it's just a thing - part one
Like most stupid things in Ryan Whitney’s life, it’s probably Maxime Fucking Talbot’s fault.
Like many stories, it starts with a bet.
--
It’s not like Ryan and Talbot were super close or whatever when they were both still playing in Pittsburgh, but Ryan’s with Anaheim now and Talbot likes to keep tabs on everyone he knows. So Talbot calls like every other fucking day, and he’s funny enough and he doesn’t get offended when he gets hung up on, so whatever: Ryan can pick up the phone for him and they can shoot the shit for a while.
He can’t remember exactly why or how it starts but, to Ryan’s best estimation, Talbot’s just talking like he always is, and Ryan’s only half paying attention. Talbot says something about the time he banged Marc-Andre Fleury and then suddenly goes all quiet, probably because he thinks it’s all sorts of awkward that he most definitely just accidentally outed himself as someone who occasionally bangs dudes. Ryan kind of thinks this is a total over-reaction, since most of Pittsburgh has probably slept with Fleury, including Ryan himself, and he tells Talbot as much.
“Oh,” Talbot says. There’s an awkward pause, before Talbot changes the subject and starts prattling on again, probably about something entirely different.
Ryan promptly forgets that this conversation ever even took place, until Talbot texts him three weeks later with DID SID.
He considers this text for a long time, mostly why the fuck did Talbot text me about this shit, before firing back a why the fuck do I care?
He doesn’t even need to check his caller ID when his phone rings almost immediately -
“The bet!” Talbot crows loudly on the other end. “I win!”
Ryan wonders how much time Talbot spends having conversations in his head and being delusional enough to believe that they’ve actually happened in real life. “What the fuck are you even talking about?” he can’t help asking and then regretting almost immediately. “What bet?”
“The bet where I fuck more number one NHL picks than you do: I win!” Talbot repeats impatiently, and Ryan fights the urge to hang up on him.
Instead - and he has no idea what possesses him to say it - he snipes, “Fuck you, peasant: I could school you in that shit. Recognize, son.”
“Uh huh,” Talbot says serenely.
Ryan sighs: “Stakes? Not money: that would be fucking gross.”
“Bragging rights,” Talbot says immediately, and Ryan belatedly realizes that not only has he been trapped, but also that Talbot’s probably been thinking about this all week. But it’s too late to back out now - “Plus you have to wear a Talbot shirt around the city for a week.”
“So you’re going to wear a fucking Whitney shirt around Pittsburgh if you lose?”
“No,” Talbot scoffs. “Because all I fucking do is win like a boss.”
They set some ground rules: whoever can sleep with more number one draft picks until they both get bored of this bet is declared the winner. Homewrecking is strongly discouraged, and everything must obviously be consensual, though the draftee doesn’t necessarily need to be told it’s a bet.
“I heard Ovechkin doesn’t sleep with dudes,” Ryan offers.
“Yeah, you heard right,” Talbot says cryptically. "Not that he has an issue with it or whatever. Just, you know. Doesn't."
“I don’t think I even want to know how you can confirm that,” Ryan says, and then pauses to think before continuing: “And doubles don’t count, Talbot. You can’t fuck Flower again and say you’re at three.”
Talbot makes a sort of vaguely offended sound: “Fuck you. So game on or what?”
“You’re going down, Max.”
“Not on you I’m not!” Talbot informs him blithely. “Besides: who’s currently winning? Here’s a hint - not you!”
--
A week and a half into the stupid bet, coincidently known to most as the end of January, the Ducks end up in Tampa Bay for a few days, and because the NHL admittedly feels like a gigantic frat house sometimes, guys from both teams end up at the same club. Ryan Malone comes over to fist-bump Ryan, and guys from both teams end up taking over the same booth near the back of the room. Ryan works his strategy and ends up next to Steven Stamkos, who’s all smiles and friendliness and in desperate need of a haircut. He cheerfully tells Ryan about how he and his team are friendly with the club’s owner, so he doesn’t even mind that Steven’s actually more than a year away from the legal drinking age in Florida, as long as they’re all hush-hush about it so that the club doesn’t get closed down.
Ryan’s doing his best to be suave and subtle, and to not feel like an old creeper. Stamkos is super responsive to Ryan's questions and enthusiastically injecting his own commentary into it all, but Ryan’s not getting the fuck yeah, let's go vibes he would if this was a sure green-lit situation, so he tries one last time:
“What're you up to later?” he throws out casually.
“Going home with my girl,” Steven says, inclining his head across the room, where a group of very attractive women, all looking so Florida, are dancing. “We have this thing, where we go out and pretend we don't know each other? But then we go home together anyway, and it's awesome? Yeah. How about you?”
Oh. Huh. Strangely enough, Ryan’s not even too pressed about striking out on Stamkos: he seems like a nice enough kid, who is just oblivious enough to Ryan’s advances. “Oh, you know,” Ryan says vaguely, and waves his hand a little, and Steven nods cheerfully.
Ryan consoles himself by picking up and going home with one of the hot blondes in Stamkos' girlfriend's group, so hey: that's probably an even better win. It's a productive evening overall, especially since she turns out to be witty, clever and pre-med, as well as very vocal in bed.
As he does the stride of pride the next morning back to the hotel where the Ducks are staying, he decides to not tell Talbot that Stamkos is straight and let him find out for himself - sure, it might be kind of a dickbag move to withhold the information, but Talbot would probably do the same thing if he were in Ryan’s situation. Besides: it’s funnier this way.
--
There’s a lull in the regular season schedule in February when the Olympics arrive. Ryan gets called in to represent Team USA, which is awesome. It doesn't matter that he's a replacement, because Ryan gets to play in the motherfucking Olympics, and that’s pretty aces regardless of why.
It’s also here, at the Olympics, where Ryan ends up sleeping with Erik Johnson. It’s not like Ryan’s not taking the Olympics seriously, because he is; it’s just that he’s got this secondary mission, too. So he kind of gets to know Erik while getting paired up with him for drills, and that night, Ryan decides that the best way to win this round is to play to Erik’s sense of competition and patriotism. He sketches out the guidelines of the bet to him, and explains that Erik should sleep with him because if he doesn’t, the Canadians have won, which is not technically a lie.
Erik seems to think about this - "Does this have anything to do with how Maxime Talbot somehow has my number and keeps calling me?"
"This has everything to do with that," Ryan says seriously.
"I don't really sleep with dudes though," Erik tells him, almost apologetically.
Ryan nods, but points out how if you look at it one way, though, it's kind of like taking one for Team America, and getting laid out of the deal, so really. Apparently that's the selling point, because all of a sudden, Erik’s more than ready to go along with it and almost immediately takes Ryan back to his hotel room.
Afterward, sometime between orgasms and Ryan pulling his pants back on in an attempt to stumble back to his own room so he can actually get some shut-eye before their early morning skate tomorrow, Erik turns to look at him, sleepy and happily fucked out, and mumbles “USA! USA!”, which makes Ryan laugh and wonder why all his one night stands can’t be this ridiculous and accidentally fun - maybe it’s time to break out the patriotism pick-up lines more often: he files that one away for later.
And maybe there is something to his patriot hypothesis, because they beat Canada in the round robin on Canadian ice - Jamie Langenbrunner starts a “USA! USA!” chant in the dressing room that gets picked up by Dustin Brown and Jonathan Quick and Ryan Kesler; everyone but Erik, who bursts into uncontrollable, hysterical laughter.
Then, in an act of patriotic solidarity, the whole team celebrates the win by getting fantastically drunk on American beer, and Ryan finds himself in the middle of a three-way with Patrick Kane and Jack Johnson -
(“I’m not into dudes like that,” Patrick says while frantically pawing at Ryan’s shirt, Jack’s pants, anything he can get his hands on. He's already stripped himself down to his boxers. “For the record.”
