Status: In Progress

All We Need Is Daylight

If Only He Knew

Frank, practically dripping in his own sweat, and feeling really gross about it, can’t seem to clean himself up enough in the locker room. It’s like Gerard will be able to tell that he’s kind of gross and sweaty. He’s almost tempted to take a shower, but he also doesn’t want to look like he cares that much. He ends up just really coating himself up in deodorant because honestly, he’d rather smell like whatever the fuck arctic fresh is than body odor. There’s a guy in the locker room, and Frank doesn’t know who, but he uses Axe and it makes Frank want to fucking kill someone. Part of him feels like it could be Pete, because he’s the kind of guy who’d do that just to make people uncomfortable.

Frank spends about two minutes just looking in the mirror trying to perfect his hair, because, while he has never cared about his appearance before, he has also never been in close proximity to a guy he likes for extended periods of time before, so he wants to make a good impression. This is future make-believe husband, he’s talking about here, his mother would be very disappointed in him if he didn’t at least put in some effort.

Behind him, there’s the sound of lockers slamming, and then, quite suddenly, a very feminine yelp which comes from Mikey who, being the smart cookie that he is, tried to slam the locker door shut on his hand.

“Ow, shit, motherfucker,” Mikey screams, hopping up and down in place for a couple of seconds while everyone just sort of stares at him and shake their heads, including Frank.

“Nice one, Mikes,” Travie says, giving him a solid nod. A sarcastic one at that, but still.

Mikey shakes his hand, trying to ebb the pain away, while he makes a face, but he goes back to zipping up his bag a moment later.

“Oh my god, Mikey, you’re such a pussy,” Morgan says, because when you’re a dick, you’re job as a dick is to act like a dick whenever the situation arises to show off your dick prowess.

Mikey just shrugs, “well, you are what you eat.”

Pete stops, gives Mikey this look, and then puts his hand on Mikey’s shoulder and says, “I’m proud of you, my son.”

“That’s all I ask of you,” Mikey says, nodding graciously.

Pete turns to Frank a few moments later who’s hair is as perfect as it’s ever going to be, which is to say, a mess. Pete, who could honestly earn himself a record for fastest changing time, doesn’t seem to mind having to wait too long for him, he just kind of rolls with whatever you give him, which Frank admires.

Pete is very happy-go-lucky. He’s also one of a kind. There is most definitely no one else like Pete on this planet. And thank God for that. But Frank likes him, he’s quite fond of the guy. He admires him in a way. Not so much attracted to him as he is just happy to see that someone so pure and joyful can exist.

Morgan huffs, because he can’t deny it when he’s been beaten, but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t spare Frank from the constant abuse his shoulder has received every time this guy has ever walked past him. It really can’t be good for his shoulder either, like surely, he’s got a Frank shaped bruise there, but he’s the one that keeps walking into him.

“You ready to go?” Pete asks, eventually having enough of Frank obsessing over every single strand of hair he has on his head.

“Oh, uh, yeah,” he says, shrugging. He wishes he smelled a little nicer, but that’s not going to happen with this short of a window.

“Right, let’s go!” Pete says, exiting the locker room where Patrick and Gerard are waiting on the other side.

Frank has a moment or two to spare to ask about Patrick before they meet up with him, so he does so, asking simply, “so what’s the deal with Patrick then?”

“What do you mean?” Pete asks.

“Just, like, I mean, is he a friend?” Frank asks, and he doesn’t mean for it to sound slightly sexual but it comes across that way anyway.

Pete blushes and says, “Yeah, yeah! He’s my best friend actually. We met in freshman year.”

“Oh, right, okay,” Frank says.

“And he’s done the hockey section since like middle of that year, so he’s practically a team member now. He comes with us on basically all of our games.”

“Okay, cool,” Frank shrugs. If Pete likes him, he supposes, Patrick must be a good guy. He doesn’t seem like he isn’t, Frank’s just a naturally curious person, and Pete’s acting kind of weird which is just making him confused. Then again Pete acting weird so far just seems to be his personality.

