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i.
“Lack, you’ve got the start today,” says Torts, and Eddie feels everything go cold and still and silent. He starts to protest, but he feels Lu reaching out to stop him, even though Lu’s across the room, wrestling with his own gear."Alright,” he says, still feeling dazed, but Torts is already gone. Everyone is staring at Eddie, but he can’t bring himself to look at Lu, can’t stand to see the anger that he can feel wrapping itself around the room: long, thin tendrils of hate and disgust and frustration. Eddie just goes back to strapping on his pads and tries to block it all out.The whole game, though, all he feels is Lu, his anger pulsing hard and fast in the back of Eddie’s brain. He doesn’t know who Lu’s mad at -- him, Torts, the crowd that’s abandoned them -- but it hurts.*In Nashville, Sidney counts his steps from the bus to the locker room.He needs to focus. The Chicago game still sticks in his mind, five to fucking one, everything thrown off by the snow and the fuss around an outdoor game. He’s been off-kilter since getting back from Sochi, and it can’t continue. It just can’t.One, two, three, he counts in his head, and as he walks, he sees plays unfolding in the back of his mind. He sees the puck popping out along the boards. He sees the dozens of different plays he could make, but in his mind, he settles on sending the puck back to Kunitz, who fires it in on Rinne. Goal, three to one.The play could go any other way, but Sidney feels this one, deep in his bones.That’s how it’s going to go.*Marian’s trying to teach Brandon, he really is, but Brandon’s so young and so full of questions. Marian barely remembers that age anymore, being twenty-one and so full of excitement and wonder. Twenty-one seems like it was ages ago, centuries ago, eons ago, and maybe it was. Marian can never tell, these days.“Like this?” Brandon’s fingers slide deftly along the blade of his stick, pressing the tape into place.“Almost,” Marian says. “But more like -- is like --” He reaches for the stick, passes his palm over the blade to show Brandon what he means. “You know, when it’s right. You feel it, here.” Marian stretches his free hand out, presses his fingertips to Brandon’s chest, just over his heart, then down, to poke him in the stomach. “And there.”Brandon squirms away and picks at the tape, then holds the stick loosely in his hands. “How come no one told me any of this before?”Marian shrugs, then winces, and rolls out his shoulders. That hit at Soldier Field took more out of him than he’d anticipated. He’s not getting any younger. “Wasn’t time,” he says. “Still isn’t really time yet, for you.”With Marian being out for the next few weeks to rest his shoulder, though, it’s time, now. Brandon has years and years to unlock his potential, but they might as well get a head start.“But soon?” Brandon’s eyes are huge and hopeful, and Marian wants to bottle up the whole world and give it to him.“You put me in early grave, kid?” he asks, just to see Brandon sputter and try to backtrack. “Don’t worry,” he says, reaching out to take the stick back from Brandon, inspecting the tape. “There’s still life in me yet.”*“Can you stop doing that?” Jamie frowns at Tyler, who’s busy grinning at everyone who walks past.“Doing what?” Tyler asks, all faux innocence, and turns his grin on Jamie, who looks away quickly.“That,” he hisses, still not looking at Tyler. “You know what that does.”“I’m using it for good,” he says, hustling to catch up with Jaime. “Good, not evil. I thought those were the rules.”Jamie tugs his knit cap down further over his brow and steadfastly avoids looking in Tyler’s direction. “If you keep it up, they’re going to start following you.” Jamie gestures at the people they’re passing as they walk through the back hallways of the arena. Heads turn as Tyler passes. A few girls wave, and Tyler only barely stops himself from grinning at them. “Remember last time that happened?”“Dude, you’re just jealous.” Tyler slings his arm around Jamie’s shoulders, keeping him from walking away even faster. “You just wish you were as cool as me.”“Oh, yeah,” Jamie scoffs. “All those people in my head, following me around, just because I smiled at them.” He squirms under Tyler’s arm, but it’s mostly for show. He doesn’t mind, not so much, and he wonders if he caught a glimpse of that grin of Tyler’s without even noticing. “That is totally me.”