virgin whore hockey player, on the wire between will and what will be
title: Miracles in Hockey
involves: Tom Barrasso/Ron Francis
part: Brass Bonanza (II): you work all your life for that moment in time; it could come or...
rated: NC-17
time: ~February 19, 1984 (It may be getting after midnight by now...)
notes: The title is from Tommy's own mouth, in this video where the Hurricanes asked Americans about the effect of the Miracle on Ice (at Lake Placid at the 1980 Winter Olympics) which took place 30 years ago today [plus 10 days]. His smile-and-answer-from-nowhere is almost as much of a miracle. ("When it comes to hockey, absolutely.")
summary: "It's not that hard if you're ready. And I think I'm ready." -- Tom Barrasso, "No Keeping Him From His Goal", Sports Ilustrated, 10.31.1983 (fast times at olympic highs, 2.19.1984)
prior to this: (I) is here
dedication in perpetuity: to nofaves , for being there as audience and consultant and suggestioner and sounding board -- and everything else. Une amie merveilleuse!
disclaimer: OH ST. RONNIE FRANCIS I'm sorry!!!...well, not really. ;D Seeing as how I was an infant at this particular date, and given the extremely likely possibility that Barrasso would kill me for writing this in the first place, and then again for not verifying if it WAS (lol), there is no WAY I would claim to know the extent of the truth. in anything. Tommy, I'm not saying you actually did this.
feedback: is still very much greatly, incredibly, thankfully and (somewhat) humbly appreciated. Even in two years.
=+=+=+=
It was a very long first kiss.
"...Nice to meet you," he said very quietly at the end of it, while I was wondering how everything could look the same around me when I'd just felt the balance of it all shifting. "I think you should call me Ronnie."
I knew I would; it was something gratifying to hear, but I just brought my mouth back over to his, not caring to speak at the moment.
"So... I pronounce that right?" I inquired, when my tongue was free again. He blinked. Then he snorted, and started laughing, silently, and shaking his head.
"Does anyone ever tell you you're strange?"
Precocious, cocky, arrogant, gifted, conceited, driven, mouthy, outspoken, well-spoken, brilliant, intense, over-ambitious, temperamental, "doesn't always play well with others", uncompromising, 'remarkably talented', every variation of 'asshole' imaginable, "look, he's 18, he just got out of high school and he wants to play the hardest position in the NHL, let's point and stare"... Strange?
"...No. They just think it. You're convincing me I need the practice." I turned his jaw and found his mouth, and found out that I could stop thinking and the world would dissolve to the warmth of the back of his neck in my palm.
I didn't think he'd be hard to persuade, but...he lowered his head; he was kissing my throat, doing it slowly -- and my blood was suddenly running hot and cold. No idea why; why it should be his mouth, there, like that, doing to me what it was doing....
"So...can you stand me?" Forget that, can you lay me? How about that? How about --now?
He re-emerged into my line of sight, looked at me like it was his fault for making me ask, since it was, and closed his eyes, smiled, and nodded. He kissed me on the mouth again and...I still couldn't get enough of that, either.
"Your eyes," he said to me.
"What?"
"They're not blue. I thought that they were."
"No." Gray. Light gray, and I've never lost a staring contest. Some people like them, some people don't.
"I like them."
"Get to know me better."
=+=+=+=
I took him to my bedroom and it was dark and easy to shed each other's clothes and touch each other's cocks. And keep kissing. It felt like writing a new language, his mouth and mine.
With our pants halfway down his cock slid in between my thighs, hard and warm, and he moved it gently, but when the only way I could translate that something inside me was going to break with pleasure was moan "Ronnie, Ronnie," he got harder and faster...
Basically, we ended up on the floor and I had his absolutely spectacular ass in my hands; warm, solid, rounded muscle in both, and he had no objections to my fingers in the divide, exploring the hottest part, using the sweat collecting there, teasing him. Dropping my fingers farther, touching him between his legs, behind his balls. I liked having him tense and respond on top of me.