Ryan just rolls his eyes, because like, yeah, he likes sex with women as much as the next mostly-straight guy, but even he would never make such outlandish claims while making out with Jack Johnson. He suspects that this might be why Jack is currently laughing into his kiss with Patrick.)
As Ryan, slicked up and protected, pushes carefully into Patrick after dutifully stretching him out, he thinks about how it would have been way more awkward to have a three-way with two guys who were both named ‘Johnson,’ because that would have been weird when he didn’t know what to call them, or the wrong one responded.
And Ryan might be drunker than he thought he was, because he’s probably just said this out loud, since Jack looks up from where he’s jerking off Patrick: “You can just call me JMFJ. Everyone else does. My mom. My brother. Everyone,” Jack says calmly to Ryan, like Ryan isn’t currently balls deep in Patrick. “It’s not even like me and Erik know each other all that well. No relation.”
“No homo,” Patrick adds, muffled as his face is pressed against the bed sheets. “Whitney, that all you got? Go harder, man.”
“Dude,” Ryan says, and shifts a bit so that he’s pushing in at a different angle, which makes Patrick babble something that sounds like a long, drawn out fuck yeah.
Jack just grins, winking like he and Ryan are in on some inside joke, and leans over Patrick to aggressively kiss Ryan instead.
("You don't get bonus points for sort of hooking up with Jack Mother Fucking Johnson," Talbot tells Ryan later. "Unless I get points for hooking up with DiPietro's wife, too."
"You fucking serious?" Ryan says in complete disbelief. "Why'd you do that for?"
"Had to. This is what happens when you end up in the middle of an open marriage: you get two DiPietros instead of one, so I took one for the team. And by the team, I mean me. And by me, I mean my penis," Talbot says loudly. "Suck it, Whitter: I win!"
Ryan can't even respond to that properly, too caught up with the first part of Talbot's sentence: "Wait, he's in an open marriage?"
"I know, right?" Talbot starts laughing. "Who would have thought it? It's so gold, it doesn't even matter that there wasn't enough time for Tavares, too. I'll get around to it next time: seduce him with my manly charms."
"Manly charms my ass, Max," Ryan says, but he starts cracking up, too.
"Are you a number one pick? No. So no fucking thanks," Talbot manages at the tail-end of his laughing fit.
Ryan doesn't think he's ever going to stop laughing ever again: "DiPietro's open marriage," he chokes out, setting both of them off all over again. This will probably never stop being funny.)
--
Ryan gets traded to Edmonton two weeks after the Olympics. He gets approximately sixteen gazillion texts about it from family, friends, and teammates, most of them some variation of laughter or condolences. Sandwiched between all of them is another text from Talbot: Rick Nash. Boom.
Ryan makes a face. Why?
His phone rings. He briefly entertains not answering it because Talbot can totally text him back like a normal person. He ends up answering anyway, to see what brilliant insights Talbot has to offer today:
“No standards; just winning!”
Then the line goes dead.
--
Ryan plays out the rest of the season in Edmonton. Alberta in winter is different from California, if only because it’s suddenly so fucking cold all of the time, and the pretty girls here wear parkas and instead of short shorts. It’s not so bad: the guys in the dressing room are nice enough and make him feel welcome. On the ice, they’re not great and they lose more games than they win, though not for a lack of heart or trying.
By the end of the season, they are last in the league but management thanks them all on locker clean-out day and tells them that next season will be different; better. Ryan sure hopes so.
As it turns out, playing for a last place team means that, by default, Ryan really does give a shit about the draft this year even though he feels like a dirty old man when he reads up about the guys most likely to go first overall. He tells himself that it's in the interest of finding out who might be an Oiler come October, and not because he'd like to know who he might have to get to know better in order to stick it to Talbot. He then proceeds to actually watch the Plymouth Whalers and Windsor Spitfires in their Ontario Hockey League playoff series and feels like a total fucking creep while doing it. It kind of helps that the two guys who are vying to get picked first are definitely showcased in the series - Ryan starts to feel like his competitive streak to best Talbot is starting to teeter somewhat into the realm of the insane, but a bet’s a bet, and there’s no fucking way he’s going to lose to Talbot, so he forces himself to watch on as the two guys go battle for a puck in the corner, impressed by the skill level demonstrated by both Tyler Seguin and Taylor Hall.
It won’t matter who goes first, Ryan decides. They’re hockey players: they’ll probably both be easy.
--
Ryan has an osteotomy on his foot in early May and then spends the entire Memorial Cup tournament sitting on his ass in front of the couch and stoned out of his mind on pain medication. During this time, a remarkable amount of ice cream also gets consumed - he’s pretty sure the trainers would murder him without a second thought if they knew how much of it he was eating while sedentary on the couch, but fuck it: his foot hurts.
The recovery’s a slow process, but it happens: slowly but surely, he’s on his feet again, and as the days drag on by, with dedication and physio, it becomes easier to walk; to run; to skate. By the time the draft rolls around, his foot’s still causing him a considerable amount of discomfort, but the progress is making it easier for Ryan to be cautiously optimistic for the upcoming season.
Three days after the draft, Ryan calls Talbot because he’s bored, and he just knows that Talbot's probably going to call him eventually: it's easier just to bite the bullet and contact him first. When Talbot picks up on the fourth ring, and audible moaning is heard in the background, Ryan tries to pretend that he doesn't know that Talbot's most definitely watching porn and jerking off on the other end of the line.
“Feeling better?” Talbot asks, and Ryan can practically hear him smirking. “Last time we talked, you called me during the Windsor and Brandon game, and you told me that you were going to do that guy. But then you kept talking about how you couldn’t cheat on the great spoon that you had? Something about marrying it because it spent a lot of time in your mouth bringing you ice cream.”
“Fuck you, I’m fine,” Ryan tells him dismissively. “That was the meds talking, dude.”
Talbot laughs, loudly and obnoxiously, but complies in changing the topic: “So Taylor Hall, eh? Disappointed?"
"No preference," Ryan tells him honestly. "I have a bet to win."
"Huh," Talbot kind of hums, probably some sort of agreement. "Hey, you ever end up hooking up with Tavares?"
"Nah," Ryan says. To be honest, he's kind of stalled since the Olympics: moving to Edmonton, a new city, meant new women, which kind of offered an awesome distraction from getting traded to a last place team in the midst of rebuild mode. "You?"
"Me neither," Talbot replies. There's a pause and the background moaning cuts off suddenly: Ryan takes this to mean that Talbot's muted his video, but probably hasn't stopped jerking it. "If you're so concerned with winning, which you're not doing by the way, why aren't you making a play for, like, Sid or something?"
Ryan thinks about it for a moment: Sid's a good kid and an even better hockey player, but Ryan's still not entirely convinced that he hasn't got the anatomy of, like, a Ken doll and doesn't really want to find out - "It's the summer, man. There are other people here to hook up with here than Sidney Crosby. Hot Boston women, for example."
Talbot makes a huffing noise into the phone that sounds like a laugh: "Is that a forfeit?"
"Fuck no. Just taking the summer off."
"Strategizing how you're going to bang your new rookie?" Talbot asks, stuttering a little over his words. “You sure about this?”
“Like hell I’m going to be wearing your shirt around Edmonton," Ryan scoffs. "So yes.”
"Not if I get to him first," Talbot says. And then: "Hold on a sec," as he puts the phone down. Ryan can hear Talbot's muffled moaning in the background and takes that as his cue to hang up, because what the fuck - Ryan needs some new friends, and also a good game plan to get to Taylor Hall before Talbot does, because losing to Talbot would be completely synonymous with failure, and that is so not a fucking option.
--
Pre-season gears up again at the end of summer: there's a sense of anticipation in the air as players trickle into Edmonton for training camp and team bonding. He gets reacquainted with guys he met last season and meets new teammates, including Taylor Hall. Ryan doesn't really get a chance to get to know him better in those first few pre-season weeks: for the most part, the kid's busy either getting swarmed by media or bounding after the other wonder-rookies Magnus Paajarvi and Jordan Eberle.
