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Well, at least it wasn't a blowout.
They've had worse starts to seasons. Leon's personally had worse starts to seasons. They're winning more than they're losing. It just so happens that the Kings are winning more than they're losing by a larger amount.
Kind of rude that the Kings won two Cups in three years, fell off, were shit for multiple seasons in a row, lottery-drafted one bright young kid, and got good again in a shorter time than it took the Oilers to make the playoffs even once, but it's whatever. It's fine. Good for them.
Leon's hair is still damp when he pulls his car around out back from the Rogers Place staff parking. Anže's where he usually is, thankfully free from autograph-seekers today, hands tucked under his arms and shoulders up to his ears in just a navy suit. Looming and well-dressed and out of place on the curb under the well-lit concrete overhang on the corner, he looks like a businessman waiting for a ride to escape after-work drinks.
"It's freezing," Anže gripes as soon as he pulls open the passenger side door.
"This is warm," Leon bitches as Anže buckles up. "It's still summer here." He flips the light and pulls away from the curb. "You're just soft from California winters."
"It's true," Anže smiles faintly, huddling down in his seat. "You don't ever go back."
Leon navigates out onto the road while Anže fiddles with the seat heaters. "Shouldn't you be getting out of here tonight? How long are you in town?"
"No game until the day after, back home," Anže shrugs. "Your club doesn't let you see the sights on the road?"
"Eh." Maybe in Miami. Or Vegas. If the Kings wanted to spend three days in the mall, sure.
"But no curfew tonight?"
"No skate in the morning," Leon says. "Well, optional." They've been having more of those lately. Leon doesn't say he thinks it may be because of him, more optional skates, so it doesn't look as bad when he misses days now. He's missed a few.
"Well then, let's have some fun," Anže says cheerfully, which is a funny way to say going back to Leon's and passing out more or less, but then Anže's getting old, maybe that is fun to him.
The avoid the worst of the traffic by going down the side roads, which is a few more twists and turns, but mostly quiet and pretty clear during this time of year. Anže spends most of the drive peacefully watching the white-LED-lit traffic barriers turn into old yellow brick housefronts passing by out the window. Leon wonders idly if he knows the way by now, or if he'd have to let Uber take care of it.
Leon turns in to the driveway behind his townhouse when they get there, all dark except the single lamp in the curtained front window. After the heavy glare of the arena lights and the glint of the ice, and the blare of the crowd and the horn all evening, it's always a little surreal going out into the suburbs at night, like you start to become invisible in some way. Leon remembers more than sees his way up the concrete path and couple of steps to the front door. Anže follows quietly, hands in his pockets, as Leon turns the key in the lock and punches in the security code. He steps inside after him as Leon nudges off his loafers and flicks the light switches on in the hallway, the living room, the kitchen.
Leon drops his stuff off on the kitchen island. He checks to see what beer he's got in the fridge. Not much.
"Any preference?" he calls over his shoulder.
Anže's taken off his shoes and made his way to the couch, settling gracefully on it like he's trying not to crush the cushions. "No, I'll have what you have."
Leon eyes the wineglasses on the shelf above the counter skeptically, and wonders if that's kind of too celebratory. Anže isn't going to apologize for his guy getting his first career hatty against Leon's team. He didn't apologize for his d-man throwing a knee on Leon's captain either.
Leon reaches for the whiskey glasses.
Anže accepts his drink gratefully. He looks a bit tired, but he always does, and he always looks great anyways, always a little sea-bronzed, scruffy in a way that doesn't ever seem to look unkempt like Leon does after he goes a little while without shaving. Leon stretches out on the couch opposite and takes a double swig from his glass.
Anže swishes his drink a little, gesturing towards the wall with it. "That's new."
Leon glances back over his shoulder. Anže's looking at the big canvas painting on the wall across from Leon's old framed print of the Kölner Dom — a pastel wash of a warm sunset on beach.
