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The Sportsnet notification pops up on Collin’s phone as he’s getting back from the gym, and he nearly drops his phone as it clicks what, exactly, he’s reading. His heart drops into his stomach.
With Thrum, it’d been one thing, and with Oreo, he’d seen it coming, the other man had been placed on waivers, but Eky—
Thankfully, his parents and Justin are out, so he’s able to unpack his car and make it from the driveway to his room with minimal interruption.
It’s a contact he’s memorized by heart, and his heart squeezes as he sees the goofy selfie that Eky had chosen as his contact photo late one night curled up in bed next to him under the sheets, both of them flushed and loopy from the exertion of celebrating a win.
I’m not going to see him again, Collin thinks as he presses the call button, not more than twice a year.
Eky, miraculously, answers on the third ring.
“Graffer—”
“Did you know?” It comes out more accusatory than Collin means, but he can’t find it in himself to care. “Eky, did you know this was happening?”
The other man’s silence for a beat or three is all the confirmation Collin needs.
“I’m sorry,” Eky replies, and Collin immediately feels a slight pang of guilt bone-deep in his gut. It’s not his fault, he knows, it’s the name of the game with professional athletes, and it’s not like Eky and him were anything serious, but—
“You promised,” Collin says, feeling his heart starting to crack. “We said we’d table it, wait til the season was starting back up again, give us a chance to figure it out for real—”
“And I meant it, really, I did,” Eky’s tone saddens, as if he, too, isn’t looking forward to the change from California to Canada. “You know Grier told me he wasn't even thinking of shopping me until this morning, right?”
Somehow, Collin doubts that their GM had meant it, because who wouldn’t want Eky, as crazy talented and competitive as he is?
“I know,” Collin settles on, “I just…we were supposed to have time, to figure this out, to figure us out—”
“We still can,” Eky says, “Graffer, c’mon, you know you matter here too.”
Collin’s laugh is hollow, dark. “Do I?”
“Collin,” and there it is, the use of his first name instead of his nickname to jerk him back to reality. “Don’t be like that.”
“Be like what?” Collin snaps, not trying to play dumb but at the end of his rope. “You know it’s true, Eks, if it were anyone else lined up to play in fucking Ottawa then maybe, maybe things would be fine for me, but—” he hesitates, too scared to say it, too scared to explain that the man who greeted him with a sunny smile and a barrel of enthusiasm to have someone else his own age on the team two springtimes ago has woven his way into his life so seamlessly that he hadn’t even noticed until after Oreo got claimed by the Rangers.
He doesn’t know how to be a Shark without Eky, without the mischief and competitive spirit and gigantic heart that maybe, someday and somehow, Collin had wanted to claim a part of.
(Still wants to, if he’s honest with himself, as if that thought doesn’t completely terrify him.)
“I know,” Eky says, as if he’s reading Collin’s mind over the distance between Massachusetts and wherever he is right now. “But Graffer, come on, you think I want to leave, chose to leave?”
“How do I know you didn’t?”
“San Jose is home, Collin.” Eky’s voice trembles, “Wenny, Felicia, the kids, Toff, whatever Smitty and Mack have going on — you really think I’d leave without figuring out what’s going on there?”
“And me?”
“You’re not just home, Graf,” Eky sounds like he’s about to cry, “you’re everything.”
That lands. “Really?” Collin’s voice comes out softer than he means for it to, and he starts blinking—
“Of course you are, fuck,” Eky speaks gently, “you know who gets it on the team, what it means to have to work to get all the way up to the show for good? That’s you, dumbass, not the kids still growing into the team.”
Collin chokes back a half-laugh, half-sob. “I thought it’d be me,” he says, “sent away because I wasn't good enough for the team, for whatever Grier and Warso want to retool, but you, I’d always thought you were guaranteed—”
“You are good enough,” Eky says, voice stabilizing into something more soothing, “and I am too, I just…I hate this, so much, even if I get to see Zetts again.”
And just like that, Collin feels like he’s been shot. “It’s not gonna, like, be weird to be back with him?”