Ryan might have to lie kind of low on this one: the local radio stations are doing call-in shows where they talk about sightings of the kid, which is kind of ridiculous because it’s basically one step away from stalking. Ryan’s going to play his cards right and decides that he’ll let the media circus sort of die down a little first before making his move: that’s probably for the best, anyway.
As a result, Ryan doesn't actually even get a chance to talk to Taylor properly until the night of the home opener, when the entire dressing room is vibrating with anticipatory energy. He wanders up to where Taylor's sitting half-dressed in his hockey pads and nudges him with his stick: “Hey kid, nervous?”
Taylor doesn’t look up from staring at his skates: so much for showing proper deference to his elders. “I don’t really get nervous,” he says distractedly.
Ryan just laughs. “Good,” he says, nudging him again. “Then get out there and show us what you’ve got.”
That gets Taylor looking up and grinning.
Taylor doesn’t score a highlight reel goal, but he does look significantly less nervous by the time the third period rolls around - he even kind of looks like he belongs out there. And afterward, in the dressing room when everyone else is heaping praises on Eberle for his ridiculous toe-drag and beautiful goal, Ryan catches Taylor’s eye from across the room as Taylor positively beams at him.
They all go out to celebrate: Ryan drinks enough that he’s pleasantly buzzed but still mostly functional. He watches as Taylor fails to pick up, and decides to make his move then - sidles up beside him and puts a hand on Taylor’s lower back, subtle enough that it could just be a moment of friendliness. Taylor turns to smile at him.
"Not so bad tonight, kid," Ryan tells him.
Taylor’s grin widens and tips the neck of his bottle toward Ryan: "Thanks. You were pretty good, too."
Ryan takes this as a cue to throw caution to the wind and segue in, hoping that he hasn't misread the situation: “You wanna get laid?” he asks casually so that it could possibly be misconstrued as a general question.
“Yeah,” Taylor tells him immediately, finishing the rest of his drink, and then looking at Ryan so intently that Ryan is almost taken aback at how little convincing that took - this is even easier than Ryan thought it was going to be. Ryan figured it would take more than that: usually it takes a bit of a sell. But hey: he’s not going to question it.
They end up back at Ryan’s and he’s barely got the front door shut, when Taylor’s hands are basically everywhere as he stretches up to make up for the height differential between the two of them. They kiss messily against the inside of Ryan’s door, one of Ryan’s hands braced against the doorknob, the other one tangled into Taylor’s hair: this would probably be awkward if it wasn’t actually kind of awesome. It takes everything in Ryan to push off the doorframe and steer the two of them toward the couch, a feat considering they don’t break the kiss once as they stumble over and land in a tangled heap on the three-seater with Ryan underneath, somehow narrowly escaping getting Taylor’s errant knee in his side which would have been sure to wind him.
Taylor makes a noise that sounds like a cross between a sigh and a laugh, his mouth still pressed to Ryan’s as he attempts to pull Ryan up against him. Ryan responds by biting down gently on Taylor’s lower lip. Taylor makes another sound, and this time it goes straight to Ryan’s dick, which leads to Taylor breaking off the kiss, and with cheeks flushed pink, folding himself onto the floor between Ryan’s legs, his hands hovering over the zipper.
"Uh, you're going to keep this on the down-low, right?" Taylor asks, and suddenly he seems nervous and hesitant, completely missing the bravado from only moments before.
Ryan decides that this is probably not the time for sarcasm or chirping and bites back any snarky comment he could possibly formulate in response. "For sure," he says. "Absolutely. We both will."
“Okay,” Taylor says, watching Ryan carefully. And then: "So, can I...?"
“You probably can,” Ryan smirks. “But the question is: may you?”
Taylor just kind of stares blankly at him, until Ryan rolls his eyes: “That’s a yes, Hallsy.”
“Oh, okay,” Taylor shrugs and before Ryan knows it, Taylor's pulled out a condom from his back pocket, unzipped Ryan and rolled it on to him.
"Wait,” Ryan pauses, leaning forward. “What?"
Taylor smiles sweetly, tossing the empty foil wrapper at Ryan’s face. "Because I don't know where the hell you've been,” he explains. “Pittsburgh and Anaheim, I guess. Boston."
Ryan considers protesting, but upon further consideration, supposes that the kid might have a point - Christ, how are they teaching kids in the OHL these days? - and concedes: "Fine, whatever. What about you?"
“I already got checked,” Taylor informs him, giving Ryan’s dick a few lazy strokes. “And I’m clean. So.”
Any great comeback Ryan may have been thinking about making - some half-formed chirp about Windsor and an inaccurately skewed statistic about the city’s STI rate, probably - gets lost, when Taylor gets his mouth around Ryan and works his jaw to let Ryan slide halfway out and dictate the rhythm.
Everything’s sort of unfocussed after that, and all Ryan really remembers is the blissed out aftermath, kind of drunk, happy and sated; he vaguely recalls Taylor tugging off the condom, and getting rid of it, before coming back and unceremoniously pulling Ryan’s pants back up and maneuvering Ryan until he’s lying properly on the couch: “Wow,” Taylor tells him, standing above him and sounding kind of amazed. “You really liked that.”
Ryan thinks about some sort of come-back, but that was kind of a great blowjob, so he settles for a half-shrug instead and a lazy smile.
“Cool,” Taylor says easily. “So uh. I’ll see you around, yeah?”
He kind of pats Ryan on the shoulder and awkwardly-half waves at Ryan before letting himself out.
It’s only as Ryan’s almost drifted off to sleep right there on the couch that it occurs to him that there was no reciprocation on his part - fuckin’ oops.
--
Ryan goes and gets checked the next day. To his utter relief, but lack of surprise, the results come back clean, and he casually mentions this to Taylor next time he gets him cornered before practice. He also casually drops that there might be something he owed Taylor the next time he's free; Taylor just grins: "Beauty," he says.
Later that night, some of the guys go out drinking again: they go out of their way to make it not look like they’re leaving together, but they end up at Ryan's anyway, and Taylor blows him again, this time without the condom.
And then Taylor swallows, which is totally relevant to Ryan's interests; Taylor smirks and it's all Ryan can do to haul him up and kiss him. Taylor shies away, like Ryan should be bothered by the fact that his dick was just in Taylor's mouth.
“Hey,” Ryan murmurs, ducking to catch his eye, because he’d like to think that, for the most part, he’s nothing like the guys Taylor’s probably used to, young and still squeamish. “It’s fine, okay?”
And it seems like Taylor’s probably okay with this also, because he’s nodding and then craning his head up to kiss Ryan, sloppy and messy and enthusiastic, and Ryan can feel Taylor pressed against him, hard in his jeans. He considers leaving it until Taylor mans up and actually says what he wants, but that’d put Ryan at oh-and-two, and that’s kind of a jackass stat. So without skipping another beat, Ryan leans forward in his seat on the couch to unzip Taylor’s jeans and shove a hand down Taylor’s boxer-briefs to jerk him off with short, hard strokes, pulling away long enough to tell Taylor to pull his pants lower if he doesn’t actually want to come in them.
“I swear to god, Hallsy,” Ryan warns without breaking rhythm as Taylor squirms, desperately trying to pull down his pants. “Jizz on the couch and I will fucking end you.”
--
Over the next few weeks, Ryan finds himself hooking up with Taylor on a semi-regular basis, usually when the young guys all go out drinking, and maybe Ryan isn’t one of the younger guys anymore, but he is unattached which is aces. And while he doesn't have all that much trouble picking up, he’s come to realize that Taylor pretty much has no game, which is ridiculously funny when they catch him striking out again and again since he’s young and likely going to be a star one day. But for someone who’s so good on the ice, he’s pretty terrible at trying to pick up girls, and he doesn't go for dudes at bars as far as Ryan can tell. Plus, while the blow jobs and hand jobs are great, Ryan still hasn’t broached the bet portion of hanging out with Taylor yet, so hey: if Ryan’s a man on a mission, he might as well throw the kid a bone. Literally.