"Got it a few months ago," Leon says. His mom had seen it and liked it at an Oilers charity auction last time she visited. It looked a little like the view of the shore from his house in Mallorca.
"It's nice." Anže sips, gazing at it. "You don't spend the summers here."
Leon snorts. "No. It's not bad," he adds hastily, because it is nice when he's around during the summer, and he feels the need to defend the city, somehow. "It's just too much time away from family. You know."
"Hmm," Anže agrees. Leon knows he still spends the summers in Slovenia. "You still train in Prague?"
"Eh, sometimes."
"Haven't been sold yet on the gospel of Gary Roberts?"
Leon grimaces. "Ah... Connor's tried."
"Is that so. The kid must be fast enough to be two places at once," Anže grins, "Or wasn't that him down in LA last summer trying to — " he makes a gesture like c'mere, c'mere, " — our guys, the free agents?"
Leon feels his face do something he isn't sure he means it to, and he turns it into a little scrunch of the nose. "Nah."
"No?"
"We don't want your guys," Leon says.
"You don't think so?"
"Don't need 'em."
"So then what was — ?"
"He was probably just stopping over on his way to Scottsdale, they've got good guys there."
"Ouch, I see how it is."
Leon smiles, and it sits odd on his face again no matter what he does, so he just ducks and takes another long sip from his glass.
Anže considers. "Connor spends a lot of time down in Arizona, yeah? Offseason."
Leon wants to say that Connor spends a lot of time anywhere other than here in offseason, same as they all do. Who could blame him? It's a long season. And Connor likes skating, like he has to return to the ice before too long or he goes crazy, sullen and snappy; and he likes places where he can skate mostly unnoticed. Leon knows he supposedly had something lined up in case of lockout, something in the Finnish Liiga, but it fell through and he won't talk about it.
Leon skates with the Haie in Köln during the summer. He'd have played games during the pause a couple years back, too, if they could've sorted out the insurance. There's photos of him buried somewhere on Twitter in the red Haie practice jersey, big grin, circling the wide open ice he'd grown up on. So what about the articles and clips and blog posts and photos of Connor at the Ice Den with half his gear sporting Oilers logos and half of it plain CCM, Connor trying out his new skates and new gloves and new sticks, Connor and Matthews and half the league following them around, whatever.
"I spend a lot of time in Spain," Leon says instead, and immediately knows the response came out more petulantly than he meant because Anže has to hold back a laugh.
"You don't like your captain fraternizing with the enemy?" Anže says.
Leon splutters. "What's your team think about what you're doing now?"
"I'm old and settled, the media never has questions about where I wanna be."
"Don't tell me you think I should seriously care about that."
"Well, I don't know, I can't tell you what you should care about, I've never had to deal with things up here," Anže waves a hand, clearly indicating all of Edmonton.
Leon needs this whiskey to work faster. "Fuck you, how long's it been since they bothered you about anything?" he scoffs, not even a real question. Not since they made Anže captain, probably. Probably before. Not since the Kings won. Twice, in three years.
"They only bother you if you let them," Anže says. "Why let them? I don't."
Canadian media hasn't caught up yet, still not out of material speculating about the emotional state of the Oilers' big Canadian star, but German media's been asking questions, every time they go on a losing streak. Every time they fizzle out in post-season.
The Kings won the year Leon was drafted. Anže was his age now, then. He'd been a champion for the second time in his life that summer, and Leon had gone to Edmonton two weeks later.
Now that Leon's mostly figured out his game, he realizes he doesn't think he'll ever be like Anže. The media stopped calling him the next Kopitar a while ago and started calling him the next Malkin, which isn't bad by any means. But Leon will win a Lady Byng before he wins a Selke maybe, let alone two.
And he doesn't have a Cup. That either.
"Did you ever worry?" Leon asks before he can think better.
Anže doesn't ask him to explain. "Never," he says, sitting back.
Anže was the first Slovene to ever play in the National Hockey League. Leon's not even the first German, though maybe he was the first one to make the league nervous.