“Someday you’ll tell me what you can do, right? You promised.” Tyler bumps his hip into Jamie’s as they walk.Jamie doesn’t have the heart to tell Tyler, now or ever, that he can’t do anything out of the ordinary. All he can do is play hockey. Good hockey, when it matters, but still. Tyler’s the one who’s special; Tyler’s magic is what drives them on the ice, not Jamie’s. That’s a burden Tyler still doesn’t need, not after how things ended for him in Boston, so he keeps it a secret.“Someday, man,” he lies, and dares to look over at Tyler, who’s smiling at him like he’s the best thing since sliced bread.Jamie feels something warm and liquid curl through his body, and he looks away. ii. Eddie looked it up once on Google Maps, the distance between Vancouver and Sunrise, Florida. The internet tells him it’s about 5,500 kilometers, and that feels far, so far, but he can still feel the icy tendrils of Lu’s thoughts, swirling around him, digging in when they shouldn’t be. It’s not fair to Jacob, he thinks. It’s not fair that his mind still searches for Lu’s when he’s on the ice, crouched low between the pipes. It doesn’t matter if they’re at practice or in a game, or if Eddie’s just sitting at home; he feels Lu, still there, always there.They lose, and lose, and lose some more, and Eddie tries so hard to stay positive.“You don’t feel that, do you?” he asks Jacob after morning skate.Jacob looks up from his stall. “What?”“That.” Eddie lifts a hand, traces in the air where he can feel the frantic loop and swirl of Lu. “It’s just me, right? I know we’re not supposed to talk about it, but, it’s just me, isn’t it?”Jacob raises his hand, presses it into the space Eddie’s indicated. “No, nothing,” Jacob says. His fingers curl into a fist, and he’s grabbed onto what Lu’s left behind without even knowing it. “Maybe because I’m new?”Eddie’s only half paying attention. He’s mostly tuned into the way he can feel Lu's energy squish in Jacob’s hand. “Let go. Let go, you’ve got it all caught up now.” He reaches out, knocks at Jacob’s arm. Guiltily, Jacob opens his hand, shakes it out, and steps away, back and back and back until Eddie stops glaring at him.Eddie sighs. No one told him how hard this was going to be. “I don’t think it’s because you’re new,” he says finally. “I think it’s because you’re not me.”*Sidney has a routine.Sidney’s routine works. Everyone knows by now, not to ask him about it. Not to fuck with him over it.There’s a power in it, a great power, and he’s known it ever since he was small. There were whispers, even when he was a boy, that he was different. “You’re going to have to fight harder,” his father told him, over and over again. “Fight harder, be stronger, because they’re going to come after you.”His father meant that he had to be physically stronger, especially to play in the Q, but it was more than that, and Sidney always knew it.Over time, the routine grows. Sidney needs more and more touchstones to get through it all, just to get through the day feeling like he can go into a game, being the best he can be. After all these years, though, he still doesn’t have it down pat. He should, he absolutely should, but he doesn’t, because what he needs just keeps getting bigger and more consuming.Some days, like today, when it all goes wrong, Sidney doesn’t just feel the game slipping away between his fingers; he feels something hot and black and angry shoot through him, up his spine, down his arms. His fingers tingle and his head aches, and it’s almost worse than the concussions, with how sick it makes him.Sidney leans forward on the bench and tries to breathe. He tries not to throw up, he tries not to let the starry blackness behind his eyes consume him. They’re deep in the third without a point on the board. They’re going to get shut out by the fucking Flyers, and there’s nothing he can do about it.Geno taps Sid’s skate with the butt of his stick. “Is bad today,” says Geno, pressed up next to him on the bench.