Pete’s got the personality of like a really old dog who hasn’t gotten the memo yet. He’s got a lot of years on him, and probably some semblance of wisdom to match, and yet he’s energetic and excited by everything anyway. Not that Pete’s old, he just gives off the vibe of an older dog.

Gerard, Frank would probably describe as a cat who’s just kind of done with all of that.

They find Pete and Gerard talking by the door, about, comic books, of course. What else? It’s a very one-sided conversation however, as Gerard is using his hands to describe something, and he’s probably not even aware of the fact that he’s speaking out loud, while Patrick just looks back at him like an exasperated mother.

“Hey!” Pete says, “Let’s do this thing.”

“Right, yeah,” Patrick nods, looking slightly nervous. He’s probably not accustomed to such large groups of people, either. Even Frank considers three, not including himself, to be too many people, and he seems to have many things in common with Patrick.

Pete suggests that they head to the dining hall because neither he nor Frank has eaten yet, and the other two shrug without objection. Gerard seems like the kind of guy who eats ramen at least ten times a week, but he also seems like the kind of guy who empties a bottle of siracha on one serving of ramen.

They walk over to the main dining hall, with casual talk filling up the air around them, which unfortunately doesn’t make it any warmer, so Frank has to hold his arms to his chest to try to retain his body heat. It’s getting colder faster as the years go by, and Frank doesn’t know whether to accredit that to the fact that he’s getting older or global climate change. Possibly both.

Patrick isn’t very talkative, but he’s a good listener, or at least, he is when Pete is talking. Pete is usually talking though. Gerard’s rather talkative as well, but Pete is even more so, Gerard has been out trumped when it comes to not shutting the hell up.

“So, what exactly do you need to know about me?” Frank asks Patrick once Pete and Gerard start getting into it about some band they both like, that Frank, astonishingly hasn’t heard of. He’s heard of most bands, or at least, he likes to think he has.

“Nothing too intimate. Just hockey stuff, really. It would be great if you could talk about winning in high school, how many championships did you say you won?”

“Three,” Frank says, “every year after freshman year.”

“Wow,” Patrick says, looking amazing. “Well that’s nothing to sneeze at, is it?”

“No, definitely not,” Frank says, laughing.

“Wow, and you came here?” Patrick asks, looking curious, because why would anyone ever make such a stupid decision?

“I was offered a scholarship I couldn’t refuse,” Frank says. Having a single mother, and also being as poor as they actually are, the mere thought of saying know to a full ride was idiotic. He’s still going to have to pay for the first year at Boston that he’s not going to finish, but that’s still an enormous amount of money that he’ll end up saving. Literally, he could buy a house with the money he’ll save.

“Well, I guess that’s fair,” Patrick nods. “Hey, maybe this’ll be the year we finally win the tournament, huh? We’ve got another Way, we haven’t won it since we had one, maybe our luck will come back.”

“We didn’t win when I got here,” Gerard says, with a scowl.

“Oh, oops, you’re right,” Patrick says, and makes a face which Frank smiles at.

“We have two Way’s now, though,” Pete says. “One on the team, one who bosses us around and calls us names.”

“Mikey may like to insult people, but he’s not bossy,” Gerard says, laughing at his own joke.

Frank smiles, and he looks over at Gerard, who is honestly so pretty by the light of a lamppost. His face is all the more pale than usual, which is saying something, but he seems to practically glow from the light. He’s so fucking pretty, it’s aggravating, how aren’t most of the people on the team gay when they have to look at Gerard so much? Gerard’s just got one of those faces, he’s probably a lot of people’s exceptions, much like Idris Elba, and probably Travie.

“Has Gerard told you about the championship game his dad won?” Patrick asks.

“No, I don’t think he has,” Frank says, even though he’s sure he hasn’t. All he managed to weasel out of Gerard was that he was a legacy, and that’s about it. He knows that they won a championship, the last championship they ever did win, forty years ago, and that Gerard’s father apparently had a lot to do with it, but that’s all he really knows.

“Oh, it’s not that exciting,” Gerard shrugs.

“Not that exciting?” Patrick asks, “that was probably the best game of college hockey ever played.”

