[fic] let's go make some history (before we fall apart)
title. let's go make some history (before we fall apart)
fandom. hockey rpf
pairings. ryan whitney/taylor hall, jordan eberle/taylor hall
rating. r
word count. ~8000
disclaimer. most of this is not real.
notes. there is a lovely soundtrack that can be found here, courtesy of the fabulous gonetoarcadia. also, tangentially related, please enjoy our favourite photo of taylor hall from the summer of 2013.
--
They’ve only been driving for an hour and a half when Taylor turns to Ryan and asks, earnestly, if he wants to see the World’s Largest Easter Egg.
For a brief moment, Ryan is vaguely concerned that kids these days have started using new euphemisms that he’s never even heard of. But when he turns to look at Taylor, he’s staring so intently that Ryan realizes that Taylor literally means the World’s Largest Easter Egg.
“Why the fuck would I want to do that?” Ryan asks.
Taylor shrugs. “Isn’t that the kind of thing that people do on roadtrips?”
“Get the fuck out of my car and start walking, Hallsy,” Ryan says. “It’s a long way to Kingston.”
Taylor shuts his mouth and leans back, presumably to sulk; Ryan cranks up the radio, intent on ignoring him. Unfortunately, that apparently does not stop him from taking the small turn-off to Vegreville, home of the World’s Largest Easter Egg.
“What the shit is this,” Ryan says, later, as he squints up at the large hunk of metal. “This isn’t an egg, this isn’t anything to see. There isn’t even any ice cream here, what sort of attraction doesn’t have fucking ice cream?”
“There was a Dairy Queen back in town,” Taylor offers.
“You don’t need any more Dairy Queen. God, I’m looking at farms. This is depressing. Get back in the car, Hallsy.”
“I thought I was walking to Kingston,” Taylor says, even as he’s heading back around to the passenger side door.
“Shut up and get in before I change my mind. I couldn’t leave you here. No one deserves that. Not even you.”
--
An hour later, Taylor suddenly sits up straighter in his seat and presses his face against the window. “Whit. Whit. Whit!” he says excitedly. “You gotta stop the car!”
“Did I not just tell you not to drink so much coffee?” Ryan asks.
“It’s not that! Just pull over,” Taylor insists.
Ryan sighs but complies anyway, and by the time he’s come to a full-stop, Taylor’s already legging it excitedly out of the car. Ryan follows at a slower pace.
“Know where we are?” Taylor asks Ryan.
Ryan thinks for a moment. “Lloydminster?” And then Ryan looks up and realizes that they’re standing beside the sign that separates Alberta and Saskatchewan, and suddenly everything clicks. “Oh, you stupid piece of shit-”
“-this is a thing me and my mom used to do when I was a kid,” Taylor presses on with a huge grin on his face. He hops on his left foot. “I’m in Alberta!” Then he shifts his weight onto his other foot. “Now I’m in Saskatchewan!” He alternates back and forth, gleefully. “Alberta! Saskatchewan! Alberta! Saskatchewan!”
Ryan considers dignifying this with an answer, but decides that sometimes silence is the best way to convey his disdain, and so he opts to turn around and walk back to his car instead, leaving Taylor to his own nostalgia. And if the whole display at the border in Lloydminster makes Ryan smile just a little, well, his back is turned, so no one else will ever know.
--
(Ryan hadn’t meant to go on this cross-country roadtrip with a tagalong: he’s perfectly capable of making his way back across the continent on his own, thank you very much. It’s just that when he had come back to the house in Edmonton last week to pick up the last of his stuff, he also found Taylor face-down on the couch, looking more pathetic than usual.
“Hallsy?” Ryan asked, once his initial surprise had passed. “What are you doing here?”
When Taylor looked up at him, even his hair seemed to droop. “Oh, hey. What’s up?”
“Well, I lived here, and now I’m going to stop living here so I came to get the rest of my shit,” Ryan said, going for casual. “What about you? Thought you were back home in Ontario.”
Taylor just shrugged.
Ryan assessed the situation and decided that the kid either needed to get laid or get drunk. Since he definitely did not want to help with the former, he went straight for the liquor cabinet and reached for two tumblers.
“It’s two in the afternoon,” Taylor called out.
“What’s that, like four o’clock Kingston time? That’s practically happy hour,” Ryan said, pouring out liberal amounts of whiskey into both glasses.)
--
As prairieland flickers by outside on the TransCanada Highway, the tinny speakers of Ryan’s car blasting Fast Car for the third time in a matter of hours, Taylor peering out the passenger side window, everything almost feels ordinary. For the first time in weeks, it doesn’t seem like everything’s about to change; everything is just as it was when it was at its most comfortable and safest. Ryan tries to hold on to this moment for as long as he can.
“Bro,” Taylor says suddenly, interrupting Ryan’s thoughts. “I gotta take a leak. Too much coffee.”
Ryan sighs deeply. “This is why they don’t let children drink coffee, Hallsy. Also, coffee makes you fat.”
“Shut up, no it doesn’t,” Taylor says indignantly. “Come on, man, pull over.”
Rolling his eyes, Ryan signals and pulls into the next service station with another long-suffering sigh. As Taylor sprints out of the car into the station, Ryan plugs in his iPod to his car’s stereo system and fiddles with playlist options, trying to put together the most obnoxious playlist possible. He’s so pleased with the fruits of his labours that he doesn’t even complain when Taylor wanders back into the car again five minutes later, clutching two more coffees in his hand, one of which he passes over to Ryan.
-
By the time they get to Saskatoon, Taylor’s practically vibrating in his seat from over-caffeination, and Ryan knows that he’s going to have to let him out soon to run off some of the excess energy before Ryan murders him or drives them into a ditch.
It’s late enough that it would probably make sense to pull over to spend the night somewhere in the outskirts of town. They’d eaten at a roadside diner miles back, shooting straw wrappers at each other and grinning over plates stacked high with all-day breakfast for dinner, Ryan relishing at the opportunity to ask Taylor if he really did need that last piece of bacon.
Their room’s nothing special, two double beds and a small bathroom, but it’ll suit their purposes for their one-night stay. There’s even more than eight channels on the television: Ryan’s flipped through all of them as he waits for Taylor to come back from his run-Ryan’s almost impressed that Taylor’s managed to find the hotel again and wasn’t lost in the wilds of Saskatchewan forever-and steal all the hot water. When he’s done showering, Taylor immediately flops down restlessly on the other bed. Ryan takes the initiative and hauls him down to the hotel bar before Taylor can inevitably start whining about being bored.
“That’s not a bar,” Taylor points out. “It’s basically a Denny’s.”
“It’s pretty much connected to the hotel. And it serves booze,” Ryan says. “So shut up.”
With a beer in front of him, Taylor does seem a lot more generous about their current lot in life and is more visibly relaxed than Ryan’s seen him since finding him prostrate on their-well, not his anymore he supposes-couch in Edmonton. As the night goes on, Taylor seems to settle into an aura of cheerfulness, to the point where Ryan even finds that they’ve moved into a different booth half an hour later to chat up two twenty-something year old women who had been staring over at their table all night.
“You’re from Australia?” Taylor asks the tiny brunette sitting next to him. “That’s awesome! My dad’s from there. I’ve always wanted to go.”
Ryan fights his urge to rolls his eyes, but he’s got to hand it to him: it seems to be working.
“Really?” she says, leaning ever-so-closer into Taylor’s side. “You should come visit. I could show you around.”
There’s a muffled chuckle beside Ryan, and when he turns to look, the other Australian woman is trying to be discreet about laughing into her Bacardi Breezer. Their eyes meet and he makes the gesture to move tables so that they can give the other two their privacy, and she nods her assent as they scamper quickly to another booth across the room before they both dissolve into laughter.
“Wow,” she says, when they finally settle in, calming down. “Does your friend get out often?”
“Who says he’s my friend?” Ryan says, and when she grins wider, he takes that as encouragement to continue. “Only with supervision,” he amends. “I’m a philanthropist.”
“Well, you’re not doing a very good job of that right now,” she says.
“No, I’m not,” he says and smiles into his beer.
They keep talking: Ryan finds out her name is Charlotte, she’s from Canberra (“There’s nothing to do there,” she says passionately. “Don’t let your friend visit. He will regret it.”), she’s on her way to Jasper and then the coast to hike and see the sights, and best of all, she has no idea who Ryan-or Taylor, for that matter-is.
“What do you do?” she asks, eventually, during a lull in conversation.
“I guess I’m between jobs right now,” Ryan says.
“Did you not like your last job?”
Ryan thinks about how to answer this. “It started out pretty good. It was pretty bad by the end though, and it was time to move on,” he finally says, surprised to find that this is true. “Not too worried though, at least not right now.”
To Charlotte’s credit, she doesn’t push the subject, just smiles and nods and takes another sip of her drink. “I don’t have a job right now either,” she confides. “I left it to come travel around Canada. And I definitely don’t regret it. Not having a job isn’t ideal, but for now that’s a problem for future Charlotte.” She holds her bottle up in the air. “To unemployment?”
“To unemployment,” Ryan says and clinks his drink with hers.
-
Ryan wakes up the next morning to a soft voice wishing him safe travels and a kiss pressed to his cheek, followed by the sound of the door closing faintly. He’s not too bothered: he knows Charlotte and her friend have an early start and before she’d agreed to come back with him to his room-partially because Taylor was in hers and partially because she had seemed to enjoy Ryan’s company-they’d confirmed that neither of them were interested in pursuing more than one night. He smiles hazily at the memory of how much fun last night had been, rolls into the warm spot she’d left in the bed, and falls back asleep.
When Ryan wakes up again, it’s to someone shaking his arm obnoxiously and saying his name over and over again.
“Ryan. Hey, Ryan. Whit. Whit!” the voice repeats. “We gotta go running. Come on. Before it gets too hot outside.”
Ryan groans. “Fuck you and fuck running.”
“That’s no way to get a job,” Taylor says.
For a moment, Ryan considers sitting up to get a better angle to punch Taylor in the face, but that’s a lot of work. “Fuck you,” he says instead. “I got my exercise last night. Go away.”
“That’s not enough cardio,” Taylor says.
Ryan smirks. “Clearly, you’re just not doing it right,” he says.
The indignation on Taylor’s face is totally worth the five kilometres that Ryan inevitably finds himself running twenty minutes later.
--
“So where are we going next?” Taylor asks while trying to massacre a stack of pancakes.
Ryan watches him in awe. “Remember, kid, it’s fork to mouth.”
“Yeah, yeah, not face to plate,” Taylor says, waving his fork in the air. “Do I look like Pens to you?”
Ryan pretends to consider this for a moment. “Well...”
“Fuck you,” Taylor says. “I’m telling Pens that you’re being an asshole when he’s not even here to defend himself.”