"You trying to make me shoot, Tommy?" (Or just living up to your name? Don't you make your living stopping the shots?) he muttered, while his tongue waged a war with my own.
"Maybe I'm just seeing what you like." (Since when are you considerate, Barrasso? When you're fucking Ronnie Francis, apparently you are....oh, who was I kidding. My hands were simply doing exactly what they wanted and if he enjoyed it, that only meant more pleasure for him, more power to me. I was actually very curious to see what he liked, but altruism was definitively being outweighed by sheer voluptuous greed just then. Though I couldn't say it wasn't mind-blowing, life-altering in itself.) I licked his ear.
He seemed amused. "I'm not hard."
"Mmm...oh yes you are." I contradicted him.
"I won't be in a minute," he informed me.
"I can set you up again." His dark eyes were taking some kind of measure of me as he went slower for a moment, I could tell.
"Cocky, Tommy Barrasso." The last part couldn't have sounded more like 'asshole' if he wasn't trying. In more than a decade since other people had discovered the immediate and unfailing alternative to my last name, and in the something less than a decade since they had discovered their favorite adjective to attach to it, this was - absolutely - the greatest experience of it I had ever had.
"That's the word." (Truthfully, right then he could've called me anything he wanted -- or maybe I can be pleased, that it showed so unmistakeably that he knew he was doing this with ME.)
"Careful what you say," I added. And since he'd given me the choice, I flexed and shifted my thighs around his cock and slid my finger right there against his rim to feel it while he came. Pulled him down to me with my free hand tangled in his dark sweaty hair and kissed him hard enough to bruise, teeth clashing. I wanted his mouth, wanted him to take my tongue in it about as badly as I had ever wanted anything. His groan didn't exactly make it out of his throat but it was in my ears, vibrating in my cock and in his, and I knew he couldn't stop anymore and he was going to move against me until he came, wordlessly demanding it now.
"Oh fuck, Ronnie...shit, you're amazing." I wasn't that far myself, the way I kept rubbing against his stomach, but I was also getting really perilously close to just babbling about how unbelievably fucking good he felt, everything felt; and the thought, the thought of another guy's penis and just how it would feel, ejaculating, hard... "Let it go." I was gasping. "Fuck, please, just let it go."
And he did, right there between my legs, spurting his come and pulsating it in a warm wet flood. It was on the rug, sopping, and then we were both dripping and adding to the mess, but I felt secretly, fiercely, incredibly glad and aroused by it, like his load might just be the best thing that ever spilled there.
Ronnie was panting with his head down against my shoulder, but eventually he picked his head up, looked down at me pointing up, and then back up at me.
"So what do we do about you?"
I took his chin in my hand and kissed him before responding.
"I intend to follow through with my prior claims. You," I said as I pulled him up and walked him backwards towards the wall. "...are the subject of those claims." I sank down to my knees in front of him and made my intentions clear.
Sucking him hard, sucking him until he came again, getting myself off as I did it...It was like some kind of feverish dream. I was grinning at his cock in my grasp but before I could open my mouth, there was a hand on my shoulder.
"Whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa...Wait a minute." And he pushed me away, and went to sit on my bed, leaving me no choice but to follow him, confused.
"Wha....?"
Where he promptly grabbed me, and kissed me, and refused to let me argue with his hand getting a firm grip on my cock and moving over it until I came, very shortly afterwards.
"I don't understand," I said while he was wiping his hand off on my stomach.
A sharp spark lit somewhere deep down in his gaze. "You don't understand a lot." He looked at me and spoke slowly, with eyebrows raised. "How stupid ARE you? How do you know I don't have something? How do I know you don't? Don't you know people are dying these days? You can't just take penicillin for everything anymore."
"I'm allergic to penicill--I couldn't even--It'd probably kill me fir--" More importantly. "How many people do you think I've been with?"
"How would I know? You weren't exactly shy."
I rolled over and spoke to the wall because I didn't feel like making my confession to his face. "I never did anything like this. Not with a guy."
