it's just a thing - part two
Everything seems to be getting better and better all the time: the Oilers go on a Northeast road trip and take all three games against Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto. The team ends up having a pretty sloppy hotel party while in Montreal - Ryan figures that the only thing missing in his life before today was Ladislav Smid's karaoke version of 'Alberta Bound': now Ryan thinks he will never want for anything else in his life ever again. Then he wakes up in a bed next to a beautiful girl who barely speaks any English, and Ryan has few doubts that La Belle Province might actually be a magical place.
And the other thing that's been going on in his life right now: even though there's no need to hook up with Taylor any more in theory, Ryan finds himself having done so a few times in recent weeks. He'd feel weird about it, but it's just that it's so easy with Taylor. Actually, it's pretty convenient to have someone that enthusiastic, willing, and surprisingly good with his mouth, in Ryan's back pocket. Plus it's not like they hook up when they haven't been drinking - that probably makes it okay. It's not like anyone spends the night. It's all for a bet, anyway. And sometimes, the best option is the most easy and convenient option, and Taylor is often both easy and convenient.
The team's success follows them home with a win against the Blues - the game ends up going into overtime, and the arena erupts to almost deafening decibels of noise when Taylor scores the game winning goal to give them the extra point.
The team goes out that night; of course they go out, and get completely hammered in celebration - even Shawn Horcoff is happily pounding them back, so somewhere in the back of Ryan's increasingly impaired brain, he briefly wonders if he should be concerned about the kids and alcohol poisoning.
Then he looks over at their booth and notices Ebs leaning drunkenly into Taylor's side, who's grinning as Gags is gesticulating widely and yelling into Andrew Cogliano’s face: "You know what's fucking great? Hockey!" Over at the next table, Maggie is chatting up a tall blonde girl who looks weirdly like a teenaged Khabibulin, so fuck it: if that's what these fools are into, they can handle themselves. Ryan takes this as his cue to order another Crown and Coke.
He's not quite sure how much time passes, but he knows that it's about two and a half drinks later, when a solid mass comes crashing into him and almost knocks him over - Ryan's ready to spin around to give the peasant a piece of his rather intoxicated mind, but when he does turn to look, it's just Taylor and his idiotic grin.
"Hey Ryan," he says, swaying a little and leaning into Ryan's personal space. Taylor leans in even further and lowers his voice: "Gonna grab another drink. Can I get you anything?"
Ryan glances between the half-empty glass, Taylor beaming face, and back again. "Are you sure you need another, kid?" And then he pauses: "Wait, is this some sort of come-on?"
"Is it working?" Taylor asks, sounding surprisingly hopeful.
"Not even a little, man," Ryan tells him, swirling his drink.
"Oh. No, it isn't then," Taylor says, blinking. He pauses, before brightening again. "Hey: wanna do it anyway?"
Ryan thinks about this as he drains the rest of his glass, making a bit of a face at the watered down Coke at the bottom of it - there could definitely be worse ways to end the evening. "Fine," Ryan finally says. "But only if you stop talking. Seriously."
"Okay," Taylor agrees cheerfully, and bounds over to the bar to settle: Ryan watches his retreating back and wonders, not for the first time, about his own questionable life choices.
--
Ryan's not going to complain, even though he nearly trips over his own feet when Taylor shoves him back on to the bed, because then Taylor's there, kissing his way down Ryan's chest, open-mouthed and messy. He's still trying to process it, when Taylor bites Ryan's nipple hard, and Ryan shoves him away, because - "Fucking ow, Hallsy, what the fuck?" Taylor's pouting, but Ryan's nipple is still throbbing and he's in no mood for this garbage. "I know you've got the brain function of a zombie right now, but that doesn't mean you have to try and eat me."
It takes a few moments for that to get through Taylor's head; he makes a face. "What are you gonna do about it?"
That's a challenge Ryan can't pass up, and the hilarious look on Taylor's face when Ryan tackles him down is just a bonus. It takes both of them a few tries to get Taylor's pants down - the shirt they abandon as a lost cause - and he'd probably feel worse about this if Taylor wasn't rolling over easily, reaching for the lube and tossing it blindly over his back.
Two fingers later, Ryan is feeling marginally more sober, and there's a nagging tickle in his brain that he's pretty sure is his conscience. "Hallsy," he says, going for casual, "We're really drunk. You sure this is cool?"
"C'mon Whit," Taylor whines, arching to look over his shoulder and the curve of his back visible under his shucked up shirt makes Ryan lose his train of thought for a second. "Don't be such a non."
Ryan considers saying more, but then Taylor grinds back on his fingers, clenching purposefully, and he figures the kid's old enough to make his own decisions.
They've done this enough that he doesn't have to be too careful - as Ryan slicks himself up, Taylor's impatient fidgeting relaxes into a boneless sprawl, and even though they're both trashed, they find an easy rhythm through muscle memory, if nothing else. When Ryan shifts to take the pressure off the bruise on his thigh, Taylor jerks under him, and his knuckles go white in the sheets. Because Ryan's not an idiot, he accommodates the shift and pushes into him again, and this time he's pretty sure if Taylor's face wasn't pressed into a pillow, he'd probably wake the entire floor - to hell with that, he wants to hear it, and Taylor's voice cracks when Ryan tugs him up by his hair. It's not exactly comfortable, but watching Taylor fall apart under him is totally worth it. He thinks about speeding this up by jerking Taylor off now, but he can't quite get a good angle, so that will have to wait.
So it's a surprise when Taylor goes still under him, hand flailing back to ease Ryan's thrusts. For a moment he's worried that he's hurt the kid, but then Taylor slumps back down against the bed and Ryan realizes - holy fuck. That's ridiculously hot, and the smug feeling in his chest is totally enough to get him off embarrassingly fast, face pressed against Taylor's shoulder to muffle his own moans.
There's nothing he'd like to do more right now than bask in his own awesomeness, but he has the condom to deal with, and by the time he gets back from the bathroom, Taylor's already gone.
--
They get the next day off, which is fantastic because Ryan doesn't remember having to nurse a hangover this bad since college; unfortunately, most of his day-off is kind of ruined when he tries to figure out exactly what happened between him and Taylor: he remembers being a sex god and Taylor fleeing into the night, but not an awful lot in between. He hopes that this won't make tomorrow's morning skate weird.
It turns out his concerns are unfounded when he wanders in to the dressing room, only half-awake, and both Ebs and Taylor greet him in unison, before going back to whatever ridiculous conversation they were having beforehand in their crazy kid language, so Ryan goes back to strapping on his pads as their other team mates come trickling in.
Later, during a breather between drills, Ryan goes over and taps Taylor's shin pads with his stick: "Hey. We good?"
Taylor looks at him strangely, tilting his head to the side a little. "'course we're good," he says easily. "Why wouldn't we be?"
"Oh," Ryan says. "Okay. Fine. Great. Do something after?"
"Sure," Taylor agrees and grins before skating over to line up for contact drills, leaving Ryan still a little confused, but feeling much better.
--
Things sort of go back to normal after that, or at least as normal as things ever are: they lose against Anaheim and win against Tampa Bay, both in shootouts; Stamkos gives Ryan a friendly bump in warm-ups, and Malone ends up buying dinner for Ryan for winning, which is aces because catching up with old friends is great, and free food is even better.
Ryan also gets a few opportunities that week to exercise the recreation of his sex god abilities: he's not exactly sure how it came about last time, but much to his chagrin, it seems that no matter what angle he subtly tries to shift to, he can't quite seem to get the same reaction out of Taylor as he did after that Blues game. Meanwhile, there's also a tiny part of him that wonders if he's getting in over his head all over something that started over a stupid bet; but the sex is not so bad - actually, much to Ryan's chagrin, it's pretty fucking good - so he's perfectly willing to ignore that part of his brain for now.
