All We Need Is Daylight

The afternoon rolls by Frank with ferocious speed. It feels like no time at all has passed since he woke up this morning, but here he sits in the locker room, in full hockey gear, even though he knows he’s not going to get a chance to play. Coach is giving the team one of those pregame pep talks, doing her best to single everyone out to tell them what they need to focus on, while Gerard just stands next to her, looking like he’s only half there, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet.

Gerard for some reason has been somewhat distant with Frank ever since they had talked earlier, and for the life of him, Frank can’t tell why. Gerard makes sparring eye contact with a few of the players, mostly his brother. Frank can tell Mikey and Gerard are having one of those telepathic conversations that only family members can have with each other, and he really wishes he knew what the heck it was about.

Even without words, Mikey manages to say to Gerard, “you’re looking at Frank an awful lot for a guy who supposedly doesn’t like him.”

To which Gerard responds with something like, “shut the fuck up.”

And then Mikey says something like, “I’m literally not even talking.”

Their eye contact ends when Gerard huffs and rolls his eyes, which confuses everyone in the room except Mikey and Frank, who are the only two people in the room privy to the conversation. Everyone else just thinks Gerard’s is really disappointed in some sophomore that Frank doesn’t know the name of.

Frank isn’t really listening to coach’s pep talk which is supposed to be encouraging, but to him it’s like a lecture on subatomic particles. He literally couldn’t care less.

Frank’s not really a pep talk kind of guy. He’s a kick in the ass kind of guy. He doesn’t really play hockey as well when someone is trying to encourage him, he honestly does better, and feels better afterwards when someone tells him everything that he’s doing wrong. When he knows what he’s doing wrong, he can fix it. And when someone is an asshole about it, he has way more determination in him to do well, because he’s a spiteful little shit who’s out to prove a point. Gerard gets that, he does that in practice. It’s kind of reverse psychology, in a sense. Gerard might just be doing it to exert power and feel like all high and mighty, but whatever his intent, the results follow, or at least they do for Frank.

Frank plays with his hockey stick, thinking about taping it up some more, because the tape job is pretty sketchy, but it’s just a practice stick he’ll be using for another couple of days, and anyway, he’s not going to actually get the chance to play tonight, and he knows that. It’s probably fair though, not to let the new guy on the ice when he’s never even seen the guys play, and has only even known them for like three days now. That doesn’t mean Frank isn’t jealous.

Frank’s never not played a game before. He’s never sat on the bench for an entire game in his entire life. He sometimes struggles watching a game on the TV or in the stands, because he just feels so tempted to pick up a stick and get on the ice himself. Frank craves it, just watching it. It’s something that he misses while he’s doing it. Frank loves hockey, loves skating, loves being in a game, he loves it all so much, that even while he’s doing it he just wishes that he could do it more. He wishes that he didn’t have to do anything else at all, not school, not homework, not chores, hell, not even eat or sleep. He just wishes that he could be doing hockey all day and all night.

It’s like when you love someone so much that you miss them even while you’re holding them. Frank feels that way about hockey. He can’t imagine ever loving anyone as much as he loves hockey, can’t imagine how it is that other people function in life without it. It just blows his mind that there are some people who just don’t care about hockey, or worse, people who actively dislike it. That’s like hearing someone doesn’t like chocolate. It’s just insane, it’s such a fundamental, enormous thing in Frank’s life that not feeling the same way as he does about it is just completely insane.

Coach finally wraps up her spiel when she checks the clock to see that they’re running really low on time, not like their fans are going to be let down, considering the fact that there’s like six people out in the stands.

“Win or lose team, let’s die trying,” Coach says, as her final words before she gets the three-minute warning, and then leaves her players to ask each other questions about strategy or whatever else, leaving the room with a bit of a buzz. Frank doesn’t know who to talk to, so he just sort of drifts off into space until Gerard steps into his line of vision.

“You nervous?” Gerard asks.

“I’m not going to be on the ice,” Frank says.

“You nervous anyway?”

“Yeah,” Frank nods.

“Good,” Gerard says, “keep you on your toes, nerves will. If you aren’t scared you’re doing something wrong.”

“I don’t want to see my team get beaten,” Frank says.