“Dustin Penner likes me better,” Ryan informs him.
Taylor shrugs, stuffing another bite into his mouth. “You never answered my question,” he says, his mouth full.
Ryan cringes. “Wanna go to Regina? See your boy’s stomping grounds? It’s kind of out of the way, but that’s what roadtrips are like, right? See things you wanna see?”
Taylor stops chewing for a moment. Ryan’s not entirely sure because Taylor has never been a beacon of subtlety, but he thinks he might see Taylor’s face fall ever so slightly. It’s gone again in a moment, but Ryan’s not entirely sure that he has imagined it. “Nah,” Taylor says casually. “Hey, wanna go to Flin Flon? I’ve never been there. And it’s fun to say.”
“No,” Ryan says immediately. “There’s nothing in Flin Flon.”
“Bobby Clarke’s in Flin Flon,” Taylor argues.
“Bobby Clarke’s in New Jersey, because we’re not in 1954,” Ryan replies.
Taylor goes back to his breakfast and Ryan takes another sip of coffee. He can’t help but still feel a little curious about why Taylor had been so quick to refuse a trip to Regina, when he’s so sure that as a Jordan Eberle superfan, that would have been the first place Taylor’d want to go. He thinks about if for a moment longer, how subdued Taylor’s been over the last few days, and takes a deep breath, knowing that he’ll likely regret the next words to come out of his mouth.
“Hey, why don’t we hit up Brandon, instead? You were there a few years back, right? You can give me a tour or whatever-the-fuck if you want.”
When Taylor looks up and smiles at him, Ryan feels something in his chest loosen just a little bit.
--
(“So,” Taylor said after taking a sip from the tumbler Ryan handed him. “Why’re you really here?”
“Did I stutter? Because I’m pretty sure I just explained it to you,” Ryan said. “I’m here for my shit. And my car. Mostly the car.”
“That car is shit,” Taylor informed him. “You really should just get a new one."
“I like my car. We’ve been through a lot together,” Ryan replied. “Plus, I don’t have a job right now.”
Taylor put down his glass and leaned forward earnestly. “Hey man, I’m sure if you just talked to them, to like, MacT and KLowe-”
“-no,” Ryan cut him off emphatically. “That’s not how things work. Maybe in that dream world you’re walking around in-”
“-but what if I talked to them about it?” Taylor tried again. “Maybe we could work something out?”
“Wow,” Ryan said, dryly. “Way to be a hero. But really, here in the real world, where adults live, that’s really not the way things work.” Taylor looked like he was going to interrupt again, so Ryan just kept talking. He’d rehearsed this exact upcoming monologue to himself enough times in the last few weeks, he could almost believe it himself. “It’s fine. Don’t worry about me. This...just isn’t the place anymore. I think I need a fresh start.”
Taylor didn’t say anything for a long moment. “That doesn’t seem fair,” he finally said, staring down into his glass.
Ryan shrugged. “Nope,” he agreed, and finished off the rest of his own drink.)
--
As soon as Ryan parks his car in Brandon, Taylor’s face lights up as he begins his tour.
“Man, I remember this corner,” Taylor says, laughing. “Nemo totally blew chunks all over some guy’s car and Welly’s shoes last time I was here. Good thing it wasn’t Elly, when you barf on him he just tries to give it back.”
Ryan raises an eyebrow but doesn’t say anything.
“Oh,” Taylor says as he meanders ahead, pointing at the bar to their left, festooned with cowboy paraphernalia. “We definitely went here.”
“I can see why your friend blew chunks,” Ryan says, making a face.
“No, that was the beginning of the night,” Taylor explained. “Nemo’s a rallier. We hit those two places across the street first before we ended up at this joint.”
Ryan looks around, taking in the sights. “We should have gone to Flin Flon,” he mutters under his breath.
Taylor doesn’t seem to hear him, as he wanders across the street at the crosswalk. Ryan lengthens his stride to keep up. “We went to a fourth place, too,” Taylor continues. “But I can’t remember where it was. I think there was an alley beside it? Because I might have puked there.”
“You think?” Ryan asks.
“I dunno,” Taylor says. “It got kind of fuzzy. I guess that’s why they say you shouldn’t mix alcohol with pain meds.”
Ryan considers ten different variations of you’re a fucking idiot, but in the end, decides that what’s done is done. “If you guys were drinking so much, when did you even have time to play hockey?”
“This was after hockey. You think our coach would’ve let us out if the Cup was still going?”
“That was all one night?” Ryan asks. “Is that why you’re a two-drink superstar these days?”
“Yeah, something like that,” Taylor says, and doesn’t offer anything else, his exuberance from only moment ago dimming in front of Ryan’s eyes.
Ryan takes a deep breath, because there’s probably only one thing he can do to fix this, and he knows that he’s going to regret this tomorrow morning. “Hey, so wanna recreate your victory night in Brandon? See if we can find that fourth bar? Without the puking though, I mean. ‘Cuz if you puke, I’m leaving you there and it’s your own problem.”
Taylor squints at him for a moment before shrugging, and Ryan remembers that sometimes, the kid can be way more perceptive than he gives him credit for. “Sure, Whit,” Taylor says. “If that’s what you want to do.”
Ryan squeezes Taylor’s shoulder and guides him toward the nearest entrance of the nearest bar. “You can buy the first round. Or the first of many,” he says. The establishment looks like a tacky, outdated strip joint. They’re probably going to need a drink or five.
--
The first thing Ryan notices when he wakes up the next morning is the smell of stale McDonald’s and for one terrifying moment, he worries that he’s passed out in a fast food restaurant. This concern is quickly alleviated when he realizes that he’s still horizontal and queasy and lying on a rather uncomfortable bed. Another moment passes and it becomes evident that he’s in a hotel room, the floor littered with at least three hamburger wrappers. It also occurs to him that he’s feeling over-heated, likely for three very particular reasons: the fact that he’s still wearing jeans, the air conditioner is not working, and he is currently being spooned by a fully-dressed Taylor Hall.
“Fuck my life,” Ryan grumbles, worming his way out from under Taylor’s barnacle-like grip without even trying to be subtle about it.
The jostling wakes up Taylor, who just yawns and blinks, extracting his arms from around Ryan. “Oh, ‘morning Whit,” he says. “Sleep okay? Hangover?”
“Fuck you,” Ryan informs him. “This is all your fault.”
“So that’s a yes?” Taylor says mildly. “That’s cool, bro. Me too. Hangover breakfast? But a run first.”
“What makes you think I have any interest in running with you?”
Taylor shrugs. “Don’t be a grump just ‘cuz you had to be little spoon,” he says and gets up to locate his bag, presumably to dig out some workout appropriate clothes.
Ryan is stunned into silence and a long moment passes in between them as Ryan realizes that this is not as weird as it probably should be. “You were only big spoon because I probably wouldn’t have been able to fit my arms all the way around you. Were all those burgers yours?” he finally says.
“Fuck off,” Taylor says, his voice muffled as his pulls a clean shirt over his head. “I’m not the one lying around like a bum.”
Ryan squints at him and quickly rolls off the bed and onto his feet. He knows a challenge when one is thrust at him, and he’s never been one to back down. He just hopes that if he ends up puking over the next five kilometres, that he’ll at least do it less than Taylor.
--
Even after a greasy breakfast and excess of coffee-Ryan’s pretty sure that Taylor has consumed a pot of it by himself-driving on the highway with a hangover is not on the list of funnest things to do ever. It’s exacerbated by Taylor’s leg jiggling continuously into the glove compartment as he flips obnoxiously through the songs on Ryan’s ipod.
“Nope, don’t like this one,” he’s saying to himself and changing the song. “Don’t like this one either.”
“Tuck and roll, Hallsy. You’re walking to Kingston. I’ve had just about enough of you,” Ryan says, not even looking in his direction.
“We’re practically in Ontario,” Taylor says. “I’m sure someone would save me.” He sits up straighter. “Besides, you wouldn’t leave me here alone. Deep down, you like me and you know it.”
“That’s a lie. Deep down, I really don’t like you that much. Or at all. In fact, if anything, deep down, I’m more full of loathing for you than I ever thought was possible,” Ryan says.
Taylor pauses. “If I put on Fast Car again, will you stop pretending to be a dick?”
“That’s your new go-to? What happened to Call Me Maybe?”
Taylor doesn’t seem to hear him, or at least pretends that he doesn’t. “Yes or no?”
Ryan sighs, long-sufferingly, as another stretch of grass, rocks, and two horses goes by outside, the sun still high in the sky. “Fine. But don’t play it again until after Thunder Bay. It needs to be savoured because it’s too awesome to get burned out by.”
--
("So how do you plan on getting your stuff back to Boston?" Taylor wanted to know, two drinks in.
"Driving," Ryan said. "Which is why, you know. The car."
"Right. I forgot. Because it doesn't deserve to be remembered." Taylor tilted his head to look speculatively at Ryan. "Hey, you want some company or something?"
"No," Ryan said flatly, immediately.
"But I can help you navigate," Taylor tried. "You could drop me off in Kingston. It's practically on the way to Boston."
"Not really," Ryan said.
Taylor pulled out his phone and pressed a few things. "It could be," he said, and then shoved the screen at Ryan's face. "Look at this!"
"Your phone's three inches from my face. I can't see shit," Ryan said, swiping at Taylor's hand. "Besides, I'm not driving you."
"But then you'll spend the entire trip by yourself. I've met you. You'll brood the whole time," Taylor pointed out. "It's creepy." His voice softened. "You think too much sometimes. Might be good to have a distraction there, right?"
Ryan hated it when Taylor was not wrong, and this was probably one of those times. It kind of pained him to nod his eventual assent, but the way that Taylor smiled at him, brightly and easily as Ryan remembered, might just be worth Ryan's concession.)
--
It’s almost midnight. They’re still a ways away from Thunder Bay and Ryan can feel himself fading fast, his eyes threatening to grow heavier in the very near future. “Fuck,” he says out loud, scrubbing a hand over his face. “We should have stopped at that last town.”
Taylor turns to look at him, concerned. “Want me to drive?”
“No,” Ryan says sharply. “Hell no. I don’t trust you with my baby. Your driving skills aren’t up to snuff.”
“You’re the one who drove for ten minutes in Saskatchewan with your hands off the wheel,” Taylor points out.
“First of all, it’s fucking Saskatchewan. Secondly, it was twelve minutes. And my knees were braced against the wheel,” Ryan says
“How much longer until Thunder Bay anyway?”
Ryan checks the his GPS. “Fuck, it’s like another hour until Staal Town. Fuck.”
“And I think it’s starting to rain, too,” Taylor points out helpfully.
“Goddammit,” Ryan curses. “To hell with all of this.” He makes the executive decision to pull onto a turn-off, and drives until they get to a small rural street, where he then pulls over and turns off the ignition.