"Tommy." Apparently, he'd lain down behind me. "Tomcat, out on the prowl...not quite, eh?" If I hadn't just prowled after him tonight, then I don't know what I'd done.
"Don't call me 'Tomcat'."
"Isn't that your nickname?"
"It's a stupid, stupid, stupid name." But his hand was stroking my side, up and down, my chest, my hip, my ribs, my thigh. He kissed the back of my neck, and then he did it again. I couldn't help but shiver, and then he spoke quietly into my ear.
"Tommy, that was what I thought. But you won't let yourself be taken for an innocent at anything, will you? You won't - and you could've fooled me. You seem like you know what the hell you're doing.
"Look, unfortunately, that's not even all that matters." Fuck, then why the hell did I tell him?!?!?!?!
"...So tell me about Russia, already."
"Huh?" I blinked at the abrupt change of subject.
"You were going to tell me about Russia... Unless you're a complete liar," he smiled, reminding me that, in fact, I had promised to tell him about last year's World Juniors in Leningrad; it was partly why he'd come back with me, tonight. "Are you sorry you didn't go to Sarajevo, now?"
"Well, just think, if I'd made Juniors the year before I could be telling you about exotic and equally arctic Minneapolis...and look how the U.S. did, in Yugoslavia. Or didn't. Sorry not to finish seventh? Out of eight?"
ABC and CBC'd been running highlights of the Winter Olympics in Sarajevo and the closing ceremonies there, late into the night, so we'd watched them when we came in. (Tretiak shuts out the Czechs and the Soviets win the gold and the hockey universe rights itself, once again...)
"Maybe 'cause you weren't there."
"Miracles don't happen twice."
"I...am disgustingly jealous of you, Tommy, you know that? National team. Other countries. Different rules. I wonder what it's like. I don't think I'll ever find out. There's a surplus of decent hockey players in Canada. You might have noticed."
"Too bad you're up here. If only you were Mario Lemieux, maybe you could sue to get into it. Or you could've taken his spot this year."
"I'm also a little too old for juniors, at this point. Guess I have to settle for the NHL."
"I saw Lemieux when I was in Russia, though....hell, I could be standing there just watching him at practice, trying to figure how out the hell I could stop him! And I wasn't the only one there."
"So he's really going to be the next Gretzky?"
"Yeah. He's just...astonishingly gifted. And this guy the Czechs had in net. Hashe.... Hasek. Yeah. He's...insane."
"He's a goalie, Tommy. You're repeating yourself."
"No, I'm serious. He's not like anybody else. The way he plays, it's like...he's making it up as he goes along. And it works." I was trying to find the words to illustrate, not wanting to have to actually get up and do it.
"...Chasing the puck WAY out of the net. Like, halfway to the blue line out. And he's not that great at playing it, either. Or he just drops the stick and grabs it with his blocker hand to make a save. Yeah... 'stop, drop, and roll'. That's how he usually makes saves.
"...He tripped a guy on a breakaway. Like, turned himself into a speed bump. Who DOES that? And...they named him Best Goalie. Of the tournament.
"So the USSR...is about as cold as Buffalo. Leningrad's kind of the best of it though, being right on the Baltic Sea. It's beautiful, really, for being under Commie oppression and everything. Peter the Great built it because he wanted it to be the best of Russia. I hear it's a lot better in June. Doesn't get dark." I was thoughtful, trying to picture it. "That'd be something to see. It was damn dark and fucking freezing, while we were there."
"And... I saw you play last year, you know. At the Garden - but I went to the Mall and saw some games there, too." Shit, Barrasso, sound a little more like you were just in high school, why don't you?
"You went from Boston to Hartford?"
"I wasn't the only one who went there to see the Bruins! And then especially second semester; senior year; the season's over; no one's giving a shit about school; I've got the desire and the time and the capability to watch hockey, so why not? Take the car; take the train, miss dinner. Get home late. Get yelled at more often then not, even if they thought I was still inside state lines." All that time, looking out of the window in winter darkness, turning over and over in my mind what I was going to do after the draft.