“Well maybe when you get to play, you’ll be able to help make sure that we don’t.”

“I should hope so,” Frank nods.

It’s already time to get on the ice, and Frank feels even his bones get nervous. He sort of tunes it out, if he’s being entirely honest, he follows the rest of his team out of the locker room, being the last person on the ice except for Ray who’s right behind him. He takes a moment to size up the crowd, but it’s not a very big one. There’s maybe a couple hundred people in attendance. At Boston, there would usually be at least a couple thousand, at their opening game they reached capacity.

Frank stands on the blue line, and waits cordially for a girl to sing the national anthem. She’s about Frank’s age, so he imagines she’s probably in choir here at the school. She’s one of those singers who you can just tell thinks they have the voice of Christina Aguilera, but is really just making weird unnecessary throat noises. Frank doesn’t care though, he’s been through this ordeal enough that he’s basically become immune to bad singing.

She wraps it up, after spending honestly a solid minute longer on the song than is entirely necessary. Frank makes his way over to the bench then, picking out his spot at the end which he’s going to be keeping warm for the next two to three hours.

For the most part, that is all he does. The puck is dropped at the beginning of the game, and then Frank spends a solid half hour feeling embarrassed as his team is scored on.

The announcer takes the time to introduce Frank as the new player on the team when there’s a stoppage of play, Morgan having gotten a penalty for checking a competitor. Frank wouldn’t say he entirely agrees with Morgan’s methods, but his methods aren’t exactly unhelpful.

Frank does look around the crowd some, though, and he sees Patrick, right up against the glass on the opposite side of the rink. He looks at Patrick for a little while, whose head seems to follow Pete rather than the puck. Frank isn’t jealous of Patrick or Pete, he’s jealous of their relationship in general. Still, he think it’s kind of cute that Patrick is watching his boyfriend.

Now that Frank knows about Pete, he feels like he’s got some sort of power, a power that he would never actually use, but a power nonetheless. If all goes to plan, Pete and Patrick will have the same power that Frank does, but he trusts them not to use that power either. Mutually assured destruction. Besides, Pete’s his friend.

Frank’s not in the least bit surprised that Patrick is here though, given that he is the writer of the hockey section in the newspaper. There’s going to be an article on this game in the morning whether they win or not.

Gerard is standing, almost leaning over the board right beside him, but he’s way too focused on the game to so much as give Frank the time of day, and Frank is too, if he’s being honest. He cares more about the game than he does about conversing with Gerard.

The first period drags along slowly compared to the rest of Frank’s day, but it does finally come to an end, which is a well needed break considering how tired and thirsty some of the guys are looking.

Going into the second period, they’re only behind by one. Frank takes his seat back on the bench where he’d been earlier, after an intermission where he’d just stared at the wall of the locker room feeling bored and nervous. The Green Knights score a goal about halfway through the clock, and then Penn State scores another goal, leaving them two to one. Then, of course, the other team scores again about thirty seconds before the end of the period, which makes Frank whimper to himself.

You can be slaughtered, but then there’s watching everyone you love die, followed by yourself in the end. Frank thinks he just might keel over to spare himself the embarrassment of wearing the same jersey as the guys who are all out there fucking things up.

Frank buries his face in his hands when the horn sounds for the end of the period. It’s a relief to at least stop the torture for a little while, though.

Frank follows Pete into the locker room, who’s sweating buckets, as are most of the other guys. Frank feels like a complete tool being all pristine and dry, considering that literally everyone else is soaked to the bone with their own sweat. Even Pete and Morgan have their hair dripping with sweat, even though they haven’t been getting as much ice time as some of the other guys because they don’t have an entire line.

“Oh god,” Pete says, sitting down next to Frank and looking like he’s got an elephant on his chest with how hard he’s trying to catch his breath. “Are we being murdered as viciously as it feels like we are?”

“Yeah, pretty much,” Frank says.

“Fuck,” Pete says, “I thought that was all in my head.”

“I wish it was,” Frank says.

“The game’s not over yet, guys,” Gerard says, trying and failing to inflate the team’s spirits as much as he can, even though no one looks like they even want to hear it. Frank eyes Morgan as he drains an entire bottle of water and then looks around for another bottle of water.