“What are we doing here?” Taylor asks, with a note of trepidation in his voice. “Are you going to serial kill me? Don’t serial kill me in Thunder Bay, okay? I’m gonna be real mad at you if you do. Is this about the spooning? You can be big spoon next time if you want.”
“You’re a goddamned idiot,” Ryan says. “And by the way, serial killing means you’re killing more than one person.”
“I know what serial killing means,” Taylor replies. “So what the fuck are we doing here?”
“Getting some shut eye, so I don’t drive us off the fucking road,” Ryan tells him. He gets out of the car and slides into the backseat. “You’re short. You can have the front. I’ll even let you recline.”
“You’re being a total non-beauty right now,” Taylor says. “Seriously, give me the keys. I don’t want to die. Or get arrested. You can get arrested for stuff like this, right? What if someone sees us?”
Ryan shrugs, doing his best to settle in against his cramped backseat. “I’m not actually employed right now. So this is all on you, buddy. Plus, if I’m going down, I’m taking the face of a franchise with me.”
“Ugh,” Taylor says tragically, but he does recline the seat and shift like he’s trying to get comfortable.
Ryan’s already starting to doze off when Taylor’s voice cuts through his fog of exhaustion. “This is killing my back. Move over bro,” Taylor says, and before Ryan can register what’s going on, Taylor’s climbing into the backseat. Ryan’s suddenly got a knee digging against his kidney and an elbow in his face, and he is wide awake again.
“What the fuck?” Ryan asks, with as much anger as he can convey. “What are you doing?”
“Getting comfortable,” Taylor informs him, his face pressed against Ryan’s shoulder. “The front seat sucked.”
Ryan sighs. “Is Ebs not giving you what you need?” he jokes, resigned to his fate.
There’s a pause, and for a moment, Ryan thinks that Taylor might have fallen asleep. “It’s not like that anymore,” Taylor finally says.
Ryan turns his head to look at Taylor. He isn’t surprised, but it’s also different hearing it out loud. “You know he has a girlfriend, right?” he says slowly.
“Yeah, I know,” Taylor says.
Ryan whistles lowly. “Wow. You must not be her favourite person.”
“No, she knew. She was okay with it,” Taylor tells him sleepily. He yawns and burrows in closer to Ryan. “It’s not like he was in love with me or anything.”
By the time Ryan has processed what Taylor means and has formulated a reasonable response, Taylor’s breathing has already evened out, asleep while plastered against Ryan’s side. Fuck, Ryan thinks to himself while, against his better judgement, he shifts Taylor so that he’s more comfortable against him. Ryan closes his eyes, reluctantly accepting the fact that they’ll be incredibly uncomfortable by the time morning comes.
--
The morning after Thunder Bay is particularly terrible: they wake up stiff, sore, and grumpy, still wrapped up together in the cramped backseat of Ryan's car.
Ryan's not sure how much Taylor remembers about their conversation from last night, but he's not about to ask either, not yet. Although, Ryan has his suspicions when Taylor is uncharacteristically quiet during what Ryan will always remember as the second worst morning run of his life-
Second worst?" Taylor asks, later, as they drive past Sudbury.
"Brandon," is all Ryan says. It's all Ryan needs to say.
Ryan takes them for breakfast in town at a place he vaguely remembers Jordan Staal bragging about all those years ago. It's not anything amazing, but Ryan supposes that this is a place Gronk has been going to for a long time, and nostalgia and memory can be a powerful thing so he probably won't even make fun of it next time they talk.
Taylor seems a little more personable after two cups of coffee and inhaling half a breakfast sandwich. He smiles at Ryan, stretching and taking another sip of coffee. "So where are we going today?"
“I dunno,” Ryan admits, stirring more milk into his coffee. “Toward Sault Ste Marie, maybe? It’s a bit of a long haul, but it’s doable. My family passed through there once when I was kid.”
“There’s nothing to do in the Soo though,” Taylor says. “I always hated going there.”
“Where would you rather go then?”
Taylor pulls out his phone, fidgeting with it for a few moments. “Oh, hey! Wanna go to Timmins? It’s got the same name as my buddy who’s a huge beauty. So it’s gotta be a gooder, right?”
Ryan raises an eyebrow. “Timmins? Isn’t he the guy who-”
“-yeah,” Taylor interrupts.”But it wasn’t his fault.”
“How did any of you survive until adulthood?” Ryan asks sincerely.
“Dude, there’s a Shania Twain museum!” Taylor says, blissfully ignoring Ryan. “I remember her being on the radio from when I was a kid. Oh my god, she was born in Windsor!”
Ryan kind of wants to disagree out of principle, but it’s not like they have anything better to do or somewhere more exciting to go. He resigns himself to a long drive of Taylor looking up Shania Twain “facts” on his phone and nods.
--
They’re passing by Hearst, Ontario, when Taylor shifts in his seat, leans over to turn down the volume of stereo, and look meaningfully over at Ryan.
“What?” Ryan asks, when he finally notices Taylor staring. “What the fuck do you want?”
“You know someone’s gonna sign you, right?” Taylor says. “I mean, you’ve got sick mitts, and I know how hard you’ve been training to get your mobility back. Plus you’re kind of a beauty. Whoever ends up with you is gonna be super lucky.”
Ryan considers how he feels about Taylor’s sudden explosion of sentimentalism and can’t quite bring himself to brush off his sincerity. “Thanks,” he says.
Taylor nods and goes back to staring out the window.
Since Taylor’s already opened this can of feelings worms, Ryan feels slightly less awkward bringing back up their unfinished conversation from last night. “So, uh. You and Ebs?”
Taylor shrugs. “Whatever. It is what it is.”
“I’m sure that would be very useful to someone who had any fucking clue what ‘it’ was,” Ryan points out.
“We’re buddies. I mean, I think we’re still living together, but we haven’t really talked about it yet. If he still wants to. I’d like to.”
Ryan is careful to stare at the road and not Taylor, because he hasn’t come this far to die in fucking Hearst. For one, the irony would be too much. “Anyone ever tell you that you’re a masochist?”
Taylor shrugs again. “He’s my best friend.”
“So is that why he broke it off with you?” Ryan asks.
Taylor laughs awkwardly and rubs a hand over his hair. “Uh. I broke it off, actually.”
“Seriously?” Ryan asks, surprised by the reminder that sometimes, Taylor’s more than just the awkward, gangly teenager he met years ago.
“It’s fine,” Taylor says. “He’s just...you know. In love with someone else.”
“And that’s a problem?” Ryan asks cautiously.
Taylor doesn’t respond. His silence says it all.
Fuck my life, Ryan thinks and sighs, as Taylor cranks the music back up to obnoxious decibels. Ryan doesn’t remember putting Levels-“Aviici Levels,” Ryan thinks to himself-on his iPod, but supposes that he can allow Taylor an indulgence just this once.
--
They arrive in Timmins to find the museum’s been closed since February-“You were just looking this up, Hallsy,” Ryan grumbles.
“Well I didn’t click on the page! My 3g really sucks out here, ok?”
but the sun is already starting to set, and Ryan doesn’t want a repeat of Thunder Bay, so he makes the executive decision to get a room for the night. Unfortunately, he’s forgotten that they’re in Ontario, which means by the time he and Taylor have gotten settled in and changed, it’s already 9:30 and the liquor stores are all closed.
“It’s practically fucking barbaric,” he tells Taylor later, over beer and nachos at the local dive bar, while he steals all the chips with cheese on them to save Taylor from himself. “That was the one good part about living in Alberta. How did you live here for so long?”
“I drank my dad’s booze,” Taylor says, reaching over to Ryan’s side of the platter, scowling when Ryan slaps his hand away. “Dude, I can’t let you be old, unemployed, and fat.”
“I’d take my two-thirds of the equation over your third.”
Taylor laughs at that and signals for another round.
In retrospect, they probably should have stopped at the second or third round, because soon it’s after last call and they’re stumbling back to their hotel room together, barely managing to get the door shut before their lips press together, hands fisting in the back of shirts and tangled in hair. Ryan gets Taylor pushed up against the wall of their hotel room before he pulls away for a moment to stare at him meaningfully.
“Hallsy, not that this isn’t...you know. But what the hell is this?”
Taylor shrugs and resumes trying to shove his hands into Ryan’s pants. “Look, bro, don’t make it weird, I won’t even big spoon you this time.”
“I mean, what we were talking about earlier, this could really easily be a pity thing. Or a drunk thing. Or a drunk pity thing.”
Taylor does pull back at that to study him, nose scrunching as his drunk brain is probably trying to muddle through. “Wait, so I’m supposed to pity you because you’re old and unemployed?”
“Hallsy.”
“Look, are you really telling me that you don’t want me to suck your dick?”
Truthfully, Ryan can’t say that, and Taylor’s filthy smile as he succeeds in pulling off Ryan’s belt is enough to make him stop arguing.
--
When Ryan wakes up the next morning in Timmins, he’s still wearing a shirt but his pants are nowhere to be found. The shirt is tacky with some sort of dried substance. “What the fuck,” he grumbles to himself. “Where the fuck are my pants? And why is my shirt so fucking disgusting?”
“Because you wouldn’t let me come in your mouth.” The sleeping mumbling comes from beside him, and when Ryan looks over, it’s most definitely Taylor. And though the sheets seem to be artfully obscuring his body, Ryan would put good money on the fact that Taylor is also not wearing pants right now.
Ryan sighs. “So at least your clothes are gross too?”
“No,” Taylor says, rolling over. “Because you came in my mouth.”
“Dude,” Ryan says.
“I know, I know,” Taylor says. “I’m a beauty.”
Ryan groans and reaches for the glass of water on the bedside table he’d had the foresight to put there the night before, resigned to their upcoming stupid morning run. “Since you ruined my shirt, I’m stealing one of yours.”
“Do you think they’d fit you?” Taylor wonders.
“Good point,” Ryan concedes. “They barely fit you.”
Taylor tilts his head, squinting consideringly at Ryan. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Oh, nothing,” Ryan says, making a valiant effort to haul himself out of bed. “Come on. Let’s go.”
--
They’ve been driving on the 401 for almost an hour and Ryan can’t help but replay the last evening over and over in his head, wondering what the fuck he could have possibly been thinking. It’s even more troubling when he looks over and notices that Taylor’s staring out the passenger side window and cheerfully bopping along to the music blasting in Ryan’s car.
“Man,” Taylor says, finally. “I really hope Hemmer stays. He’s such a beauty.”
Ryan raises an eyebrow. “The hell are you talking about?”
“Oh, there’s just this article here on the TSN website that’s talking about how other teams might be interested in him.”
“Have you been on TSN.ca this whole time?” Ryan asks.