College, right? Okay, so play for the Olympic team first. Yet I couldn't let the thought go, that maybe, maybe I could make that jump, land safely even if it was on ice in the National Hockey League.
"So you ended up going Whale watching."
"Those stupid long pants."
"Well, you must've liked what you saw."
Easy, undeniable. (Well, maybe not the way he skated, but...) He had skill; a lot of it. Dangerous; nevermind being able to score; he could and would set anybody up for a goal.
And fuck talent, he'd work one end of the ice just as hard as the other.
Like he was customized and fantasized for a goalie.
Someone who cares, who will never forget about you and never, ever, abandon you.
I don't believe in fate, but I smiled and wondered if I couldn't take some productive inspiration, that he was there, Opening Night, and I was stopping him, my first game, my first win, the first time everything was official, the first time everything was for real.
...And then I saw him, up-close and clear, and my eyes -- my entire body didn't want to stop following him. Swallowing -- my mouth was dry before I even noticed I was doing it.
"Hard not to," I said, looking him over most appreciatively, head to toe. "Or not too hard. Hard, anyway. I mean...it is the NHL."
(Why, was I supposed to be talking about something else?)
...That hair, those eyes, that body, that mouth.
And...it probably should've felt more bizarre, or uncomfortable, that I was lying there narrating 1983 for him when he was lying there with me just as absolutely naked as I was. If I'd bothered to think about it.
"Everything goes hard with you, huh, Barrasso? Not everything's hard." To demonstrate it he kissed me very slowly, gently, working my mouth over with thorough care -- and encouraging me to reciprocate.
"...Damn, Ronnie." I was trying to find the oxygen for speech after that. "You win."
Something told me I could trust you; I could ask you, and neither of us would end up taking a swing at the other. But I never would have guessed you'd be this amenable...
"Don't argue with the veteran, rookie."
"You win even if you're proving my point," I said, looking down at the two of us and emphasizing the last three words.
"Shut up, rookie." He lazily grinned at me, then his face softened, and turned more serious, and the tips of his fingers were brushing my hair. "You know, Tommy...so that I'm the first one you've been with like this...?"
"Yes?" I said, nonchalant, because I flatly refused to be embarrassed about it; what was the point?
Doesn't everybody have to start somewhere?
"So let me show you what you missed," he said simply. And kissed me. "You mean no one's ever touched you like I have... like I'm doing right now...?" Between his hands and voice he seemed to be viewing me with this combination fluctuating between genuine gratitude, pure appreciation, and utter horniness. "...It's an incredible fucking turn-on, Tommy, is what it is," he lowered his voice, and murmured in my ear, warm, and mind-blowing.
It felt like something had seized me, physically... Okay, so it had, but... psychically seized me at the same time.
Never in my entire life had I ever been so grateful for being uncomfortable, mistrusting most people, and having ridiculously high standards.
"I think... you just found an effective way to get me to shut up, Mr. Francis, sir..." I said, absently; unnecessarily, really, with lust completely overunning my brain, coursing through me so strongly that I was surprised I could even speak, and didn't care where my capacity for speech had gone. Words - any words - all words - seemed incredibly stupid, and utterly immaterial.
"Are you done?" he asked, looming over me mock-threateningly.
"Yessir."
"Good." And his mouth dropped over mine.
Am I sorry I didn't go to Sarajevo? Was he serious?!?
Yeah, so I could have been in Sarajevo. Hmm, where and with whom (and how, especially how) would I rather be spending my time right now -- with that asshole Chelios and that idiot kid Eddie Olczyk and Coach Lou from Brooklyn?
Over in the Eastern Bloc under even more surveillance?
Or flying like an eagle and brandishing... whatever... right here in Buffalo, where the weather's the same and training camp's at Lake Placid and I am as free as I have ever been and unencumbered enough to be doing this with "ohhellfuckingyesRonFrancis"... and really, really, really enjoying it...