It all kind of comes to a head after a loss against the Canucks in a game where they really should have won, and no one's happy: as Khabibulin yells loudly in the dressing room before their coach has even made it back in, Ryan meets Taylor's eye, and it becomes an unspoken agreement that Taylor will end up at Ryan's later that evening in an attempt to at least end the evening on a less lousy note.
And they're half-naked, Ryan already having tipped them on to the couch, when Taylor suddenly shoves at him and tries to sit up: "Wait, wait, pause," Taylor says, pulling away. "Okay, look: I know what you're trying to do. It was embarrassing last time it happened, and it's not happening again. So seriously: you need to, like. Stop."
Ryan contemplates pretending not knowing what Taylor’s talking about and making him say it, but the kid is clearly uncomfortable, and Ryan doesn’t want to be a jackass about this. So, instead, he tries to sound encouraging: "But it was awesome," Ryan argues.
Because: yeah, it kind of totally was.
"Embarrassing," Taylor counters firmly, shaking his head vehemently. "Also, I'm too sober for that right now."
Ryan tilts his head to the side: "Too sober to get laid?"
"Never too sober for that, come on," Taylor counters.
Ryan laughs: "You sure? We do have morning skate and all."
"You're not that big," Taylor deadpans. He pauses, before grinning widely. "Or impressive."
Never one to back down, Ryan sets out to prove him wrong.
--
Here's the thing: precedence dictates that, when Ryan finally hauls himself out of bed afterwards, to get cleaned up and pull on a pair of boxers, Taylor takes it as his cue to get dressed and head home for the night. They’ve got a system: it works and everyone knows you don't mess with a good thing.
So Ryan's more than a little surprised, and somewhat dismayed, when he gets back to his room ready to collapse into bed and fall into blissed out sleep, and finds Taylor’s still sprawled out on his bed, naked and mostly asleep under Ryan’s comforter.
He stares dumbly for a few minutes, trying to consider the best course of action before deciding on the most direct approach: he prods at Taylor’s shoulder a few times: “Hallsy. Hey, Hallsy, wake the fuck up - you can’t stay here.”
Taylor sighs, burrowing further into Ryan’s blankets. “C’mon Whit, I’m tired,” he mumbles into the pillow without opening his eyes. “Blow you tomorrow morning, okay?”
Ryan opens his mouth to argue, and then closes it again when he decides that it’s probably a lost cause since Taylor’s pretty much dead to the world by this point. Plus, Ryan's having horrifying flashes as to how he might explain to coach and management and the media about how he broke the face of the franchise by dumping him out of bed after fucking him. After a long moment, Ryan climbs into his bed too, because like hell he’s going to sleep on the couch and fuck up his back when he’s got his own perfectly good bed, thanks, but not without shoving Taylor over to make more room and grabbing some of the blankets back for himself first. It’s not as awkward as it could be, sharing this bed: actually, it’s surprisingly warm and comfortable.
It could be worse, is the last thing Ryan remembers thinking before dropping off into sleep as Taylor snuffles a little beside him: at least I’m getting morning sex out of this.
("You're smiling," Theo notes to Ryan, when he drops down beside him in the dressing room.
"No, I'm not," Ryan says, distracted with his skate laces.
"Yeah, you are. It's terrifying," Theo continues, undeterred. "Either you murdered someone, or you got laid this morning. Personally, I'm hoping for the first one."
Ryan tries hard not to think about the surprisingly awesome blow job that happened approximately five minutes after he woke up this morning. "I hid the bodies really well," Ryan tells him solemnly and then smiles even more widely.
Theo makes a face: "I'm just going to go...over there now."
When they take to the ice, Ryan almost feels bad when it seems to take Taylor a few extra laps to get back into the groove of things, but then Taylor skates over to fake slewfoot him and grins, and it's all Ryan can do not to laugh.)
--
“I should probably go home at some point,” Taylor mentions later, after a day of shooting the shit around town. “I thought Ebs would want more alone time with his girlfriend, but they said we should all hang tonight, and just like. Hang out and watch movies at home or something.” He pauses for a moment. “Hey, you want to come?”
To this day, Ryan has no idea why he agreed to this: temporary lapse of judgment. Temporary insanity, maybe even.
When he trails after Taylor into Casa Eberle and Hall, Ebs' sitting on the couch awfully close to a blonde girl, both of them looking like they’re completely engrossed into what’s playing on the television above that weird faux-fireplace. Taylor just grins and bounds over to the couch, throwing himself over the back onto his spot at the end: “Hey kids,” he says, draping one of his freakishly long arms over Ebs’ shoulders and reaches all the way over to Ebs' girlfriend's back.
“Hey yourself,” Ebs says right back and looks perfectly content to nestle his head against Taylor’s shoulder and shift so that his legs are in his girlfriend’s lap. “Where have you been? Me and Lauren, we had a bet going: I said you were with a girl, but she says you weren’t ‘cuz she doesn’t have any friends in Edmonton right now--”
“--but a couple of girls I know will be in town next weekend, so if you guys are around, I can introduce you if you want,” the girlfriend, Lauren, interjects cheerfully.
Taylor leans forward to beam at Lauren: "You're the best," he says sincerely. And then, "Ebs! Pay the lady."
Lauren claps her hands once in excitement: "I like when Taylor's around," she declares. "It's like Tubes is still here. Except short. And doesn't try to grab my boobs," she adds almost regretfully. "I miss him."
Ryan sort of hangs back in the doorway, watching the three of them interact with their easy affection. Mostly, he just feels incredibly old.
“Oh, so hey,” Ebs turns to his girlfriend, who’s affectionately rubbing his knee now, probably missing this Tubes, whoever or whatever that is. “The grumpy old dude by the door is Whit: he plays D for us.”
It’s probably too late to make a getaway at this point, so Ryan mans up and goes over to the couch and sits down on Lauren’s other side. “Hey,” he says, sticking out his hand to shake. “Ryan.”
She turns to smile at him, shaking his hand with an impressive grip: “Nice to meet you. I’m Lauren.”
“Lauren’s cool,” Taylor announces, sitting up straighter. “She knows all these hot musical theater chicks - she keeps hooking me up and everything: she’s pretty much the ultimate wingman.”
Ryan raises an eyebrow: “Musical theatre?”
Lauren shrugs, grinning ruefully, “Music performance major at Calgary - sometimes I introduce Taylor to my friends.”
“She’s pretty much the only reason Hallsy ever gets laid,” Ebs adds solemnly, and then yelps when Lauren and Taylor team up to shove him off the couch. Ebs reaches up to pull Lauren down with him - as the two of them laugh in a tangled mass of limbs on the floor, they miss the bemused smirk that passes between Taylor and Ryan.
--
It turns out Ebs and Lauren had been knee-deep in a “The Bachelor” marathon before Ryan and Taylor had showed up, and they don’t look like they’ll be surrendering the remote control anytime soon, so Ryan settles into the couch, bracing himself for some really shitty reality television.
(“I thought you guys would be watching Canadian football or something,” he says idly as The Bachelor gazes soulfully into the camera lens and lists off his unreasonable criteria for his potential future mate. “Isn’t that what Canadians do?”
Lauren and Taylor let out a collectively loud groan. Ebs just ignores them: “The CFL season ended two weeks ago, man.”
“I hate CFL,” Taylor grumbles. “I ended up watching so much of it last month because Ebby likes it.”
“Your dad’s CFL,” Ebs retorts. Then he turns to Ryan and grins: “No, seriously: his dad played in the CFL.”
“And it’s still boring!” Taylor laments. “Shouldn’t that just be proof of how much it sucks? Even my dad couldn’t make it awesome.”
Lauren leans over and wraps Taylor up into a sympathetic hug: “Jordan makes me watch a lot of CFL with him, too. It’s cruel. Let’s run away together where there’s no Canadian football.”