“What, really?” Frank asks, now looking curious.

“Nah,” Gerard shrugs.

“Well, I want to hear about it,” Frank says, stuffing his hands into his pockets when they start to go slightly numb from the cold. Unfortunately, it’s not a short walk from here to the dining hall. Frank hasn’t actually been there yet, because his plane got in after he’d already eaten last night, and then he’d had breakfast with Gerard which filled him up until he had a bag of chips. He doesn’t know how good the food is here, but Boston’s was comparable to a high school cafeteria, otherwise known as absolute shit.

“Okay, fine,” Gerard says, “well, really, like we were not the projected winners. We were the fourth seed in regionals, and we somehow won, barely though. Then throughout quarter and semifinals we kept on scraping by, don’t know how the fuck we even got there, right? Because the team wasn’t supposed to even make it into the tournament, because our hockey team had been new at the time, only like two or three years old. But then it got to the championship game, and Minnesota was like easily the best team at the time, right, like they should’ve trampled us. And, they kind of did. At first. So, by the third period we had one goal. That was it. Minnesota had five.”

Five?” Frank asks, incredulous, “you were down by four whole goals? In the last period?”

“I know, it’s insane, right?” Patrick says, looking excited, because apparently, this is his favorite story. He probably has to have a reflection piece every other week in his column about a game like that. Especially when considering how shit the other games he could describe are.

“Well anyway,” Gerard says, “we got a goal in about two or three minutes into the clock in the third period, but like, everyone assumed it was a sinking ship, of course. There was no helping it. And like, that seemed like it’d be true, until the last seven minutes of the game. As my dad tells it, Minnesota had already decided they’d won, so they kind of stopped trying. Because there’s seven minutes left, they’re up by three, there’s no way this measly little team is gonna beat them. Obviously not. So, then my dad gets another goal, ‘cause the other guys are getting lazy, wasn’t even that hard. He scored the first goal and then the third. And then, maybe like two minutes on the clock left, they get another one. At that point we were down by one, four to five. Minnesota still assumed they had it though, because we were down by one, two minutes left, there’s not a chance. We’d already scored three goals in the final period, no way in hell we were gonna get another. That just doesn’t happen. My dad says that there was thirty seconds left. Thirty whole seconds left. That was it. When he scored another goal.”

“Fucking hell,” Frank says.

“Right, so it gets to overtime. My dad’s out there, course he is, he scored three goals. But like, five minutes are up, still no goals. We get to double overtime, right, and we end up still fucking tied. But finally, in triple overtime, not my dad, it was the captain actually, finally scores a goal. And like, it was a huge upset, ‘cause no one expected us to win, we really should’ve lost. It was probably the strangest win that the tournament had ever seen, might even be to this day. But we won, in triple overtime, after one of the longest games the NCAA had ever even seen. It was such a big deal, too, man, like according to my dad, he had the pick of the ladies after that. I don’t doubt it, though, honestly.”

“Holy shit,” Frank says, aghast, because honestly, he would sell the entire left sight of his body to see a game like that in person. Hell, he’d sell his soul and his fucking body to have been Gerard’s dad during that game.

“Fuck, I wish I was there,” Pete says, shaking his head.

“Yeah,” Gerard says, “it was a great game, no doubt about it. It’s just, I’ve lived my entire life in the shadow of that.”

“Oh,” Frank nods, understanding. He supposes it makes sense why he wouldn’t want to talk too much about his dad or that game when you consider that Gerard has no tournament wins under his belt at all. Not in high school, not in college, not as a coach. That’s got to be a little infuriating.

Frank almost feels guilty, having won three of the four big games he’s ever played. He just gulps down whatever comments he’d intended to say, and allows them to walk in silence for a little while more. Or, it would be silence if Pete weren’t there.

They finally reach the dining hall, after what feels like an eight-mile jog, but to be fair, Frank’s feet are incredibly tired and aching after being in skates for so long. The dining hall is connected to the largest dorm on campus, and it looks like pretty much any other college dining hall from the outside, not nearly as big as the one at Boston, but this is also a much smaller school. It’s not as big as most of the ones that Frank looked at when he was touring colleges, though.