I wasn't making noise because I wanted to argue with him -- that was for certain -- but I would argue there was no way - absolutely no fucking way - that even Tretiak was having a better night than this.
involves: Tom Barrasso/Ron Francis
part: Brass Bonanza (II): you work all your life for that moment in time; it could come or...
rated: NC-17
time: ~February 19, 1984 (It may be getting after midnight by now...)
notes: The title is from Tommy's own mouth, in this video where the Hurricanes asked Americans about the effect of the Miracle on Ice (at Lake Placid at the 1980 Winter Olympics) which took place 30 years ago today [plus 10 days]. His smile-and-answer-from-nowhere is almost as much of a miracle. ("When it comes to hockey, absolutely.")
summary: "It's not that hard if you're ready. And I think I'm ready." -- Tom Barrasso, "No Keeping Him From His Goal", Sports Ilustrated, 10.31.1983 (fast times at olympic highs, 2.19.1984)
prior to this: (I) is here
dedication in perpetuity: to nofaves , for being there as audience and consultant and suggestioner and sounding board -- and everything else. Une amie merveilleuse!
disclaimer: OH ST. RONNIE FRANCIS I'm sorry!!!...well, not really. ;D Seeing as how I was an infant at this particular date, and given the extremely likely possibility that Barrasso would kill me for writing this in the first place, and then again for not verifying if it WAS (lol), there is no WAY I would claim to know the extent of the truth. in anything. Tommy, I'm not saying you actually did this.
feedback: is still very much greatly, incredibly, thankfully and (somewhat) humbly appreciated. Even in two years.
=+=+=+=
It was a very long first kiss.
"...Nice to meet you," he said very quietly at the end of it, while I was wondering how everything could look the same around me when I'd just felt the balance of it all shifting. "I think you should call me Ronnie."
I knew I would; it was something gratifying to hear, but I just brought my mouth back over to his, not caring to speak at the moment.
"So... I pronounce that right?" I inquired, when my tongue was free again. He blinked. Then he snorted, and started laughing, silently, and shaking his head.
"Does anyone ever tell you you're strange?"
Precocious, cocky, arrogant, gifted, conceited, driven, mouthy, outspoken, well-spoken, brilliant, intense, over-ambitious, temperamental, "doesn't always play well with others", uncompromising, 'remarkably talented', every variation of 'asshole' imaginable, "look, he's 18, he just got out of high school and he wants to play the hardest position in the NHL, let's point and stare"... Strange?
"...No. They just think it. You're convincing me I need the practice." I turned his jaw and found his mouth, and found out that I could stop thinking and the world would dissolve to the warmth of the back of his neck in my palm.
I didn't think he'd be hard to persuade, but...he lowered his head; he was kissing my throat, doing it slowly -- and my blood was suddenly running hot and cold. No idea why; why it should be his mouth, there, like that, doing to me what it was doing....
"So...can you stand me?" Forget that, can you lay me? How about that? How about --now?
He re-emerged into my line of sight, looked at me like it was his fault for making me ask, since it was, and closed his eyes, smiled, and nodded. He kissed me on the mouth again and...I still couldn't get enough of that, either.
"Your eyes," he said to me.
"What?"
"They're not blue. I thought that they were."
"No." Gray. Light gray, and I've never lost a staring contest. Some people like them, some people don't.
"I like them."
"Get to know me better."
=+=+=+=
I took him to my bedroom and it was dark and easy to shed each other's clothes and touch each other's cocks. And keep kissing. It felt like writing a new language, his mouth and mine.
With our pants halfway down his cock slid in between my thighs, hard and warm, and he moved it gently, but when the only way I could translate that something inside me was going to break with pleasure was moan "Ronnie, Ronnie," he got harder and faster...
Basically, we ended up on the floor and I had his absolutely spectacular ass in my hands; warm, solid, rounded muscle in both, and he had no objections to my fingers in the divide, exploring the hottest part, using the sweat collecting there, teasing him. Dropping my fingers farther, touching him between his legs, behind his balls. I liked having him tense and respond on top of me.