“No,” Taylor says. “I was on Deadspin and Barstool Sports, too. But I was just reading the comments on TSN and someone was talking shit about Hemmer, which sucks.”
“You’re reading the comments?” Ryan hopes his voice can accurately convey the disgust he currently feels.
“Well yeah, there’s some cool stuff there,” Taylor says.
“Only a goddamned idiot reads comments on sports pages,” Ryan says. “You’re stupid.”
“Your face is stupid,” Taylor replies.
“You didn’t seem to think so last night,” Ryan says automatically and then regrets it almost at once.
“It’s not like I was looking at your face,” Taylor points out. Then he seems to realize what he’s just said and looks away awkwardly.
Ryan coughs a little, turning to look back at the road. He knows how to handle one-night stands and he’s seen Taylor in the inevitably awkward aftermath of his hookups, so he decides to try and side-step everything awful by making a joke instead: “Just don’t fall in love with me and we can still be cool.”
Taylor turns back to look at him, a little half-smile on his face. “Yeah, that only happened once and it’s not like it’s gonna happen again. Didn’t work out so great.”
A long beat passes as Ryan processes all the things that Taylor didn’t say. “Jesus, Hallsy,” Ryan finally says.
The smile that Taylor gives him in response seems like the most genuine one Ryan’s seen all week.”Don’t worry,” Taylor says. “It’s all good. We’re cool.”
“How could that be cool?” Ryan can’t help but ask. “This all sounds like the opposite of cool.”
Taylor shrugs. “I knew what I was getting into, so it’s not like I didn’t know this was going to happen.” He pauses. “It’s not like things are shitty though, you know? Hanging out with you isn’t that bad.”
Ryan thinks about this carefully, about what he wants, about what he should say next, and tries to make the two match up. “I’m not gonna be your new Ebby,” he finally says, going for honesty. “I can’t be that and I don’t want to be.”
“Who says I want you to be Ebby?” Taylor sounds genuinely confused. “You’re...you know, Whit. Why would I want you to be him?”
Ryan sighs. He’s pretty sure Taylor understood what he was trying to say, but it can be hard to tell with Taylor sometimes-the kid can be pretty literal. But with the way that Taylor’s watching him curiously, Ryan believes him and not just because it’s the easiest solution. “I don’t know,” he says. “You’re a weird kid.”
“Not that weird,” Taylor says. He shrugs. “I trust you.”
“And?” Ryan asks.
“And...that’s all,” Taylor says.
Ryan thinks about it for a moment. “That’s stupid,” he finally settles on. “You’re kind of an idiot.”
“People keep telling me that,” Taylor says. “I don’t really care though. Plus my mom thinks I’m great.”
“Keep telling yourself that,” Ryan says. He thinks he might get where Taylor’s coming from though-he’s not sure if that’s comforting or terrifying. It’s probably best not to think about this all for now. “What do you want for lunch?” he asks instead.
--
They hit Barrie by mid-evening, and Ryan figures it’s as good of a place to stop for the night as any. There’s been this strange buzzing feeling between him and Taylor all day and it’s starting to get under his skin. The day after has never felt this comfortable for Ryan: not good or bad, exactly, but it’s kind of weird.
“Are you going to be as easy as you were last night?” Ryan deadpans, getting it out of the way. “Because if I have to buy you dinner, it’s not happening. I don’t have a job.”
“I’m not your girlfriend,” Taylor says, rolling his eyes. “Maybe if you’re nice, I’ll pay for yours.” He pauses before adding, “But if you wanna blow me again later, that’s all on you.”
“Thank you for reminding me of how little game you have,” Ryan says.
“That was a joke,” Taylor protests.
“Sure it was,” Ryan replies, patting him on the back. “Besides, only one of us swallows, and it sure isn’t me.”
“It’s not like you need the calories,” Taylor says, and Ryan can only stare at him for a moment.
“Are you seriously making that joke?” Ryan asks, still in disbelief. “Isn’t that my line?”
“Why would it be your line?” Taylor’s dead serious as far as Ryan can tell.
Ryan decides that there’s no possible way to dignify that with an appropriate response and just gets out of his car and walks away without Taylor.
“Hey!” Taylor yells after him, jogging to catch up. “Hey, I still don’t get it!”
--
“Seriously, Whit,” Taylor says halfway through his pasta. “Is this about the sex thing again? ‘Cause if things are going to be weird, we can go back to pretending it didn’t happen.”
“I’m not the one who keeps bringing up the sex thing,” Ryan mutters
“You kinda did first earlier today, bro,” Taylor points out, and Ryan sighs. “Both times.”
“I guess I just wanna make things clear,” Ryan says.
Taylor rolls his eyes. “Look, bro, I just wanna get laid. And if you wanna get laid too, that’s cool. You can come if you want. Pun intended. Hey, that’s a pun too, did you know that?”
“Of unintended? I’m not a moron.”
“Not saying you are,” Taylor says. “But you’re overthinking this one.”
Ryan takes a moment to think it over, how maybe there’s something there between the lines in what Taylor’s saying. Ryan decides that he deserves this, for something to be easy and uncomplicated. Maybe Taylor deserves that too. “I’d tell you to eat me, but you’d probably take that as an invitation.”
“Was that a sex joke?” Taylor asks, fork paused halfway to his mouth.
“... I’ll give you a solid maybe on that one,” Ryan demurs and waves down the waitress for another beer.
Taylor just laughs.
--
When they end up falling into the same bed that night after dinner, this time around they can’t even blame it on being too drunk. Ryan’s had maybe two beers, and he’s not sure if Taylor had anything to drink at all. He still kisses sloppily, though, and he still groans when Ryan’s hand twists in his hair to pull him back, biting him gently on his lower lip before coaxing him into a proper kiss.
Ryan makes it a point to remove his shirt before things can get any further, pulling it off in one smooth motion.
“Hey,” Taylor says. “If you’d just swallow, this wouldn’t even be an issue.”
Normally, Ryan would have a good comeback for that, but Taylor’s trying to chirp him while undoing Ryan’s belt buckle, so it actually seems quite unnecessary.
It turns out that, contrary to any common sense, Taylor is surprisingly good in bed. At the very least, he gives head like a champ. If last night felt anything like it currently does, Ryan kind of regrets not being able to remember anything about what happened. Not that he’d ever tell Taylor that, but from the way Taylor’s looking up at him, smug with Ryan’s dick still in his mouth, he probably doesn’t need to.
Ryan thinks that he should make it a point of pride to hold out for as long as he can and sets out with the intention of doing so; to his credit it’s not embarrassing but still sooner than he’d like. He does give the courtesy nudge to the back of Taylor’s head when it happens, but it only seems to encourage Taylor to redouble his efforts and Ryan will deny the resulting groan until his dying day.
When Ryan finally comes down, Taylor’s crawled over him, still fucking smirking. “So, I’m going to guess that was awesome.”
“I’ve had better,” Ryan says, even though it might have ranked pretty high on his list of all-time blow jobs, he’s not about to tell Taylor that. “You’re kind of sloppy, kid. Where’s the finesse?”
“I save it for your mom,” Taylor says, and if Ryan’s hand wasn’t already halfway down Taylor’s pants he might be more annoyed. Instead he squeezes just this side of too hard and watches as Taylor bites his lip. “Besides, it’s not like you’ve got any blowjob high ground, bro.”
Much to Ryan’s chagrin, he supposes that Taylor might actually have some semblance of a point. “You’re fucking heavy,” he says instead, shoving at him. “Get off already.”
“When you say ‘get off,’” Taylor says. “Do you mean…”
“You wanna lie back and think of Kingston, that’s your prerogative,” Ryan says. “But some of us aren’t young enough to go all night.”
Taylor smiles at him, wide-open and just a little filthy. “Bet you’re wrong,”
Ryan isn’t necessarily wrong, although they make a pretty decent go of it.
--
When Ryan startles awake from drowsing an indeterminate amount of time later-and it could have been five minutes, it could have been hours, Ryan honestly doesn’t know-he’s dismayed to find that the bed they’re still lying in together is completely disgusting and the sheets in disarray. He groans, reaching out to smack Taylor in the shoulder. “Hallsy. Get up.”
“Where are we going?” Taylor mumbles, rolling over just enough to mash his face into Ryan’s arm.
“I’m going to the other bed, this one is covered in your jizz.” Ryan pauses, and pushes Taylor’s clammy forehead back. “You can come if you like, I guess. That wasn’t a pun.”
“Yes it was,” Taylor says sleepily but follows Ryan to the other bed anyway.
This time, Ryan’s even anticipating it when they fall asleep with Taylor curled up around him, octopus-like limbs everywhere, and the last thing Ryan remembers is how he, unfortunately, doesn’t actually mind all that much.
--
They set out fairly early the next morning, after a leisurely breakfast where Taylor orders two sides of pancakes and Ryan chokes on his coffee while laughing. And even though Taylor demands they stop at pretty much every township for some reason or another, he’s hardly feeling murderous at all. He thinks about how maybe he’s not ready to head back to Boston just yet, how maybe for the first time in a long time, he’s finally ready to go to somewhere rather than away from somewhere else. And perhaps that’s why, as the signs for Kingston start to appear on the road ahead of them, he turns to Taylor and clears his throat.
“So I was thinking, I’ve never been to Montreal in the summer.”
Taylor turns to look at him, half-smiling, almost like he knows exactly what Ryan’s not saying. “You’re missing out, bro. Rockets everywhere.”
Ryan lets out the breath he didn’t even know he was holding. “What do you care? It’s not like you’ll ever convince any of them to come home with you.”
“Only one way to find out, isn’t there,” Taylor says, kicking his feet up onto the dashboard and sliding on the sunglasses that Ryan’s pretty sure belong to him, or at least belonged to him at the beginning of the week.
While Ryan’s feeling generous, it has limits; he reaches over to shove down Taylor’s legs. “Respect my fucking car, peasant, or I’ll leave you in Hull.”
“Oh no, anything but that,” Taylor says in mock horror.
“You’re getting uppity,” Ryan says, settling in for a long drive and reaching over to set his ipod to blast the playlist he put together at the gas station parking lot in the middle of Saskatchewan. “We’re going to have to deal with that.”
“We’ve got the time,” Taylor says, and turns to look out the window, still smiling.
--
[EPILOGUE
“This is really shitty beer,” Taylor says, over pints of Rolling Rock in Dartmouth. “Why are we drinking this?”
“Because I’m unemployed and we’re in Nova Scotia,” Ryan says. “Shut up and drink your fucking beer.”
“Shoulda gotten off at Kingston,” Taylor mutters, but he grins when Ryan kicks him in the ankle. “Too bad I already did before that! Boom!”