Gerard pulls the door open, and then holds it for everyone to walk in before him, and they make their way into the building, relief bubbling in Frank at the warmth that presents itself. It’s not incredibly busy right now, because it’s nearly nine, not exactly rush hour for food. Patrick and Gerard go find a spot near the window to sit and wait while Pete and Patrick grab food.

It is, despite being quite small, an absolutely stunning room. The ceiling above is vaulted, with large windows arraying the walls that look out onto the campus outside. It’s so close to the edge of campus that the windows of the far wall expose a forest that Frank hadn’t even known was there. He makes a note to go explore the grounds around campus at some point, especially since there’s supposed to be a river just a mile down the road. There’s these big, elegant lights in the hall as well, almost chandeliers but not quite as intricate. There’s an exposed brick wall which divides the stations where you get food apart from the tables. The two of them make their way past it, all the while Frank staring in awe at the room around him. He hadn’t been expecting so beautiful an interior considering what the outside had looked like, but he’s being consistently proved wrong about this school. This school has definitely shown itself to be something very different than what Frank was expecting.

Frank has been pleasantly surprised many times so far. He was pleasantly surprised by how beautiful this town is, then by the fact that his roommate is actually one of the coolest dudes ever, then by the fact that Coach likes him, then by the fact that the captain of the team likes him too, then by the fact that he’s actually made what can be construed as friends, and it’s only the second day. What’s more, he’d originally thought Gerard might not have liked him, and now it turns out Gerard actually does, or at least, Frank thinks he does because he doesn’t know too many people who would invite a guy they hate out to breakfast. He wishes Gerard liked him the way Frank likes him, but that’s something way beyond wishful thinking. That’s lunacy.

The only downsides so far have been Morgan and the weather. The weather has been pretty misty, and rainy. Today it was cold, harsh autumnal cold, which is the worst because you’re not expecting it so you never prepare for it, which leaves you colder. Frank doesn’t even have a winter jacket, he packed it along with all of his other things, so it probably won’t even be here for another few days.

And then there’s Morgan. Morgan also has about three or four guys on the team who definitely side with him. Frank had made a note of that earlier in the locker room. When he’d called Morgan a dick, there had been three very distinct faces who did not agree. He’s got to watch out for those guys, not as much as Morgan, but still.

Frank doesn’t fully understand why Morgan resents him so much, though. Frank is a good player, yeah, he’ll admit to it. He outshines most people when he’s on the ice. But Morgan is damn good too, and Frank would even say that they’re almost matched. He wouldn’t even wager that he’s the better of the two of them.

In the dining hall, Frank’s eyes go wide when he sets them for the first time on the pasta bar, which he’s just now decided is now his favorite place in the entire fucking world. There’s about eight different sauces, and Frank makes a note to try all of them. He grabs himself a healthy portion of pasta, probably more than he’d be able to eat if he hadn’t gone without food for so long, and a few slices of garlic bread. Then he has to battle off with Pete when he asks if he’s a vegetarian and then has to hear the “I’ve never seen a hockey player who was a vegetarian before” speech that he’s heard before, and will no doubt hear again.

People like to go on and on about how he’s a sports player who really should get more protein, which usually comes from meat, but he just combats them with “well am I dead? No? Then it looks like I must know what I’m fucking doing.”

He and Pete make their way over to the two, and this time Patrick’s actually talking when they interrupt. Frank hears a snippet of a conversation about a professor that he really likes, whom Gerard must have had before, but he stops abruptly when the two of them sit down.

It’s a small table, one meant for only four people, and Pete takes the seat next to Patrick before Frank can even consider who he’d rather sit next to.

“Did you guys know Frank was a vegetarian?” Pete asks when they sit down, with this look on his face like he’s just heard the most interesting news in the world. Frank’s arm brushes against Gerard as he sits down and he feels like a teenage girl for a moment, when it’s like electricity just to touch. He’s got it fucking bad.

“Yeah, actually,” Gerard says, “he told the waiter at breakfast.”