"You trying to make me shoot, Tommy?" (Or just living up to your name? Don't you make your living stopping the shots?) he muttered, while his tongue waged a war with my own.
"Maybe I'm just seeing what you like." (Since when are you considerate, Barrasso? When you're fucking Ronnie Francis, apparently you are....oh, who was I kidding. My hands were simply doing exactly what they wanted and if he enjoyed it, that only meant more pleasure for him, more power to me. I was actually very curious to see what he liked, but altruism was definitively being outweighed by sheer voluptuous greed just then. Though I couldn't say it wasn't mind-blowing, life-altering in itself.) I licked his ear.
He seemed amused. "I'm not hard."
"Mmm...oh yes you are." I contradicted him.
"I won't be in a minute," he informed me.
"I can set you up again." His dark eyes were taking some kind of measure of me as he went slower for a moment, I could tell.
"Cocky, Tommy Barrasso." The last part couldn't have sounded more like 'asshole' if he wasn't trying. In more than a decade since other people had discovered the immediate and unfailing alternative to my last name, and in the something less than a decade since they had discovered their favorite adjective to attach to it, this was - absolutely - the greatest experience of it I had ever had.
"That's the word." (Truthfully, right then he could've called me anything he wanted -- or maybe I can be pleased, that it showed so unmistakeably that he knew he was doing this with ME.)
"Careful what you say," I added. And since he'd given me the choice, I flexed and shifted my thighs around his cock and slid my finger right there against his rim to feel it while he came. Pulled him down to me with my free hand tangled in his dark sweaty hair and kissed him hard enough to bruise, teeth clashing. I wanted his mouth, wanted him to take my tongue in it about as badly as I had ever wanted anything. His groan didn't exactly make it out of his throat but it was in my ears, vibrating in my cock and in his, and I knew he couldn't stop anymore and he was going to move against me until he came, wordlessly demanding it now.
"Oh fuck, Ronnie...shit, you're amazing." I wasn't that far myself, the way I kept rubbing against his stomach, but I was also getting really perilously close to just babbling about how unbelievably fucking good he felt, everything felt; and the thought, the thought of another guy's penis and just how it would feel, ejaculating, hard... "Let it go." I was gasping. "Fuck, please, just let it go."
And he did, right there between my legs, spurting his come and pulsating it in a warm wet flood. It was on the rug, sopping, and then we were both dripping and adding to the mess, but I felt secretly, fiercely, incredibly glad and aroused by it, like his load might just be the best thing that ever spilled there.
Ronnie was panting with his head down against my shoulder, but eventually he picked his head up, looked down at me pointing up, and then back up at me.
"So what do we do about you?"
I took his chin in my hand and kissed him before responding.
"I intend to follow through with my prior claims. You," I said as I pulled him up and walked him backwards towards the wall. "...are the subject of those claims." I sank down to my knees in front of him and made my intentions clear.
Sucking him hard, sucking him until he came again, getting myself off as I did it...It was like some kind of feverish dream. I was grinning at his cock in my grasp but before I could open my mouth, there was a hand on my shoulder.
"Whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa...Wait a minute." And he pushed me away, and went to sit on my bed, leaving me no choice but to follow him, confused.
"Wha....?"
Where he promptly grabbed me, and kissed me, and refused to let me argue with his hand getting a firm grip on my cock and moving over it until I came, very shortly afterwards.
"I don't understand," I said while he was wiping his hand off on my stomach.
A sharp spark lit somewhere deep down in his gaze. "You don't understand a lot." He looked at me and spoke slowly, with eyebrows raised. "How stupid ARE you? How do you know I don't have something? How do I know you don't? Don't you know people are dying these days? You can't just take penicillin for everything anymore."
"I'm allergic to penicill--I couldn't even--It'd probably kill me fir--" More importantly. "How many people do you think I've been with?"
"How would I know? You weren't exactly shy."
I rolled over and spoke to the wall because I didn't feel like making my confession to his face. "I never did anything like this. Not with a guy."