“Okay,” Taylor says pathetically, hooking his chin against her shoulder. “And Ebs will feel bad when he’s left alone with nothing but CFL and Ryan Whitney.”
Ryan’s almost impressed at how adept Ebs seems to be at ignoring his girlfriend and roommate’s antics. Then again, Ebs willingly hangs out with these two, so maybe he’s just a glutton for punishment.)
Ten minutes later, he’s already sick of the duster on the television in the ill-fitting suit, trying to decide between ten marginally attractive women.
Taylor seems to run out of patience with the show about ten minutes after that, because he finally extracts his arm, stretches, and announces that he’s going to his room to play Call of Duty instead: “Whit, you coming?”
Ryan trails Taylor down the hall, away from where Ebs and Lauren are still engrossed with The Bachelor’s seemingly difficult choice (“Haha, Sophie’s choice,” Ryan had said when the duster had picked the platinum blonde Sophie to stay another week - only Lauren had laughed at his terribly clever joke, which made her okay in his books), to Taylor’s surprisingly neat bedroom, where he tosses Ryan a controller and gestures to him to sit.
“So, Lauren,” Ryan perches on the edge of the bed. “She seems nice.”
“She is nice,” Taylor nods, flicking on the television. “She’s great, and Ebs is the best: they’re good for each other,” he adds as they wait for the game to load.
They’re about forty minutes in, and halfway through one of the missions, when Ryan is suddenly acutely aware of how close they’re sitting together on Taylor’s bed, how Taylor’s knee is pressed casually against his. They finish the rest of the level with little difficulty.
“Break time,” Taylor says when they’ve finally cleared the zone, and then sticks the game into a save point before dropping the controller on to the floor and shoving Ryan down onto the bed instead.
“Uh, what the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Ryan says, but already he’s angling upwards to kiss Taylor, his controller forgotten.
“Well,” Taylor replies, his hands shamelessly toying with the hem of Ryan’s shirt. “It’s just that we’ve never done it in my bed before. It could be fun.”
Ryan pulls back for a moment to help a little with Taylor tugging the shirt over his head. “Hallsy: your roommate and his girlfriend are in the next room,” he warns, even as he’s working at the buttons on Taylor’s shirt.
“We’ll be quiet,” Taylor promises, and Ryan kind of knows from past experience that he’s pretty much lying, but Taylor can be convincing when he wants to be, and the hands tugging at the fly of Ryan’s jeans right now are plenty convincing.
--
When Ryan wakes up in the morning, the first thing he realizes is that he’s definitely not in his own room; he also notices that, judging from the colour-scheme and general décor and emptiness of the bedroom, he probably didn’t end up back at some girl’s place. The third thing he notices is that he’s got Taylor’s sleep-octopus limbs draped all over him. He puts all three of these facts together and deduces that he most definitely fell asleep in Taylor’s bed.
Goddammit.
Carefully, he extracts himself from bed and pulls on his discarded clothes tossed carelessly on the ground the night before. From the other side of the apartment, he can hear the shower running in Ebs’ room and decides that this would probably be the best time to make a getaway before anyone else realizes that he’s accidentally spent the night.
Unfortunately, Ebs is in the kitchen by the time Ryan gets there en route to sneaking out the front door. They kind of stare awkwardly at each other for a moment.
“Cereal?” Ebs finally offers.
“Sure.”
“We have Cheerios, Vector, Corn Flakes and. Um. Some Raisin Bran. Uh. If you want. Since you’re old.”
Ryan just tiredly flips him the bird and reaches for the Corn Flakes and an empty bowl.
“So, uh," Ebs begins awkwardly. "Are you two…together?”
Alarmed, Ryan looks up so fast that he thinks he might have whiplash - "What? No! Just, you know. Hanging out. Whatever.”
“Right. Okay. Well then.”
“Yeah.”
The door to Ebs’ room clicks open just then and Lauren comes out in an oversized t-shirt and her hair wrapped up in a towel. Her smile doubles in size when she sees Ryan: “Good morning!”
Ryan grunts in response, bracing himself for whatever terrible ridiculousness that is inevitably coming.
As Lauren wanders around the kitchen, digging for a spoon and her own cereal bowl, Ryan can hear her start humming under her breath, something familiar and vaguely annoying, before she finally bursts into song: “YOU! MAKE! ME! FEEL LIKE I’M LIVING A TEEN! AGE! DREAM!” And hey: at least her background as a music performance major means that she can stay on key.
She pauses after her rousing rendition of the chorus to put a hand on her hip and turn to glare accusingly at Ryan: “I can’t believe Taylor didn’t tell us you were his boyfriend!”
“They’re just hanging out, apparently,” Ebs tells her, looking vaguely unhappy. “So he’s not.”
Ryan could swear that Lauren says something like ‘yet’ under her breath, but before he can call her on it and correct her, she’s distracted by Taylor choosing that exact moment to wander into the kitchen.
“Taylor! Hi!” Lauren all but shouts. “Morning! I can’t introduce you to my girl friends anymore. They’re all taken. Or gay. Which is a lifestyle I totally support!”
It seems that Taylor has no idea about what she's talking about: Ryan's not sure if this is attributed to the lack of caffeine, the early hour of morning, or willful ignorance, but whatever it is, Taylor just blinks sleepily at her, before making his way over to the coffee pot and emitting a vaguely pathetic noise when he finds it empty.
Ryan sighs: “I’m going to go use your shower. And when I am done, I’m going to pretend that this morning never happened.”
When he gets out of the bathroom ten minutes later, he finds Taylor intently watching the coffee maker as it slowly drips a pot of caffeinated nectar, and Ebs lying on the couch with his head in his girlfriend’s lap: “You’re a good person,” Lauren tells Ebs, gently stroking his hair.
Ryan's not sure he wants to know.
(“Nah, Ebs doesn’t care," Taylor tells Ryan as he goes with him to the lobby of their building to wait for a cab. "He probably just thinks it’s weird that Lauren pretty much wants to adopt you, man.”)
--
The team goes out again the next evening, morning skate pushed back until early afternoon, so partying is inevitable, really - “We need a code word,” Taylor says, leaning heavily against the bar, almost spilling his drink all over Ryan’s shirt.
Ryan just stares at him: “What are you, fucking fourteen years old?”
“I’m just saying. At least then it would be clear what we wanted to do, and no one else would know,” Taylor continues, undeterred.
“Listen, why the hell would I say Alphaghetti or something equally stupid every time I wanted to get laid?”
And then Taylor’s grinning so wide that Ryan sincerely wants to brain himself for opening his mouth in the first place.
It could totally be worse though: the whole thing brings a whole new level of hilarious stupidity to…whatever this is, because if Taylor’s going to insist on using the stupid code word, Ryan should have free reign to give him a hard time about it, right?
Ryan ends up going home with Taylor that night anyway, since easy convenience wins out so often. “I’m going to lowball this so that you can feel better about yourself: make me an offer you can’t spell!” Ryan tells him, trying desperately to hold back his laughter as he backs Taylor into the bed.
Taylor gives him an unimpressed look: “Blow me.”
“Only if you can spell it,” Ryan says, raising an eyebrow.
“F-U-C-K-O-F-F,” Taylor spells out, glaring.
This time, Ryan’s much less successful at holding in his laughter. “That’s more like it,” Ryan announces, pulling Taylor in for a messy kiss while working the zipper of his pants.
And that's kind of how Ryan ends up accidentally waking up in Taylor's bed for the second time in three days. He’s feeling a little less self-conscious this time around, especially when he wanders out into the kitchen and sees Lauren bent over something in front of the stove. Ebs gives him a pained smile from the breakfast nook - Ryan has no idea if it has to do with his presence or whatever Lauren seems to be cooking:
“Good morning!” she trills happily. “You’re just in time - pancakes?”
Ryan stares at Ebs, who just looks right back at Ryan. Finally, Ebs cracks first and blurts out: “Honey, why is my pancake shaped like a butt?”