Leon finishes his drink with a face and thinks for a second about just showing Anže the guest room and falling into his own bed and blacking out, but then again how often does he get the opportunity to really get fucked in his own home during the season. Not often enough.
So he goes and puts his glass down on the coffee table and slings his leg over the arm of the chair and climbs onto Anže's lap and kisses him, hand steadying Anže's glass so it doesn't spill between them.
He tastes like the whiskey and smells like shampoo and winter air a little, most everything washed away in the post-game shower, mostly the same as Leon imagines he himself does. But his mouth is hot and soft, jaw scratchy on Leon's own, the rest of his body solid, cool layers of clothing crushed between them.
Anže's a steady kisser, patient. He always was. The first time Leon had kissed him, most of the girls and boys Leon had been used to kissing were still either too sloppy and enthusiastic or too stiff and awkward. Leon remembers learning that a good pace should be frustrating: in a nice way, enough to feed anticipation without rushing.
Anže's hands have weight more than they have motion, touch leisurely, one light on the small of Leon's back, the other sliding across his hip and into his waistband. Leon shifts in, and Anže slips his hands under the curve of his ass, stretching the elastic of his briefs.
Anže makes a sound. "You're heavy."
"I'm lighter than I was the last time we did this," Leon immediately says, because it's true, between playoffs and post-playoffs rehab he hadn't been able to put on as much muscle over the summer as he'd have liked.
Anže holds up one hand in surrender, other hand still rubbing a soothing circle into Leon's thigh. After a moment Leon adds, grumpily, "It's my ankle." He can't get any leverage at this angle, it makes his leg throb right up to the knee.
Anže makes a humming sound. Maybe Leon only imagines that it sounds a bit guilty, but he immediately feels satisfied despite himself. "Bed?"
Leon manages to slide back and off Anže's lap. He drags Anže up clumsily by the sleeve as he kicks the trousers off, half inside-out and trampled into the rug. By this point he's too stiff and aching in his trousers to really walk the two of them anywhere, but Leon's not about to be limping around bare-legged alone, so he fumbles Anže's belt open and zipper down before letting go and continuing up the stairs. Anže muffles a laugh, and Leon hears the clink of him trying to keep the trousers up behind him, and then trying to ease them off without falling over instead.
Leon's gotten most his buttons off himself by the top of the stairs, so he gets to his room and strips the covering off the bed. He falls into it with an oof, one leg up, one dangling off the edge.
"Very graceful," Anže says, appearing in the doorway.
Leon doesn't move, just beckons him over with a wave of the hand. And then, when he feels Anže close enough to knock the inside of his knee with his leg, Leon catches the hem of his shirt.
Down he goes, slow, careful with his weight, which is nice but isn't worth much because then Leon loops his arms around his neck and throws them both off balance with a huff. Pressed up against him, Leon can feel Anže's hard-on through his boxers. He wiggles his hips a little, urgent. Anže's big palms work their way over Leon's belly, over exposed skin, gentle after a night of having his muscles abused into a continuous bruise. He grinds down a little, threads his fingers through Leon's hair, and kisses him into the mattress.
They make out in this hazy, mindless way for a while, and it's nice, it's good to not think, it's good to just move and breathe. Leon gasps when Anže runs his thumb along the length of his cock through the cotton of his briefs, digging in to tease around at the head. Leon reaches over to clumsily pull his bedside drawer open, and then he doesn't feel like getting up off the bed so he lets Anže reach over to rummage and grab the lube and condoms out while Leon pinches his hip impatiently.
"Okay?" Anže says when he's ready.
"Yeah." It comes out drowsier than he was expecting. Leon's hiked-up knee is twitching. Maybe a little from exhaustion, but he's not going to tell Anže to stop.
Anže snorts, noticing, and prods Leon over on the bed, rolling him over on his side and scooting up behind him. "Well, let's have mercy on my back," he says.
