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Brendan decides to say something out loud one day in the room before practice about how Alex looks at him all the time and Alex gets pissed about it.
“Bud, why with the looks?” Brendan says. It’s just the two of them in the room because it’s early and they try to get out of their suits ASAP.
“Fuck you talking about, Gally?” Alex says back but he knows. He’s the one looking, after all.
“You look at me with those eyes, you know, not like normal.” Alex prays for someone to walk into the room to save him from this.
“I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Look, Chuckie, we’ve both been in a lot of locker rooms and no one has looked at me the way that you do.” He says it with that smile on his face, too.
“Shut the fuck up, Gally, I don’t look at you in some special way. Maybe it’s you that looks at me, huh?”
Brendan straight up laughs at him. Laughs like Alex isn’t already super fucking embarrassed and he’s not rubbing it in his fucking face.
“Alright, Alex, whatever you say, man. Come on, let’s go to the bench.” He doesn’t really want to go sit on the bench with Brendan now, fuck him.
Except how the only thing he wants to do right now is go sit on the bench with Gallagher and shoot the shit until they need to get ready for the game.
Fuck.
____
A few weeks later, Alex is sitting on his bed with his headphones on Facebook chatting with a few buddies back in Russia. He’s got the music blasting loud but he can still see Gallagher giggling at whatever he’s looking at on his iPad. He wishes that laying on his side with his back to Brendan was a more comfortable position because he can only take so much giggling before he needs to settle himself down.
He reaches that point about 20 minutes later and heads to the bathroom. He looks at himself in the mirror and whispers, “Brendan Gallagher is your teammate and good friend. You feel nothing more for him. Period,” to himself in Russian.
When he exits the bathroom Brendan is changing into his sleep shorts. Alex makes it incredibly obvious that he is NOT watching him change. He starts to strip off his shirt and pants in exchange for sleep shit, too. When he finishes and looks over to Brendan to ask him if it’s okay if he turns the TV off, he’s definitely staring at him with a small curl to his lips.
“What the fuck, man?” Alex says because Gally’s being more obvious than he’s ever seen anyone be before.
“Huh?” Brendan challenges because he’s an asshole.
“You were watching me change, weren’t you?”
“I wasn’t doing anything I haven’t seen you do before,” Brendan says and then finally looks away and starts to get into bed.
“Whatever man, can I turn the TV off?”
“You can do whatever you want, Alex, whatever you feel like.”
Alex rolls his eyes at Gally and turns both the TV and the bedside lamp off as fast as he can.
____
The next day, the next hotel room, Brendan starts talking to him the moment they step into the room about some shit about Vancouver and his dad and something else. He stopped listening, like, 5 minutes ago and is just using Brendan’s rambling as an excuse to look at his mouth every once in awhile without it being weird.
Brendan’s been silent for a minute, done with whatever story he was telling, before he says, “Alex, are you even listening to me?”
Alex thinks about if for a beat before saying, “Nope.”
“You were looking at me like you were listening,” Brendan says smiling.
“What’s with you and the way I fucking look at you?”
Brendan laughs and then laughs again. “You’re funny, Chuckie.”
Alex’s sure that he has not said anything funny. “You think everything is funny, Gallagher.”
Brendan drops it and asks Alex what he wants from room service. Thankfully, they eat in silence, noses pressed in their iPads.
Alex is proud that he doesn’t even look at Brendan once. That is, until he gets up to walk to the bathroom. Then, he tracks every step Brendan takes until he closes the bathroom door, exhaling loudly once it shuts.
____
Once they get back to Montreal, Alex is happy to see his mom and sister. At least they don’t analyze every fucking look he gives them.
His sister takes him out to dinner that night and asks him how everything is going.
“Good, you know, teams doing well, I’m doing well, things are good.”
“How’s rooming with Brendan? You two are like attached at the hip, right?”
“It’s fine, you know, better than being all alone, I guess.”
Anna nods her head and they eat in silence for a minute.
“You and Brendan, keeping things friendly, right?” Anna asks and Alex almost chokes on his food.
“Ah, yea, Anna, of course we are, we’re teammates, it’s important for us to be friendly.”
“Just checking because I see the way he looks at you on the bench sometimes and you know you promised mom and I to keep shit under control.”
Alex wants to throw his chair down and maybe toss his plate of food on ground. “The way he looks at me, what the fuck, Anna?”
“Settle down, Alex, he just sometimes looks over at you and it looks like there is more going on there, but I will drop it, just wanted to check in.”
“Brendan Gallagher and I do not look at each other in any special fucking way. End of story. We’re roommates and teammates and that’s it.”
“Alright, Alright, I get it, sorry.”
“I keep my promises, sis, k?”
“Yea, Alex, got it.”
They don’t talk too much for the rest of the meal, just small comments on the food, how long it takes for the waitress to bring the check. After they get back to their apartment Alex goes straight to his bedroom and vows to never look at Brendan Gallagher ever again.