“They’re hearts!” Lauren says, handing a plate of questionably shaped pancakes to Ryan.
Ebs peers closer at his plate. “I know that. But um...they look butt-shaped.”
“It’s fine,” Ryan interrupts, leaning over to inspect his own plate. “They’re, um. Heart shaped…if I don’t look too closely. I'm sure they taste like normal pancakes, right?"
Ryan's saved from having to further wax poetic about the pancakes when Taylor appears and leans against to the breakfast island beside him, and reaching across the table to steal Ebs' mug of coffee: "What're we having?"
"Pancakes!" Lauren tells him. "Do you want some?"
"Yeah," Taylor nods, taking a long swallow of coffee and ignoring the unintimidating glare that Ebs is sending his way. "Oh, hey Lauren: why haven’t you brought any of your friends around lately? What’s up with that?”
Lauren sighs, sliding the last of the pancakes onto a plate: “I told you already: all my friends stopped being single!" And then she pauses and clears her throat, like something really ingenious has just occurred to her: "Hey, I know! You could date, like, Ryan, instead!"
Taylor makes a face as he digs for a fork: “Gross. He’s eating ass-shaped pancakes.”
“Thank you,” Ebs mutters.
“They’re hearts!” Lauren all but yells, throwing her spatula into the sink and crossing her arms. "Even though none of you deserve them!"
“They taste good either way,” Taylor says trying to sound comforting around a mouthful of breakfast. “As long as they don't taste like how they look. Which they don't, probably.”
Then Ryan and Taylor both start snickering.
Ebs puts down his fork and slides his plate over to his girlfriend: “You know, I don’t think I fully understand why you two are laughing, but I still lost my appetite. Thanks.”
--
The next time they're all out in Edmonton, Ryan realizes that he's been jonsing for some no strings attached hook up with a woman for a while now, and sets out to make this happen. He's still weighing his options and prospects when Taylor sidles up to him and nudges him hard: "Hey Whit."
"Alphaghetti?" Ryan says, distractedly. "Not tonight, kid. Gonna get me a lady."
"No, not Alphaghetti," Taylor tells him patiently. "I'm going home with that girl there." He gestures with his shoulder at a pretty, dark-skinned girl with long hair who is pulling on her coat and chatting with a cute redhead.
"Good for you?" Ryan says. "I don't care - why are you telling me?"
Taylor rolls his eyes. "Because. She has a friend. And her friend wanted to know if I knew anyone for her. And since Ebs, Gags and Cogs all have girls, and Maggie's into that tennis player chick who looks like Khabi, I thought of you."
Ryan blinks, clearly caught up with the wrong details: "You think she looks like Khabi too?"
"Well yeah," Taylor says, like it's the most obvious thing in the world. "Of course she does: he's her dad."
"Seriously?" Ryan asks in disbelief. "Maggie? That kid's got bigger balls than all of us!"
Taylor nods: "Sure," he says distracted. "But I don't want to talk about Maggie's balls; I want to get laid. And that hot girl there wants to have sex with me. So you can stand here thinking about Maggie's balls while I'm doing it with that hot girl, or you can go over there and talk to her friend who's also a total smokeshow." He nods again, signalling the end of the conversation as he backs away, grinning. "You're welcome, Whit."
Ryan thinks about it and decides that talking to pretty girls is infinitely hotter than thinking about Maggie's balls any day of the week. So he knocks back the rest of his drink, makes his way over to the stool recently vacated by the redhead's friend and introduces himself. She smiles at him and shakes his hand - Taylor's right: she is cute. She doesn't seem to know who Ryan is, but she's funny and smart and a good conversationalist. They share a cab at the end of the night: Ryan thinks about how Taylor's a surprisingly good wingman for someone who's got no game - and then the cute ginger girl invites him up to her apartment, and he stops thinking about anything at all.
--
Ryan's minding his own business and waiting for their flight to Los Angeles to board, when someone sits down next to him in the airport waiting area and snags one of his ear buds: of course it’s Taylor, who ignores Ryan’s glare and stuffs it into his own ear. “What are we listening to?”
And, okay, this is a little embarrassing because Ryan’s totally listening to his guilty pleasure mix right now, but whatever: “’Blue Monday,’” he finally relents. “You know, New Order?”
He gets a completely blank stare in return.
“Uh,” Ryan says. “Maybe you’re more familiar with the shitty Orgy cover that came out, like, ten years ago?”
Taylor snickers: “There’s a band called ‘Orgy’?”
So this is Ryan’s life now: he’s listening to New Order in the San Jose airport with someone who’s not even old enough to remember ‘Blue Monday,’ or the cover of it - so fuck that.
The song then flips to the next track, Depeche Mode’s “Just Can’t Get Enough,” and Taylor’s kind of bopping along to the 80’s synthesizer, which is incredibly lame but it makes Ryan want to smile, and that’s almost way worse.
“Go find someone else to bother, kid,” he finally says, nudging Taylor. “Before I have to get all grumpy old guy on you.”
“You’re always a grumpy old guy,” Taylor laughs, but complies, giving Ryan his earbud back: Ryan resolutely does not watch as Taylor bounds off again, no doubt to annoy one of their other poor, unsuspecting teammates, like Ebs.
--
Ryan's always been a big fan of Christmas, but not so much of the aftermath. This year, it's particularly shitty because he fucks up his ankle pretty badly during the second game back, and seriously: fuck his fucking life right in its stupid face.
He's still busy feeling sorry for himself a few days later, when his phone buzzes thrice. Against his better judgement, he checks the incoming messages - there are three text messages, all from Talbot:
hope ur doing ok. They call him jumbo jo cuz he loves to eat hot dogs
and
also his dicks real big
and
And hes tall
Ryan seriously does not understand why Maxime Talbot does the majority of the things that he does, and he’s pretty sure that these texts do nothing to cheer up his sour mood, especially when it occurs to him that he’s probably going to lag behind on the bet with his injury and all.
Everything sucks: Ryan’s entitled to a bit of self-pity, so it’s totally justified that he’s still kind of moping when Taylor calls and announces that he's coming over now with dinner, so Ryan should open his door.
"The fuck are you doing here?" Ryan wants to know, when he hears his door open and shut, a take-out box of pasta gets dropped down in front of him and a plastic fork hits him in the back of the head.
"Horc said someone had to come over and make sure you didn’t crawl into a hole and try to stay there forever," Taylor tells him, throwing himself over the back of the couch to sit down.
Ryan leans over to open the box of take-out and makes a face: he's not crazy about white sauce, but it's not the worst either, so he digs in anyway with a grunt of thanks - "Let me guess: you drew the short straw?"
"N'aw," Taylor says easily. "I volunteered."
"That's because you have no sense of self-preservation," Ryan says, rolling his eyes.
Taylor just laughs: "That's what Horc said. How’re you feeling, champ?"
"Fuck you: how the fuck do you think I'm feeling?" Ryan snipes, but it sounds half-hearted, even to himself.
"Could be worse," Taylor says, unfazed, but he does reach over to pat Ryan's arm. "At least you didn't sprain, like, your dick."
Ryan pauses, the plastic fork halfway to his mouth, to stare incredulously at Taylor: "...out of complete curiosity, do you ever listen to yourself when you talk?"
"I try not to.”
They don't say anything for a while and watch the rest of the second period of the Sabres game instead. During the intermission, Ryan puts down his empty take-out box and pushes it across the coffee table. He thinks about telling Taylor about the bet. "But seriously, why are you here?" he asks instead.
Taylor shrugs. "Just wanted to hang out. Want a blowjob or something? Might make you feel better."
Ryan just shakes his head, suddenly kind of feeling better than he has in days at how familiar and comfortable this actually is: "Nah, too depressed. Thanks for the offer though."