“You bang him yet?” Talbot demands, the next time he calls.
“Close,” Ryan says. “Working on it.”
“Nice, Whit. What is he, like, nineteen?”
Ryan groans. “Almost. Next week.”
“You’re a bad person,” Talbot laughs. “Congratulations!”
“Yeah, well, I came to terms with that a long time ago,” Ryan tells him. “Also, you slept with Rick Nash.”
“Yeah, I did, didn’t I?” Talbot says cheerfully. “Good talk, Whit.”
--
As the season slowly unfolds, Ryan learns that all three rookies are actually as good as advertised: Ebs’ got skills, Maggie’s got moves, and Taylor storms around the ice like a wild animal in a room full of fragile things. They seem to spend a lot of time together: in particular, Ebs and Taylor seem joined at the hip - if it weren’t for the fact that Ryan’s heard Ebs mention his girlfriend a few times in passing, and that Taylor sometimes goes home with Ryan to fool around, Ryan would wonder if there was something going on between the two kids.
(“Nah,” Taylor tells him one time while pulling his clothes back on and digging around in his pocket for his phone to call a cab. “Ebs and his girl have a good thing going. Plus I don’t think he’d be into it, you know?”)
Ryan’s bet with Talbot provides a good distraction to the mediocre record the Oilers have going so far this season, but the frenzy of trying to fuck his way through the drafts has kind of died out since the bet's inception back in January.
Then, in November, the Oilers go on a road trip through parts of New York state: they don’t make it to Long Island, but the Islanders are at home and Ryan manages to hook up with John Tavares during one of their days off. He doesn’t end of scoring with DiPietro, who apparently has a sore groin (again), which puts Ryan at one for two, but that isn’t so bad since it means that he’s pulled even with Talbot.
Then Talbot calls a few days later to announce that he’s banged Joe Thornton, and how the fuck did he even manage that?
(“Wanna know why they call him ‘Jumbo Joe’?” Talbot says smugly. “I can tell you.”
Ryan decides that there are some things he’s probably better off not knowing: “No, not even a little bit, man.”)
Their next game is an afternoon match-up against the Rangers at Madison Square Garden, and all morning leading up to it, Ebs and Maggie keep shoving Taylor and pulling him into headlocks because he turns nineteen today. Apparently this means that the three of them poke at each other all through breakfast, like the small children they are.
“No,” Maggie says almost indignantly when Theo Peckham articulates Ryan’s almost exact thoughts out loud - though like Theo can talk: he and Jason Strudwick just spent the entire meal pulling faces at Sam Gagner until milk shot out of his nose from laughing. “It means that we’re gonna win it for the birthday boy.”
Ebs beams and reaches over to muss up Taylor’s hair, which quickly disintegrates into another playful shoving match. Ryan just rolls his eyes and turns back to his eggs and toast.
They don’t win the game. In fact, they get routed so badly by the Rangers in a massive clusterfuck full of defensive breakdowns and sucker punches that it’s an absolute relief when they have to board the plane back to Edmonton immediately after the game. The entire flight back is a miserable one: everybody on board is wracked with shame at being that embarrassingly outplayed. In a moment of tentative consideration as to how he might console himself from the stupidity of the entire afternoon, Ryan weighs the pros and cons of propositioning Taylor’s now nineteen year old self into joining the mile-high club and being done with this leg of this bet once and for all so that he can at least feel like he’s accomplished something today, even if it would be wrapped up in at least two and a half clichés.
Then he looks over to where Taylor’s sitting, quiet and glum, and so unlike the ridiculousness that all of the kids were living out just hours ago, that Ryan decides it’s probably best to leave it for now. So he closes his eyes and hopes to be asleep until the plane touches down again in Leduc.
--
Of course, the next day brings a new sense of optimism and hope, so the evening inevitably ends at the bar again; a belated birthday celebration of sorts for Taylor. They haven’t got practice until later the next day, so the young guys end up taking turns at buying rounds of shooters. Ryan catches Tom Gilbert’s eye from across the table, both of them with their college days far behind them and nursing beers instead. They exchange a ‘what can you do?’ half-shrug over Maggie’s tilted head as he pounds back a double shot of whiskey.
At the table over, a group of girls keep looking over at their booth while whispering and giggling - Ryan really thinks that this might have less to do with getting recognized, and much more to do with a table of half-drunk eighteen year old, probably heterosexual, girls who likely possess heteronormative tendencies. (Thank you, three quarters of a sociology degree, Ryan thinks, taking another long swallow of his beer.)
The kids don’t seem to have any qualms with this though, and end up buying a round of tequila shots for the girls. Gags sends Taylor over to talk to them, probably because he’s the most hilarious option, but also because he’s currently the drunkest of them all, and the most likely to agree to make his way over and chat up the girls -
“Go get birthday laid, Hallsy,” Gags tells him, pounding him hard on the back a couple times in encouragement. “Make us proud.”
It turns out Gags’ not wrong, either, because Taylor does end up wandering over, stumbling only a little on the way.
They give him a few minutes with the girls, before Ryan definitely overhears him trying to pick up the tiny brunette perched on the outside of the table, shamelessly resorting to the But it’s my birthday! line.
She sort of side-eyes him, as her friends at the table giggle. She hesitates for a moment, stirring her drink a little: “Oh, yeah? Prove it.”
Ryan watches half-interestedly as Taylor fumbles for his wallet and pulls out his driver’s license, presenting it to her with a flourish. She takes it from him to inspect closely, and then looks between the ID and Taylor’s face a few times.
And then she gasps: “Wait, you’re Taylor Hall?”
“Uh,” he pauses, before flashing his brightest, most hopeful grin. “Yeah?”
“Oh,” she says, and immediately slides out of her chair, grabbing her purse and coat, handing the driver’s license back to him. “Okay, let’s go. Happy birthday, by the way.”
As Taylor follows the girl out of the bar, pausing only to gives their table a double thumbs up, Ebs, Gags and Maggie drunkenly high-five each other and order another round.
Ryan gawks a little, surprised: “Did that just happen?” he asks the table at large.
Gibby tilts back the rest of his beer. “Yep.”
“That shit’s just downright depressing,” Ryan points out.
“Yep,” Gibby agrees.
--
It’s more than a week later before they’re back at the bar, this time to celebrate a hard-fought win against the Avs. They all drink a little too much in celebration: everyone else is too busy reveling in festivities to notice when Ryan leans over to talk into Taylor’s ear so that he’s heard over the loud music and thumping bass. The line that Ryan throws out is probably awful, but Taylor doesn’t seem to care because he goes with it anyway; bro-hugs Ebs and trails out of the place after Ryan, getting into the cab and going home with him.
It’s different this time and they both know it, because when they get back to Ryan’s one-bedroom, they bypass the couch where they usually end up, and make it into the aforementioned bedroom instead. They leave a trail of clothing from the front door all the way down the hallway, and both of them are almost naked by the time Ryan gets them to the bed, stumbling onto it with Taylor underneath him. He slides a hand down Taylor’s side, pausing to rest against the side of his hip.
“Can I?” Ryan asks, suddenly slightly nervous; hesitant.
Taylor just smirks up at him, almost expectant. “I don’t know. Can you?”
That kind of throws Ryan off for a moment, and he just kind of stares at Taylor in disbelief before huffing out a laugh - “Dude, you didn’t even get the joke right,” he informs him, but reaches over to pull open the drawer on the bedside table anyway to grab a bottle of lube and a condom.
He pauses, considering Taylor: “So we’re doing this,” Ryan says, flipping open the cap of the lube bottle.
“Yeah,” Taylor says, reaching up to pull Ryan down for another kiss, wet and hot. And fuck: the things the kid can do with his mouth - Ryan silently thanks all the higher powers for Taylor's total lack of game.
interlude one
Like many stories, it starts with a bet.