“If God was a merciful person, it would be over,” Mikey says, “to spare us from this embarrassment.”

“Okay, literally, shut the fuck up,” Gerard says, and even an assistant coach probably shouldn’t say that to one of his players, but they’re brothers so no one really blinks twice at it. “Just because we’re behind doesn’t mean we can’t bring it back, guys. We just need to tie it up. We’ll have them in the bag if we can bring this to overtime, and you all know it.”

“Gerard, your optimism is cute,” Ray says.

“Oh, screw all of you,” Gerard shakes his head. “And I mean that in a loving way, truly. Just try your best… and hope for a miracle.” Gerard’s pep talk fizzles out just like that, and Frank dreads their three-minute warning which comes too soon.

They go into the third period three goals behind, which is a lot of goals to make up for in only twenty minutes, and it’s also pretty much impossible for a team like this against a team like that.

Nevertheless though, they do score one goal in the first five minutes, only for the following ten minutes to go by with no event, good or bad.

Frank’s got to hand it to Ray that he is a good goaltender. He’s blocking far more shots than the other team’s goalie, whose job is quite a bit easier than Ray’s. Of course, Ray wouldn’t need to be such a good goaltender if his team could keep the puck on the other fucking side of the rink.

The minute’s tick by until Frank is staring above him at a huge number three. Three minutes left on the clock is not enough time for two goals. It’s possible for a better team than them, but this is the team that they have to work with.

Frank watches Gerard’s fingers, white as a sheet of paper against the boards as he digs his nails furiously into the wall in anxiety. Frank has never seen such an emotional reaction to hockey before, because even his coach at Boston wasn’t this invested. Gerard’s got so much more to win and to lose than anyone else Frank has ever met.

It becomes clear that as their team is slowly dwindling out of force, their hopes are ebbing away with each passing second. Frank can hardly watch it. If this were a game he was watching on a TV, he’d change the channel right about now, because there’s no hope.

The clock hits the two-minute mark and that’s when all of Frank’s hopes completely wash away, much like a bathtub being drained of water. Frank can see the gears turning in Gerard’s head, and can tell about a split second beforehand that he’s about to make a rash move.

“Oh, fuck it,” Gerard exasperates, and he shouts over the board at Ray, gesturing furiously for him to get off the ice.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Frank asks, exasperated.

“Get out there!” Gerard screams at him in response. Hockey is a very fast paced sport, so fast that even the players are sometimes out of the loop as to what’s going on, but you have to take everything head on as if you know what is going on.

Usually, Frank wouldn’t need someone to tell him to get on the ice, because when you’re part of a line, you know when to change because the line is in charge of changes, not the coaches. It depends on what period of the game you’re in, but there’s a pretty general amount of time that each line spends on the ice. It’s a very short time too, and a line change happens on the fly, meaning that the clock does not stop for players to switch out. It’s all done with lightning quick precision, and both the players on the ice and the players that are changing with them know when the change is going to happen well before it ever even does happen.

Now, is not the case, as Frank wasn’t actually supposed to get on the ice today. He’s not even part of a line. You don’t send out a player onto the ice who’s not a part of a line, that’s insane, and suicidal.

Frank has about a fraction of a second, probably not even that much time, to figure out exactly what Gerard’s thinking. All decisions in hockey are about that quick, some shorter, because it’s an incredibly fast paced sport, considering how quick the puck is, and how fast a skate is. It’s a lot faster than soccer, which is similar in play, but not in pace.

There’s only two minutes left on the clock, and they’re down by two goals, which is not an ideal place to be. An empty netter, otherwise known as pulling the goalie, is a last resort made only for situations like this. An empty net is exactly what it sounds like, it’s when the goaltender is taken off of the net and substituted for an extra attacker.

In this case, Frank has either pulled the short straw, or gotten really fucking lucky, because he’s on the ice within no less than a second of thought between Gerard’s words. In hockey, even if you don’t understand what’s going on, you have to fucking roll with it. You either roll with the punches or you get out of the fucking way.

Frank immediately rushes to the offensive side of the rink, and blocks an opposing player from getting handle of the puck. It only takes a couple of seconds before Frank has possession of the puck, and it’s exhilarating to finally be in a game, since it feels like it’s been forever. He was in a game just last week, but it was an entirely different team which makes it feel like it’s been years.