“I know it’s fucking bad,” Sidney snaps. “Look at that shit out there, they’re tearing us up. You don’t have to fucking remind me, G.”He narrows his eyes at the play, glares at an egregious turnover in the neutral zone. Sidney bangs his stick against the ground and shouts, a whole string of obscenities directed at the hot mess in front of him. He’s in no shape to go back out there, and Dan knows it, but that doesn’t mean that he’s not ready to jump back over the boards anyway.Geno makes a noise close to a growl, and Sidney looks over, startled. “I not mean game,” he says. “Game is shit, yeah, but I mean this.” He presses one gloved hand to Sidney’s helmet, taps with his fingers, then pulls back away. “Is bad, no?”Sidney shrugs. “I must have missed something,” he sighs. “I’ll fix it, for tomorrow.” It’s a home-and-home series, and they owe it to the Flyers to fucking destroy them back in Pittsburgh, after this bullshit.Geno hums thoughtfully. “Don’t push too hard,” he says then. “Don’t get lost in it.”It’s too late, though; Sidney’s been lost in the twinned horror and wonder of what he can do since he was just a boy.*“Show me again,” Nick says. He leans forward on the couch, elbows on his knees, and he watches Brandon like a hawk. “Show me how you made that pass.”“It doesn’t work like that and you know it,” Brandon says. He tosses the lacrosse ball from hand to hand, not really looking at it. He watches Nick instead, watches Nick watching the arc the ball makes in the air. “It’s all tied up in the game. I can’t just perform on command. I’m not a circus monkey, Leds.”He can’t perform on command, or maybe he just won’t. He closes his eyes, catches the ball a few more times, then starts to do tricks with it, catching it behind his back, tossing it under a raised leg. He hears Nick laugh.“You can do that, but you won’t tell me how you made that pass.”Brandon opens his eyes and stops tossing the ball. “I told you, it doesn’t work like that for me. I can’t -- I can’t find the words for it.”Nick frowns. It’s almost a pout, and Brandon refrains from telling him he looks stupid. “But Hoss can.”“Hoss is thirty-five,” Brandon says. “Hoss can do a lot of things that I can’t do yet.” He throws the lacrosse ball at Nick, who catches it and starts tossing it hand to hand. He copies Brandon’s movements, but there’s still something off, something awkward in the way the ball splats back in his palms, less elegant and less efficient than Brandon’s own game of catch.“But you’ll get there?” Nick botches the catch and the ball rolls off his fingers, bounces across the floor to come to a stop at Brandon’s foot.Brandon grins. “We’re working on it.”*Tyler doesn’t miss Boston, not in the way he used to, when he first got sent down to Dallas. Sure, he misses his boys, Marchy and Bergy and all of them, but Boston did him wrong, and he knows it now.Dallas wants Tyler to be the best he can be, but they don’t push him to be something other than what he is, they don’t push him until he’s ready to break.It also helps that he’s not fighting for space with superstars. Boston is stacked, top to bottom, with guys who can do what Tyler does, only better, smoother, faster. There was no room for Tyler’s easy smile and soft hands in Boston.Dallas is different.“Are you almost ready?” Jamie asks. Jamie’s been ready forever. Of course he has.Tyler studies himself in the mirror and fusses with his tie. “Calm down, we’re not going to be late. The plane’s not going to leave without you.”Tyler still thinks that maybe they’d leave him behind, tell him that he’s not a part of the Stars’ plans going forward. He’s still half-convinced that they’d close the door in his face and fly away without him.But leave without Jamie? Never. He’s the heart of the team, even if he’s too modest to admit it.Jamie glances at Tyler’s reflection in the mirror, at the furrow of his brow, the way his tongue pokes out of the corner of his mouth as he tries to fix the knot of his tie. “Your tie looks terrible,” he points out.Tyler raises his eyes to meet Jamie’s in the mirror. “You look terrible,” he says, and smiles.Jamie flushes and turns away. “Stop that,” he scolds. “You know you shouldn’t.”“Make me,” Tyler retorts. He lifts his chin and tugs the tie tight; through the mirror, he sneaks another glance at Jamie. The blush creeps down Jamie’s neck, and he’s not even looking at Tyler anymore.Tyler likes Dallas. He likes it a lot. iii. All the way in Sweden, Eddie can still feel it, he can still feel the twist and flow of Lu’s thoughts through his mind. Jacob's are there, too, finally, but they're quieter, less sure, more tentative. There’s nothing he can do about it other than try to use the long off-season to block Lu out.He doesn’t know that he wants to, though, and that’s the problem.