--
It’s not like Ryan and Talbot were super close or whatever when they were both still playing in Pittsburgh, but Ryan’s with Anaheim now and Talbot likes to keep tabs on everyone he knows. So Talbot calls like every other fucking day, and he’s funny enough and he doesn’t get offended when he gets hung up on, so whatever: Ryan can pick up the phone for him and they can shoot the shit for a while.
He can’t remember exactly why or how it starts but, to Ryan’s best estimation, Talbot’s just talking like he always is, and Ryan’s only half paying attention. Talbot says something about the time he banged Marc-Andre Fleury and then suddenly goes all quiet, probably because he thinks it’s all sorts of awkward that he most definitely just accidentally outed himself as someone who occasionally bangs dudes. Ryan kind of thinks this is a total over-reaction, since most of Pittsburgh has probably slept with Fleury, including Ryan himself, and he tells Talbot as much.
“Oh,” Talbot says. There’s an awkward pause, before Talbot changes the subject and starts prattling on again, probably about something entirely different.
Ryan promptly forgets that this conversation ever even took place, until Talbot texts him three weeks later with DID SID.
He considers this text for a long time, mostly why the fuck did Talbot text me about this shit, before firing back a why the fuck do I care?
He doesn’t even need to check his caller ID when his phone rings almost immediately -
“The bet!” Talbot crows loudly on the other end. “I win!”
Ryan wonders how much time Talbot spends having conversations in his head and being delusional enough to believe that they’ve actually happened in real life. “What the fuck are you even talking about?” he can’t help asking and then regretting almost immediately. “What bet?”
“The bet where I fuck more number one NHL picks than you do: I win!” Talbot repeats impatiently, and Ryan fights the urge to hang up on him.
Instead - and he has no idea what possesses him to say it - he snipes, “Fuck you, peasant: I could school you in that shit. Recognize, son.”
“Uh huh,” Talbot says serenely.
Ryan sighs: “Stakes? Not money: that would be fucking gross.”
“Bragging rights,” Talbot says immediately, and Ryan belatedly realizes that not only has he been trapped, but also that Talbot’s probably been thinking about this all week. But it’s too late to back out now - “Plus you have to wear a Talbot shirt around the city for a week.”
“So you’re going to wear a fucking Whitney shirt around Pittsburgh if you lose?”
“No,” Talbot scoffs. “Because all I fucking do is win like a boss.”
They set some ground rules: whoever can sleep with more number one draft picks until they both get bored of this bet is declared the winner. Homewrecking is strongly discouraged, and everything must obviously be consensual, though the draftee doesn’t necessarily need to be told it’s a bet.
“I heard Ovechkin doesn’t sleep with dudes,” Ryan offers.
“Yeah, you heard right,” Talbot says cryptically. "Not that he has an issue with it or whatever. Just, you know. Doesn't."
“I don’t think I even want to know how you can confirm that,” Ryan says, and then pauses to think before continuing: “And doubles don’t count, Talbot. You can’t fuck Flower again and say you’re at three.”
Talbot makes a sort of vaguely offended sound: “Fuck you. So game on or what?”
“You’re going down, Max.”
“Not on you I’m not!” Talbot informs him blithely. “Besides: who’s currently winning? Here’s a hint - not you!”
--
A week and a half into the stupid bet, coincidently known to most as the end of January, the Ducks end up in Tampa Bay for a few days, and because the NHL admittedly feels like a gigantic frat house sometimes, guys from both teams end up at the same club. Ryan Malone comes over to fist-bump Ryan, and guys from both teams end up taking over the same booth near the back of the room. Ryan works his strategy and ends up next to Steven Stamkos, who’s all smiles and friendliness and in desperate need of a haircut. He cheerfully tells Ryan about how he and his team are friendly with the club’s owner, so he doesn’t even mind that Steven’s actually more than a year away from the legal drinking age in Florida, as long as they’re all hush-hush about it so that the club doesn’t get closed down.
Ryan’s doing his best to be suave and subtle, and to not feel like an old creeper. Stamkos is super responsive to Ryan's questions and enthusiastically injecting his own commentary into it all, but Ryan’s not getting the fuck yeah, let's go vibes he would if this was a sure green-lit situation, so he tries one last time:
“What're you up to later?” he throws out casually.
“Going home with my girl,” Steven says, inclining his head across the room, where a group of very attractive women, all looking so Florida, are dancing. “We have this thing, where we go out and pretend we don't know each other? But then we go home together anyway, and it's awesome? Yeah. How about you?”
Oh. Huh. Strangely enough, Ryan’s not even too pressed about striking out on Stamkos: he seems like a nice enough kid, who is just oblivious enough to Ryan’s advances. “Oh, you know,” Ryan says vaguely, and waves his hand a little, and Steven nods cheerfully.
Ryan consoles himself by picking up and going home with one of the hot blondes in Stamkos' girlfriend's group, so hey: that's probably an even better win. It's a productive evening overall, especially since she turns out to be witty, clever and pre-med, as well as very vocal in bed.
As he does the stride of pride the next morning back to the hotel where the Ducks are staying, he decides to not tell Talbot that Stamkos is straight and let him find out for himself - sure, it might be kind of a dickbag move to withhold the information, but Talbot would probably do the same thing if he were in Ryan’s situation. Besides: it’s funnier this way.
--
There’s a lull in the regular season schedule in February when the Olympics arrive. Ryan gets called in to represent Team USA, which is awesome. It doesn't matter that he's a replacement, because Ryan gets to play in the motherfucking Olympics, and that’s pretty aces regardless of why.
It’s also here, at the Olympics, where Ryan ends up sleeping with Erik Johnson. It’s not like Ryan’s not taking the Olympics seriously, because he is; it’s just that he’s got this secondary mission, too. So he kind of gets to know Erik while getting paired up with him for drills, and that night, Ryan decides that the best way to win this round is to play to Erik’s sense of competition and patriotism. He sketches out the guidelines of the bet to him, and explains that Erik should sleep with him because if he doesn’t, the Canadians have won, which is not technically a lie.
Erik seems to think about this - "Does this have anything to do with how Maxime Talbot somehow has my number and keeps calling me?"
"This has everything to do with that," Ryan says seriously.
"I don't really sleep with dudes though," Erik tells him, almost apologetically.
Ryan nods, but points out how if you look at it one way, though, it's kind of like taking one for Team America, and getting laid out of the deal, so really. Apparently that's the selling point, because all of a sudden, Erik’s more than ready to go along with it and almost immediately takes Ryan back to his hotel room.
Afterward, sometime between orgasms and Ryan pulling his pants back on in an attempt to stumble back to his own room so he can actually get some shut-eye before their early morning skate tomorrow, Erik turns to look at him, sleepy and happily fucked out, and mumbles “USA! USA!”, which makes Ryan laugh and wonder why all his one night stands can’t be this ridiculous and accidentally fun - maybe it’s time to break out the patriotism pick-up lines more often: he files that one away for later.
And maybe there is something to his patriot hypothesis, because they beat Canada in the round robin on Canadian ice - Jamie Langenbrunner starts a “USA! USA!” chant in the dressing room that gets picked up by Dustin Brown and Jonathan Quick and Ryan Kesler; everyone but Erik, who bursts into uncontrollable, hysterical laughter.
Then, in an act of patriotic solidarity, the whole team celebrates the win by getting fantastically drunk on American beer, and Ryan finds himself in the middle of a three-way with Patrick Kane and Jack Johnson -
(“I’m not into dudes like that,” Patrick says while frantically pawing at Ryan’s shirt, Jack’s pants, anything he can get his hands on. He's already stripped himself down to his boxers. “For the record.”
Ryan just rolls his eyes, because like, yeah, he likes sex with women as much as the next mostly-straight guy, but even he would never make such outlandish claims while making out with Jack Johnson. He suspects that this might be why Jack is currently laughing into his kiss with Patrick.)