____
Another road trip, another hotel room, another 100 failed attempts to not check out Brendan Gallagher. Alex is at the point where he is just blaming biology and chemistry because he’s a (teenage) guy and him and Brendan just have a natural attraction towards one another.
Late one night, after a game that seemed to last forever, and in which each of them scored and assisted on each other goals, Prusty is escorting them to their room because he’s just that kind of guy. He’s got an arm around each of their shoulders, standing in the middle of them like the big brother that he is.
“We’ve got the best rookies in the league,” Brandon says taping both their backs.
“Damn right you do,” Alex says. Brendan just giggles and Alex looks across Brandon at him and rolls his eyes.
Brandon leads them to their door and waits for Brendan to take the key out of his pocket and open the door. Once the door is open he pulls himself out of the middle of them and makes Alex put his arm around Brendan’s shoulder in his absence. Brendan follows by putting his arm around Alex’s waist. Once Brandon seems to be satisfied with their positions he pushes them into the room with a “Goodnight Boys” and let’s the door close.
Alex intends to push Gallagher away the moment the door closes but that mother fucker is strong and grips his waist tight.
“We are the best rookies in the league,” Gally says looking up at Alex from his side.
“Yea, I know, now let me go,” Alex says trying to push Gally away again.
Gally finally drops his hand from Alex’s waist after displaying that he is, in fact, stronger than Alex, even if he is shorter. Once his arm is dropped he pushes Alex onto the closest bed (Brendan’s) and walks to the bathroom.
While Gally is in the bathroom Alex changes into sleep shorts and gets into bed. He’s thinking about what how tight Gally’s hand was on his waist, how it felt to be pushed onto his bed, the look in Brendan’s eye’s before he turned away to the bathroom.
He’s laying on his bed staring at the ceiling and doesn’t even notice Brendan isn’t in the bathroom anymore. He glances over at the other bed and Brendan is changing, looking right at Alex.
“You know,” Alex says, not looking away from Brendan, “My sister said you give me looks on the bench and on the ice, like, not normal ones.”
“Yea, so?” Brendan says smiling.
“So, it’s not just me, is what I’m trying to say.”
“Yea, Chuckie, I know, did I not make that obvious?”
“Huh? I thought you were just, like, trying to make fun of me.”
“You’re not actually that stupid, Galchenyuk, you might be in denial, but you’re not stupid.”
Alex doesn’t know what to say to that, so he doesn’t say anything. He just looks at Brendan for a second, then throws his hands up in the air, shakes his head and walks past him to the bathroom.
He brushes his teeth and washes his face counting the number of shower tiles. When he’s done he takes a deep breath, shuts the lights off and opens the door.
He’s not expecting Brendan to be right there, in the doorway, looking up at him.
“What?” Alex says pushing his way past him.
He gets to his bed with Gally right on his tail. He sits down and Brendan stands right next to his bed. “I’m sick of doing this, Alex.”
“Of doing what, Brendan?”
“Of fucking pretending that we’re just two guys who aren’t attracted to each other.”
Alex doesn’t say anything to him. He just looks at Brendan standing right next to his bed, looking down on him. Brendan reaches out and puts a hand on his shoulder and every instinct Alex has wants to push his hand away. But, he doesn’t. Brendan takes it as an invitation to sit down, moving his hand up to Alex’s face once he is seated.
Brendan starts to pull himself closer to Alex. When their lips are about an inch away, Alex closes his eyes and says, “I promised my sister I wouldn’t do this.”
“Do what?”
“This,” Alex says and then kisses Brendan. It’s tentative at first, soft lips and careful movements.
Brendan pulls away before it gets more intense and looks Alex straight in the eye not saying anything. Alex blinks and Brendan’s smiles and moves his eyes to his lips before connecting their mouths together again. This time with open lips and when their tongues touch for the first time Alex can’t help but moan into Brendan’s mouth.
They kiss like that on the bed for a while, Brendan eventually pushing Alex so he is laying down and climbing on top of him. Alex lets his hands explore Brendan’s back and arms. He doesn’t know how long they’ve been doing this for when Brendan pulls away and flops down on the bed next to Alex.
“Wow,” he says, sounding a little breathless, “I knew that was going to be awesome, but I didn’t know it would be THAT awesome.”
Alex laughs because, of course Gally would say something that dorky after something like this. He turns his body to face Brendan and says, “It was just okay, in my opinion.”
He tries SUPER hard not to smile but can’t help himself because Brendan looks truly offended for a second before he gets it. When he does he hits Alex with the hand that is closest to him and lets it rest on Alex’s chest. Alex reaches up and threads their finger together, “We are kind of fucked now, Gally.”
Brendan doesn’t look at him just squeezes his hand quickly before saying, “We’ve been fucked for a while now, Gally, now we can actually be fucked though, so that’s a plus.”
Alex laughs with his whole body because that’s the funniest and most insightful thing he’s ever heard Brendan Gallagher say and, holy fuck, he can’t stop. Pretty soon, Brendan joins him and then they are two National Hockey League Rookies lying in a bed, holding hands, laughing their asses off like they have the whole world at their feet.