*Sidney crouches low for the face-off, staring down Stepan. He hurts everywhere, and it isn’t just an ache from playing the game, from going seven deep in a series they should have had wrapped up already. It’s the ache rooted in his bones that tells him that this game is done, that he’s going to lose this face-off, that they’re not going to tie it up.The linesman drops the puck and Sidney misses; Stepan pokes the puck past him and back out to Kreider and Sidney feels the season slip away.*Brandon doesn’t even know he’s doing it, but before he realizes it, he’s laughing at Stoner, who surges forward and cross-checks him. It’s a weak cross-check, but Stoner’s also a dumb shit who does it right in front of the linesman.Stoner gets sent to the box, and Brandon skates back over to the bench, pleased with himself.“Good one, kid,” Marian says, flashing him a grin and patting him on the helmet. “That’s what I’m talking about.” It’s not quite the same as feeling the vibrations of the game through his fingers, up his arms, right down to his core, but it’s close enough, and the rest of it will come with time.*Not for the first time, Tyler wishes that there was more that he could do. He doesn’t resent the gifts that were given to him, but they don’t help him win hockey games, they don’t help his team hold on to a critical lead, they don’t lead him to a Stanley Cup with his new home.Jamie comes around on locker clean-out day and fist bumps him. “Next year, eh?”He looks so hopeful. “Next year,” Tyler agrees. He thumps his fist against Jamie’s shoulder and smiles.Jamie, for once, doesn’t turn away.
iv.
Eddie knows about Miller signing with the Canucks long before anyone calls to tell him, long before he signs on to Twitter to read the news. He knows because all of a sudden, there’s a new energy fighting for dominance with the ever-present red swirls and loops that belong to Lu. It’s a thick, heavy presence, and it feels blue to Eddie, blue and gold and steady, and it drowns out the jittery, thin presence of Jacob that he’s just gotten used to being aware of.Eddie stops to check in on himself, to see how he feels about working in tandem with Miller. He’s still thinking about it whenever his phone starts to light up with texts. Eddie ignores most of them, swiping past them one by one, until his phone vibrates in his hands and Lu’s name pops up.relief, he writes. you’re feeling relief. The message is followed by about twenty-five different smiley face emojis, two umbrellas, and a brown bear.He thinks about it, and Lu’s right. Eddie knows he can be a starter, he has faith that maybe this season, he won’t be left hung out to dry, but having Miller around… Lu’s right. It’s relief.thx lu. miss u, he types, and follows it up with one frowny face, seven smiley faces, a palm tree, a pair of big red lips, and a party hat.Lu texts back with a heart and a big green check mark.Everything is going to be fine.*Sidney’s knows Nealer’s gone before anyone tells him. Same with Brooks, Jussi, Engo, Nisky, all of them. He knows, because he feels a big empty spot in his mind when he thinks about the team. He imagines plays and can’t see them the whole way through anymore, there’s a big blur in his vision where one of his now-former teammates should be.Battle along the boards, he thinks, get the puck out, fire it back to the blue line, to… and then it stops, because he doesn’t have a face, a name, a playing style. Just a nameless blob in a Penguins jersey.The ache in his head is back, set deep in behind his eyes, and he winces. He doesn’t know who to talk to about it, about the way his thoughts burn, hot and hard, in his mind. He doesn’t know what it means. He could talk to Mario, but he doesn’t want to be a bother. Mario has enough on his plate right now. He doesn’t need to deal with Sidney feeling absolutely broken.Flower would understand -- Flower, who talks to the net, Flower, who runs a reassuring hand over the posts when they help him out -- but Flower would worry too much, and Flower’s actually close enough to do something about it right now. Sid doesn’t want that.He doesn’t want anyone to try to fix him, even though he’s more sure than ever that he’s broken.That leaves Geno, who’s off swimming with whale sharks and partying in Moscow. Even then, though, he still doesn’t actually want to talk to Geno about what’s going on. You ok? he texts Geno. He doesn’t expect an answer, and is surprised to see a text reading lazy((((((((((((( everyone(((((( a few minutes later.We’ll be fine. We can do this. Sidney’s trying to reassure himself more than Geno, because that sick feeling inside of him has been settling there ever since the playoffs, and the summer isn’t making it go away, not like it usually does.He thinks he needs something else to add to the routine. Another touchstone, another precaution. He has all summer to work it out, he thinks. It will be easier when they have a full roster again, once he’s touched base with all of the new guys. He should be able to see what he’s missing.Maybe this will be the season he finally gets it right again.