As Ryan, slicked up and protected, pushes carefully into Patrick after dutifully stretching him out, he thinks about how it would have been way more awkward to have a three-way with two guys who were both named ‘Johnson,’ because that would have been weird when he didn’t know what to call them, or the wrong one responded.
And Ryan might be drunker than he thought he was, because he’s probably just said this out loud, since Jack looks up from where he’s jerking off Patrick: “You can just call me JMFJ. Everyone else does. My mom. My brother. Everyone,” Jack says calmly to Ryan, like Ryan isn’t currently balls deep in Patrick. “It’s not even like me and Erik know each other all that well. No relation.”
“No homo,” Patrick adds, muffled as his face is pressed against the bed sheets. “Whitney, that all you got? Go harder, man.”
“Dude,” Ryan says, and shifts a bit so that he’s pushing in at a different angle, which makes Patrick babble something that sounds like a long, drawn out fuck yeah.
Jack just grins, winking like he and Ryan are in on some inside joke, and leans over Patrick to aggressively kiss Ryan instead.
("You don't get bonus points for sort of hooking up with Jack Mother Fucking Johnson," Talbot tells Ryan later. "Unless I get points for hooking up with DiPietro's wife, too."
"You fucking serious?" Ryan says in complete disbelief. "Why'd you do that for?"
"Had to. This is what happens when you end up in the middle of an open marriage: you get two DiPietros instead of one, so I took one for the team. And by the team, I mean me. And by me, I mean my penis," Talbot says loudly. "Suck it, Whitter: I win!"
Ryan can't even respond to that properly, too caught up with the first part of Talbot's sentence: "Wait, he's in an open marriage?"
"I know, right?" Talbot starts laughing. "Who would have thought it? It's so gold, it doesn't even matter that there wasn't enough time for Tavares, too. I'll get around to it next time: seduce him with my manly charms."
"Manly charms my ass, Max," Ryan says, but he starts cracking up, too.
"Are you a number one pick? No. So no fucking thanks," Talbot manages at the tail-end of his laughing fit.
Ryan doesn't think he's ever going to stop laughing ever again: "DiPietro's open marriage," he chokes out, setting both of them off all over again. This will probably never stop being funny.)
--
Ryan gets traded to Edmonton two weeks after the Olympics. He gets approximately sixteen gazillion texts about it from family, friends, and teammates, most of them some variation of laughter or condolences. Sandwiched between all of them is another text from Talbot: Rick Nash. Boom.
Ryan makes a face. Why?
His phone rings. He briefly entertains not answering it because Talbot can totally text him back like a normal person. He ends up answering anyway, to see what brilliant insights Talbot has to offer today:
“No standards; just winning!”
Then the line goes dead.
--
Ryan plays out the rest of the season in Edmonton. Alberta in winter is different from California, if only because it’s suddenly so fucking cold all of the time, and the pretty girls here wear parkas and instead of short shorts. It’s not so bad: the guys in the dressing room are nice enough and make him feel welcome. On the ice, they’re not great and they lose more games than they win, though not for a lack of heart or trying.
By the end of the season, they are last in the league but management thanks them all on locker clean-out day and tells them that next season will be different; better. Ryan sure hopes so.
As it turns out, playing for a last place team means that, by default, Ryan really does give a shit about the draft this year even though he feels like a dirty old man when he reads up about the guys most likely to go first overall. He tells himself that it's in the interest of finding out who might be an Oiler come October, and not because he'd like to know who he might have to get to know better in order to stick it to Talbot. He then proceeds to actually watch the Plymouth Whalers and Windsor Spitfires in their Ontario Hockey League playoff series and feels like a total fucking creep while doing it. It kind of helps that the two guys who are vying to get picked first are definitely showcased in the series - Ryan starts to feel like his competitive streak to best Talbot is starting to teeter somewhat into the realm of the insane, but a bet’s a bet, and there’s no fucking way he’s going to lose to Talbot, so he forces himself to watch on as the two guys go battle for a puck in the corner, impressed by the skill level demonstrated by both Tyler Seguin and Taylor Hall.
It won’t matter who goes first, Ryan decides. They’re hockey players: they’ll probably both be easy.
--
Ryan has an osteotomy on his foot in early May and then spends the entire Memorial Cup tournament sitting on his ass in front of the couch and stoned out of his mind on pain medication. During this time, a remarkable amount of ice cream also gets consumed - he’s pretty sure the trainers would murder him without a second thought if they knew how much of it he was eating while sedentary on the couch, but fuck it: his foot hurts.
The recovery’s a slow process, but it happens: slowly but surely, he’s on his feet again, and as the days drag on by, with dedication and physio, it becomes easier to walk; to run; to skate. By the time the draft rolls around, his foot’s still causing him a considerable amount of discomfort, but the progress is making it easier for Ryan to be cautiously optimistic for the upcoming season.
Three days after the draft, Ryan calls Talbot because he’s bored, and he just knows that Talbot's probably going to call him eventually: it's easier just to bite the bullet and contact him first. When Talbot picks up on the fourth ring, and audible moaning is heard in the background, Ryan tries to pretend that he doesn't know that Talbot's most definitely watching porn and jerking off on the other end of the line.
“Feeling better?” Talbot asks, and Ryan can practically hear him smirking. “Last time we talked, you called me during the Windsor and Brandon game, and you told me that you were going to do that guy. But then you kept talking about how you couldn’t cheat on the great spoon that you had? Something about marrying it because it spent a lot of time in your mouth bringing you ice cream.”
“Fuck you, I’m fine,” Ryan tells him dismissively. “That was the meds talking, dude.”
Talbot laughs, loudly and obnoxiously, but complies in changing the topic: “So Taylor Hall, eh? Disappointed?"
"No preference," Ryan tells him honestly. "I have a bet to win."
"Huh," Talbot kind of hums, probably some sort of agreement. "Hey, you ever end up hooking up with Tavares?"
"Nah," Ryan says. To be honest, he's kind of stalled since the Olympics: moving to Edmonton, a new city, meant new women, which kind of offered an awesome distraction from getting traded to a last place team in the midst of rebuild mode. "You?"
"Me neither," Talbot replies. There's a pause and the background moaning cuts off suddenly: Ryan takes this to mean that Talbot's muted his video, but probably hasn't stopped jerking it. "If you're so concerned with winning, which you're not doing by the way, why aren't you making a play for, like, Sid or something?"
Ryan thinks about it for a moment: Sid's a good kid and an even better hockey player, but Ryan's still not entirely convinced that he hasn't got the anatomy of, like, a Ken doll and doesn't really want to find out - "It's the summer, man. There are other people here to hook up with here than Sidney Crosby. Hot Boston women, for example."
Talbot makes a huffing noise into the phone that sounds like a laugh: "Is that a forfeit?"
"Fuck no. Just taking the summer off."
"Strategizing how you're going to bang your new rookie?" Talbot asks, stuttering a little over his words. “You sure about this?”
“Like hell I’m going to be wearing your shirt around Edmonton," Ryan scoffs. "So yes.”
"Not if I get to him first," Talbot says. And then: "Hold on a sec," as he puts the phone down. Ryan can hear Talbot's muffled moaning in the background and takes that as his cue to hang up, because what the fuck - Ryan needs some new friends, and also a good game plan to get to Taylor Hall before Talbot does, because losing to Talbot would be completely synonymous with failure, and that is so not a fucking option.
--
Pre-season gears up again at the end of summer: there's a sense of anticipation in the air as players trickle into Edmonton for training camp and team bonding. He gets reacquainted with guys he met last season and meets new teammates, including Taylor Hall. Ryan doesn't really get a chance to get to know him better in those first few pre-season weeks: for the most part, the kid's busy either getting swarmed by media or bounding after the other wonder-rookies Magnus Paajarvi and Jordan Eberle.