Frank passes the puck to Pete, who in turn passes it to Morgan, who passes it to the other forward whom Frank doesn’t know well, but he knows is named Trystan. They pass the puck around a few more times, no good shot ever becoming available though, and eventually it gets taken by the other team. The other team tries to bring the play to the empty net on the Green Knight’s side, but Pete intercepts a play, passing control to Morgan again. Frank understands that Morgan is on his side, but he’s somewhat surprised when Morgan passes him the puck.

The goal isn’t too far, and if you squint, there’s a possible goal there. It’s not a probable goal, but he should take a shot at it anyway. Frank panics, and he passes it to Trystan.

Frank feels like an idiot, practically feels ashamed, at the fact that he panicked. He’s never panicked like that before. He doesn’t know what could possibly have made him panic like that. He wants to curse himself out, but he doesn’t have time for that. There’s only about a minute left on the clock, and he needs to be completely here, not in his own head.

Frank watches as the puck gets intercepted by the other team and a player, number 31, makes his way towards the defending zone. Frank loses his shit, and skates after the guy with intent and an insane amount of skill. Frank manages to backcheck number 31, stealing the puck from him with ease. He swipes the puck back to the other side of the rink and then chases after it. Morgan gets possession, bounces the puck off the board to Pete who passes the puck to Frank, and Frank sees his opening.

Frank doesn’t think about it, doesn’t allow himself even the amount of time he would need to panic, and he just shoots. It’s kind of a blind shot, grasping at straws, aimed at the general area around the net. Lucky shot or not, though, Frank feels his heart fly up into his throat when the puck flies straight into the net, through the knees of the goaltender.

He stops and stares in disbelief at the goal, not even entirely sure if it just happened, but Pete is rushing up to him and attacking him in a hug before Frank can even come to terms with what’s happened. That’s the thing about hockey, everything happens so fast that you’ve only got seconds between anything, so you’ve got try to sort things out at about the speed of sound.

Pete pulls off of him after a second, and the two of them head towards the bench, Morgan and Trystan not long to follow. A goal is an ideal time for a line change, because it’s a stop of play. A hockey shift, which is the time you spend on the ice before being relieved by another line, is usually only about forty seconds to a minute, due to how physically active and draining it is. Frank climbs over the boards and then takes a seat where he’d been earlier, still not entirely sure he just got a goal. It’s one of those numb feeling where he knows he’s feeling something but he’s not entirely sure what.

They’re still a goal behind, and only forty seconds left on the clock, which means there’s almost no way in hell that they can win, but being down by one is a very different thing to being down by two.

The play continues at the center line a few moments later, after the referee confirms the goal. Frank is patted on the back a few times, he’s not sure by who, he just feels it.

“Frank, I could bloody kiss you right now,” Gerard says, not even taking the time to look at him as he says it, too focused on the game. Frank blushes, even though he knows he’s just saying that because he’s thankful they got a goal. That doesn’t mean Frank isn’t effected by the words. He feels a little giddy.

Frank thinks to himself that he might honestly be more emotionally thrilled to have Gerard say he could kiss him than getting an actual goal. What the fuck is wrong with him?

Part of him thinks that it’s just because he’s in disbelief. He’s literally never done anything like that before. Sure, he’s made goals, he makes them all the time, during games and during practices. But never has he gotten a goal after spending literally a grand total of a minute and five seconds on the ice. That’s just never happened before. Not to him at least. How is he ever going to live up this in the future?

There’s just twenty seconds left on the clock, and it ticks down quickly. If you were to blink, you’d miss the end of the game, which comes fast and with no other goals to put under the Green Knight’s belt. Frank isn’t surprised, not in the least. Sure, maybe very deep in the back of his mind he had been hoping that they’d score another goal, it’s not like it’s never happened before, but it would be a first for this team. The fastest consecutive goals this team has ever had was twenty-two seconds, and that was back in the nineties.

Nevertheless, the team all look a lot happier about only being beaten by one, because one goal is about a mountain less than two. The opposing team congratulate themselves, flood onto the ice, while the Green Knights look overwhelmingly dejected. Depressed, but not nearly as depressed as they’d be if they lost by two.