“I’m driving back to Vegreville, just so I can kick you out of the car,” Ryan says solemnly, but doesn’t actually mean it at all. And then, shitty beer or not, Ryan downs the rest of it in one go.]
fandom. hockey rpf
pairings. ryan whitney/taylor hall, jordan eberle/taylor hall
rating. r
word count. ~8000
disclaimer. most of this is not real.
notes. there is a lovely soundtrack that can be found here, courtesy of the fabulous gonetoarcadia. also, tangentially related, please enjoy our favourite photo of taylor hall from the summer of 2013.
--
They’ve only been driving for an hour and a half when Taylor turns to Ryan and asks, earnestly, if he wants to see the World’s Largest Easter Egg.
For a brief moment, Ryan is vaguely concerned that kids these days have started using new euphemisms that he’s never even heard of. But when he turns to look at Taylor, he’s staring so intently that Ryan realizes that Taylor literally means the World’s Largest Easter Egg.
“Why the fuck would I want to do that?” Ryan asks.
Taylor shrugs. “Isn’t that the kind of thing that people do on roadtrips?”
“Get the fuck out of my car and start walking, Hallsy,” Ryan says. “It’s a long way to Kingston.”
Taylor shuts his mouth and leans back, presumably to sulk; Ryan cranks up the radio, intent on ignoring him. Unfortunately, that apparently does not stop him from taking the small turn-off to Vegreville, home of the World’s Largest Easter Egg.
“What the shit is this,” Ryan says, later, as he squints up at the large hunk of metal. “This isn’t an egg, this isn’t anything to see. There isn’t even any ice cream here, what sort of attraction doesn’t have fucking ice cream?”
“There was a Dairy Queen back in town,” Taylor offers.
“You don’t need any more Dairy Queen. God, I’m looking at farms. This is depressing. Get back in the car, Hallsy.”
“I thought I was walking to Kingston,” Taylor says, even as he’s heading back around to the passenger side door.
“Shut up and get in before I change my mind. I couldn’t leave you here. No one deserves that. Not even you.”
--
An hour later, Taylor suddenly sits up straighter in his seat and presses his face against the window. “Whit. Whit. Whit!” he says excitedly. “You gotta stop the car!”
“Did I not just tell you not to drink so much coffee?” Ryan asks.
“It’s not that! Just pull over,” Taylor insists.
Ryan sighs but complies anyway, and by the time he’s come to a full-stop, Taylor’s already legging it excitedly out of the car. Ryan follows at a slower pace.
“Know where we are?” Taylor asks Ryan.
Ryan thinks for a moment. “Lloydminster?” And then Ryan looks up and realizes that they’re standing beside the sign that separates Alberta and Saskatchewan, and suddenly everything clicks. “Oh, you stupid piece of shit-”
“-this is a thing me and my mom used to do when I was a kid,” Taylor presses on with a huge grin on his face. He hops on his left foot. “I’m in Alberta!” Then he shifts his weight onto his other foot. “Now I’m in Saskatchewan!” He alternates back and forth, gleefully. “Alberta! Saskatchewan! Alberta! Saskatchewan!”
Ryan considers dignifying this with an answer, but decides that sometimes silence is the best way to convey his disdain, and so he opts to turn around and walk back to his car instead, leaving Taylor to his own nostalgia. And if the whole display at the border in Lloydminster makes Ryan smile just a little, well, his back is turned, so no one else will ever know.
--
(Ryan hadn’t meant to go on this cross-country roadtrip with a tagalong: he’s perfectly capable of making his way back across the continent on his own, thank you very much. It’s just that when he had come back to the house in Edmonton last week to pick up the last of his stuff, he also found Taylor face-down on the couch, looking more pathetic than usual.
“Hallsy?” Ryan asked, once his initial surprise had passed. “What are you doing here?”
When Taylor looked up at him, even his hair seemed to droop. “Oh, hey. What’s up?”
“Well, I lived here, and now I’m going to stop living here so I came to get the rest of my shit,” Ryan said, going for casual. “What about you? Thought you were back home in Ontario.”
Taylor just shrugged.
Ryan assessed the situation and decided that the kid either needed to get laid or get drunk. Since he definitely did not want to help with the former, he went straight for the liquor cabinet and reached for two tumblers.
“It’s two in the afternoon,” Taylor called out.
“What’s that, like four o’clock Kingston time? That’s practically happy hour,” Ryan said, pouring out liberal amounts of whiskey into both glasses.)
--
As prairieland flickers by outside on the TransCanada Highway, the tinny speakers of Ryan’s car blasting Fast Car for the third time in a matter of hours, Taylor peering out the passenger side window, everything almost feels ordinary. For the first time in weeks, it doesn’t seem like everything’s about to change; everything is just as it was when it was at its most comfortable and safest. Ryan tries to hold on to this moment for as long as he can.
“Bro,” Taylor says suddenly, interrupting Ryan’s thoughts. “I gotta take a leak. Too much coffee.”
Ryan sighs deeply. “This is why they don’t let children drink coffee, Hallsy. Also, coffee makes you fat.”
“Shut up, no it doesn’t,” Taylor says indignantly. “Come on, man, pull over.”
Rolling his eyes, Ryan signals and pulls into the next service station with another long-suffering sigh. As Taylor sprints out of the car into the station, Ryan plugs in his iPod to his car’s stereo system and fiddles with playlist options, trying to put together the most obnoxious playlist possible. He’s so pleased with the fruits of his labours that he doesn’t even complain when Taylor wanders back into the car again five minutes later, clutching two more coffees in his hand, one of which he passes over to Ryan.
-
By the time they get to Saskatoon, Taylor’s practically vibrating in his seat from over-caffeination, and Ryan knows that he’s going to have to let him out soon to run off some of the excess energy before Ryan murders him or drives them into a ditch.
It’s late enough that it would probably make sense to pull over to spend the night somewhere in the outskirts of town. They’d eaten at a roadside diner miles back, shooting straw wrappers at each other and grinning over plates stacked high with all-day breakfast for dinner, Ryan relishing at the opportunity to ask Taylor if he really did need that last piece of bacon.
Their room’s nothing special, two double beds and a small bathroom, but it’ll suit their purposes for their one-night stay. There’s even more than eight channels on the television: Ryan’s flipped through all of them as he waits for Taylor to come back from his run-Ryan’s almost impressed that Taylor’s managed to find the hotel again and wasn’t lost in the wilds of Saskatchewan forever-and steal all the hot water. When he’s done showering, Taylor immediately flops down restlessly on the other bed. Ryan takes the initiative and hauls him down to the hotel bar before Taylor can inevitably start whining about being bored.
“That’s not a bar,” Taylor points out. “It’s basically a Denny’s.”
“It’s pretty much connected to the hotel. And it serves booze,” Ryan says. “So shut up.”
With a beer in front of him, Taylor does seem a lot more generous about their current lot in life and is more visibly relaxed than Ryan’s seen him since finding him prostrate on their-well, not his anymore he supposes-couch in Edmonton. As the night goes on, Taylor seems to settle into an aura of cheerfulness, to the point where Ryan even finds that they’ve moved into a different booth half an hour later to chat up two twenty-something year old women who had been staring over at their table all night.
“You’re from Australia?” Taylor asks the tiny brunette sitting next to him. “That’s awesome! My dad’s from there. I’ve always wanted to go.”
Ryan fights his urge to rolls his eyes, but he’s got to hand it to him: it seems to be working.
“Really?” she says, leaning ever-so-closer into Taylor’s side. “You should come visit. I could show you around.”
There’s a muffled chuckle beside Ryan, and when he turns to look, the other Australian woman is trying to be discreet about laughing into her Bacardi Breezer. Their eyes meet and he makes the gesture to move tables so that they can give the other two their privacy, and she nods her assent as they scamper quickly to another booth across the room before they both dissolve into laughter.
“Wow,” she says, when they finally settle in, calming down. “Does your friend get out often?”
“Who says he’s my friend?” Ryan says, and when she grins wider, he takes that as encouragement to continue. “Only with supervision,” he amends. “I’m a philanthropist.”
“Well, you’re not doing a very good job of that right now,” she says.
“No, I’m not,” he says and smiles into his beer.
They keep talking: Ryan finds out her name is Charlotte, she’s from Canberra (“There’s nothing to do there,” she says passionately. “Don’t let your friend visit. He will regret it.”), she’s on her way to Jasper and then the coast to hike and see the sights, and best of all, she has no idea who Ryan-or Taylor, for that matter-is.
“What do you do?” she asks, eventually, during a lull in conversation.
“I guess I’m between jobs right now,” Ryan says.
“Did you not like your last job?”
Ryan thinks about how to answer this. “It started out pretty good. It was pretty bad by the end though, and it was time to move on,” he finally says, surprised to find that this is true. “Not too worried though, at least not right now.”
To Charlotte’s credit, she doesn’t push the subject, just smiles and nods and takes another sip of her drink. “I don’t have a job right now either,” she confides. “I left it to come travel around Canada. And I definitely don’t regret it. Not having a job isn’t ideal, but for now that’s a problem for future Charlotte.” She holds her bottle up in the air. “To unemployment?”
“To unemployment,” Ryan says and clinks his drink with hers.
-
Ryan wakes up the next morning to a soft voice wishing him safe travels and a kiss pressed to his cheek, followed by the sound of the door closing faintly. He’s not too bothered: he knows Charlotte and her friend have an early start and before she’d agreed to come back with him to his room-partially because Taylor was in hers and partially because she had seemed to enjoy Ryan’s company-they’d confirmed that neither of them were interested in pursuing more than one night. He smiles hazily at the memory of how much fun last night had been, rolls into the warm spot she’d left in the bed, and falls back asleep.
When Ryan wakes up again, it’s to someone shaking his arm obnoxiously and saying his name over and over again.
“Ryan. Hey, Ryan. Whit. Whit!” the voice repeats. “We gotta go running. Come on. Before it gets too hot outside.”
Ryan groans. “Fuck you and fuck running.”
“That’s no way to get a job,” Taylor says.
For a moment, Ryan considers sitting up to get a better angle to punch Taylor in the face, but that’s a lot of work. “Fuck you,” he says instead. “I got my exercise last night. Go away.”
“That’s not enough cardio,” Taylor says.
Ryan smirks. “Clearly, you’re just not doing it right,” he says.
The indignation on Taylor’s face is totally worth the five kilometres that Ryan inevitably finds himself running twenty minutes later.
--
“So where are we going next?” Taylor asks while trying to massacre a stack of pancakes.
Ryan watches him in awe. “Remember, kid, it’s fork to mouth.”
“Yeah, yeah, not face to plate,” Taylor says, waving his fork in the air. “Do I look like Pens to you?”
Ryan pretends to consider this for a moment. “Well...”
“Fuck you,” Taylor says. “I’m telling Pens that you’re being an asshole when he’s not even here to defend himself.”
“Dustin Penner likes me better,” Ryan informs him.
