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The pills slid easily over the wood veneer. Arranged on the desk, they looked like tiny white soldiers marching in formation.
“Zimms, get your ass down here! We gotta go!”
Jack frowned as he swallowed one pill and guided the others back into the bottle. He really didn’t want to go out tonight. Didn’t want to drink shitty beer in a stranger’s basement and laugh at dumb jokes made by wasted teammates. It was their last night before a three-game roadie, though, and he knew how much Kenny wanted to let loose before spending a week crammed into a bus.
On a whim, he picked up the last two pills and dropped them into an empty metal tin behind the desk lamp. He couldn't say why he did it exactly. It couldn't hurt to have a few as a backup stash, right? In case something ever happened. Something important.
He grabbed a fleece off the floor and ran downstairs.
Kent was draped petulantly over the end of the banister. “You’re so slooow, god.”
Kent slid to the floor in mock exasperation, starfishing his arms and legs over the staircase. His snapback caught on the railing, fell, and landed a few feet away from his limp frame.
“Fuck you, man.” Jack rolled his eyes, gripped Kent’s arm and hauled him to his feet. He retrieved the snapback and pushed it down over Kent’s cowlick. He purposefully mussed a hand over his face.
Kent just laughed, leaned in for a sloppy kiss, and led the way outside.
_/ _/ \_ \_
One week, two goals and four assists later, Jack felt wrecked. His right side was a patchwork of yellow and purple from being knocked into the boards in Beauport. His left knee twinged when he bent it. He knew their opponents were gunning for him now that he and Kenny consistently out-scored any other line in the Q, but last week had been rough.
Jack adjusted the ice pack on his knee and scrolled through Sportsnet. He couldn't help scanning for articles about the draft. Speculation had ramped up as the regular season wound down. It probably wasn’t a great decision to binge-read every mediocre commenter spewing opinions on prospects, but - well, whatever.
A new article caught his attention. The lead picture was of him and Kent at a recent game. Jack remembered the moment the picture was taken. They were skating off the ice after second period. Jack had made a lame joke – he couldn’t remember the punchline now for the life of him – and the photographer had caught Kenny’s head thrown back in a laugh and Jack’s eyes locked on Kent in adoration.
He hadn’t known there were cameras.
An invisible belt tightened around Jack’s chest and pinpricks flickered in his peripheral vision. Fuck.
The article was the same as all the rest. Blah blah, top draft picks, blah blah, is the son as good as the father, blah blah fuck his life how was he going to get through June.
Jack reached for the bottle in his pocket before remembering he’d stripped down to his underwear. He rolled sideways over the edge of the bed and rooted through the jeans on the floor. Where was it?
His breath started to constrict, like sucking air through a straw.
He hauled his practice duffel onto the bed, grubbing through musty, unwashed gear. Not there either.
Jack didn’t know why it was getting harder to keep away the panic attacks, but it scared him. He tried to calm himself down, close his eyes and settle his breathing like he read about on the internet. It used to work sometimes, but it wasn’t working now.
There were only two things Jack knew for certain could push away the panic, and Kenny had texted that he was going to bed hours ago. He was down to his only option.
There. On the desk. He crossed the floor and quickly placed one tablet under his tongue. He carefully took two more, retrieved the little metal tin from his duffel, and deposited them shakily with a click of the lid. The action had become almost as routine and calming as taking the pills themselves.
He slumped to the carpet, shoulders and jaw clenched, and waited for the ropes around his body to release.
He just had to get through June.
_/ _/ \_ \_
“Whaddaya wanna do this afternoon?” Kent asked as he pushed a fry into Jack’s open mouth.
They were sitting in the parking lot behind a crappy burger joint. Coach Michaels had given them the afternoon off, a much-needed break from their grueling playoff schedule. The single picnic table sat between a shed and a dumpster, obviously intended for smoke breaks rather than patrons. It was quiet, though, and no one walked back here except the girl who took out the trash.
Jack hummed thoughtfully as he chewed. “You.”