Frank had forgotten all about that, how he’d told the waiter not to prepare his food with anything that cooked meat, because Gerard hadn’t said anything of it, which is unusual when people hear that. People love to be so concerned about his diet, but Gerard had just brushed it off. Even his mom gives him the stink eye occasionally, usually when she has to prepare him a completely separate meal during Thanksgiving dinner. It makes him smile when he thinks about it, though. It’s tiny, something he probably wouldn’t even notice if it weren’t Gerard, but it’s nice. It’s the little things that count the most, in the end.

“Wait,” Patrick stops, “you two went out for breakfast?”

“Yeah,” Gerard says, and Patrick gives him this glare like he wants more out of him.

“I thought I mentioned that to you earlier,” Pete says.

“No,” Patrick says. “Since when has Gerard ever gotten all buddy-buddy with a fresher?”

“Um, since my brother started here?” Gerard offers. “And my brothers best friend?”

“Okay, but other than them,” Patrick says, and he makes it out to seem like it’s a big deal. Apparently these three are really close friends, though, which makes Frank slightly jealous, because he’s never had friends and also Gerard is his.

“I’m allowed to be nice to people,” Gerard says frowning, and he’s still frowning when he turns to look at Frank who’s in the middle of a less than attractive bite of pasta. He puts his hand over his mouth, slurping up the hanging noodle and hopes that Gerard hadn’t looked at him too hard.

“Right, so Gerard aside, how are you getting along with the rest of the team so far?” Patrick asks. Frank had almost forgotten that Patrick was interviewing him, and then he sees the notebook in front of him, and the interested look he has on his face.

“I think pretty well, or at least I hope so. Well, Morgan hates me…”

“Yeah, but who doesn’t he hate?” Patrick shrugs.

“Yeah, sorry about that though,” Pete says, looking guilty, and Frank doesn’t understand why.

“It’s not your fault,” Frank says.

“It kinda is.”

“What? Why?”

“Oh, man, you don’t know?” Pete asks, and when he receives a look of confusion on Frank’s face, he continues, “Morgan hates you because I like you.”

“What?” Frank asks.

“Well, see, Morgan and I were the alternate cpatains for Lance. And when Lance got injured, the team voted, and I won. It’s a popularity contest, no doubt about that. Morgan and I actually used to, well, I wouldn’t say ‘get along’ exactly, but he didn’t hate me. Like, with Morgan, him not hating you is the best thing you can ask for. But when I was voted in, and since he kind of deserves it more than I do, he just started to resent me. But then you came along and I sided with you pretty early on, and he started hating you because of it.”

“Oh,” Frank nods, and things start to make a little more sense. That would explain a few things. Morgan might have even started to hate him before he even got here. If he was out for the captain gig, and Pete stole that away from him, anything would piss him off about the new situation. It might even be Lance’s fault when you think about it like that. Though really, no one’s to blame. Morgan’s just a dick. It’s Morgan’s own fault for being a dick. Frank says as much and the other three laugh at the idea, because they know it’s true.

“Well, other than Morgan,” Patrick says, stressing his name with a snarl, “how is the team?”

“They’re all pretty nice, I think,” Frank shrugs. “Not the best players in the world, though.”

“Well, I’ve filled two and a half years with almost those exact words,” Patrick says.

“Oh, right, yeah, sorry.”

“So, what would you say was your best moment in high school?”

“Um, I don’t know,” Frank shrugs. “I scored the winning goal in two of our final games.”

“That’s cool,” Patrick says, and then he gets the details from Frank about the games he won. He won one of them at four to two, the next at three to two, and the final one he won seven to three. He also has his face plastered on the entire website for his old high school, and a bench with his name on it.

“I thought they usually named benches after dead people?” Pete says.

“Well, this time they named it after a guy who resurrected the dead,” Gerard says.

Frank blushes. He feels particularly embarrassed whenever Gerard compliments him. It also carries more weight. There’s just something special about him. Frank has this warm feeling in his bones like he’s going to know Gerard for a very long time, which is unfortunate given that it is day two of that very long time and he already has a crush on the guy. Things can only get worse from here, but he can’t help himself.