Ryan might have to lie kind of low on this one: the local radio stations are doing call-in shows where they talk about sightings of the kid, which is kind of ridiculous because it’s basically one step away from stalking. Ryan’s going to play his cards right and decides that he’ll let the media circus sort of die down a little first before making his move: that’s probably for the best, anyway.
As a result, Ryan doesn't actually even get a chance to talk to Taylor properly until the night of the home opener, when the entire dressing room is vibrating with anticipatory energy. He wanders up to where Taylor's sitting half-dressed in his hockey pads and nudges him with his stick: “Hey kid, nervous?”
Taylor doesn’t look up from staring at his skates: so much for showing proper deference to his elders. “I don’t really get nervous,” he says distractedly.
Ryan just laughs. “Good,” he says, nudging him again. “Then get out there and show us what you’ve got.”
That gets Taylor looking up and grinning.
Taylor doesn’t score a highlight reel goal, but he does look significantly less nervous by the time the third period rolls around - he even kind of looks like he belongs out there. And afterward, in the dressing room when everyone else is heaping praises on Eberle for his ridiculous toe-drag and beautiful goal, Ryan catches Taylor’s eye from across the room as Taylor positively beams at him.
They all go out to celebrate: Ryan drinks enough that he’s pleasantly buzzed but still mostly functional. He watches as Taylor fails to pick up, and decides to make his move then - sidles up beside him and puts a hand on Taylor’s lower back, subtle enough that it could just be a moment of friendliness. Taylor turns to smile at him.
"Not so bad tonight, kid," Ryan tells him.
Taylor’s grin widens and tips the neck of his bottle toward Ryan: "Thanks. You were pretty good, too."
Ryan takes this as a cue to throw caution to the wind and segue in, hoping that he hasn't misread the situation: “You wanna get laid?” he asks casually so that it could possibly be misconstrued as a general question.
“Yeah,” Taylor tells him immediately, finishing the rest of his drink, and then looking at Ryan so intently that Ryan is almost taken aback at how little convincing that took - this is even easier than Ryan thought it was going to be. Ryan figured it would take more than that: usually it takes a bit of a sell. But hey: he’s not going to question it.
They end up back at Ryan’s and he’s barely got the front door shut, when Taylor’s hands are basically everywhere as he stretches up to make up for the height differential between the two of them. They kiss messily against the inside of Ryan’s door, one of Ryan’s hands braced against the doorknob, the other one tangled into Taylor’s hair: this would probably be awkward if it wasn’t actually kind of awesome. It takes everything in Ryan to push off the doorframe and steer the two of them toward the couch, a feat considering they don’t break the kiss once as they stumble over and land in a tangled heap on the three-seater with Ryan underneath, somehow narrowly escaping getting Taylor’s errant knee in his side which would have been sure to wind him.
Taylor makes a noise that sounds like a cross between a sigh and a laugh, his mouth still pressed to Ryan’s as he attempts to pull Ryan up against him. Ryan responds by biting down gently on Taylor’s lower lip. Taylor makes another sound, and this time it goes straight to Ryan’s dick, which leads to Taylor breaking off the kiss, and with cheeks flushed pink, folding himself onto the floor between Ryan’s legs, his hands hovering over the zipper.
"Uh, you're going to keep this on the down-low, right?" Taylor asks, and suddenly he seems nervous and hesitant, completely missing the bravado from only moments before.
Ryan decides that this is probably not the time for sarcasm or chirping and bites back any snarky comment he could possibly formulate in response. "For sure," he says. "Absolutely. We both will."
“Okay,” Taylor says, watching Ryan carefully. And then: "So, can I...?"
“You probably can,” Ryan smirks. “But the question is: may you?”
Taylor just kind of stares blankly at him, until Ryan rolls his eyes: “That’s a yes, Hallsy.”
“Oh, okay,” Taylor shrugs and before Ryan knows it, Taylor's pulled out a condom from his back pocket, unzipped Ryan and rolled it on to him.
"Wait,” Ryan pauses, leaning forward. “What?"
Taylor smiles sweetly, tossing the empty foil wrapper at Ryan’s face. "Because I don't know where the hell you've been,” he explains. “Pittsburgh and Anaheim, I guess. Boston."
Ryan considers protesting, but upon further consideration, supposes that the kid might have a point - Christ, how are they teaching kids in the OHL these days? - and concedes: "Fine, whatever. What about you?"
“I already got checked,” Taylor informs him, giving Ryan’s dick a few lazy strokes. “And I’m clean. So.”
Any great comeback Ryan may have been thinking about making - some half-formed chirp about Windsor and an inaccurately skewed statistic about the city’s STI rate, probably - gets lost, when Taylor gets his mouth around Ryan and works his jaw to let Ryan slide halfway out and dictate the rhythm.
Everything’s sort of unfocussed after that, and all Ryan really remembers is the blissed out aftermath, kind of drunk, happy and sated; he vaguely recalls Taylor tugging off the condom, and getting rid of it, before coming back and unceremoniously pulling Ryan’s pants back up and maneuvering Ryan until he’s lying properly on the couch: “Wow,” Taylor tells him, standing above him and sounding kind of amazed. “You really liked that.”
Ryan thinks about some sort of come-back, but that was kind of a great blowjob, so he settles for a half-shrug instead and a lazy smile.
“Cool,” Taylor says easily. “So uh. I’ll see you around, yeah?”
He kind of pats Ryan on the shoulder and awkwardly-half waves at Ryan before letting himself out.
It’s only as Ryan’s almost drifted off to sleep right there on the couch that it occurs to him that there was no reciprocation on his part - fuckin’ oops.
--
Ryan goes and gets checked the next day. To his utter relief, but lack of surprise, the results come back clean, and he casually mentions this to Taylor next time he gets him cornered before practice. He also casually drops that there might be something he owed Taylor the next time he's free; Taylor just grins: "Beauty," he says.
Later that night, some of the guys go out drinking again: they go out of their way to make it not look like they’re leaving together, but they end up at Ryan's anyway, and Taylor blows him again, this time without the condom.
And then Taylor swallows, which is totally relevant to Ryan's interests; Taylor smirks and it's all Ryan can do to haul him up and kiss him. Taylor shies away, like Ryan should be bothered by the fact that his dick was just in Taylor's mouth.
“Hey,” Ryan murmurs, ducking to catch his eye, because he’d like to think that, for the most part, he’s nothing like the guys Taylor’s probably used to, young and still squeamish. “It’s fine, okay?”
And it seems like Taylor’s probably okay with this also, because he’s nodding and then craning his head up to kiss Ryan, sloppy and messy and enthusiastic, and Ryan can feel Taylor pressed against him, hard in his jeans. He considers leaving it until Taylor mans up and actually says what he wants, but that’d put Ryan at oh-and-two, and that’s kind of a jackass stat. So without skipping another beat, Ryan leans forward in his seat on the couch to unzip Taylor’s jeans and shove a hand down Taylor’s boxer-briefs to jerk him off with short, hard strokes, pulling away long enough to tell Taylor to pull his pants lower if he doesn’t actually want to come in them.
“I swear to god, Hallsy,” Ryan warns without breaking rhythm as Taylor squirms, desperately trying to pull down his pants. “Jizz on the couch and I will fucking end you.”
--
Over the next few weeks, Ryan finds himself hooking up with Taylor on a semi-regular basis, usually when the young guys all go out drinking, and maybe Ryan isn’t one of the younger guys anymore, but he is unattached which is aces. And while he doesn't have all that much trouble picking up, he’s come to realize that Taylor pretty much has no game, which is ridiculously funny when they catch him striking out again and again since he’s young and likely going to be a star one day. But for someone who’s so good on the ice, he’s pretty terrible at trying to pick up girls, and he doesn't go for dudes at bars as far as Ryan can tell. Plus, while the blow jobs and hand jobs are great, Ryan still hasn’t broached the bet portion of hanging out with Taylor yet, so hey: if Ryan’s a man on a mission, he might as well throw the kid a bone. Literally.