*At the convention, Marian pulls Brandon aside. “This season,” he says. His fingers curl over Brandon’s arm, and Brandon feels electricity, the same jump and twitch he feels whenever he’s holding his stick.His eyes get wide. Marian’s contract runs for years and years, still. It’s not time for him to go. “You’re not… you can’t. I’m not ready.”Marian chuckles. “I’m not going anywhere, don’t worry.” He pats Brandon’s shoulder. “Just time you know more of it. You’re money, kid. You felt it, against LA, yeah?”Brandon did, that’s the thing. Everything clicked in a way it hadn’t before; everything finally came together in that series.“I felt it,” he says. “Here.” He presses his hand over his heart, his other to his stomach. “And here. Like the game, like it was living inside me. Like it was everything.” Brandon sounds a little awe-struck when he talks about it.Marian smiles. The corners of his eyes crinkle. “Then it’s time.” He pats Brandon on the back. “At camp, we start work. Be ready.”*Tyler spends his summer trying to fix something that’s not broken. What he can do, it helps on the ice, believe it or not. The easy smiles he flashes keep him calm and steady, and if it throws the other team off kilter, well, so what?(It could always be worse, Tyler thinks. He heard stories about a girl who played on a boys’ Juniors team up in Alberta whose hair turned to snakes, whose look turned men to stone. He never found out if it was true or not, and doesn’t remember where she ended up after Alberta, but he thinks, at the very least, that it would have made shoot-outs interesting.)But, see, the problem is, Jamie’s the only person who ever really seems bothered by what Tyler can do, off the ice. Tyler can’t stand it, can’t stand the way that Jamie looks away, like looking at Tyler burns him. He has to fix it.wat r u doin, he texts Jamie one night, when he’s bored and wants to try something.Jamie’s response takes a curiously long time. why??? is all he types, but Tyler can practically hear the skepticism in that one word, like Jamie’s standing next to him and judging him, lips tugged down into a frown.just get on skype asshole he texts back, then opens up his laptop and waits for Jamie to sign on.He’s busy posting a picture of his dinner to Instagram whenever Jamie pops up on his screen. “What’s up?”Tyler tosses his phone aside and adjusts the laptop so that he’s better positioned for the camera. “I want to try something,” Tyler says. “Alright?”Jamie frowns. “Is this going to get freaky?” He pushes a hand through his hair, frowns some more. “Are we going to wind up on Deadspin or something?”“No, asshole.” Tyler flicks Jamie off, two-handed. “I just, I’ve been working on the whole thing this summer.” He gestures to his face, before Jamie can protest that he’s being too vague. “And I figured out how I can game the system.”The crease between Jamie’s brows grows deeper. “Game the system? We’re not talking about fucking poker, Segs, I don’t think this is something you can just decide to change. You can’t just turn it off.”“No, I can, look.” Tyler pulls the laptop onto his lap and adjusts the screen again. “Look, I’ve been practicing, and I found out if I focus, and if I find that, whatever, energy thread or whatever the fuck it is, and I keep it inside me, then I can actually interact with people like a normal fucking person, not, not, whatever this is.” He waves at his face again and flashes him a broad grin. Tyler tries to focus on the jumpy thread of energy, tries to hold it back in, but something about Jamie draws it out of him.Jamie, on instinct, looks away from the screen, and Tyler’s face falls. “You’re the only person who does that, you know.”“Does what?”