“What do you hope to bring to the team?” Patrick asks, not even looking up as he continues to write things down.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, I would say that he’s brought unity,” Gerard says, and Frank is going to perpetually be pink if Gerard doesn’t shut his cute fucking mouth up. “Like, so far, people have been kind of hesitant to let him in, but like, he’s doing a good job. Our goal is to bring unity or togetherness into the game, and Frank’s got some good ideas as to how to do that.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Pete agrees, “he’s actually really smart. I want to pick your brain sometime, Frank, because, honestly, I thought I liked hockey.”

“Actually, talk more about that,” Patrick says, addressing Frank. “What makes you like hockey? Or better yet, when did you get into it, how long have you been playing?”

“I’ve been playing hockey since about the time I could walk,” Frank says. “I started skating, well, I started skating because my neighbor, this amazing skater, she was always on the ice. I lived next to a pond growing up, and I would watch her out there, and I got kind of jealous of her, so one day I went out there to watch her and try to mimic her and she sort of just decided to take me under her wing. We started off really slow, her just teaching me how to balance, and then she got me into watching skating on TV with her so I understood the sport, anything really. We’d watch regular hockey games, we never missed the Stanley Cup, and then the grand prix, or the Olympics, you name it. And then, you know, by the time I got to about third or fourth grade I decided to join a peewee team, and she helped me through that too. She was so good to me, honestly, this little kid who was bothering her, she should’ve focused on her own skating, really dedicated herself to her own art, but instead she took me on. She still managed to be the best goddamn skater you ever could see, though, she actually won four gold medals in figure skating.”

“Ew, figure skating,” Gerard says making a face, and Pete nods.

“I fucking hate them twirlers,” Pete says. “They make it hard for anyone to take hockey seriously.”

“I know right,” Gerard says with a groan.

Frank feels like his heart has dropped several stories before crashing to the ground, turning into a pile of smothering ashes. It sucks, obviously, it sucks, to have Ray and Pete think poorly of figure skating, but to have even Gerard hate it? That’s the worst news he possibly could have heard from the guy. Frank loves figure skating with all of his heart, and to have the guy that he likes just blatantly insult it like it’s no big deal, it breaks his heart. Frank just wishes that somebody, anybody, any one, especially in hockey, could accept figure skating. Not having anyone know except his own mother, it’s awful. Even his own neighbor thinks he quit, he just didn’t have the nerve to let anyone know. He still doesn’t.

The thing is, it’s not like figure skating is even a big deal to hockey players. It’s just a sport. It’s just a sport where people skate, it’s not that different from hockey. It’s actually harder than hockey. Hockey players say shit about it for being easy when there’s no way any of them could do any of the stuff a figure skater does. No hockey player could ever do a quadruple lutz. Hell, no hockey player could do a fucking lutz to begin with. And yet they say all these mean things about it like it’s the same thing as coloring in a picture.

Hockey players don’t know shit when it comes to life outside the sport. They don’t understand that other people work just as hard, more even, and yet they’re brushed aside like it’s nothing. Like figure skating is too insignificant to earn even the slightest bit of respect.

Frank’s a better skater than every single one of his teammates, every last one he has or ever will have. He is, inherently so. And it’s because of all the time he’s spent figure skating. He is simply better than them. It also improves his hockey performance, being so good on the ice. A good skater can be bad at hockey, but Frank’s learned how to take the skills from each sport and utilize them in the other.

Frank has grace. He has balance, and flow, and rhythm. He can bring all of those things to hockey. But he also has the thrill of the chase, of the game, of the spectators. He has the rush of a good goal, or the pride in a perfect play. He can bring it to his figure skating, and blow away the world with him. He’s good at both because of the way he allows them to intertwine. They’re like a dance, bringing the aspects of both together like an entirely new, and beautiful creation.

Franks frowns at the thought of Gerard’s words, and of the thoughts of all the other hockey players, and his face visibly shows his disappointment. He just feels attacked, personally so, because they’re saying awful things about something he loves more than almost anything else, and they don’t even care that they’re hurting him. They can’t even know.