"Sure," Leon says, like the pads of Anže's fingers aren't buried halfway into his asscrack. Anže slings Leon's leg up gently towards his chest and presses in deeper, fingertip wet and pressure blunt at his sensitive entrance, until he slips in, a familiar fullness, then back out, and then pressing in deeper to the knuckle, until it feels like a stretch when Leon clenches down.
When he reaches behind him and touches Anže's wrist, Anže doesn't stop; when he reaches further and slides his hand into Anže's boxers, Anže lets him; when he tries to jack Anže off and nearly wrenches his elbow at the angle, Anže laughs and withdraws his fingers abruptly, drawing a small shiver along the way, to fiddle with the condom wrapper.
Leon exhales when he feels Anže line up his cock.
He's maybe a little too tight for this still, and he feels the stretch when Anže starts to fuck in. He sucks in a breath, hisses, exhales again, tensing involuntarily.
"All right?" Anže sounds out of breath, too.
"Mmh," Leon mumbles shakily, and Anže gets the message, going slower, withdrawing a little and fucking in again, increments. His hand comes up under Leon's ribcage, gentle, rubbing lightly, thumb on his nipple. Leon's going to feel it less nicely tomorrow, but for now it's perfect, pinned back against Anže's solid body.
It's good. It's hot, and Leon feels light-headed, relaxed, skin tingling, cheek pressed against the pillow and fingers digging into the sheets, half-asleep. He wonders if he can doze off getting fucked. He contemplates passing out like this, just letting Anže continue. He thinks about something Connor told him once about passing out after losses. Wins? Different story. Losses? Nothing worth remembering, nothing worth mulling over.
Like this, loose and pinned open, every movement sends a hot wave down his spine, stretch and friction building. Anže's hand travels down to circle his cock lightly. He keeps on grinding into the sweet spot inside Leon that makes him clench up from the elbows to the toes, and Leon flinches at his touch, taut like a wire. It's almost enough, just — "Fuck," he bites, and grabs Anže's hand to tighten the stroke, grinding down.
They rock back and forth like that, losing rhythm gradually, Leon's thighs burning, hips bucking involuntarily. When he comes it hits him all at once, like a whole body sensation, a pulsing tide rolling through that has him open-mouthed and shuddering into the sheets. Anže gently fucks him through it until he's wrung out, weightless, nothing but the warm feeling of Anže in him keeping him grounded.
Anže laughs and grinds in lazily a few more times without any particular pattern, but it's a little too much then and he seems to know it, so he gently slips out, discards the condom, and then he's coming, hot and wet, onto Leon's back.
The bed is a disaster, a big damp spot of sweat and come. After catching his breath Leon kicks the covering half off and over the side, letting them both dry off in the open air. He glances over at Anže, who is running his knuckles affectionately over Leon's bicep, head propped up on his arm.
"Ok?" Anže asks.
"Yeah," Leon says. "Good." It always is. He'd wondered for a while if it was some residual hero worship that really heightened the thrill, but Anže's also just pretty good at it.
Anže reaches up to tuck a lock of hair behind Leon's ear. It comes loose again, not really long enough to stay in place despite his efforts. Anže wraps it around his finger. "You going to grow this back out?"
Leon gives him a look.
Anže shrugs. "What? I like it long. Always did."
"It hasn't been long since I was a rookie."
"Yeah." Anže smiles, fond. Pervert.
Leon turns to lick a little kiss onto Anže's palm, and Anže leans in to return the favor on Leon's temple before falling back to his side of the mattress.
Leon rolls over, smears the wet spot around trying to get comfortable. "We should have done this at your hotel," he mumbles. "So somebody else could clean up the sheets."
Anže reaches out and pats his shoulder affectionately. "I'll buy you new ones," he says.
When Leon went to the World Cup, he had been twenty. The next youngest guy on the team was Toby, at twenty-three.
Leon had friends there, sure: he knew half of Team North America, stacked with first overall picks who could still shave with a pair of tweezers. The newest, the best and the brightest. Blew out Europe that first exhibition game, Nuge with a goal and MacKinnon with two while Leon watched on despondently. Then the powerhouses got the actual stars, Crosby, Ovechkin, Quick, the Sedins. And then there were the leftovers.
