Fic: Le Jour d’Aprés Valentin
Happy Valentine's Day!
Title: Le Jour d'Aprés Valentin
Pairing: Kesler/Burrows (also Bieksa/Lapierre. I don't know why! I can't stop!)
Rating: Like, nothing. NC17 for language.
Summary: Ryan hates Valentine's Day as much as he hates Alex's boyfriends, which is to say, more than anything.
Ryan hates Valentine’s day. He absolutely fucking hates it. It exists only to mock him, as if the world hasn’t been doing enough of that lately.
Alex’s last three boyfriends have all been the worst kind of insult, taunting Ryan with what he cannot have. The day before Valentine’s day, he sees Alex’s latest in the parking lot after their game, leaning against a sleek black car. He’s wearing aviators and an unbearable smirk, and Ryan walks past without punching him, which he thinks he should be commended for.
“Kes!” Kevin comes up as Ryan’s unlocking his car. “Everyone’s comin’ back to my place, you are too.”
“Am I.”
“Yup. See you in ten.” He heads off without waiting for an answer, because to him, invitations are non-optional. Ryan sighs, his breath a fog in the cold air. Better than going home alone, really.
He looks across the lot, to where Alex is greeting the brunette with the sunglasses, kissing him. Alex kisses in a way that’s so him, looks aggressive and gentle all at once; his hands are on either side of whatshisname against the car, leaning over him, kissing him. Ryan hates watching, can’t look away, wishes it was him.
The guys are only a semi-effective distraction. They’re watching some terrible horror movie in Kevin’s living room, bickering through most of it. Mason and Bally are arguing about whether hiding in a cabin is enough to deter a psycho killer. Cody and Dale are sitting on the floor, throwing popcorn at each other, increasingly violently. Jannik, Mike and Aaron look like they’re actually trying to watch the movie, and Sami and Steven can be heard from the kitchen. Ryan sinks further into his corner of the couch, tries to tune out the cabin argument. Loo’s got the chair next to the couch, Cory on the floor in front of him, leaning back against Luongo’s legs. They’re pretty much the worst-kept secret of the entire team, even worse than the Lappy thing, which Ryan considers to be so obvious, blind people could see it. Kevin can’t, of course, which just figures; Maxim’s sprawled on the other end of the couch, watching Kevin in a way he probably thinks is discrete. The entire thing is sort of weird, because Lappy’s a fucking loudmouth, and he hasn’t said a word about this to Kevin, which makes Ryan think Maxim’s got it pretty bad.
“Guess Burr’s too busy for us, eh?” Kevin says, coming over to sit next to Ryan. He pushes Maxim’s legs out of the way, missing the dark blush that creeps up Lappy’s neck.
“Mmhmm.” Ryan studies his pop can, which is disgustingly warm by now. “Probably with whats-his-fuckin-name.” He doesn’t mean it to come out the way it does, extremely bitter and nasty. Kevin arches an eyebrow, but doesn’t comment.
“I don’t know why he even bothers to break up with them,” Kevin says, “I mean, they’re all the same as the last one.”
“Yeah, he’s got a real definitive type,” Ryan says through his teeth. Maxim’s sat up, and is looking at Ryan, openly curious. Ryan does his best to fight the urge to reach over and hit him.
“Well, go figure, really,” Kevin shrugs, “they’re all arrogant and shit. The poor guy.” The look he couples with this, directed at Ryan and sort of mildly accusatory, Ryan doesn’t get it.
“I don’t tell him I hate them or anything,” Ryan protests, “I’m not that much of an asshole.”
“Okay,” Kevin says, and Ryan gets the distinct impression that they’re having two different conversations here. Possibly three. He’s following exactly none of them.
“I just wish he wouldn’t,” Ryan adds, “but just, whatever. It doesn’t matter.”
“You should tell him,” Maxim contributes suddenly, leaning over. The look he gives Ryan, though, Ryan really wants to hit him now, because he knows what Lappy’s saying Ryan should tell Alex. Maybe it’s his anger about Alex’s new guy, or his dread for Valentine’s day, or just the fact that everything about his situation sucks, but Ryan sort of snaps.
“Should I,” he all-but snarls, and he knows he’s being unfair, that of all people, obviously Maxim would understand this best, but at the moment, all he’s getting is the hypocrisy, because fuck Maxim. He’s been watching Kevin all season long, like Kevin’s a permanent shooting star, something to remember because it’s beautiful and painfully unique. He’s never told Kevin anything, so he must know how impossible that kind of thing is.