“Frank,” Gerard says, “come on, we don’t mean to insult the girl who taught you, or anything. I just really fucking hate figure skating. You’re not a figure skater, so it’s fine, you found yourself an actual skillset.” If he only knew.

“I…” Frank starts, “she worked really hard to get where she is today. Really fucking hard. Harder than you have ever worked.”

“Doing twirls,” Pete adds, with a roll of his eyes.

“And you think that’s easy, do you?” Frank asks. “Could you ever, and I mean ever, land a jump?”

“It’s still stupid,” Pete shrugs.

“But it’s harder than hockey,” Frank replies.

“But hockey has a point,” Gerard says, “you’re on a team, you play a game, you’re actually doing something. Figure skaters just dance around.”

“What’s to stop a figure skater talking the same shit about hockey? It’s just a game after all.”

“It’s a damn good one.”

“But that doesn’t mean that either sport is invalid,” Frank states. “It is perfectly acceptable to like one and not hate on the other. You don’t need to be genius to have the capacity to not be an asshole.”

Patrick, because he doesn’t like it when people argue and he definitely doesn’t like it when people are upset, which Frank most certainly is, interrupts to say, “well, I think I’ve gotten all I really need for that article. Now, if it’s cool with you guys, I eat, sleep, and breathe hockey, or at least it feels like it, so can we talk about something else?”

“What?” Pete asks, looking confused to even find himself in a conversation, like he’d totally forgotten where he was for a moment. It’s not that he’s upset with Frank, he’s just annoyed that Frank would have the nerve to defend something so ridiculous as figure skating.

“Right, yeah,” Gerard says, trying to shake off the tension he feels, which is not quite as easy as he would like. He can see that he really upset Frank, and now he’s cursing to himself because he shouldn’t have said anything. He likes this boy. He gets butterflies when Frank so much as looks his way. Why would he say shit about someone Frank obviously likes? How could he be so stupid? He should’ve dropped it the second Frank got tense.

Obviously, this girl means a lot to Frank. She did teach him how to skate after all. Who wouldn’t care about someone like that? Even if Gerard does hate figure skating, if someone he knew had one four gold medals in any sport, he’d probably snap at anyone who tried to talk shit about them.

It hits Gerard like a bomb, and he knew he’d have to face this one time or another, but he still hates having to think about it. The girl that Frank likes, it’s the girl who taught him to skate. He’s probably in love with her, who wouldn’t be after she taught him how to skate, the thing that Frank wants to spend the rest of his life doing? He’s probably loved her for years, since he was a kid. Even though he knew Frank was straight, the very thought of him having liked a girl for that long completely squashes all of Gerard’s hopes. There’s no way he’d ever like him, not like there ever was a chance, but he had hope. He had the slightest bit of hope. Now it feels like someone’s ripped it out of his hands.

Gerard frowns, and he disengages himself completely from the conversation that sprouts up, he honestly doesn’t even know what it’s about, and he doesn’t care. It’s like he can’t even hear the other guys talking, his own thoughts are too loud for him to hear over.

Frank doesn’t like him. Frank can’t like him. Frank’s a hockey player. Hockey players aren’t allowed to be gay, that’s why Gerard quit hockey in the first place, though he’s never admitted it to anyone. He loved hockey. He still does. But the pressure of being a gay hockey player, it ate him alive. He could even think or breathe anymore without being terrified that someone would find out. Someone would learn his dirty little secret, and he’d be run out of the sport in disgrace. So, he beat everyone to the punch. And he has regretted that decision every single second since.

It's stupid though. Even as a coach, he still can’t tell anyone, still afraid of the danger that’ll arise if he does. But even if people did know, Frank’s still straight. Frank’s still a hockey player, he’s still probably a jerk about people being gay. Besides, Frank’s in love with someone else, a girl, and Gerard is just an absolute idiot who actually thought he stood a chance.
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Honestly, I have to say, I've never had an easier time writing a fic than this one, like this fic is probably the most natural one I've ever written and I'm really happy that people are enjoying it, so thanks so much for reading, it means more than you know.