Welcome, Anže had said when Leon had arrived, warm and cheerful and captainly. When Leon mumbled that they had met before, Anže had said, yeah yeah I remember, which was probably a lie. It had been like for five minutes right after the Kings had won game three of the 2014 Stanley Cup Final. There'd been a bunch of them there, greasy-faced prospects in bad suits with sweaty hands. Leon hadn't been the tallest, or had the best English, or even the best eyebrows or teeth.
Good to have you, Anže had said anyway. And then,
You're quiet eh? Anže had said after Leon had then spent the next two days attached to him like a limpet. He'd been nice enough not to say anything until Leon followed him to the oatmeal table at breakfast, watched him scoop oatmeal, and then followed him away again without getting any oatmeal. Leon knew it was probably unfair to hog him, but he couldn't help it. He was new, not just to this tournament, but to all these people he watched on television back in his billet's basement just milling about, doing stretches and grawing muffins. You didn't get to eat breakfast with Anže Kopitar every day. And really, he just found Anže comforting.
Hm? Uh, Leon had said.
What's wrong? Don't like the guys? We're not good enough for you? Anže had said, shaking him with an arm around the shoulders.
Leon had flushed red at that. It was the other way around, honestly. Kind of an odd assortment of players, but there were Cup winners on this team, All-Stars, and then Leon, who had one solid NHL season under his belt during a year known as "when Connor McDavid got injured and left a space in the lineup for someone else to step up and fill".
Not to worry, you'll show us how it's done, Anže had said, which would have been condescending if he hadn't been so fucking thrilled when Leon got a hat trick the next game. He'd gone around bragging about Leon to the media, all he just needed time, I knew all along, I was shy at his age, too.
Team Europe went all the way to the final before losing to Canada. And then the next season, the Oilers made the playoffs for the first time in ten years, and the Kings missed.
The Oilers have played LA four times a year since, about. They see each other around.
It feels like less than an hour until the light is coming in through the blinds, blue and hazy. Leon looks around fuzzily and sees that the bed is empty next to him.
Leon tries to figure out where his phone is. Somewhere on the rug downstairs, probably. There's still light and sound from the kitchen. Anže must not have an early flight, or it must not be that early, though he'll want to get going before he gets left behind by the team.
Leon unsticks himself from the sheets and goes to take a shower.
The thing about hooking up with Anže, Leon reflects as he scrubs the shampoo through his hair, is that's it's nice to be with someone who really doesn't seem to give a fuck about — well, anything, and doesn't really need to. Three quarters of the time Leon doesn't feel like he knows what's going on around him, and it doesn't feel like anybody else around does either. His entire NHL career has been people around him lying through their teeth about everything being under control: his captains, his coaches, his GMs, and then himself now, to the new kids, free agents, the media. It feels like it's just how being an Oiler goes.
Anže doesn't need to do that. He's got everything already, this is all just extra.
Leon rinses and thinks about being twenty-one and exhausted and drenched in sweat on the bench and Todd McLellan murmuring with an edge in his ear, c'mon you can be better, be better than that, you know you can, and then about being twenty-seven and skating impatiently around the faceoff dot, Todd McLellan covering his mouth on the other bench during the TV timeout, Anže in his tinted visor nodding along, you can be better, be the best out there, just play.
It's good to have that sometimes. A reminder of things outside of Edmonton, that Leon doesn't just stop and start with the Oilers.
Leon figures he should probably send Anže on his way with some breakfast, if he's going to make him show up late anyway. He pokes his head out into the hallway as he towels off and opens his mouth to yell about whether there's sausage left in the fridge when he realizes he hears voices downstairs.
He recognizes the voices.
He hauls himself into the bedroom just long enough to dig a pair of sweats out of a drawer and then yank them on, going down the stairs two at a time.