"No problem," Taylor says and smiles so widely that Ryan can't help that the corners of his own mouth are kind of twitching upwards, too. Ryan decides that maybe he'll wait a bit longer and then he'll come clean about the whole thing later, because right now, it seems like it might be better to just sit in companionable silence.
interlude two
And the other thing that's been going on in his life right now: even though there's no need to hook up with Taylor any more in theory, Ryan finds himself having done so a few times in recent weeks. He'd feel weird about it, but it's just that it's so easy with Taylor. Actually, it's pretty convenient to have someone that enthusiastic, willing, and surprisingly good with his mouth, in Ryan's back pocket. Plus it's not like they hook up when they haven't been drinking - that probably makes it okay. It's not like anyone spends the night. It's all for a bet, anyway. And sometimes, the best option is the most easy and convenient option, and Taylor is often both easy and convenient.
The team's success follows them home with a win against the Blues - the game ends up going into overtime, and the arena erupts to almost deafening decibels of noise when Taylor scores the game winning goal to give them the extra point.
The team goes out that night; of course they go out, and get completely hammered in celebration - even Shawn Horcoff is happily pounding them back, so somewhere in the back of Ryan's increasingly impaired brain, he briefly wonders if he should be concerned about the kids and alcohol poisoning.
Then he looks over at their booth and notices Ebs leaning drunkenly into Taylor's side, who's grinning as Gags is gesticulating widely and yelling into Andrew Cogliano’s face: "You know what's fucking great? Hockey!" Over at the next table, Maggie is chatting up a tall blonde girl who looks weirdly like a teenaged Khabibulin, so fuck it: if that's what these fools are into, they can handle themselves. Ryan takes this as his cue to order another Crown and Coke.
He's not quite sure how much time passes, but he knows that it's about two and a half drinks later, when a solid mass comes crashing into him and almost knocks him over - Ryan's ready to spin around to give the peasant a piece of his rather intoxicated mind, but when he does turn to look, it's just Taylor and his idiotic grin.
"Hey Ryan," he says, swaying a little and leaning into Ryan's personal space. Taylor leans in even further and lowers his voice: "Gonna grab another drink. Can I get you anything?"
Ryan glances between the half-empty glass, Taylor beaming face, and back again. "Are you sure you need another, kid?" And then he pauses: "Wait, is this some sort of come-on?"
"Is it working?" Taylor asks, sounding surprisingly hopeful.
"Not even a little, man," Ryan tells him, swirling his drink.
"Oh. No, it isn't then," Taylor says, blinking. He pauses, before brightening again. "Hey: wanna do it anyway?"
Ryan thinks about this as he drains the rest of his glass, making a bit of a face at the watered down Coke at the bottom of it - there could definitely be worse ways to end the evening. "Fine," Ryan finally says. "But only if you stop talking. Seriously."
"Okay," Taylor agrees cheerfully, and bounds over to the bar to settle: Ryan watches his retreating back and wonders, not for the first time, about his own questionable life choices.
--
Ryan's not going to complain, even though he nearly trips over his own feet when Taylor shoves him back on to the bed, because then Taylor's there, kissing his way down Ryan's chest, open-mouthed and messy. He's still trying to process it, when Taylor bites Ryan's nipple hard, and Ryan shoves him away, because - "Fucking ow, Hallsy, what the fuck?" Taylor's pouting, but Ryan's nipple is still throbbing and he's in no mood for this garbage. "I know you've got the brain function of a zombie right now, but that doesn't mean you have to try and eat me."
It takes a few moments for that to get through Taylor's head; he makes a face. "What are you gonna do about it?"
That's a challenge Ryan can't pass up, and the hilarious look on Taylor's face when Ryan tackles him down is just a bonus. It takes both of them a few tries to get Taylor's pants down - the shirt they abandon as a lost cause - and he'd probably feel worse about this if Taylor wasn't rolling over easily, reaching for the lube and tossing it blindly over his back.
Two fingers later, Ryan is feeling marginally more sober, and there's a nagging tickle in his brain that he's pretty sure is his conscience. "Hallsy," he says, going for casual, "We're really drunk. You sure this is cool?"
"C'mon Whit," Taylor whines, arching to look over his shoulder and the curve of his back visible under his shucked up shirt makes Ryan lose his train of thought for a second. "Don't be such a non."
Ryan considers saying more, but then Taylor grinds back on his fingers, clenching purposefully, and he figures the kid's old enough to make his own decisions.
They've done this enough that he doesn't have to be too careful - as Ryan slicks himself up, Taylor's impatient fidgeting relaxes into a boneless sprawl, and even though they're both trashed, they find an easy rhythm through muscle memory, if nothing else. When Ryan shifts to take the pressure off the bruise on his thigh, Taylor jerks under him, and his knuckles go white in the sheets. Because Ryan's not an idiot, he accommodates the shift and pushes into him again, and this time he's pretty sure if Taylor's face wasn't pressed into a pillow, he'd probably wake the entire floor - to hell with that, he wants to hear it, and Taylor's voice cracks when Ryan tugs him up by his hair. It's not exactly comfortable, but watching Taylor fall apart under him is totally worth it. He thinks about speeding this up by jerking Taylor off now, but he can't quite get a good angle, so that will have to wait.
So it's a surprise when Taylor goes still under him, hand flailing back to ease Ryan's thrusts. For a moment he's worried that he's hurt the kid, but then Taylor slumps back down against the bed and Ryan realizes - holy fuck. That's ridiculously hot, and the smug feeling in his chest is totally enough to get him off embarrassingly fast, face pressed against Taylor's shoulder to muffle his own moans.
There's nothing he'd like to do more right now than bask in his own awesomeness, but he has the condom to deal with, and by the time he gets back from the bathroom, Taylor's already gone.
--
They get the next day off, which is fantastic because Ryan doesn't remember having to nurse a hangover this bad since college; unfortunately, most of his day-off is kind of ruined when he tries to figure out exactly what happened between him and Taylor: he remembers being a sex god and Taylor fleeing into the night, but not an awful lot in between. He hopes that this won't make tomorrow's morning skate weird.
It turns out his concerns are unfounded when he wanders in to the dressing room, only half-awake, and both Ebs and Taylor greet him in unison, before going back to whatever ridiculous conversation they were having beforehand in their crazy kid language, so Ryan goes back to strapping on his pads as their other team mates come trickling in.
Later, during a breather between drills, Ryan goes over and taps Taylor's shin pads with his stick: "Hey. We good?"
Taylor looks at him strangely, tilting his head to the side a little. "'course we're good," he says easily. "Why wouldn't we be?"
"Oh," Ryan says. "Okay. Fine. Great. Do something after?"
"Sure," Taylor agrees and grins before skating over to line up for contact drills, leaving Ryan still a little confused, but feeling much better.
--
Things sort of go back to normal after that, or at least as normal as things ever are: they lose against Anaheim and win against Tampa Bay, both in shootouts; Stamkos gives Ryan a friendly bump in warm-ups, and Malone ends up buying dinner for Ryan for winning, which is aces because catching up with old friends is great, and free food is even better.
Ryan also gets a few opportunities that week to exercise the recreation of his sex god abilities: he's not exactly sure how it came about last time, but much to his chagrin, it seems that no matter what angle he subtly tries to shift to, he can't quite seem to get the same reaction out of Taylor as he did after that Blues game. Meanwhile, there's also a tiny part of him that wonders if he's getting in over his head all over something that started over a stupid bet; but the sex is not so bad - actually, much to Ryan's chagrin, it's pretty fucking good - so he's perfectly willing to ignore that part of his brain for now.
It all kind of comes to a head after a loss against the Canucks in a game where they really should have won, and no one's happy: as Khabibulin yells loudly in the dressing room before their coach has even made it back in, Ryan meets Taylor's eye, and it becomes an unspoken agreement that Taylor will end up at Ryan's later that evening in an attempt to at least end the evening on a less lousy note.