"Tommy." Apparently, he'd lain down behind me. "Tomcat, out on the prowl...not quite, eh?" If I hadn't just prowled after him tonight, then I don't know what I'd done.
"Don't call me 'Tomcat'."
"Isn't that your nickname?"
"It's a stupid, stupid, stupid name." But his hand was stroking my side, up and down, my chest, my hip, my ribs, my thigh. He kissed the back of my neck, and then he did it again. I couldn't help but shiver, and then he spoke quietly into my ear.
"Tommy, that was what I thought. But you won't let yourself be taken for an innocent at anything, will you? You won't - and you could've fooled me. You seem like you know what the hell you're doing.
"Look, unfortunately, that's not even all that matters." Fuck, then why the hell did I tell him?!?!?!?!
"...So tell me about Russia, already."
"Huh?" I blinked at the abrupt change of subject.
"You were going to tell me about Russia... Unless you're a complete liar," he smiled, reminding me that, in fact, I had promised to tell him about last year's World Juniors in Leningrad; it was partly why he'd come back with me, tonight. "Are you sorry you didn't go to Sarajevo, now?"
"Well, just think, if I'd made Juniors the year before I could be telling you about exotic and equally arctic Minneapolis...and look how the U.S. did, in Yugoslavia. Or didn't. Sorry not to finish seventh? Out of eight?"
ABC and CBC'd been running highlights of the Winter Olympics in Sarajevo and the closing ceremonies there, late into the night, so we'd watched them when we came in. (Tretiak shuts out the Czechs and the Soviets win the gold and the hockey universe rights itself, once again...)
"Maybe 'cause you weren't there."
"Miracles don't happen twice."
"I...am disgustingly jealous of you, Tommy, you know that? National team. Other countries. Different rules. I wonder what it's like. I don't think I'll ever find out. There's a surplus of decent hockey players in Canada. You might have noticed."
"Too bad you're up here. If only you were Mario Lemieux, maybe you could sue to get into it. Or you could've taken his spot this year."
"I'm also a little too old for juniors, at this point. Guess I have to settle for the NHL."
"I saw Lemieux when I was in Russia, though....hell, I could be standing there just watching him at practice, trying to figure how out the hell I could stop him! And I wasn't the only one there."
"So he's really going to be the next Gretzky?"
"Yeah. He's just...astonishingly gifted. And this guy the Czechs had in net. Hashe.... Hasek. Yeah. He's...insane."
"He's a goalie, Tommy. You're repeating yourself."
"No, I'm serious. He's not like anybody else. The way he plays, it's like...he's making it up as he goes along. And it works." I was trying to find the words to illustrate, not wanting to have to actually get up and do it.
"...Chasing the puck WAY out of the net. Like, halfway to the blue line out. And he's not that great at playing it, either. Or he just drops the stick and grabs it with his blocker hand to make a save. Yeah... 'stop, drop, and roll'. That's how he usually makes saves.
"...He tripped a guy on a breakaway. Like, turned himself into a speed bump. Who DOES that? And...they named him Best Goalie. Of the tournament.
"So the USSR...is about as cold as Buffalo. Leningrad's kind of the best of it though, being right on the Baltic Sea. It's beautiful, really, for being under Commie oppression and everything. Peter the Great built it because he wanted it to be the best of Russia. I hear it's a lot better in June. Doesn't get dark." I was thoughtful, trying to picture it. "That'd be something to see. It was damn dark and fucking freezing, while we were there."
"And... I saw you play last year, you know. At the Garden - but I went to the Mall and saw some games there, too." Shit, Barrasso, sound a little more like you were just in high school, why don't you?
"You went from Boston to Hartford?"
"I wasn't the only one who went there to see the Bruins! And then especially second semester; senior year; the season's over; no one's giving a shit about school; I've got the desire and the time and the capability to watch hockey, so why not? Take the car; take the train, miss dinner. Get home late. Get yelled at more often then not, even if they thought I was still inside state lines." All that time, looking out of the window in winter darkness, turning over and over in my mind what I was going to do after the draft.