“Ha!” Kent raised a skeptical eyebrow. He scooted back on the wooden tabletop, drinking in the sight of Jack kneeling on the bench in front of him, waist bracketed by Kent’s thighs. “You sure about that?”
“Well, I guess maybe the other way around,” Jack conceded, “But it sounded better that way.”
Kent leaned in for a kiss, licked into Jack’s mouth to taste the salt from his fries. He bit Jack’s bottom lip. It hurt.
“Then let’s get outta here, babe.”
The driveway was empty at Jack’s billet house when they pulled in. They practically fell up the stairs and onto Jack’s twin bed, Kent braced above him. Jack mewled when Kenny stopped kissing his neck and tugged on the waistband of his sweats.
“These. Off.”
Jack did as he was told, kicking his sweats and underwear onto the floor. Kent pushed him onto his back, running his hands under Jack’s shirt and sucking marks into the delicate skin of his abdomen. He reached the bottom of Jack’s torso and licked Jack’s cock once, defiantly.
“Kenny, please–” Jack was so hard it hurt. His vision blurred with the white fog of his arousal.
“You want somethin', Zimms?” He nuzzled Jack’s balls with his nose, looked up expectantly.
“I, euh, um…” They played this game a lot. Jack was pretty sure Kent liked to hear him stammer, liked getting him so turned on that his brain couldn’t form the words of what he wanted Kent to do.
It didn’t matter, though. Kent always supplied the words in the end. “You want me to suck your dick, babe? Want me to finger you and open you up, and fuck you till you come all over?”
Oh, Crisse, yes. That was what he wanted.
He squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breath. He could already feel the fog seeping into his brain, smothering the static until all he could hear and feel was Kent.
“Babe, where’s your lube?” Kent asked, reaching under the bed, feeling around for the bottle that was usually there.
Jack muttered a swear and forced himself to sit up. “I just bought more. Lemme grab it."
He nearly tripped over his own feet as he hoisted himself over to his bag. He zipped open the small side pouch. Kent watched from the bed, idly rubbing his hand over his dick through his sweats.
Wallet, key card, deodorant. Jack rooted through the contents of his bag. His fingers closed over the little metal tin. Huh. He quickly pulled it out and set it behind the desk lamp.
“What was that?” Kent asked, hand still on his dick.
“Hmm what?” Jack replied. His mind was on his fingers, searching for the tube he knew was in here somewhere.
“The tin. You carry it everywhere. What is it?”
“Oh that? It’s nothing. Mints.” Jack fumbled, then pulled a small bottle from the pocket victoriously. “Ta da.”
He crawled back to the bed and slid under Kent, leaning down to find his lips and kiss him tenderly. Kenny obliged, then shifted lower so his face hovered again over Jack’s waiting dick.
“You’re so weird,” Kent murmured as he squeezed a line of thick liquid onto his index finger, “you never eat mints.”
_/ _/ \_ \_
They weren’t mints.
Jack didn’t even think about the little metal tin most days. He never used the pills he stashed away in his tin, not even while he waited for a refill on his prescription.
In his mind he thought of the little metal tin less like a physical object and more like a...like an escape hatch, maybe…or a big red button, with a carefully handwritten label: For Emergencies.
In his mind, he'd placed the big red button in a box inside a drawer on a high shelf behind a locked door. To think about it, his brain would need to unlock the door, reach up to the shelf, slide open the drawer, and unseal the box. Which of course, he never did.
So, instead, he didn’t think about it. Instead, he unthinkingly carried his little tin with his hoarded pills and soothed himself into believing his life was a tiny bit more within his control.
He just had to get through June.
_/ _/ \_ \_
They huddled side by side on the concrete floor of the small balcony, hemmed in by potted plants and a bicycle with two flat tires. In all the time they’d lived in Rimouski, Jack had never seen anyone in Kent’s billet family ride a bike.
Kent gestured emphatically with the vodka bottle. “Just think what it’d be like! We wouldn’t have to fucking hide all the time.” His voice practically vibrated with excitement.