“That. You fuckin’, like, you can’t even look at me. You look away, like you can’t stand it.” Tyler shoves the laptop onto the sofa and stands up. He starts to pace around, and when he looks back at the monitor, Jamie’s expression is furious.“You think that’s what it is? You really think that?” Tyler watches the tendons in Jamie’s neck jump and tense as he speaks, and he’s suddenly very glad that they’re on opposite sides of the country right now.“What the fuck else am I supposed to think?” Tyler leans over the back of the sofa and looms over the laptop, scowling down at Jamie. “It’s not like… dude, what I can do, it’s not like I’m making people do things they don’t want to do. I’m not, like, taking away your, what, your free will or something.”Jamie laughs; it’s bitter and harsh and grating, and Tyler wants to slam his laptop shut to get away from it. “Free will! Tyler Seguin, talking to me about free fuckin’ will? That’s cool, real cool, Segs, after Boston? You fuckin’ remember any of what went down?”“Fuck you,” Tyler spits out. He kicks the back of his sofa, balls up his fists and tries not to punch anything. “You think I forgot? You think I fucking forgot?” He kicks the sofa again and the laptop shifts, tilting perilously close to the edge. “That’s why I’m trying to get this under control, so that doesn’t happen again.”Jamie reaches out and tilts his own laptop, trying to get everything to straighten out on his end. “We’re not Boston. We’re not gonna do you like that. But …” Jamie sucks in a deep breath and looks up at his ceiling. “You’ve gotta get out of my head, when we’re not on the ice.”Tyler’s quiet for a while as he lets go of his anger, blows it out between clenched teeth. “And what if I can’t?” Jamie doesn’t answer. He’s still looking up at his ceiling; Tyler’s looking down at his feet. “You’re the only one I can’t just turn it off for,” he whispers. He doesn’t know if the webcam picks up his words, and he doesn’t care. “All summer, with everyone else, I’ve been able to push it back down, but you -- fuck, man, I can’t do it.”“We’re not talking about this,” Jamie says, too loud, too sharp, and before Tyler can protest, the call disconnects.Tyler shoves at the back of his sofa, and the laptop slides off of the cushions.It figures. It all figures. v. Ryan and Eddie spend most of the summer texting and emailing and being entertaining on Twitter, but they don’t actually meet in person until training camp.“Hi, Eddie,” says Ryan as he sticks out his hand. They’ve crossed paths before, on the ice, but they’ve never really talked, and Eddie is intrigued.Eddie grips Ryan’s hand and shakes, but before he can say anything, Ryan’s eyebrows shoot up. “Oh!” He smiles, a bit lopsided, and it catches Eddie off guard. He doesn’t know how to read Ryan yet, but he’s not like Lu, smiling like he’s got a secret that he’s not going to share; and not like Jacob, whose smile was always too nervous to make Eddie feel at home.“That’s you, then.” Ryan looks past Eddie, but still holds his hand tight.“What’s me?” He follows Ryan’s gaze up, off to the far corner of the ceiling.“That.” He reaches overhead, fingers weaving a thin, quick pattern in the air. “It feels… purple, I think, maybe teal. It sort of sparkles. I’m not sure yet, but that’s what it feels like. I was wondering. I started feeling it as soon as I signed the contract.”Eddie reaches up, too, and sticks his hand up in the air near Ryan’s. “To the left,” says Ryan, and he reaches out to tug on Eddie’s arm, pulling him into place. “Left and up. You seriously can’t feel it?”Eddie lets Ryan move his arm around, and when he’s finally in position, he feels a jolt of electricity roll down his spine. “Oh, there it is,” he says through laughter. “No, I’ve never been able to find me. Just everyone else.”“Huh.” Ryan looks around the room, trying to tell what else is there. “Luongo is...?”“The red, down here, by my ankles.” Eddie lifts one leg, shakes his foot towards the spot where he can still feel Lu in the locker room, then pauses. He looks silly, standing on one foot, one hand in the air, the other still gripping tight to Ryan. He looks like a stork, he thinks, and smiles. Eddie lets go of Ryan’s hand and steps back. “Will it ever go away?”“I can show you,” Ryan says, “if you want.” He doesn’t sound cocky about it; he sounds like he actually wants Eddie to choose. Ryan isn’t what Eddie expected.Eddie shifts his weight from foot to foot. “And if I don’t?”Ryan lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “Whatever. It doesn’t bother me.”