College, right? Okay, so play for the Olympic team first. Yet I couldn't let the thought go, that maybe, maybe I could make that jump, land safely even if it was on ice in the National Hockey League.
"So you ended up going Whale watching."
"Those stupid long pants."
"Well, you must've liked what you saw."
Easy, undeniable. (Well, maybe not the way he skated, but...) He had skill; a lot of it. Dangerous; nevermind being able to score; he could and would set anybody up for a goal.
And fuck talent, he'd work one end of the ice just as hard as the other.
Like he was customized and fantasized for a goalie.
Someone who cares, who will never forget about you and never, ever, abandon you.
I don't believe in fate, but I smiled and wondered if I couldn't take some productive inspiration, that he was there, Opening Night, and I was stopping him, my first game, my first win, the first time everything was official, the first time everything was for real.
...And then I saw him, up-close and clear, and my eyes -- my entire body didn't want to stop following him. Swallowing -- my mouth was dry before I even noticed I was doing it.
"Hard not to," I said, looking him over most appreciatively, head to toe. "Or not too hard. Hard, anyway. I mean...it is the NHL."
(Why, was I supposed to be talking about something else?)
...That hair, those eyes, that body, that mouth.
And...it probably should've felt more bizarre, or uncomfortable, that I was lying there narrating 1983 for him when he was lying there with me just as absolutely naked as I was. If I'd bothered to think about it.
"Everything goes hard with you, huh, Barrasso? Not everything's hard." To demonstrate it he kissed me very slowly, gently, working my mouth over with thorough care -- and encouraging me to reciprocate.
"...Damn, Ronnie." I was trying to find the oxygen for speech after that. "You win."
Something told me I could trust you; I could ask you, and neither of us would end up taking a swing at the other. But I never would have guessed you'd be this amenable...
"Don't argue with the veteran, rookie."
"You win even if you're proving my point," I said, looking down at the two of us and emphasizing the last three words.
"Shut up, rookie." He lazily grinned at me, then his face softened, and turned more serious, and the tips of his fingers were brushing my hair. "You know, Tommy...so that I'm the first one you've been with like this...?"
"Yes?" I said, nonchalant, because I flatly refused to be embarrassed about it; what was the point?
Doesn't everybody have to start somewhere?
"So let me show you what you missed," he said simply. And kissed me. "You mean no one's ever touched you like I have... like I'm doing right now...?" Between his hands and voice he seemed to be viewing me with this combination fluctuating between genuine gratitude, pure appreciation, and utter horniness. "...It's an incredible fucking turn-on, Tommy, is what it is," he lowered his voice, and murmured in my ear, warm, and mind-blowing.
It felt like something had seized me, physically... Okay, so it had, but... psychically seized me at the same time.
Never in my entire life had I ever been so grateful for being uncomfortable, mistrusting most people, and having ridiculously high standards.
"I think... you just found an effective way to get me to shut up, Mr. Francis, sir..." I said, absently; unnecessarily, really, with lust completely overunning my brain, coursing through me so strongly that I was surprised I could even speak, and didn't care where my capacity for speech had gone. Words - any words - all words - seemed incredibly stupid, and utterly immaterial.
"Are you done?" he asked, looming over me mock-threateningly.
"Yessir."
"Good." And his mouth dropped over mine.
Am I sorry I didn't go to Sarajevo? Was he serious?!?
Yeah, so I could have been in Sarajevo. Hmm, where and with whom (and how, especially how) would I rather be spending my time right now -- with that asshole Chelios and that idiot kid Eddie Olczyk and Coach Lou from Brooklyn?
Over in the Eastern Bloc under even more surveillance?
Or flying like an eagle and brandishing... whatever... right here in Buffalo, where the weather's the same and training camp's at Lake Placid and I am as free as I have ever been and unencumbered enough to be doing this with "ohhellfuckingyesRonFrancis"... and really, really, really enjoying it...
I wasn't making noise because I wanted to argue with him -- that was for certain -- but I would argue there was no way - absolutely no fucking way - that even Tretiak was having a better night than this.