Taylor shrugs, stuffing another bite into his mouth. “You never answered my question,” he says, his mouth full.
Ryan cringes. “Wanna go to Regina? See your boy’s stomping grounds? It’s kind of out of the way, but that’s what roadtrips are like, right? See things you wanna see?”
Taylor stops chewing for a moment. Ryan’s not entirely sure because Taylor has never been a beacon of subtlety, but he thinks he might see Taylor’s face fall ever so slightly. It’s gone again in a moment, but Ryan’s not entirely sure that he has imagined it. “Nah,” Taylor says casually. “Hey, wanna go to Flin Flon? I’ve never been there. And it’s fun to say.”
“No,” Ryan says immediately. “There’s nothing in Flin Flon.”
“Bobby Clarke’s in Flin Flon,” Taylor argues.
“Bobby Clarke’s in New Jersey, because we’re not in 1954,” Ryan replies.
Taylor goes back to his breakfast and Ryan takes another sip of coffee. He can’t help but still feel a little curious about why Taylor had been so quick to refuse a trip to Regina, when he’s so sure that as a Jordan Eberle superfan, that would have been the first place Taylor’d want to go. He thinks about if for a moment longer, how subdued Taylor’s been over the last few days, and takes a deep breath, knowing that he’ll likely regret the next words to come out of his mouth.
“Hey, why don’t we hit up Brandon, instead? You were there a few years back, right? You can give me a tour or whatever-the-fuck if you want.”
When Taylor looks up and smiles at him, Ryan feels something in his chest loosen just a little bit.
--
(“So,” Taylor said after taking a sip from the tumbler Ryan handed him. “Why’re you really here?”
“Did I stutter? Because I’m pretty sure I just explained it to you,” Ryan said. “I’m here for my shit. And my car. Mostly the car.”
“That car is shit,” Taylor informed him. “You really should just get a new one."
“I like my car. We’ve been through a lot together,” Ryan replied. “Plus, I don’t have a job right now.”
Taylor put down his glass and leaned forward earnestly. “Hey man, I’m sure if you just talked to them, to like, MacT and KLowe-”
“-no,” Ryan cut him off emphatically. “That’s not how things work. Maybe in that dream world you’re walking around in-”
“-but what if I talked to them about it?” Taylor tried again. “Maybe we could work something out?”
“Wow,” Ryan said, dryly. “Way to be a hero. But really, here in the real world, where adults live, that’s really not the way things work.” Taylor looked like he was going to interrupt again, so Ryan just kept talking. He’d rehearsed this exact upcoming monologue to himself enough times in the last few weeks, he could almost believe it himself. “It’s fine. Don’t worry about me. This...just isn’t the place anymore. I think I need a fresh start.”
Taylor didn’t say anything for a long moment. “That doesn’t seem fair,” he finally said, staring down into his glass.
Ryan shrugged. “Nope,” he agreed, and finished off the rest of his own drink.)
--
As soon as Ryan parks his car in Brandon, Taylor’s face lights up as he begins his tour.
“Man, I remember this corner,” Taylor says, laughing. “Nemo totally blew chunks all over some guy’s car and Welly’s shoes last time I was here. Good thing it wasn’t Elly, when you barf on him he just tries to give it back.”
Ryan raises an eyebrow but doesn’t say anything.
“Oh,” Taylor says as he meanders ahead, pointing at the bar to their left, festooned with cowboy paraphernalia. “We definitely went here.”
“I can see why your friend blew chunks,” Ryan says, making a face.
“No, that was the beginning of the night,” Taylor explained. “Nemo’s a rallier. We hit those two places across the street first before we ended up at this joint.”
Ryan looks around, taking in the sights. “We should have gone to Flin Flon,” he mutters under his breath.
Taylor doesn’t seem to hear him, as he wanders across the street at the crosswalk. Ryan lengthens his stride to keep up. “We went to a fourth place, too,” Taylor continues. “But I can’t remember where it was. I think there was an alley beside it? Because I might have puked there.”
“You think?” Ryan asks.
“I dunno,” Taylor says. “It got kind of fuzzy. I guess that’s why they say you shouldn’t mix alcohol with pain meds.”
Ryan considers ten different variations of you’re a fucking idiot, but in the end, decides that what’s done is done. “If you guys were drinking so much, when did you even have time to play hockey?”
“This was after hockey. You think our coach would’ve let us out if the Cup was still going?”
“That was all one night?” Ryan asks. “Is that why you’re a two-drink superstar these days?”
“Yeah, something like that,” Taylor says, and doesn’t offer anything else, his exuberance from only moment ago dimming in front of Ryan’s eyes.
Ryan takes a deep breath, because there’s probably only one thing he can do to fix this, and he knows that he’s going to regret this tomorrow morning. “Hey, so wanna recreate your victory night in Brandon? See if we can find that fourth bar? Without the puking though, I mean. ‘Cuz if you puke, I’m leaving you there and it’s your own problem.”
Taylor squints at him for a moment before shrugging, and Ryan remembers that sometimes, the kid can be way more perceptive than he gives him credit for. “Sure, Whit,” Taylor says. “If that’s what you want to do.”
Ryan squeezes Taylor’s shoulder and guides him toward the nearest entrance of the nearest bar. “You can buy the first round. Or the first of many,” he says. The establishment looks like a tacky, outdated strip joint. They’re probably going to need a drink or five.
--
The first thing Ryan notices when he wakes up the next morning is the smell of stale McDonald’s and for one terrifying moment, he worries that he’s passed out in a fast food restaurant. This concern is quickly alleviated when he realizes that he’s still horizontal and queasy and lying on a rather uncomfortable bed. Another moment passes and it becomes evident that he’s in a hotel room, the floor littered with at least three hamburger wrappers. It also occurs to him that he’s feeling over-heated, likely for three very particular reasons: the fact that he’s still wearing jeans, the air conditioner is not working, and he is currently being spooned by a fully-dressed Taylor Hall.
“Fuck my life,” Ryan grumbles, worming his way out from under Taylor’s barnacle-like grip without even trying to be subtle about it.
The jostling wakes up Taylor, who just yawns and blinks, extracting his arms from around Ryan. “Oh, ‘morning Whit,” he says. “Sleep okay? Hangover?”
“Fuck you,” Ryan informs him. “This is all your fault.”
“So that’s a yes?” Taylor says mildly. “That’s cool, bro. Me too. Hangover breakfast? But a run first.”
“What makes you think I have any interest in running with you?”
Taylor shrugs. “Don’t be a grump just ‘cuz you had to be little spoon,” he says and gets up to locate his bag, presumably to dig out some workout appropriate clothes.
Ryan is stunned into silence and a long moment passes in between them as Ryan realizes that this is not as weird as it probably should be. “You were only big spoon because I probably wouldn’t have been able to fit my arms all the way around you. Were all those burgers yours?” he finally says.
“Fuck off,” Taylor says, his voice muffled as his pulls a clean shirt over his head. “I’m not the one lying around like a bum.”
Ryan squints at him and quickly rolls off the bed and onto his feet. He knows a challenge when one is thrust at him, and he’s never been one to back down. He just hopes that if he ends up puking over the next five kilometres, that he’ll at least do it less than Taylor.
--
Even after a greasy breakfast and excess of coffee-Ryan’s pretty sure that Taylor has consumed a pot of it by himself-driving on the highway with a hangover is not on the list of funnest things to do ever. It’s exacerbated by Taylor’s leg jiggling continuously into the glove compartment as he flips obnoxiously through the songs on Ryan’s ipod.
“Nope, don’t like this one,” he’s saying to himself and changing the song. “Don’t like this one either.”
“Tuck and roll, Hallsy. You’re walking to Kingston. I’ve had just about enough of you,” Ryan says, not even looking in his direction.
“We’re practically in Ontario,” Taylor says. “I’m sure someone would save me.” He sits up straighter. “Besides, you wouldn’t leave me here alone. Deep down, you like me and you know it.”
“That’s a lie. Deep down, I really don’t like you that much. Or at all. In fact, if anything, deep down, I’m more full of loathing for you than I ever thought was possible,” Ryan says.
Taylor pauses. “If I put on Fast Car again, will you stop pretending to be a dick?”
“That’s your new go-to? What happened to Call Me Maybe?”
Taylor doesn’t seem to hear him, or at least pretends that he doesn’t. “Yes or no?”
Ryan sighs, long-sufferingly, as another stretch of grass, rocks, and two horses goes by outside, the sun still high in the sky. “Fine. But don’t play it again until after Thunder Bay. It needs to be savoured because it’s too awesome to get burned out by.”
--
("So how do you plan on getting your stuff back to Boston?" Taylor wanted to know, two drinks in.
"Driving," Ryan said. "Which is why, you know. The car."
"Right. I forgot. Because it doesn't deserve to be remembered." Taylor tilted his head to look speculatively at Ryan. "Hey, you want some company or something?"
"No," Ryan said flatly, immediately.
"But I can help you navigate," Taylor tried. "You could drop me off in Kingston. It's practically on the way to Boston."
"Not really," Ryan said.
Taylor pulled out his phone and pressed a few things. "It could be," he said, and then shoved the screen at Ryan's face. "Look at this!"
"Your phone's three inches from my face. I can't see shit," Ryan said, swiping at Taylor's hand. "Besides, I'm not driving you."
"But then you'll spend the entire trip by yourself. I've met you. You'll brood the whole time," Taylor pointed out. "It's creepy." His voice softened. "You think too much sometimes. Might be good to have a distraction there, right?"
Ryan hated it when Taylor was not wrong, and this was probably one of those times. It kind of pained him to nod his eventual assent, but the way that Taylor smiled at him, brightly and easily as Ryan remembered, might just be worth Ryan's concession.)
--
It’s almost midnight. They’re still a ways away from Thunder Bay and Ryan can feel himself fading fast, his eyes threatening to grow heavier in the very near future. “Fuck,” he says out loud, scrubbing a hand over his face. “We should have stopped at that last town.”
Taylor turns to look at him, concerned. “Want me to drive?”
“No,” Ryan says sharply. “Hell no. I don’t trust you with my baby. Your driving skills aren’t up to snuff.”
“You’re the one who drove for ten minutes in Saskatchewan with your hands off the wheel,” Taylor points out.
“First of all, it’s fucking Saskatchewan. Secondly, it was twelve minutes. And my knees were braced against the wheel,” Ryan says
“How much longer until Thunder Bay anyway?”
Ryan checks the his GPS. “Fuck, it’s like another hour until Staal Town. Fuck.”
“And I think it’s starting to rain, too,” Taylor points out helpfully.
“Goddammit,” Ryan curses. “To hell with all of this.” He makes the executive decision to pull onto a turn-off, and drives until they get to a small rural street, where he then pulls over and turns off the ignition.