“I’d like to keep it, then.” Eddie hates how hopeful he sounds, how much he wants Ryan to like him, to not think he’s just a big weirdo.“We can do that.” Ryan thumps his hand against Eddie’s chest, once, twice. “Keep it.”*“Hey, Patric,” Sidney says from across the room, and all eyes turn towards their newest forward. “Can you hand me those sticks?”Flower curses under his breath. Geno looks at Sid like he’s lost his mind.Patric looks like someone just asked him to drown a kitten. “What?” he asks. He hasn’t even moved from his stall. He’s not even in arm’s length of Sidney’s gear, and he doesn’t look like he’s planning on getting any closer.“The sticks I taped up, in my stall.” Sidney waves one glove in their direction. “Can you bring them over to me?”Geno can’t take it; he launches himself out of his stall and towards Sidney. “We need to talk,” he says, planting his hands firmly on Sid’s shoulders.“What?” Geno looms more than usual, already in his skates while Sid’s barefoot. Sidney has to look up, up, up, to see Geno’s face.“What’s with you? You do everything different today.” Geno keeps one hand fisted in Sid’s jersey, and begins raising the fingers of his free hand as he goes down the list. “No sandwich, different steps to locker room, you let Dana sharpen your skates, now asking new guy to hand you your sticks. You call mother, too? You want to wear blue jerseys next?” Sid tries to pull away from Geno, but he’s outmatched. “What’s wrong? You hit your head over the summer or something?”Sidney pushes at Geno, gets him arm’s length away. “That’s what I’m trying to undo,” he whispers harshly. “Things haven’t been right for years, not since the concussion, and we all know it. I think it knocked something loose in here.” He presses his hand not to his head, but to the center of his chest, right next to where Geno’s holding on to him. “I’ve got to fix it.”“You fix by blowing up everything you build? All those -- those -- “ Geno gropes for the right word to explain what it is that Sid does; he knows the word in Russian, but not English. “Point touches, fuck, I don’t know what.” He makes an angry noise and clenches his fingers tighter in Sid’s jersey. “All of that, you blow up? Just because?”“What else am I supposed to do?” Sid sounds so quiet, so lost. “Nothing feels right. What do we do when a game’s not going right? What do we do when the whole season’s fucked? We blow up our lines, we blow up the team. With what I can do, why should it be any different?”Geno lets Sid go and takes a few steps back. “Doesn’t feel right,” he mutters. “Don’t like it.”Sid tugs on his jersey, straightening it back out. “I don’t, either,” he admits, “but I don’t know what else to do.” He flexes his hands, like he’s reaching for something. “I need to strip it all down to the bones and build it back up again, do you understand? I need to tear it down, piece by piece, to make it right again.”Geno pushes his hands into his hair and looks away. He doesn’t want to ask, but he has to. “What if it not get right?”The Next Great One, they called Sidney when he stormed into the NHL, when he started breaking records and racking up trophies. Gretzky never lost that long, looping thread that held him together, but Sidney’s terrified that he has. Sidney’s terrified that he’s broken. He swallows heavily, reaches out and pinches the hem of Geno’s jersey between his fingers, just to have something to touch.Maybe Geno can be a new touchstone for him, he thinks.“I don’t know,” he says. Sidney’s voice is thin and threatens to crack. “I can’t think like that.” His fingers rub back and forth over the black of the jersey. He can’t meet Geno’s eyes. “Be patient with me?”“For you?” Geno looks back at Sid, offers him a sad smile. “For you, anything.”*Brandon nets a hat trick in the home opener and he never looks back.He blows past Bobby Hull’s point streak record. People are finally calling him a superstar, which Brandon brushes off. He’s playing on a team with Jonathan Toews and Duncan Keith and Marian Hossa. He’s surrounded by the legacies of Hull and Mikita and Larmer and Savard.He’s not a superstar. He just feels the game now.“Maybe you don’t need me after all, kid,” Marian says, slapping Brandon on the back as he goes to hang the championship belt up in his stall, again. (The team jokes that they should just let Brandon keep it. He gives it away after every game to someone he finds more deserving, but somehow, it always winds up right back in his stall. He doesn’t ask.)