And they're half-naked, Ryan already having tipped them on to the couch, when Taylor suddenly shoves at him and tries to sit up: "Wait, wait, pause," Taylor says, pulling away. "Okay, look: I know what you're trying to do. It was embarrassing last time it happened, and it's not happening again. So seriously: you need to, like. Stop."
Ryan contemplates pretending not knowing what Taylor’s talking about and making him say it, but the kid is clearly uncomfortable, and Ryan doesn’t want to be a jackass about this. So, instead, he tries to sound encouraging: "But it was awesome," Ryan argues.
Because: yeah, it kind of totally was.
"Embarrassing," Taylor counters firmly, shaking his head vehemently. "Also, I'm too sober for that right now."
Ryan tilts his head to the side: "Too sober to get laid?"
"Never too sober for that, come on," Taylor counters.
Ryan laughs: "You sure? We do have morning skate and all."
"You're not that big," Taylor deadpans. He pauses, before grinning widely. "Or impressive."
Never one to back down, Ryan sets out to prove him wrong.
--
Here's the thing: precedence dictates that, when Ryan finally hauls himself out of bed afterwards, to get cleaned up and pull on a pair of boxers, Taylor takes it as his cue to get dressed and head home for the night. They’ve got a system: it works and everyone knows you don't mess with a good thing.
So Ryan's more than a little surprised, and somewhat dismayed, when he gets back to his room ready to collapse into bed and fall into blissed out sleep, and finds Taylor’s still sprawled out on his bed, naked and mostly asleep under Ryan’s comforter.
He stares dumbly for a few minutes, trying to consider the best course of action before deciding on the most direct approach: he prods at Taylor’s shoulder a few times: “Hallsy. Hey, Hallsy, wake the fuck up - you can’t stay here.”
Taylor sighs, burrowing further into Ryan’s blankets. “C’mon Whit, I’m tired,” he mumbles into the pillow without opening his eyes. “Blow you tomorrow morning, okay?”
Ryan opens his mouth to argue, and then closes it again when he decides that it’s probably a lost cause since Taylor’s pretty much dead to the world by this point. Plus, Ryan's having horrifying flashes as to how he might explain to coach and management and the media about how he broke the face of the franchise by dumping him out of bed after fucking him. After a long moment, Ryan climbs into his bed too, because like hell he’s going to sleep on the couch and fuck up his back when he’s got his own perfectly good bed, thanks, but not without shoving Taylor over to make more room and grabbing some of the blankets back for himself first. It’s not as awkward as it could be, sharing this bed: actually, it’s surprisingly warm and comfortable.
It could be worse, is the last thing Ryan remembers thinking before dropping off into sleep as Taylor snuffles a little beside him: at least I’m getting morning sex out of this.
("You're smiling," Theo notes to Ryan, when he drops down beside him in the dressing room.
"No, I'm not," Ryan says, distracted with his skate laces.
"Yeah, you are. It's terrifying," Theo continues, undeterred. "Either you murdered someone, or you got laid this morning. Personally, I'm hoping for the first one."
Ryan tries hard not to think about the surprisingly awesome blow job that happened approximately five minutes after he woke up this morning. "I hid the bodies really well," Ryan tells him solemnly and then smiles even more widely.
Theo makes a face: "I'm just going to go...over there now."
When they take to the ice, Ryan almost feels bad when it seems to take Taylor a few extra laps to get back into the groove of things, but then Taylor skates over to fake slewfoot him and grins, and it's all Ryan can do not to laugh.)
--
“I should probably go home at some point,” Taylor mentions later, after a day of shooting the shit around town. “I thought Ebs would want more alone time with his girlfriend, but they said we should all hang tonight, and just like. Hang out and watch movies at home or something.” He pauses for a moment. “Hey, you want to come?”
To this day, Ryan has no idea why he agreed to this: temporary lapse of judgment. Temporary insanity, maybe even.
When he trails after Taylor into Casa Eberle and Hall, Ebs' sitting on the couch awfully close to a blonde girl, both of them looking like they’re completely engrossed into what’s playing on the television above that weird faux-fireplace. Taylor just grins and bounds over to the couch, throwing himself over the back onto his spot at the end: “Hey kids,” he says, draping one of his freakishly long arms over Ebs’ shoulders and reaches all the way over to Ebs' girlfriend's back.
“Hey yourself,” Ebs says right back and looks perfectly content to nestle his head against Taylor’s shoulder and shift so that his legs are in his girlfriend’s lap. “Where have you been? Me and Lauren, we had a bet going: I said you were with a girl, but she says you weren’t ‘cuz she doesn’t have any friends in Edmonton right now--”
“--but a couple of girls I know will be in town next weekend, so if you guys are around, I can introduce you if you want,” the girlfriend, Lauren, interjects cheerfully.
Taylor leans forward to beam at Lauren: "You're the best," he says sincerely. And then, "Ebs! Pay the lady."
Lauren claps her hands once in excitement: "I like when Taylor's around," she declares. "It's like Tubes is still here. Except short. And doesn't try to grab my boobs," she adds almost regretfully. "I miss him."
Ryan sort of hangs back in the doorway, watching the three of them interact with their easy affection. Mostly, he just feels incredibly old.
“Oh, so hey,” Ebs turns to his girlfriend, who’s affectionately rubbing his knee now, probably missing this Tubes, whoever or whatever that is. “The grumpy old dude by the door is Whit: he plays D for us.”
It’s probably too late to make a getaway at this point, so Ryan mans up and goes over to the couch and sits down on Lauren’s other side. “Hey,” he says, sticking out his hand to shake. “Ryan.”
She turns to smile at him, shaking his hand with an impressive grip: “Nice to meet you. I’m Lauren.”
“Lauren’s cool,” Taylor announces, sitting up straighter. “She knows all these hot musical theater chicks - she keeps hooking me up and everything: she’s pretty much the ultimate wingman.”
Ryan raises an eyebrow: “Musical theatre?”
Lauren shrugs, grinning ruefully, “Music performance major at Calgary - sometimes I introduce Taylor to my friends.”
“She’s pretty much the only reason Hallsy ever gets laid,” Ebs adds solemnly, and then yelps when Lauren and Taylor team up to shove him off the couch. Ebs reaches up to pull Lauren down with him - as the two of them laugh in a tangled mass of limbs on the floor, they miss the bemused smirk that passes between Taylor and Ryan.
--
It turns out Ebs and Lauren had been knee-deep in a “The Bachelor” marathon before Ryan and Taylor had showed up, and they don’t look like they’ll be surrendering the remote control anytime soon, so Ryan settles into the couch, bracing himself for some really shitty reality television.
(“I thought you guys would be watching Canadian football or something,” he says idly as The Bachelor gazes soulfully into the camera lens and lists off his unreasonable criteria for his potential future mate. “Isn’t that what Canadians do?”
Lauren and Taylor let out a collectively loud groan. Ebs just ignores them: “The CFL season ended two weeks ago, man.”
“I hate CFL,” Taylor grumbles. “I ended up watching so much of it last month because Ebby likes it.”
“Your dad’s CFL,” Ebs retorts. Then he turns to Ryan and grins: “No, seriously: his dad played in the CFL.”
“And it’s still boring!” Taylor laments. “Shouldn’t that just be proof of how much it sucks? Even my dad couldn’t make it awesome.”
Lauren leans over and wraps Taylor up into a sympathetic hug: “Jordan makes me watch a lot of CFL with him, too. It’s cruel. Let’s run away together where there’s no Canadian football.”
“Okay,” Taylor says pathetically, hooking his chin against her shoulder. “And Ebs will feel bad when he’s left alone with nothing but CFL and Ryan Whitney.”
Ryan’s almost impressed at how adept Ebs seems to be at ignoring his girlfriend and roommate’s antics. Then again, Ebs willingly hangs out with these two, so maybe he’s just a glutton for punishment.)
