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Time runs out, and the crowd screams, slamming their hands against the glass. Brooks skids to a stop behind their goal, biting down on his mouthguard until it hurts. He looks across Neuvy’s bowed shoulders and sees Ovi drifting towards them, stick trailing off the curl of his loosened fist. He’s got his head tilted to the side, exactly at the angle it was when Doan drilled him into the wall, bottom of the second. Brooks’ hands shake. He tightens them on his stick.Neuvy swivels a little on his skates, quick enough to catch Brooks’ eyes, and lifts his mask. He’s pale beneath the red pressure marks on his cheeks. Brooks blows his breath out through his mouth, and shakes his head. “You kept us in the game,” he says, skating around in time to join the lineup.Ovi bumps into his back. His hand brushes Brooks’ hip. Brooks stays close as long as possible, makes Ovi have to bump Neuvy’s shoulder with his hand, reaching around Brooks and keeping their bodies close. Brooks skates away first, straight into CSN’s camera crew. *** Coach finally stops talking, looking around the locker with his hands on his hips and his face screwed up like he’d spit bullets if he could. The locker room is silent, and the space where they’re supposed to yell until they’re hungry to win again stretches until it splinters, dried out with misery. The door bangs shut hard enough to almost catch Coach on the way out, and Brooks grinds his teeth. He forces himself to look down and not towards the far corner of the room. He yanks the last bits of tape off his right kneepad, bunching the strand up in his fist as he unwinds it. The guys shift around him, muttering to each other in spurts as they all undress and the trainers start mixing in. Brooks pushes his lips in between his teeth and shakes his head, breathing through the ache in the back of his mouth. They’ll have to talk to the media soon. Fuck. Fuck.“I say, leave it alone!” Alex roars, and Brooks’ head snaps up. “Head is good, face is fine, everything is fine!”Shit. Brooks digs his fingers into his laces, yanking to either side of his skate. To his right, he sees Tommy’s eyes go wide, and follows his line of sight, already wincing. Jack’s got his hands spread palms out, facing the corner of the room Alex tried to bury himself. Alex’s still in all his gear, sweaty and looming, flushing red. His shoulders look huge beneath his pads. He smacks his gloves into the empty stall next to him, and the room flinches back. Troy glances over and Brooks ducks his head; he takes a deep breath. Brooks feels sticky and tired, sore in places he should be too young to worry about. The low-level hum of the team trying to ignore the shit in Alex’s corner rises up enough that he can hear Beags filling Tommy in on where Jack made his mistake. Brooks’ stomach turns and settles, heart thumping a little harder than necessary. He closes his eyes and sees Alex lying on the ice, and forces them open again, swallowing over and over. Not now, he can’t do this right now. He pulls off his skates, and tucks the laces inside, wriggling his sweaty feet. Wardo and Nikky are watching him from opposite sides of the room, eyebrows raised to almost exactly the same angle. And Wardo calls him and Alex an old married couple. He chews his lips again, and drags his sweater over his head, ducking underneath the collar and away; unsnaps his pads.“Alex, you need more than ice and we need to run some tests, all right?” Jack asks, coaxing like Alex’s still eighteen, and fuck it, but he should really know better by now. “Cameras are gone now. I need to look at your neck.”Perfect, that’s just fucking perfect. As if Alex can’t tell the fucking time or remember they haven’t…oh God. Brooks throws his shoulder pads behind him, and yanks off his sweaty undershirt; threads snap underneath his hands. He looks up, and Alex isn’t swaying, he’s firm on his skates, he’s fine. He’s always fine. “Bullshit, I play the rest of game, no problems,” Alex says clearly, not slurring his words. He’s fine.Brooks licks the sweat from his lips, and widens his eyes until the stinging at their corners is coming from the air, and not…not. He breaths in, and coughs out. Fuck, they started up in…fuck, a month after the Caps kept him for good, and just before the league decided to spin Sasha as the Red Menace without actually saying the words. He can’t honestly put a date to it, he’s never had the brain for keeping track of that stuff, but the two events were close and it felt like gravity, the first time Alex put his head in Brooks’ hands. It still feels like that now, honestly, but these days it’s different, not so much something they have to prove, and more something that just is. The rookies come to them wrapped in NDAs, and Nikky’s supposed to handle the rest of it. Brooks can’t explain it, him and Alex, he just knows enough to do it.“No problems that we know about, eh?” Jack is still talking, as if he fucking doesn’t know what Alex’s like sometimes after a loss and didn’t get the memo about who gets to handle it. “I know we didn’t see anything too bad after the hit, but symptoms can—”“Fuck your symptoms,” Alex says, corkscrewing his voice into something strung tighter than piano wire. “Fuck you and fuck your—” Alex swipes Jack’s hand away. “—I say don’t God damn touch—”“Sasha, Jesus Christ,” Brooks finally snaps, and the room stops. Alex glares at him, red-faced and puffy with bruising at his temple. Brooks’ throat clicks when he swallows. Alex’s upper lip curls over a brief flash of blunt teeth. He jerks his head, and the whole room sees him wince. Brooks swallows, and rubs his hands over his face. Not Alex’s head, Jesus, not his head, fucking Doan. Jack raises his hand again, and gestures back to where Alex had been sitting, curled in on himself, probably reliving all the best bits of that fucking circus act they’d stumbled through. Sometimes the Coyotes bite it, and sometimes they bite the fuck back.Brooks stands up, and walks