“What are we doing here?” Taylor asks, with a note of trepidation in his voice. “Are you going to serial kill me? Don’t serial kill me in Thunder Bay, okay? I’m gonna be real mad at you if you do. Is this about the spooning? You can be big spoon next time if you want.”
“You’re a goddamned idiot,” Ryan says. “And by the way, serial killing means you’re killing more than one person.”
“I know what serial killing means,” Taylor replies. “So what the fuck are we doing here?”
“Getting some shut eye, so I don’t drive us off the fucking road,” Ryan tells him. He gets out of the car and slides into the backseat. “You’re short. You can have the front. I’ll even let you recline.”
“You’re being a total non-beauty right now,” Taylor says. “Seriously, give me the keys. I don’t want to die. Or get arrested. You can get arrested for stuff like this, right? What if someone sees us?”
Ryan shrugs, doing his best to settle in against his cramped backseat. “I’m not actually employed right now. So this is all on you, buddy. Plus, if I’m going down, I’m taking the face of a franchise with me.”
“Ugh,” Taylor says tragically, but he does recline the seat and shift like he’s trying to get comfortable.
Ryan’s already starting to doze off when Taylor’s voice cuts through his fog of exhaustion. “This is killing my back. Move over bro,” Taylor says, and before Ryan can register what’s going on, Taylor’s climbing into the backseat. Ryan’s suddenly got a knee digging against his kidney and an elbow in his face, and he is wide awake again.
“What the fuck?” Ryan asks, with as much anger as he can convey. “What are you doing?”
“Getting comfortable,” Taylor informs him, his face pressed against Ryan’s shoulder. “The front seat sucked.”
Ryan sighs. “Is Ebs not giving you what you need?” he jokes, resigned to his fate.
There’s a pause, and for a moment, Ryan thinks that Taylor might have fallen asleep. “It’s not like that anymore,” Taylor finally says.
Ryan turns his head to look at Taylor. He isn’t surprised, but it’s also different hearing it out loud. “You know he has a girlfriend, right?” he says slowly.
“Yeah, I know,” Taylor says.
Ryan whistles lowly. “Wow. You must not be her favourite person.”
“No, she knew. She was okay with it,” Taylor tells him sleepily. He yawns and burrows in closer to Ryan. “It’s not like he was in love with me or anything.”
By the time Ryan has processed what Taylor means and has formulated a reasonable response, Taylor’s breathing has already evened out, asleep while plastered against Ryan’s side. Fuck, Ryan thinks to himself while, against his better judgement, he shifts Taylor so that he’s more comfortable against him. Ryan closes his eyes, reluctantly accepting the fact that they’ll be incredibly uncomfortable by the time morning comes.
--
The morning after Thunder Bay is particularly terrible: they wake up stiff, sore, and grumpy, still wrapped up together in the cramped backseat of Ryan's car.
Ryan's not sure how much Taylor remembers about their conversation from last night, but he's not about to ask either, not yet. Although, Ryan has his suspicions when Taylor is uncharacteristically quiet during what Ryan will always remember as the second worst morning run of his life-
Second worst?" Taylor asks, later, as they drive past Sudbury.
"Brandon," is all Ryan says. It's all Ryan needs to say.
Ryan takes them for breakfast in town at a place he vaguely remembers Jordan Staal bragging about all those years ago. It's not anything amazing, but Ryan supposes that this is a place Gronk has been going to for a long time, and nostalgia and memory can be a powerful thing so he probably won't even make fun of it next time they talk.
Taylor seems a little more personable after two cups of coffee and inhaling half a breakfast sandwich. He smiles at Ryan, stretching and taking another sip of coffee. "So where are we going today?"
“I dunno,” Ryan admits, stirring more milk into his coffee. “Toward Sault Ste Marie, maybe? It’s a bit of a long haul, but it’s doable. My family passed through there once when I was kid.”
“There’s nothing to do in the Soo though,” Taylor says. “I always hated going there.”
“Where would you rather go then?”
Taylor pulls out his phone, fidgeting with it for a few moments. “Oh, hey! Wanna go to Timmins? It’s got the same name as my buddy who’s a huge beauty. So it’s gotta be a gooder, right?”
Ryan raises an eyebrow. “Timmins? Isn’t he the guy who-”
“-yeah,” Taylor interrupts.”But it wasn’t his fault.”
“How did any of you survive until adulthood?” Ryan asks sincerely.
“Dude, there’s a Shania Twain museum!” Taylor says, blissfully ignoring Ryan. “I remember her being on the radio from when I was a kid. Oh my god, she was born in Windsor!”
Ryan kind of wants to disagree out of principle, but it’s not like they have anything better to do or somewhere more exciting to go. He resigns himself to a long drive of Taylor looking up Shania Twain “facts” on his phone and nods.
--
They’re passing by Hearst, Ontario, when Taylor shifts in his seat, leans over to turn down the volume of stereo, and look meaningfully over at Ryan.
“What?” Ryan asks, when he finally notices Taylor staring. “What the fuck do you want?”
“You know someone’s gonna sign you, right?” Taylor says. “I mean, you’ve got sick mitts, and I know how hard you’ve been training to get your mobility back. Plus you’re kind of a beauty. Whoever ends up with you is gonna be super lucky.”
Ryan considers how he feels about Taylor’s sudden explosion of sentimentalism and can’t quite bring himself to brush off his sincerity. “Thanks,” he says.
Taylor nods and goes back to staring out the window.
Since Taylor’s already opened this can of feelings worms, Ryan feels slightly less awkward bringing back up their unfinished conversation from last night. “So, uh. You and Ebs?”
Taylor shrugs. “Whatever. It is what it is.”
“I’m sure that would be very useful to someone who had any fucking clue what ‘it’ was,” Ryan points out.
“We’re buddies. I mean, I think we’re still living together, but we haven’t really talked about it yet. If he still wants to. I’d like to.”
Ryan is careful to stare at the road and not Taylor, because he hasn’t come this far to die in fucking Hearst. For one, the irony would be too much. “Anyone ever tell you that you’re a masochist?”
Taylor shrugs again. “He’s my best friend.”
“So is that why he broke it off with you?” Ryan asks.
Taylor laughs awkwardly and rubs a hand over his hair. “Uh. I broke it off, actually.”
“Seriously?” Ryan asks, surprised by the reminder that sometimes, Taylor’s more than just the awkward, gangly teenager he met years ago.
“It’s fine,” Taylor says. “He’s just...you know. In love with someone else.”
“And that’s a problem?” Ryan asks cautiously.
Taylor doesn’t respond. His silence says it all.
Fuck my life, Ryan thinks and sighs, as Taylor cranks the music back up to obnoxious decibels. Ryan doesn’t remember putting Levels-“Aviici Levels,” Ryan thinks to himself-on his iPod, but supposes that he can allow Taylor an indulgence just this once.
--
They arrive in Timmins to find the museum’s been closed since February-“You were just looking this up, Hallsy,” Ryan grumbles.
“Well I didn’t click on the page! My 3g really sucks out here, ok?”
but the sun is already starting to set, and Ryan doesn’t want a repeat of Thunder Bay, so he makes the executive decision to get a room for the night. Unfortunately, he’s forgotten that they’re in Ontario, which means by the time he and Taylor have gotten settled in and changed, it’s already 9:30 and the liquor stores are all closed.
“It’s practically fucking barbaric,” he tells Taylor later, over beer and nachos at the local dive bar, while he steals all the chips with cheese on them to save Taylor from himself. “That was the one good part about living in Alberta. How did you live here for so long?”
“I drank my dad’s booze,” Taylor says, reaching over to Ryan’s side of the platter, scowling when Ryan slaps his hand away. “Dude, I can’t let you be old, unemployed, and fat.”
“I’d take my two-thirds of the equation over your third.”
Taylor laughs at that and signals for another round.
In retrospect, they probably should have stopped at the second or third round, because soon it’s after last call and they’re stumbling back to their hotel room together, barely managing to get the door shut before their lips press together, hands fisting in the back of shirts and tangled in hair. Ryan gets Taylor pushed up against the wall of their hotel room before he pulls away for a moment to stare at him meaningfully.
“Hallsy, not that this isn’t...you know. But what the hell is this?”
Taylor shrugs and resumes trying to shove his hands into Ryan’s pants. “Look, bro, don’t make it weird, I won’t even big spoon you this time.”
“I mean, what we were talking about earlier, this could really easily be a pity thing. Or a drunk thing. Or a drunk pity thing.”
Taylor does pull back at that to study him, nose scrunching as his drunk brain is probably trying to muddle through. “Wait, so I’m supposed to pity you because you’re old and unemployed?”
“Hallsy.”
“Look, are you really telling me that you don’t want me to suck your dick?”
Truthfully, Ryan can’t say that, and Taylor’s filthy smile as he succeeds in pulling off Ryan’s belt is enough to make him stop arguing.
--
When Ryan wakes up the next morning in Timmins, he’s still wearing a shirt but his pants are nowhere to be found. The shirt is tacky with some sort of dried substance. “What the fuck,” he grumbles to himself. “Where the fuck are my pants? And why is my shirt so fucking disgusting?”
“Because you wouldn’t let me come in your mouth.” The sleeping mumbling comes from beside him, and when Ryan looks over, it’s most definitely Taylor. And though the sheets seem to be artfully obscuring his body, Ryan would put good money on the fact that Taylor is also not wearing pants right now.
Ryan sighs. “So at least your clothes are gross too?”
“No,” Taylor says, rolling over. “Because you came in my mouth.”
“Dude,” Ryan says.
“I know, I know,” Taylor says. “I’m a beauty.”
Ryan groans and reaches for the glass of water on the bedside table he’d had the foresight to put there the night before, resigned to their upcoming stupid morning run. “Since you ruined my shirt, I’m stealing one of yours.”
“Do you think they’d fit you?” Taylor wonders.
“Good point,” Ryan concedes. “They barely fit you.”
Taylor tilts his head, squinting consideringly at Ryan. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Oh, nothing,” Ryan says, making a valiant effort to haul himself out of bed. “Come on. Let’s go.”
--
They’ve been driving on the 401 for almost an hour and Ryan can’t help but replay the last evening over and over in his head, wondering what the fuck he could have possibly been thinking. It’s even more troubling when he looks over and notices that Taylor’s staring out the passenger side window and cheerfully bopping along to the music blasting in Ryan’s car.
“Man,” Taylor says, finally. “I really hope Hemmer stays. He’s such a beauty.”
Ryan raises an eyebrow. “The hell are you talking about?”
“Oh, there’s just this article here on the TSN website that’s talking about how other teams might be interested in him.”
“Have you been on TSN.ca this whole time?” Ryan asks.
“No,” Taylor says. “I was on Deadspin and Barstool Sports, too. But I was just reading the comments on TSN and someone was talking shit about Hemmer, which sucks.”