Ten minutes later, he’s already sick of the duster on the television in the ill-fitting suit, trying to decide between ten marginally attractive women.
Taylor seems to run out of patience with the show about ten minutes after that, because he finally extracts his arm, stretches, and announces that he’s going to his room to play Call of Duty instead: “Whit, you coming?”
Ryan trails Taylor down the hall, away from where Ebs and Lauren are still engrossed with The Bachelor’s seemingly difficult choice (“Haha, Sophie’s choice,” Ryan had said when the duster had picked the platinum blonde Sophie to stay another week - only Lauren had laughed at his terribly clever joke, which made her okay in his books), to Taylor’s surprisingly neat bedroom, where he tosses Ryan a controller and gestures to him to sit.
“So, Lauren,” Ryan perches on the edge of the bed. “She seems nice.”
“She is nice,” Taylor nods, flicking on the television. “She’s great, and Ebs is the best: they’re good for each other,” he adds as they wait for the game to load.
They’re about forty minutes in, and halfway through one of the missions, when Ryan is suddenly acutely aware of how close they’re sitting together on Taylor’s bed, how Taylor’s knee is pressed casually against his. They finish the rest of the level with little difficulty.
“Break time,” Taylor says when they’ve finally cleared the zone, and then sticks the game into a save point before dropping the controller on to the floor and shoving Ryan down onto the bed instead.
“Uh, what the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Ryan says, but already he’s angling upwards to kiss Taylor, his controller forgotten.
“Well,” Taylor replies, his hands shamelessly toying with the hem of Ryan’s shirt. “It’s just that we’ve never done it in my bed before. It could be fun.”
Ryan pulls back for a moment to help a little with Taylor tugging the shirt over his head. “Hallsy: your roommate and his girlfriend are in the next room,” he warns, even as he’s working at the buttons on Taylor’s shirt.
“We’ll be quiet,” Taylor promises, and Ryan kind of knows from past experience that he’s pretty much lying, but Taylor can be convincing when he wants to be, and the hands tugging at the fly of Ryan’s jeans right now are plenty convincing.
--
When Ryan wakes up in the morning, the first thing he realizes is that he’s definitely not in his own room; he also notices that, judging from the colour-scheme and general décor and emptiness of the bedroom, he probably didn’t end up back at some girl’s place. The third thing he notices is that he’s got Taylor’s sleep-octopus limbs draped all over him. He puts all three of these facts together and deduces that he most definitely fell asleep in Taylor’s bed.
Goddammit.
Carefully, he extracts himself from bed and pulls on his discarded clothes tossed carelessly on the ground the night before. From the other side of the apartment, he can hear the shower running in Ebs’ room and decides that this would probably be the best time to make a getaway before anyone else realizes that he’s accidentally spent the night.
Unfortunately, Ebs is in the kitchen by the time Ryan gets there en route to sneaking out the front door. They kind of stare awkwardly at each other for a moment.
“Cereal?” Ebs finally offers.
“Sure.”
“We have Cheerios, Vector, Corn Flakes and. Um. Some Raisin Bran. Uh. If you want. Since you’re old.”
Ryan just tiredly flips him the bird and reaches for the Corn Flakes and an empty bowl.
“So, uh," Ebs begins awkwardly. "Are you two…together?”
Alarmed, Ryan looks up so fast that he thinks he might have whiplash - "What? No! Just, you know. Hanging out. Whatever.”
“Right. Okay. Well then.”
“Yeah.”
The door to Ebs’ room clicks open just then and Lauren comes out in an oversized t-shirt and her hair wrapped up in a towel. Her smile doubles in size when she sees Ryan: “Good morning!”
Ryan grunts in response, bracing himself for whatever terrible ridiculousness that is inevitably coming.
As Lauren wanders around the kitchen, digging for a spoon and her own cereal bowl, Ryan can hear her start humming under her breath, something familiar and vaguely annoying, before she finally bursts into song: “YOU! MAKE! ME! FEEL LIKE I’M LIVING A TEEN! AGE! DREAM!” And hey: at least her background as a music performance major means that she can stay on key.
She pauses after her rousing rendition of the chorus to put a hand on her hip and turn to glare accusingly at Ryan: “I can’t believe Taylor didn’t tell us you were his boyfriend!”
“They’re just hanging out, apparently,” Ebs tells her, looking vaguely unhappy. “So he’s not.”
Ryan could swear that Lauren says something like ‘yet’ under her breath, but before he can call her on it and correct her, she’s distracted by Taylor choosing that exact moment to wander into the kitchen.
“Taylor! Hi!” Lauren all but shouts. “Morning! I can’t introduce you to my girl friends anymore. They’re all taken. Or gay. Which is a lifestyle I totally support!”
It seems that Taylor has no idea about what she's talking about: Ryan's not sure if this is attributed to the lack of caffeine, the early hour of morning, or willful ignorance, but whatever it is, Taylor just blinks sleepily at her, before making his way over to the coffee pot and emitting a vaguely pathetic noise when he finds it empty.
Ryan sighs: “I’m going to go use your shower. And when I am done, I’m going to pretend that this morning never happened.”
When he gets out of the bathroom ten minutes later, he finds Taylor intently watching the coffee maker as it slowly drips a pot of caffeinated nectar, and Ebs lying on the couch with his head in his girlfriend’s lap: “You’re a good person,” Lauren tells Ebs, gently stroking his hair.
Ryan's not sure he wants to know.
(“Nah, Ebs doesn’t care," Taylor tells Ryan as he goes with him to the lobby of their building to wait for a cab. "He probably just thinks it’s weird that Lauren pretty much wants to adopt you, man.”)
--
The team goes out again the next evening, morning skate pushed back until early afternoon, so partying is inevitable, really - “We need a code word,” Taylor says, leaning heavily against the bar, almost spilling his drink all over Ryan’s shirt.
Ryan just stares at him: “What are you, fucking fourteen years old?”
“I’m just saying. At least then it would be clear what we wanted to do, and no one else would know,” Taylor continues, undeterred.
“Listen, why the hell would I say Alphaghetti or something equally stupid every time I wanted to get laid?”
And then Taylor’s grinning so wide that Ryan sincerely wants to brain himself for opening his mouth in the first place.
It could totally be worse though: the whole thing brings a whole new level of hilarious stupidity to…whatever this is, because if Taylor’s going to insist on using the stupid code word, Ryan should have free reign to give him a hard time about it, right?
Ryan ends up going home with Taylor that night anyway, since easy convenience wins out so often. “I’m going to lowball this so that you can feel better about yourself: make me an offer you can’t spell!” Ryan tells him, trying desperately to hold back his laughter as he backs Taylor into the bed.
Taylor gives him an unimpressed look: “Blow me.”
“Only if you can spell it,” Ryan says, raising an eyebrow.
“F-U-C-K-O-F-F,” Taylor spells out, glaring.
This time, Ryan’s much less successful at holding in his laughter. “That’s more like it,” Ryan announces, pulling Taylor in for a messy kiss while working the zipper of his pants.
And that's kind of how Ryan ends up accidentally waking up in Taylor's bed for the second time in three days. He’s feeling a little less self-conscious this time around, especially when he wanders out into the kitchen and sees Lauren bent over something in front of the stove. Ebs gives him a pained smile from the breakfast nook - Ryan has no idea if it has to do with his presence or whatever Lauren seems to be cooking:
“Good morning!” she trills happily. “You’re just in time - pancakes?”
Ryan stares at Ebs, who just looks right back at Ryan. Finally, Ebs cracks first and blurts out: “Honey, why is my pancake shaped like a butt?”
“They’re hearts!” Lauren says, handing a plate of questionably shaped pancakes to Ryan.
Ebs peers closer at his plate. “I know that. But um...they look butt-shaped.”