The arena of people around them look especially somber, which is always the case at home games. Frank can tell that they’d all had a little too much hope after Frank had scored that goal, which for a fan is a bigger deal than for the team itself. For a fan, you get your hopes up, because they’ve scored one goal, why can’t they get another? But when you’re on the team, one goal is pretty much the aim, and you’re happy with that much. Baseless hoping won’t get you any further.

A lot of faces do look Frank’s way, which he’s definitely not a stranger to, he’s used to being the star of the game. He wouldn’t exactly say he was a star today, but he did have his moment.

The announcers voice around the entire room is talking about Frank’s goal, which definitely would not be such a topic of conversation if Frank weren’t both the new guy and had only had a minute of ice time.

With the final score at three to four, Frank feels at least slightly prouder of his team than he would if they’d lost two to four.

Pete makes his way over to Frank, almost stepping on a few toes to get there. Everyone else starts piling back into the locker room, with their backs slumped downward along with their faces.

“I can’t fucking believe how awesome that goal was!” Pete exasperates when he’s within ear shot, and a few of the players who don’t like Frank so much roll their eyes. Frank chooses to ignore them, and instead focus his attention on Pete.

“Yeah, it wasn’t too bad,” Frank shrugs.

“Too bad?” Pete asks, “that was fucking awesome!”

“We still lost,” Frank points out.

“Yeah, well, you win some, you lose some. It’s just a game, you know.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Frank says. Frank acknowledges that hockey is just a game, but he doesn’t see it that way. Hockey is his entire life. But at the same time, he understands that it is just a game, and especially singular games are just games. Frank likes winning though. He’s not entirely competitive but he’s also not very used to losing which might explain a few things.

The team file out through the door, Frank making a sort of grimace at the other team who are still celebrating, even though he’s been that team for most of his life. He’s been the winning team celebrating and skating around the ice. He’s not used to being the one who’s got to walk away in shame.

Frank, like he does with the pregame pep talk, tunes out the aftergame one too. He’s aware that Coach congratulates him in particular, but he doesn’t care. Frank feels kind of fuzzy and muddled. He’s got a whole mixture of emotions, it feels like a current of heat mixing with cold.

He doesn’t like losing. This is the first game he’s lost in a while, considering that he hasn’t played since last May when his school’s hockey season finished. Even then, he hadn’t lost a game in about two months. So, it’s been over half a year since Frank lost a hockey game, and it’s not a pleasant feeling. It stings quite a bit more than he remembered. Possibly because he feels like he let Gerard down. This is how Gerard has felt after every game for like a solid five years in a row. That’s gotta fucking hurt.

When she finishes, Frank starts to peel his clothes off of him. He didn’t play that long, but he really worked up a sweat watching his team get pummeled. It’s quite a harrowing experience.

“I cannot get over that goal, Frank,” Pete says, shaking his head. “That was insane. Your first minute on the team and you’ve already got a goal. You’re going to be our secret weapon! Well, maybe not so secret if you play like that, but you know what I mean.”

“They knew they were winning, their defenses were down, that’s all,” Frank says, being all humble and embarrassed because he doesn’t know how he feels about the goal.

He actually thinks he might be more anxious than proud, because now, everyone’s going to come to expect so much from him. He made a goal in his first minute on the ice, how is the team going to react when he can’t replicate that? He’s gotten goals that quickly before, but never the first goal he’s ever made on a team. Frank’s only ever been on three teams unless you count his peewee team which he does not. He did once get a goal less than thirty seconds into the game, but that was a long time ago and his team actually did lose that game.

“Don’t sell yourself short, dude,” Pete says, “that was fucking awesome. Even Morgan will admit it.”

Frank makes a skeptical face and he peers over at Morgan who’s got his face in a snarl, and doesn’t look happy to have words put in his mouth.

“Beginners luck,” Morgan says.

Frank would love to let it go and just move on, because really, he doesn’t want to sell himself up too high for him to achieve, but on the other hand, he just really fucking hates Morgan.

“I have been playing hockey for like fifteen years. I wouldn’t exactly call it beginners luck,” Frank snaps back.