“You’re reading the comments?” Ryan hopes his voice can accurately convey the disgust he currently feels.
“Well yeah, there’s some cool stuff there,” Taylor says.
“Only a goddamned idiot reads comments on sports pages,” Ryan says. “You’re stupid.”
“Your face is stupid,” Taylor replies.
“You didn’t seem to think so last night,” Ryan says automatically and then regrets it almost at once.
“It’s not like I was looking at your face,” Taylor points out. Then he seems to realize what he’s just said and looks away awkwardly.
Ryan coughs a little, turning to look back at the road. He knows how to handle one-night stands and he’s seen Taylor in the inevitably awkward aftermath of his hookups, so he decides to try and side-step everything awful by making a joke instead: “Just don’t fall in love with me and we can still be cool.”
Taylor turns back to look at him, a little half-smile on his face. “Yeah, that only happened once and it’s not like it’s gonna happen again. Didn’t work out so great.”
A long beat passes as Ryan processes all the things that Taylor didn’t say. “Jesus, Hallsy,” Ryan finally says.
The smile that Taylor gives him in response seems like the most genuine one Ryan’s seen all week.”Don’t worry,” Taylor says. “It’s all good. We’re cool.”
“How could that be cool?” Ryan can’t help but ask. “This all sounds like the opposite of cool.”
Taylor shrugs. “I knew what I was getting into, so it’s not like I didn’t know this was going to happen.” He pauses. “It’s not like things are shitty though, you know? Hanging out with you isn’t that bad.”
Ryan thinks about this carefully, about what he wants, about what he should say next, and tries to make the two match up. “I’m not gonna be your new Ebby,” he finally says, going for honesty. “I can’t be that and I don’t want to be.”
“Who says I want you to be Ebby?” Taylor sounds genuinely confused. “You’re...you know, Whit. Why would I want you to be him?”
Ryan sighs. He’s pretty sure Taylor understood what he was trying to say, but it can be hard to tell with Taylor sometimes-the kid can be pretty literal. But with the way that Taylor’s watching him curiously, Ryan believes him and not just because it’s the easiest solution. “I don’t know,” he says. “You’re a weird kid.”
“Not that weird,” Taylor says. He shrugs. “I trust you.”
“And?” Ryan asks.
“And...that’s all,” Taylor says.
Ryan thinks about it for a moment. “That’s stupid,” he finally settles on. “You’re kind of an idiot.”
“People keep telling me that,” Taylor says. “I don’t really care though. Plus my mom thinks I’m great.”
“Keep telling yourself that,” Ryan says. He thinks he might get where Taylor’s coming from though-he’s not sure if that’s comforting or terrifying. It’s probably best not to think about this all for now. “What do you want for lunch?” he asks instead.
--
They hit Barrie by mid-evening, and Ryan figures it’s as good of a place to stop for the night as any. There’s been this strange buzzing feeling between him and Taylor all day and it’s starting to get under his skin. The day after has never felt this comfortable for Ryan: not good or bad, exactly, but it’s kind of weird.
“Are you going to be as easy as you were last night?” Ryan deadpans, getting it out of the way. “Because if I have to buy you dinner, it’s not happening. I don’t have a job.”
“I’m not your girlfriend,” Taylor says, rolling his eyes. “Maybe if you’re nice, I’ll pay for yours.” He pauses before adding, “But if you wanna blow me again later, that’s all on you.”
“Thank you for reminding me of how little game you have,” Ryan says.
“That was a joke,” Taylor protests.
“Sure it was,” Ryan replies, patting him on the back. “Besides, only one of us swallows, and it sure isn’t me.”
“It’s not like you need the calories,” Taylor says, and Ryan can only stare at him for a moment.
“Are you seriously making that joke?” Ryan asks, still in disbelief. “Isn’t that my line?”
“Why would it be your line?” Taylor’s dead serious as far as Ryan can tell.
Ryan decides that there’s no possible way to dignify that with an appropriate response and just gets out of his car and walks away without Taylor.
“Hey!” Taylor yells after him, jogging to catch up. “Hey, I still don’t get it!”
--
“Seriously, Whit,” Taylor says halfway through his pasta. “Is this about the sex thing again? ‘Cause if things are going to be weird, we can go back to pretending it didn’t happen.”
“I’m not the one who keeps bringing up the sex thing,” Ryan mutters
“You kinda did first earlier today, bro,” Taylor points out, and Ryan sighs. “Both times.”
“I guess I just wanna make things clear,” Ryan says.
Taylor rolls his eyes. “Look, bro, I just wanna get laid. And if you wanna get laid too, that’s cool. You can come if you want. Pun intended. Hey, that’s a pun too, did you know that?”
“Of unintended? I’m not a moron.”
“Not saying you are,” Taylor says. “But you’re overthinking this one.”
Ryan takes a moment to think it over, how maybe there’s something there between the lines in what Taylor’s saying. Ryan decides that he deserves this, for something to be easy and uncomplicated. Maybe Taylor deserves that too. “I’d tell you to eat me, but you’d probably take that as an invitation.”
“Was that a sex joke?” Taylor asks, fork paused halfway to his mouth.
“... I’ll give you a solid maybe on that one,” Ryan demurs and waves down the waitress for another beer.
Taylor just laughs.
--
When they end up falling into the same bed that night after dinner, this time around they can’t even blame it on being too drunk. Ryan’s had maybe two beers, and he’s not sure if Taylor had anything to drink at all. He still kisses sloppily, though, and he still groans when Ryan’s hand twists in his hair to pull him back, biting him gently on his lower lip before coaxing him into a proper kiss.
Ryan makes it a point to remove his shirt before things can get any further, pulling it off in one smooth motion.
“Hey,” Taylor says. “If you’d just swallow, this wouldn’t even be an issue.”
Normally, Ryan would have a good comeback for that, but Taylor’s trying to chirp him while undoing Ryan’s belt buckle, so it actually seems quite unnecessary.
It turns out that, contrary to any common sense, Taylor is surprisingly good in bed. At the very least, he gives head like a champ. If last night felt anything like it currently does, Ryan kind of regrets not being able to remember anything about what happened. Not that he’d ever tell Taylor that, but from the way Taylor’s looking up at him, smug with Ryan’s dick still in his mouth, he probably doesn’t need to.
Ryan thinks that he should make it a point of pride to hold out for as long as he can and sets out with the intention of doing so; to his credit it’s not embarrassing but still sooner than he’d like. He does give the courtesy nudge to the back of Taylor’s head when it happens, but it only seems to encourage Taylor to redouble his efforts and Ryan will deny the resulting groan until his dying day.
When Ryan finally comes down, Taylor’s crawled over him, still fucking smirking. “So, I’m going to guess that was awesome.”
“I’ve had better,” Ryan says, even though it might have ranked pretty high on his list of all-time blow jobs, he’s not about to tell Taylor that. “You’re kind of sloppy, kid. Where’s the finesse?”
“I save it for your mom,” Taylor says, and if Ryan’s hand wasn’t already halfway down Taylor’s pants he might be more annoyed. Instead he squeezes just this side of too hard and watches as Taylor bites his lip. “Besides, it’s not like you’ve got any blowjob high ground, bro.”
Much to Ryan’s chagrin, he supposes that Taylor might actually have some semblance of a point. “You’re fucking heavy,” he says instead, shoving at him. “Get off already.”
“When you say ‘get off,’” Taylor says. “Do you mean…”
“You wanna lie back and think of Kingston, that’s your prerogative,” Ryan says. “But some of us aren’t young enough to go all night.”
Taylor smiles at him, wide-open and just a little filthy. “Bet you’re wrong,”
Ryan isn’t necessarily wrong, although they make a pretty decent go of it.
--
When Ryan startles awake from drowsing an indeterminate amount of time later-and it could have been five minutes, it could have been hours, Ryan honestly doesn’t know-he’s dismayed to find that the bed they’re still lying in together is completely disgusting and the sheets in disarray. He groans, reaching out to smack Taylor in the shoulder. “Hallsy. Get up.”
“Where are we going?” Taylor mumbles, rolling over just enough to mash his face into Ryan’s arm.
“I’m going to the other bed, this one is covered in your jizz.” Ryan pauses, and pushes Taylor’s clammy forehead back. “You can come if you like, I guess. That wasn’t a pun.”
“Yes it was,” Taylor says sleepily but follows Ryan to the other bed anyway.
This time, Ryan’s even anticipating it when they fall asleep with Taylor curled up around him, octopus-like limbs everywhere, and the last thing Ryan remembers is how he, unfortunately, doesn’t actually mind all that much.
--
They set out fairly early the next morning, after a leisurely breakfast where Taylor orders two sides of pancakes and Ryan chokes on his coffee while laughing. And even though Taylor demands they stop at pretty much every township for some reason or another, he’s hardly feeling murderous at all. He thinks about how maybe he’s not ready to head back to Boston just yet, how maybe for the first time in a long time, he’s finally ready to go to somewhere rather than away from somewhere else. And perhaps that’s why, as the signs for Kingston start to appear on the road ahead of them, he turns to Taylor and clears his throat.
“So I was thinking, I’ve never been to Montreal in the summer.”
Taylor turns to look at him, half-smiling, almost like he knows exactly what Ryan’s not saying. “You’re missing out, bro. Rockets everywhere.”
Ryan lets out the breath he didn’t even know he was holding. “What do you care? It’s not like you’ll ever convince any of them to come home with you.”
“Only one way to find out, isn’t there,” Taylor says, kicking his feet up onto the dashboard and sliding on the sunglasses that Ryan’s pretty sure belong to him, or at least belonged to him at the beginning of the week.
While Ryan’s feeling generous, it has limits; he reaches over to shove down Taylor’s legs. “Respect my fucking car, peasant, or I’ll leave you in Hull.”
“Oh no, anything but that,” Taylor says in mock horror.
“You’re getting uppity,” Ryan says, settling in for a long drive and reaching over to set his ipod to blast the playlist he put together at the gas station parking lot in the middle of Saskatchewan. “We’re going to have to deal with that.”
“We’ve got the time,” Taylor says, and turns to look out the window, still smiling.
--
[EPILOGUE
“This is really shitty beer,” Taylor says, over pints of Rolling Rock in Dartmouth. “Why are we drinking this?”
“Because I’m unemployed and we’re in Nova Scotia,” Ryan says. “Shut up and drink your fucking beer.”
“Shoulda gotten off at Kingston,” Taylor mutters, but he grins when Ryan kicks him in the ankle. “Too bad I already did before that! Boom!”
“I’m driving back to Vegreville, just so I can kick you out of the car,” Ryan says solemnly, but doesn’t actually mean it at all. And then, shitty beer or not, Ryan downs the rest of it in one go.]