“Of course not,” and Collin can practically hear Eky’s eye roll. “Yeah, I mean, we both know I had a crush on him, I couldn’t hide that if I wanted to, but he’s already let me down, Graffer. We went over this, when...”
Collin blushes, knowing he’s thinking of the same night back in Chicago, just before the Olympic break. “Yeah.”
They might not have scored, but they scored, so. Semantics.
“So what now?” Collin says, a little dumbly. “Dude, you have to, like, relocate everything from another continent, find a place to stay—”
“It won’t be that bad,” Eky cuts in, “it just…it doesn’t feel real, y’know? I thought, I just…maybe I wouldn’t be a Shark forever, but I thought that I’d be there longer, get through the end of my contract or close to it.”
“Yeah,” Collin lets out a sigh, “this sucks.”
“You’re not even the one that has to move, dude,” Eky grouses, and Collin almost chuckles.
“True.”
“And the cats,” Eky moans, “what are the cats gonna do without me?”
“Be a lot less spoiled,” Collin replies, and that draws a snort out of Eky.
“Over my dead body,” the Swede chirps.
“The cats will miss you,” Collin tells him, the I’ll miss you going unspoken.
“I’m aware.”
“And…” Fuck it, now or never, “what happens? For us, I mean.”
It’s silent for so long that Collin almost assumes the other man had hung up on him.
“Well,” Eky’s voice jolts Collin out of his stupor, “I didn’t want to tell you, not yet, but…” Collin squeezes his eyes shut, braces for the worst. “…I want it to work, even when it’s hard.”
“We can’t.” Collin blurts out, not thinking, then winces. “I mean, not that I don’t think we could, but the distance, the schedules—”
“So?” Eky says, like it’s the easiest thing in the world. “I don’t care if it’s difficult or exhausting, I care that it’s you.”
Collin, ever the pessimist, is ready to fire back. “But the league—”
“Fuck the league!” Eky snaps. “Goddamnit, Graf, when I said you were everything, I meant it. Get that through your head.”
Collin blinks, because someone wanting him, choosing him—
“Okay,” he says, still not fully believing in it, “but you know we’d only see each other like, twice a year, right?”
“I can read a schedule,” Eky quips dryly, “and we can take this, one day at a time, one step at a time. That’s all I’ve planned, because leaving you? I wouldn’t have planned it, not when…” The Swede trails off, and Collin knows that it’s a situation neither quite knows how to navigate, or who to turn to.
“It’s not gonna be easy,” Collin breaks the silence with his words, “I know that, you know that, but how do we know we aren’t gonna regret this?” That you won’t get tired of me, won’t stop texting me like Oreo did, like Thrum stopped calling.
“We don’t,” Eky admits, “but I’d regret not trying more, I think.”
Something inside Collin breaks at that, breaks because he’s seen Eky’s single-minded pursuit of the things he deems worth it, and now he’s on that list—
He sobs, sue him.
“Fuck,” Collin chokes out, “Eky — Wille, I don’t know how to do this without you, man, navigate the locker room, be on the roster. I had Thrum and then Oreo for a bit, but you were always there too, you know?”
“You can,” Wille reassures him, even through his own tearfulness, “you did the ‘Cuda, you did college hockey, this won’t be that different. Plus someone has to be Sharkie’s new best friend and keep the rookies from being scarred for life by Smitty and Mack and help me get to the bottom of Gaudy’s whatever with his wife and her best friend, yeah?”
Collin swallows and dabs at the corners of his eyes — fuck, when had he started crying? “For the last time,” he says, “Gaudy’s not in a polycule, dude, you’re imagining things.”
“Or am I?”
“You’re insufferable,” Collin jokes, and Wille lets out a pleased hum.
“Yeah,” Wille admits, “but I’m yours for the taking, if you’ll have me.”
For a moment, the miles their heart will have to cross vanish, and they’re just two young men with the world ahead of them, Collin pondering the hopefulness in the last four words.
And maybe the SAP without the Swede will be strange, might feel haunted by another turnover, but at this moment? In this glow knowing they both want this?
“Yeah, Wille,” Collin says, “I think I will.”