“It’s fine,” Ryan interrupts, leaning over to inspect his own plate. “They’re, um. Heart shaped…if I don’t look too closely. I'm sure they taste like normal pancakes, right?"
Ryan's saved from having to further wax poetic about the pancakes when Taylor appears and leans against to the breakfast island beside him, and reaching across the table to steal Ebs' mug of coffee: "What're we having?"
"Pancakes!" Lauren tells him. "Do you want some?"
"Yeah," Taylor nods, taking a long swallow of coffee and ignoring the unintimidating glare that Ebs is sending his way. "Oh, hey Lauren: why haven’t you brought any of your friends around lately? What’s up with that?”
Lauren sighs, sliding the last of the pancakes onto a plate: “I told you already: all my friends stopped being single!" And then she pauses and clears her throat, like something really ingenious has just occurred to her: "Hey, I know! You could date, like, Ryan, instead!"
Taylor makes a face as he digs for a fork: “Gross. He’s eating ass-shaped pancakes.”
“Thank you,” Ebs mutters.
“They’re hearts!” Lauren all but yells, throwing her spatula into the sink and crossing her arms. "Even though none of you deserve them!"
“They taste good either way,” Taylor says trying to sound comforting around a mouthful of breakfast. “As long as they don't taste like how they look. Which they don't, probably.”
Then Ryan and Taylor both start snickering.
Ebs puts down his fork and slides his plate over to his girlfriend: “You know, I don’t think I fully understand why you two are laughing, but I still lost my appetite. Thanks.”
--
The next time they're all out in Edmonton, Ryan realizes that he's been jonsing for some no strings attached hook up with a woman for a while now, and sets out to make this happen. He's still weighing his options and prospects when Taylor sidles up to him and nudges him hard: "Hey Whit."
"Alphaghetti?" Ryan says, distractedly. "Not tonight, kid. Gonna get me a lady."
"No, not Alphaghetti," Taylor tells him patiently. "I'm going home with that girl there." He gestures with his shoulder at a pretty, dark-skinned girl with long hair who is pulling on her coat and chatting with a cute redhead.
"Good for you?" Ryan says. "I don't care - why are you telling me?"
Taylor rolls his eyes. "Because. She has a friend. And her friend wanted to know if I knew anyone for her. And since Ebs, Gags and Cogs all have girls, and Maggie's into that tennis player chick who looks like Khabi, I thought of you."
Ryan blinks, clearly caught up with the wrong details: "You think she looks like Khabi too?"
"Well yeah," Taylor says, like it's the most obvious thing in the world. "Of course she does: he's her dad."
"Seriously?" Ryan asks in disbelief. "Maggie? That kid's got bigger balls than all of us!"
Taylor nods: "Sure," he says distracted. "But I don't want to talk about Maggie's balls; I want to get laid. And that hot girl there wants to have sex with me. So you can stand here thinking about Maggie's balls while I'm doing it with that hot girl, or you can go over there and talk to her friend who's also a total smokeshow." He nods again, signalling the end of the conversation as he backs away, grinning. "You're welcome, Whit."
Ryan thinks about it and decides that talking to pretty girls is infinitely hotter than thinking about Maggie's balls any day of the week. So he knocks back the rest of his drink, makes his way over to the stool recently vacated by the redhead's friend and introduces himself. She smiles at him and shakes his hand - Taylor's right: she is cute. She doesn't seem to know who Ryan is, but she's funny and smart and a good conversationalist. They share a cab at the end of the night: Ryan thinks about how Taylor's a surprisingly good wingman for someone who's got no game - and then the cute ginger girl invites him up to her apartment, and he stops thinking about anything at all.
--
Ryan's minding his own business and waiting for their flight to Los Angeles to board, when someone sits down next to him in the airport waiting area and snags one of his ear buds: of course it’s Taylor, who ignores Ryan’s glare and stuffs it into his own ear. “What are we listening to?”
And, okay, this is a little embarrassing because Ryan’s totally listening to his guilty pleasure mix right now, but whatever: “’Blue Monday,’” he finally relents. “You know, New Order?”
He gets a completely blank stare in return.
“Uh,” Ryan says. “Maybe you’re more familiar with the shitty Orgy cover that came out, like, ten years ago?”
Taylor snickers: “There’s a band called ‘Orgy’?”
So this is Ryan’s life now: he’s listening to New Order in the San Jose airport with someone who’s not even old enough to remember ‘Blue Monday,’ or the cover of it - so fuck that.
The song then flips to the next track, Depeche Mode’s “Just Can’t Get Enough,” and Taylor’s kind of bopping along to the 80’s synthesizer, which is incredibly lame but it makes Ryan want to smile, and that’s almost way worse.
“Go find someone else to bother, kid,” he finally says, nudging Taylor. “Before I have to get all grumpy old guy on you.”
“You’re always a grumpy old guy,” Taylor laughs, but complies, giving Ryan his earbud back: Ryan resolutely does not watch as Taylor bounds off again, no doubt to annoy one of their other poor, unsuspecting teammates, like Ebs.
--
Ryan's always been a big fan of Christmas, but not so much of the aftermath. This year, it's particularly shitty because he fucks up his ankle pretty badly during the second game back, and seriously: fuck his fucking life right in its stupid face.
He's still busy feeling sorry for himself a few days later, when his phone buzzes thrice. Against his better judgement, he checks the incoming messages - there are three text messages, all from Talbot:
hope ur doing ok. They call him jumbo jo cuz he loves to eat hot dogs
and
also his dicks real big
and
And hes tall
Ryan seriously does not understand why Maxime Talbot does the majority of the things that he does, and he’s pretty sure that these texts do nothing to cheer up his sour mood, especially when it occurs to him that he’s probably going to lag behind on the bet with his injury and all.
Everything sucks: Ryan’s entitled to a bit of self-pity, so it’s totally justified that he’s still kind of moping when Taylor calls and announces that he's coming over now with dinner, so Ryan should open his door.
"The fuck are you doing here?" Ryan wants to know, when he hears his door open and shut, a take-out box of pasta gets dropped down in front of him and a plastic fork hits him in the back of the head.
"Horc said someone had to come over and make sure you didn’t crawl into a hole and try to stay there forever," Taylor tells him, throwing himself over the back of the couch to sit down.
Ryan leans over to open the box of take-out and makes a face: he's not crazy about white sauce, but it's not the worst either, so he digs in anyway with a grunt of thanks - "Let me guess: you drew the short straw?"
"N'aw," Taylor says easily. "I volunteered."
"That's because you have no sense of self-preservation," Ryan says, rolling his eyes.
Taylor just laughs: "That's what Horc said. How’re you feeling, champ?"
"Fuck you: how the fuck do you think I'm feeling?" Ryan snipes, but it sounds half-hearted, even to himself.
"Could be worse," Taylor says, unfazed, but he does reach over to pat Ryan's arm. "At least you didn't sprain, like, your dick."
Ryan pauses, the plastic fork halfway to his mouth, to stare incredulously at Taylor: "...out of complete curiosity, do you ever listen to yourself when you talk?"
"I try not to.”
They don't say anything for a while and watch the rest of the second period of the Sabres game instead. During the intermission, Ryan puts down his empty take-out box and pushes it across the coffee table. He thinks about telling Taylor about the bet. "But seriously, why are you here?" he asks instead.
Taylor shrugs. "Just wanted to hang out. Want a blowjob or something? Might make you feel better."
Ryan just shakes his head, suddenly kind of feeling better than he has in days at how familiar and comfortable this actually is: "Nah, too depressed. Thanks for the offer though."
"No problem," Taylor says and smiles so widely that Ryan can't help that the corners of his own mouth are kind of twitching upwards, too. Ryan decides that maybe he'll wait a bit longer and then he'll come clean about the whole thing later, because right now, it seems like it might be better to just sit in companionable silence.
interlude two