over, staring straight into Alex’s glare. Alex’s got an inch on him, it’s not much, but it’s more than Jack has, and as Brooks walks, the trainer in between them gets even smaller. He hears the team’s chatter pick up more loudly, a little too edgy not to be deliberate. The locker room door squeaks open and closes, the noise goes down.Alex’s neck clicks audibly when he turns his head, lifting his chin as Brooks steps in close. The air is cold against Brooks’ chest, sweat drying in icy flashes. Jack rolls his eyes in Brooks’ peripheral vision, already signaling someone across the room. Fuckin’ Jack, dipshit should know better. Brooks licks his lips, and looks at the early grey in Alex’s hair. He’s squinting now, lines around his eyes neither of them are supposed to have yet. Is he…is it the lights? “Let Jack fucking look, okay?” Brooks asks, quietly.If he just pretends there’s no one in the room with them, Alex might too, no one to swagger for, and no one to think about but themselves. It takes awhile sometimes, and losses set Alex back every time. Brooks reaches for him, just like normal, not slowly like he’s some kind of animal, and cups the back of Alex’s neck in both hands. His skin is hot and too slick for an already awkward grip around the uniform gear. It’s not enough. Alex’s mouth softens. He licks his lips, and Brooks sighs. “I want to go home,” he says, and Alex grabs his hips, making his back sway into a brief arch.“We have press,” Alex says, tilting his head again. “I can do it,” Brooks says, and Alex’s face twitches. He sniffs, and Brooks rubs his thumbs along the little stretches of skin at the base of Alex’s skull. “Let me take it.”Behind them, he hears Tommy’s voice crack, and then what’s probably the smack of Troy’s palm. Whatever, kid’ll fucking learn. If they were home, Alex’d be out of his gear—out of his clothes—and Brooks would be rubbing the frustration out of them both. If Jack’d just left Alex alone they could have been doing this on the fucking plane, but if it’s now, that’s okay, too. Brooks wants to bring Alex in close, retrace every inch of his body like he does at home until Alex goes boneless and perfect, skin drawn warm and tight over his muscles, but that asshole took him down hard, and it…and it…“You fucking get checked out,” he mutters, clearing his throat, and steps in so he can whisper in Alex’s ear, holding his head still and feeling the muscles flutter beneath his palms. “Let him make sure, so I can take you home,” he whispers, and Alex’s fingers clench, cracked fingernails slipping against Brooks’ skin. He hears Jack shifting and coughing next to them; the guys voices rise and fall. Alex tilts his head a little, as much as he can in Brooks’ hold, and catches his stubble against Brooks’ lips. “What for?” he asks loudly, too loudly, and Brooks hopes the slamming door means Greenie took Volpatti out into the hall. Mike’ll keep him quiet.Brooks breathes in, and closes his eyes. He can feel how tense Alex is, constantly shifting his weight like he’s angling for a breakaway, shoulders twitching fast enough to make his pads quake. So many clothes, at home—if no one had touched Alex they could be—at home Alex barely wears anything and Brooks can get his mouth on any part of him. He tightens his grip, not too much, but enough that Alex’s rumbling sigh makes Brooks’ exhale too shaky.“So I can take care of you,” he says, not loudly at all, but firmly, so that every-fucking-body can see the way Alex slumps in his grip. Alex’s thumbs dig into the line of muscle at his hips, and Brooks kisses his cheek. Jack clears his throat, and Brooks feels heat blast up his cheeks just as the rightness of saying it settles his stomach. A lifetime of flying under the radar doesn’t make this shit easier, but Alex needs to hear him say it, sometimes over and over again, and Brooks had promised. Any time you need it, I’ll tell you, he’d said, and this counted, even with the door opening and closing on God knew how many people. “I want to…” his voice stumbles, trying to figure out who is left in the room, and Alex tenses. “I want to get my mouth on you,” he says, quickly because oh God, good boys from Regina don’t, but he does. “I want to—lay you out and touch you until I can’t remember how anything else feels but you.”He kisses Alex, higher and almost on the mouth. “You’re perfect, I know,” he says, grinning a little. “But I still want to kiss it better.” He lets go, turning in Alex’s grip. Jack, at least, looks him in the eye, but his mouth tightens when Alex dips his head against Brooks’ shoulder. “Neck hurts,” Alex says, softly enough that Brooks feels the sting of it a full two heartbeats later. “And it’s bright.”“We’ll start with the ImPACT test,” Jack says, a little shortly. “You want to wait here?”Of fucking course he doesn’t, but Brooks nods anyway. He stays still as Alex follows Jack out of the door. His chest shakes, he—on the plane, they duck their heads and Brooks can do this better, he can get a blanket and twist in his chair to rub his hand underneath Alex’s shirt and jeans until the skin of his palm buzzes. He can tell Alex how good he feels, how perfect he is until Alex forgets about every single asshole who tells him differently. Instead, they had this, in front of fucking everybody, and so what if most of them knew already? He takes a breath, and then another, shaking it off. There’s still their guys to talk to, a loss to contain. When he lifts his head, the room is mostly empty, only Nikky and Greenie left, and he realizes he’s been clenching his fists.“You gonna get dressed any time soon there, buddy?” Greenie asks, waggling his eyebrows. “‘Cause if you make me late, you’re explaining to my fiancée why I missed my fucking flight.”It takes a moment, he has to breathe again and his lungs feel too heavy for it, but Nikky rolls his eyes and smacks Greenie in the chest, and Brooks makes himself smile. “Yeah,” he says, while Greenie pushes Nikky into the nearest stall. “Yeah, sorry, I’ll be right there.”