“We can’t just come out, Kenny.” Jack winced at the whine in his voice. They'd had this argument before. Jack didn’t even understand what his own fucked-up sexuality was, not really, and he couldn’t begin to imagine admitting that to a crowd of unsympathetic and probably homophobic adults deciding their future.
“We have the upper hand, Zimms! They’re gonna draft us no matter what. We won the goddamn Memorial Cup. They’re not stupid.”
That was exactly the problem. Jack’s head spun with the thought that, no, they weren’t stupid, and they were going to find out eventually what Jack was trying so hard to keep buried – that he’d been hiding behind the Zimmermann name all along, that he wasn’t good enough for the NHL, even that winning the Memorial Cup had been Kent’s doing and Jack was just a fraud.
Jack glared down at his hands. “Kenny–”
“C’mon, man, you know I’m right.” Kent’s tone soured into annoyance.
When Jack looked over, Kent's eyes were fierce as he stared at a jet trail in the distance. He raised the bottle to his lips.
“Let’s just drop it, okay?” Jack ran his hands through his hair. They’d had such a good day. Private ice time in the morning, then their final team lunch, a lazy afternoon listening to CD’s – he didn’t want to end the day with a fight.
He stood up. “I have to take a piss.”
Kent nodded. His eyes still followed the plane intensely, like he could fuel its flight with the force of his willpower.
On his way back from the bathroom, Jack stopped in Kent’s room and fished through his duffel. He didn’t want this day to end badly. He could make it better. He popped one pill in his mouth and swallowed it with warm grape Powerade. Then he took two pills, pulled out the little metal tin from a side pocket, and stowed them with the others. He arranged them carefully, aware he was running out of space.
By the time he closed the sliding door and sat down next to Kent, he imagined he could feel the fuzzy calmness of the medication taking effect.
He turned sideways and placed his hands on either side of Kent’s legs so his face was inches from Kent’s. He saw hurt in his grey eyes. “I’m- I’m sorry, eh. I know it sucks."
Kent tugged on the strings of Jack's hoodie and frowned. “I don’t wanna lose you, Zimms.”
Make this day better, Jack thought. Don’t let it end badly.
Jack kissed Kent once, then reached behind him for the bottle. He took a long drink and offered it to Kent. When their lips met again, Kent's eyes bulged and he made a surprised noise in the back of his throat. Jack hadn’t swallowed, and their mouths were filled with shared vodka and saliva. It burned all the way to Jack’s stomach.
Bolstered by medication and alcohol and arousal, the lie didn’t even hurt. “You won’t lose me, Kenny. I’m not going anywhere.”
_/ _/ \_ \_
Jack sat on his bed in his parents’ house, scanning the hockey posters and trophies on the walls. His suit and dress shirt hung pressed in a corner, ready for the big day tomorrow.
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow was the draft.
Tomorrow at the Bell Centre in Montreal, he would stand on a stage with Kent and the other NHL hopefuls and watch everything he’d worked for fall apart. He would force a grin when Kent went first, because of course he would, and his parents would fake-smile as teams chose player after player before they chose Jack.
What the fuck was he going to do? Everyone would know him for a fraud.
The invisible hand on his chest started to squeeze. His lungs couldn't get enough air.
What if they didn’t choose him at all? How would he face his dad, his coaches, Kenny?
He leaned forward, head in his hands, eyes pressed shut against his sweaty palms. An image of a big red button flickered in the back of his mind. For Emergencies.
He swallowed down the panic. He could do this. He’d done everything he was supposed to, ten years of youth leagues, two years in the Q. He’d worked harder than anyone. He could do this.
His vision narrowed to a tunnel as his ears began to roar.
Fuck, he couldn’t do this.
Through the surging static in his head, Jack focused on the big red button tucked away in the back of his mind. Shakily, he unlocked a door, reached up on a shelf, slid open a drawer and unsealed a box. Inside the box he found his answer.
It was simple. He knew how to do this. He had known all along.
Jack pulled the little metal tin out of his duffel. He dumped all the pills into his palm, reached under the bed for the vodka he'd smuggled from Kent’s, and pressed a big red button to make the panic stop.