Anže's at the kitchen sink, wearing a t-shirt and a pair of of Leon's Puma-branded basketball shorts.
Connor's standing on the other side of the counter, cheeks pink, orange hair sticking up. They both turn to face him at once when he emerges into the kitchen.
"Hey," Leon says, breathless.
"Hey," Connor's voice breaks a little on the hey, soft, and that's the familiar tone Leon could pick out from upstairs.
Leon wonders if he's only imagining that they are all trying slightly too hard to maintain eye contact with each other. A very regular conversation in a very regular place. He's damp and in sweatpants and nothing else, dick still airing out underneath. For some reason he feels like he's dressed inappropriately. It's his house; both these men have seen him far more naked. Recently, even.
Connor clears his throat. "I thought you were coming to the rink, so I uh, brought coffee. So."
Leon pulls his gaze away from Connor's face to glance at the cardboard tray on the counter. Two cups, paper and plastic, Leon knows, Connor's coffee, black with too much sugar, and Leon's coffee, iced vanilla latte with half the ice.
Connor adds, "We have the fundraiser night meeting today."
"Shit." Was that today? "When is it?"
"Eleven?"
Leon feels a small tug of guilt up somewhere behind his ribcage. He's typically good to forget plans they had made once a month or so. Connor's usually good about it. Just really, really bad timing.
Leon tries to remember not to scowl or to make his surprised face, which he's told just looks pissed. "Okay. Sorry, can you give me like... an hour?" He can miss practice again, it's no problem, nobody was expecting him to go anyway. "I'll meet you there. Yeah?"
"Yeah, sure, no problem." Connor flicks his keyring around his finger nervously. He shifts, and his gaze lands on Anže. "Uh, good to see you."
Anže looks unreadable to Leon. He nods graciously and makes a sound of agreement. "Yourself."
Connor nods back somewhat robotically like he sometimes does and picks up his coat, meanders back into the hallway to let himself out.
Leon calls out, "You want your coffee?" and feels like an asshole.
Connor emerges to grab the cup, mumbles Yeah thanks fast enough that Leon barely catches it, and swings back out.
They hear the front door close.
Anže waves his mug of tea in its direction. "He's got a key," he observes.
Leon exhales all at once. So Connor had let himself in; Leon had probably missed the mutual jumpscare of the century in the shower. "Yeah, you know, he stops by sometimes," Leon says.
"All right." It sounds muffled in the mug.
"We're not fucking," Leon clarifies, because when he thinks about it, it kind of looks like they could be.
"Never said you were."
"What'd you say to him?"
"I said you were kind enough to let me stay over." Anže shrugs. "Just like that, no more, no less."
"And what'd he say?"
"Nothing, we had a chat about home renovations."
Leon lets out another breath in a hiss and scratches at his wet hair. "Sorry about that." God, this was weird for all of them.
"I think he'll leave it alone," Anže says placatingly.
Leon surveys the room belatedly, hoping that nothing could be more embarrassing than Anže Kopitar in his shorts in the kitchen while Leon was in the shower. He cringes a little when he spots his pants from the night before crumpled in a heap next to the coffee table. At least Anže had had the presence of mind to drape his own pair neatly over the banister.
"You don't mind me asking," Anže says, kindly. "Does he know you sleep with men?"
"Uh." Leon blinks. "Yeah, probably."
Leon doesn't know, actually. Some of the guys probably suspect by now, but they don't say anything. If anybody would know him well enough to guess, it'd be Connor. But then Connor has a habit of not really noticing anything going on around him if it's not happening on the ice.
But like, Connor knows Leon. Leon doesn't exactly hide it too well.
"He doesn't ask about it," Leon says.
"Okay."
"We don't really talk about it," Leon says.
"Mmm."
Leon realizes that he has no idea who Connor fucks, either. It's just — never really come up. Leon has no idea if he fucks women, or men, or anybody really. And Leon could make a guess, but whenever a part of him says obnoxiously, well I mean y o u k n o w, he tells it to shush, shut up, that's none of your business.
