could pull him close and … He cleared his throat again. “It’s getting late. If we’re going to get off together, we should do it now. I need to get to bed.”
Tanner rolled his eyes but he did take off his shirt. “Wouldn’t want to interrupt your routine.”
Leif shook his head and shimmied out of his clothing too. Like Tanner hadn’t been disrupting his routine since the very first second they met.
What Leif firmly refused to dwell on was how worth the disruption talking to Tanner was. How much he’d started looking forward to these almost-nightly calls.
Panting and covered in cum, Tanner sleepily said good night to Leif and ended the call.
This had been a really good one too. Leif had edged him a bit and by the time he finally came it was so intense it blew the top of his head off.
His phone buzzed. Don’t forget to go clean up.
With a groan, Tanner peeled himself out of bed before he could fall asleep.
He’d complained about that to Leif before—he hated waking up to sticky sheets and dried cum in his pubes—but it was sometimes hard to get himself to move.
He’d lie there, half asleep, trying to talk himself into getting his ass out of bed.
But it was like his body was frozen even when his mind was chanting “go, go, go” like some sort of skating drill.
Tanner mopped up the worst of the mess with an old shirt, tugged on underwear, and opened his bedroom door. When he did, he yelped as he came face-to-face with Mickey who was just coming out of the bathroom.
Mickey looked equally startled and they just stared at each other in the dim hallway for a moment. A nightlight glowed in the plug on the floor and the light from Tanner’s TV spilled out of his door.
Mickey and Rafe had the main bedroom—the one with the en suite bathroom—because Tanner had wanted the bigger closet in the second bedroom. The bathroom was right across the hall from Tanner’s bedroom and Mickey hardly ever used it.
“What are you doing here?” Tanner blurted out, wondering if Mickey had overheard him and Leif in his room.
Tanner’s earbuds had died partway through their conversation, and he hadn’t been able to find his charging cable, so he’d switched to using the phone speaker.
What if Mickey had recognized Leif’s voice or heard Tanner say Leif’s name or call him princess?
Shit.
Mickey raised an eyebrow. “Something Rafe ate isn’t agreeing with his stomach so he’s using our bathroom, and I wanted to pee before bed. You don’t mind, do you?”
“Right,” Tanner said. “No of course not. Makes sense. Hope he feels better soon.”
“I’m sure he will. I got him some electrolytes and ginger tea.”
They stared at each other for another long, tense moment. Tanner resisted the urge to explain what he was doing or fidget or …
“I was just talking to someone on a video chat,” he blurted out. Damn it, that part was supposed to stay inside his head.
Mickey’s gaze strayed to his stomach. “Apparently.”
Tanner nodded. “Yep. So that was fun.”
“Good. Is this the same person who you talked to before?”
“Umm,” Tanner said. “Yeah, probably.”
“You don’t remember?”