“Don’t say that,” Brandon says, suddenly very serious. “It’s not time yet.”“No,” Marian says, “but someday.”Marian knows he doesn’t have forever here, but Chicago’s the first place that’s felt like home since those first years in Ottawa, and he couldn’t do in Ottawa what he does in Chicago.“How does it work?” Brandon asks. He sits down in his stall and taps the bench next to him for Marian to sit. “How do you know, when it’s time?”“Same as everything else, you just feel it, inside.” Marian sits, winces as his joints creak and pop. “Same way you feel those goals, those passes. It just stings a little more, when you’ve been around as long as I have.”Brandon nods knowingly. For everything he masters, something else has to give, and sometimes the thrum of energy he feels when his stick rests in his hands just so turns into the sharpest stab of pain.None of them have forever, but they’ll take every moment they can get.“Will I…” Brandon grips his knees, looks down at the ground, his bare toes wiggling in his sandals. “Will I become you, then, someday?”“That’s the plan, when it’s time,” Marian admits. Fear and panic crosses Brandon’s face before he can tamp it back down. “Don’t worry,” Marian reassures him. “I’ll make sure you’re ready, before I go.”Brandon picks at fuzz on his shorts. “Thanks,” he says. “You’ll tell me, when it’s time?”“You won’t need me to,” Marian says. He clamps one big hand around Brandon’s shoulder and squeezes, then hauls himself to his feet. “Like I said. You’ll know.”*Tyler hardly talks to Jamie at all over the summer. They talk about the team, about training plans and camp and their new teammates, but never about their fight.Tyler doesn’t care. He doesn’t. He spends the rest of his summer practicing, holding on to that little bit of himself that gets out of control, that gets into people’s heads, that draws them in so tight that he can’t let them go.He was right, when he told Jamie that he could hold back for everyone else. By the time he settles back into his place in Dallas, he’s finally got it under control. He can grin and touch and even flirt and not have to worry about breaking anyone else in the process.There’s a knock at his door, and Tyler stumbles over discarded shoes and his half-open suitcase. “Coming,” he shouts, kicking at the suitcase, cursing, kicking it again.“I’m sorry,” Jamie says, as soon as Tyler’s swung the door open.“Hello to you, too.” Tyler frowns. “What do you want?” He doesn’t have time for Jamie’s games, for Jamie treating him like he’s dangerous.Jamie shoulders past Tyler and walks inside. “I’m sorry for freaking out. It’s just. What you can do, it’s scary,” he says. “That’s why I can’t, why I can’t get caught up in it, because it’s fucking scary, you in my head, pulling on something in me.”He’s not looking at Tyler, and it makes Tyler burn hot with rage. “Look at me when you’re talking, you fuck,” Tyler says, low and dangerous. “Look at me.”Slowly, Jamie turns around. He meets Tyler’s eyes, unblinking.Tyler’s hands ball into fists at his side. “I told you, it doesn’t -- I’m not putting thoughts in your head. Anything that happens, it was already there, man.”“I know,” Jamie snaps. “I know it’s already there. That’s what I’m fucking afraid of.” He reaches out, takes a step towards Tyler, then thinks better of it and stops.Tyler takes a step closer, too, and Jamie’s outstretched fingers barely graze against Tyler’s stomach. “I told you, I can pull it back for everyone but you,” he says. His eyes are dark and the corners of his lips start to pull back into a smile. “Why do you think it’s like that, man?”“Because of what’s in here.” Jamie presses his hand to his chest, right over his heart.Tyler’s smile gets bigger, all teeth, and he feels Jamie bend towards him. “Everyone but you,” he repeats, eyes wide. His fingers brush across the back of Jamie’s hand, and it’s like lightning surging up his arm. It’s not like they haven’t touched without gear before, but this time, it hits Tyler like a punch and he stumbles back with the force of it.Jamie coughs and turns his hand over, underneath Tyler’s. “Because of what’s in here,” he repeats, and he reaches out to tap Tyler’s chest with his fingers.“Huh,” says Tyler, and his smile settles into something less shark-like, more natural.He doesn’t let go of Jamie’s hand. He won’t.