“You bang him yet?” Talbot demands, the next time he calls.
“Close,” Ryan says. “Working on it.”
“Nice, Whit. What is he, like, nineteen?”
Ryan groans. “Almost. Next week.”
“You’re a bad person,” Talbot laughs. “Congratulations!”
“Yeah, well, I came to terms with that a long time ago,” Ryan tells him. “Also, you slept with Rick Nash.”
“Yeah, I did, didn’t I?” Talbot says cheerfully. “Good talk, Whit.”
--
As the season slowly unfolds, Ryan learns that all three rookies are actually as good as advertised: Ebs’ got skills, Maggie’s got moves, and Taylor storms around the ice like a wild animal in a room full of fragile things. They seem to spend a lot of time together: in particular, Ebs and Taylor seem joined at the hip - if it weren’t for the fact that Ryan’s heard Ebs mention his girlfriend a few times in passing, and that Taylor sometimes goes home with Ryan to fool around, Ryan would wonder if there was something going on between the two kids.
(“Nah,” Taylor tells him one time while pulling his clothes back on and digging around in his pocket for his phone to call a cab. “Ebs and his girl have a good thing going. Plus I don’t think he’d be into it, you know?”)
Ryan’s bet with Talbot provides a good distraction to the mediocre record the Oilers have going so far this season, but the frenzy of trying to fuck his way through the drafts has kind of died out since the bet's inception back in January.
Then, in November, the Oilers go on a road trip through parts of New York state: they don’t make it to Long Island, but the Islanders are at home and Ryan manages to hook up with John Tavares during one of their days off. He doesn’t end of scoring with DiPietro, who apparently has a sore groin (again), which puts Ryan at one for two, but that isn’t so bad since it means that he’s pulled even with Talbot.
Then Talbot calls a few days later to announce that he’s banged Joe Thornton, and how the fuck did he even manage that?
(“Wanna know why they call him ‘Jumbo Joe’?” Talbot says smugly. “I can tell you.”
Ryan decides that there are some things he’s probably better off not knowing: “No, not even a little bit, man.”)
Their next game is an afternoon match-up against the Rangers at Madison Square Garden, and all morning leading up to it, Ebs and Maggie keep shoving Taylor and pulling him into headlocks because he turns nineteen today. Apparently this means that the three of them poke at each other all through breakfast, like the small children they are.
“No,” Maggie says almost indignantly when Theo Peckham articulates Ryan’s almost exact thoughts out loud - though like Theo can talk: he and Jason Strudwick just spent the entire meal pulling faces at Sam Gagner until milk shot out of his nose from laughing. “It means that we’re gonna win it for the birthday boy.”
Ebs beams and reaches over to muss up Taylor’s hair, which quickly disintegrates into another playful shoving match. Ryan just rolls his eyes and turns back to his eggs and toast.
They don’t win the game. In fact, they get routed so badly by the Rangers in a massive clusterfuck full of defensive breakdowns and sucker punches that it’s an absolute relief when they have to board the plane back to Edmonton immediately after the game. The entire flight back is a miserable one: everybody on board is wracked with shame at being that embarrassingly outplayed. In a moment of tentative consideration as to how he might console himself from the stupidity of the entire afternoon, Ryan weighs the pros and cons of propositioning Taylor’s now nineteen year old self into joining the mile-high club and being done with this leg of this bet once and for all so that he can at least feel like he’s accomplished something today, even if it would be wrapped up in at least two and a half clichés.
Then he looks over to where Taylor’s sitting, quiet and glum, and so unlike the ridiculousness that all of the kids were living out just hours ago, that Ryan decides it’s probably best to leave it for now. So he closes his eyes and hopes to be asleep until the plane touches down again in Leduc.
--
Of course, the next day brings a new sense of optimism and hope, so the evening inevitably ends at the bar again; a belated birthday celebration of sorts for Taylor. They haven’t got practice until later the next day, so the young guys end up taking turns at buying rounds of shooters. Ryan catches Tom Gilbert’s eye from across the table, both of them with their college days far behind them and nursing beers instead. They exchange a ‘what can you do?’ half-shrug over Maggie’s tilted head as he pounds back a double shot of whiskey.
At the table over, a group of girls keep looking over at their booth while whispering and giggling - Ryan really thinks that this might have less to do with getting recognized, and much more to do with a table of half-drunk eighteen year old, probably heterosexual, girls who likely possess heteronormative tendencies. (Thank you, three quarters of a sociology degree, Ryan thinks, taking another long swallow of his beer.)
The kids don’t seem to have any qualms with this though, and end up buying a round of tequila shots for the girls. Gags sends Taylor over to talk to them, probably because he’s the most hilarious option, but also because he’s currently the drunkest of them all, and the most likely to agree to make his way over and chat up the girls -
“Go get birthday laid, Hallsy,” Gags tells him, pounding him hard on the back a couple times in encouragement. “Make us proud.”
It turns out Gags’ not wrong, either, because Taylor does end up wandering over, stumbling only a little on the way.
They give him a few minutes with the girls, before Ryan definitely overhears him trying to pick up the tiny brunette perched on the outside of the table, shamelessly resorting to the But it’s my birthday! line.
She sort of side-eyes him, as her friends at the table giggle. She hesitates for a moment, stirring her drink a little: “Oh, yeah? Prove it.”
Ryan watches half-interestedly as Taylor fumbles for his wallet and pulls out his driver’s license, presenting it to her with a flourish. She takes it from him to inspect closely, and then looks between the ID and Taylor’s face a few times.
And then she gasps: “Wait, you’re Taylor Hall?”
“Uh,” he pauses, before flashing his brightest, most hopeful grin. “Yeah?”
“Oh,” she says, and immediately slides out of her chair, grabbing her purse and coat, handing the driver’s license back to him. “Okay, let’s go. Happy birthday, by the way.”
As Taylor follows the girl out of the bar, pausing only to gives their table a double thumbs up, Ebs, Gags and Maggie drunkenly high-five each other and order another round.
Ryan gawks a little, surprised: “Did that just happen?” he asks the table at large.
Gibby tilts back the rest of his beer. “Yep.”
“That shit’s just downright depressing,” Ryan points out.
“Yep,” Gibby agrees.
--
It’s more than a week later before they’re back at the bar, this time to celebrate a hard-fought win against the Avs. They all drink a little too much in celebration: everyone else is too busy reveling in festivities to notice when Ryan leans over to talk into Taylor’s ear so that he’s heard over the loud music and thumping bass. The line that Ryan throws out is probably awful, but Taylor doesn’t seem to care because he goes with it anyway; bro-hugs Ebs and trails out of the place after Ryan, getting into the cab and going home with him.
It’s different this time and they both know it, because when they get back to Ryan’s one-bedroom, they bypass the couch where they usually end up, and make it into the aforementioned bedroom instead. They leave a trail of clothing from the front door all the way down the hallway, and both of them are almost naked by the time Ryan gets them to the bed, stumbling onto it with Taylor underneath him. He slides a hand down Taylor’s side, pausing to rest against the side of his hip.
“Can I?” Ryan asks, suddenly slightly nervous; hesitant.
Taylor just smirks up at him, almost expectant. “I don’t know. Can you?”
That kind of throws Ryan off for a moment, and he just kind of stares at Taylor in disbelief before huffing out a laugh - “Dude, you didn’t even get the joke right,” he informs him, but reaches over to pull open the drawer on the bedside table anyway to grab a bottle of lube and a condom.
He pauses, considering Taylor: “So we’re doing this,” Ryan says, flipping open the cap of the lube bottle.
“Yeah,” Taylor says, reaching up to pull Ryan down for another kiss, wet and hot. And fuck: the things the kid can do with his mouth - Ryan silently thanks all the higher powers for Taylor's total lack of game.
interlude one