“Is that what you call what you were doing out there? Hockey?” Morgan retorts, and Frank’s eyes narrow, and his nose wrinkles a little too, the universal sign for ‘I fucking hate you.’

Pete steps between the two of them, both figuratively and literally and says, “so what’s your take on that time that the entire basketball team decided to alienate Troy for auditioning for a musical? Pretty fucked up, right?” Because that’s just Pete’s personality.

“What?” Frank asks.

“Just that whole number, Status Quo, that’s a pretty whack song.”

“Pete, you’re such a special snowflake,” Mikey says from behind him and Pete turns back to give him this big toothy grin that honestly describes his personality perfectly.

“I think the musical was a metaphor,” Pete says. “A metaphor for masculinity and femininity. Troy was a figure meant to demonstrate the fluidity between the two, and his teammates were a metaphor for assholes.”

Frank nods, and then just shakes his head. He’s awfully happy to have someone like Pete in his life, who is just so very much who he is.

Frank finishes changing into his street clothes, and decides to leave the locker room as quick as he can. It’s not that he doesn’t want to hang and chat with Pete for a little while longer, because he does, he just wants to get away from Morgan. Morgan scares him. It’s in his eyebrows. His eyebrows scream Disney villain to him.

Gerard happens to be standing outside of the locker room when Frank leaves. He’s doing that thing where he’s pretending to be texting on his phone but it’s clear he’s actually not. Frank doesn’t say anything, because when someone is pretending to do something, you pretend to go along with it to spare you both from embarrassment.

“Hey, Frank!” Gerard says, looking up animatedly and putting his phone away at the sight of him. It seems an awful lot like Gerard had been waiting for him. Probably because Gerard had been waiting for him.

“Hi,” Frank says, and he tries not to look at Gerard because looking at Gerard is like looking at the sun or at Chip Skylark’s mouth. He’s just so bright.

“That was a really great game today, don’t you think?”

“I mean, it was alright, I guess.”

“You know, you played amazingly well,” Gerard says, and he starts to walk with Frank whose headed towards the door. The team didn’t win so there’s no reason to celebrate, so Frank’s just going to go back to his dorm and eat an entire bag of Doritos.

“I was only out there for like a minute,” Frank says.

“I know,” Gerard nods, “And it was the best minute in the whole game.”

“We still lost.”

“By one point,” Gerard says, and he opens the door for Frank, who walks through it, being hit in the face with the cold air which came about all too suddenly. It hints at the inevitability of winter which is just around the corner.

“Which is still a loss,” Frank replies.

“You don’t lose a lot, do you?”

“Not particularly.”

“Lucky bastard,” Gerard laughs. “Maybe your luck will rub off on the guys.”

“Why did you let me out there, by the way? You said you didn’t want me out there until I assimilated into the team.”

“I did say that,” Gerard nods.

“So then why did you let me play?”

“Because we had nothing to lose at that point,” Gerard shrugs. “You handled it well. Didn’t question me or anything, you just went out there. You are very good under pressure, that’s an admirable thing.”

“Hockey moves at the speed of light,” Frank shrugs, “You gotta be prepared for anything.”

“You’re fucking amazing, you know that?” Gerard says, looking at Frank and actually looking ecstatic to be doing so. Gerard actually feels excited to be in his presence. It’s like he’s in the company of a celebrity. He’s sure that he technically is, Frank’s just not one yet. But in like five years, he’ll be in the NHL and that’ll be that.

Every time Gerard sees Frank it’s like watching a slow-motion movie scene where someone is running and the sunlight is on their face, and their wind is blowing. Kind of like Baywatch only with a splash of Dirty Dancing. Gerard just really likes Frank’s face. And his personality. Gerard likes Frank.

“You never seem to stop saying that to me,” Frank says, blushing, but it’s cold out so he thinks that the weather covers that up.

“Well what does that tell you?” Gerard says, and Frank could swear that if he were a girl, that would be flirting. Even though he’s not a girl, that’s still clearly flirting, like you can’t get past that. If only Frank wasn’t a fucking idiot.

“Oh boy, it’s going to be a long four years,” Frank sighs, mostly to himself, but Gerard laughs at his words anyway.

“But we’re finally going to turn this crap team around,” Gerard says, grinning. “Just you wait, Frank. Just you wait and see.”