"Like, we don't really need to talk about it," he repeats. He knows it wouldn't be an issue anyway, one hundred percent it wouldn't. They're clear about that in Edmonton, Connor is clear about it in Edmonton.
Anže tilts his head. "You don't worry other people talk?"
Leon snorts and flips a coaster over as he gingerly extracts his own coffee from the cardboard tray. "People always talk. I've been playing out here since I moved here when I was sixteen, they can say whatever."
Anže smiles, shuffles over next to him. He leans back against the countertop just left of where Connor was standing, close enough to touch elbows with Leon.
Anže glances down at Leon's bare chest and low sweatpants, up again. This close, Leon can see the copper flecks in the rings of his irises. Something about him still doesn't look like how anybody in Edmonton does: his hair curls under his ears into a faded gold, like the sun made it that way; laugh lines around his eyes, frame somehow broad and tall and solid in a way Leon still isn't and never has been. Leon suspects the Oilers were hoping he'd fill out more like that when they drafted him, but he never put on weight the way they wanted, even though he filled out eventually. Leon's still skinny in the legs, a little wobbly and unbalanced on the ice.
"Listen, you want to come down south in the summer?" Anže sounds casual, but also like he's confiding something. "Spend some time, catch up? Get some sun. Assuming one of us doesn't, you know," Finally win, or win again because the gods are real and Edmonton is damned, "Become too busy."
Leon looks at him, looks again. "Would that be... okay?" He falters.
"Yeah, of course."
Somehow he'd never thought about that as an option. He's usually kept his off-season and in-season social groups separate. There's work, and then there's friends, family. Even seeing guys from around the league at Worlds or offseason training always felt odd, the context was so different. "Ines would be okay with it?"
"I can have friends. She has her own friends over sometimes." Anže shrugs.
"Does she know about me?"
"Not you in particular, but she wouldn't mind."
Leon hesitates. "Maybe," he says. He'll think about it. It might be different. Maybe it would be nice to go somewhere new, get away from the usual.
"Unless it'd bother the people on your team," Anže says pointedly.
Leon snorts. "Fraternizing," he sounds out, distastefully.
Anže grins and checks the time. "Speaking of, you better head out, no?"
Leon grimaces; probably best not to be later than he needs to when Connor's already covering for him. "You need a ride?"
"I'll order one. Don't let me make you late. And let me know if this becomes a problem or something, eh? With the team." He gestures between them with two fingers. "You can still come over, we can be friends."
Leon squints, fake-disgusted. "Why would I want to be friends? Without..." He makes an obscene gesture.
Anže laughs, slaps a hand over his heart. "You won't miss my personality? Ouch."
"Tell Moore to stop scoring on my goalie," Leon demands.
"Fuck no, I won't," Anže says jovially, and scoops his pants off the banister on his way to the bathroom.
Practice is probably just about wrapping up when Leon pulls into his usual spot in the Rogers Place garage. He tosses his empty plastic coffee cup into the trash can beside the entrance as he keycards in, and strides down the back hallway towards the video room.
Everyone is sitting in a row of chairs around the big whiteboard when he arrives, luckily not with any of coaching staff, or Leon would be done for no matter what. Tyson makes an exaggerated wide-eyed face at Leon, and Darnell shifts around to look at him like he's 50 minutes late instead of 8 because Darnell's a dick, so Leon just gives up on being subtle and pulls around a chair.
Connor looks up at that, eyes stormy and just a little red high on the cheeks before he looks away. He's so often a little red like that though, just emotions that never hide all the way, even if Leon doesn't really know what they mean, or if it's just the sunburn he gets year-round from the lake, or from the snow, or from sitting on the patio at the wrong time of day. They'll probably talk after, and Leon'll make it up to him. Connor'll know that, too.
"Hey, sorry, all right," Leon says, as he settles in with his legs stretched out in front of him. "Sorry. What's going on?"