Kevin looks up at Ryan, bewilderment on his face, confused at the loud, biting tone that came out of nowhere. None of the other guys so much as look at Ryan, half focused intently on the climax of the movie, the other half loudly arguing.
“Yes,” Maxim says evenly.
“Yeah, I’ll be sure to get right the fuck on that.” He stands, grabs his car keys off the coffee table.
“I’m sure you won’t,” Maxim retorts, and Ryan hears everything in that, from anger to frustration to a private longing, all things that beg sympathy and condemn anger, the only thing Ryan can feel right now.
“You know what?” Ryan growls, turning back to him, and Maxim just glares. Ryan looks to Kevin instead, who actually seems speechless for once. “He’s in love with you,” Ryan declares, pointing to Maxim, “and he’s too fucking terrified to tell you.”
He hears a strangled, choking sound from Maxim, and Kevin’s eyes go wide, but Ryan stalks out before anything else happens.
0o0o00o0o0
They have an off-day on Valentine’s day, and Ryan spends it ignoring his phone as well as he can. He gets all the way to the evening without having to talk to anyone, until someone knocks on his door at eight.
He really, really doesn’t want to answer it, but when he sees it’s Alex, he’s powerless to do anything but open the door and let him in.
“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” he asks as Alex walks past him. Alex is actually kind of dressed up, and he yanks off his tie and tosses it with his jacket on a chair.
“Nope.” Alex heads into Ryan’s kitchen, and Ryan just follows. “Trade you that story for the one you haven’t told me about.”
“Which is…?” Ryan sits on one of the counter stools, watching Alex poke through his refrigerator.
“Juice says he’s been trying to talk to you all day.”
“Oh.” Ryan’s been trying not to think about that, to absolutely no success. “I, uh, I should probably… talk to him. And, um, apologise to Lappy. That too.”
“Apologise?” Alex shuts the fridge, comes over with Chinese takeout he found. He leans against the counter, opening the box. “What the fuck did you do?”
“Uh. I was kind of arguing with Juice? And then Lappy got involved, and I got mad and, uh.” He’s been thinking about it all day, and yet, every time, he manages to feel even worse. “Told Kevin that Maxim’s in love with him. So, uh, if they’re not speaking now, that’s why. And if Maxim asks to get traded to fucking Florida, that’ll be my fault too.”
“Hmm.” Alex is picking all the chicken pieces out of the box, like always, even though it’s pretty much the most annoying thing he could possibly do. “Weird.”
“Weird?” He’d use a lot of words to describe it; weird didn’t exactly make the list.
“Weird,” Alex agrees. Now he’s picking out the cashews. Ryan would stab him with that fork if the whole thing wasn’t so goddamn endearing. He waits for an explanation, but apparently, Alex is too involved with reducing his takeout to just rice.
“Well?” Ryan presses. Alex looks up, this ridiculously inquisitive, adorable look on his face. “Why is that weird?!”
“Oh, because, well. They’re, you know.”
“What? Fighting? Not speaking? Mad?”
“Uh, no?” Alex looks downright confused now. “Did you tell Juice just to be an asshole, and not because you knew he wanted Lappy?”
“What.”
Alex huffs out a sigh, seems to finally decide to give Ryan the entire story. “Kevin told me he is with Lappy.”
“So they’re speaking?”
“Speaking,” Alex scoffs, “sure, I guess they are speaking, in between everything else they are doing.”
“Alex,” Ryan growls out, “what the fucking even is going on.” He’s perfectly aware that barely makes sense, but Alex hardly looks phased.
“They are together,” he says, almost sounds patient, which is hilarious coming from him. “Kevin has always liked Maxim, and he said you-euh - made them be together?”
“Oh.” Ryan falls silent. “Well, uh, glad that worked out, then.”
“Guess so,” Alex returns to the apparently far more interesting takeout.
“So?”
“What?”
“You’re trading me a story.”
“But I just told you that one, more than you told me anything,” Alex sighs heavily, “so unfair.”
“Tell me!”
“Fine, fine.” He goes back to the refrigerator, presumably to see if there are any other dishes he can reduce to pointless by eating only the good parts. “I broke up with Rick.”
“On Valentine’s day.”
“Ouais.” He finds more takeout, this time Persian food. “Do you never cook?”
“Why bother? And, come on, dude, on Valentine’s day?”
Alex just shrugs. He does this sometimes, shuts down, and it’s fast, so Ryan has to backtrack if he wants anything.
“How’d he treat you?” he asks instead, the first thing that comes out of his mouth, which he didn’t actually want to say at all. Sure, he worries about it almost nonstop, but there are things that would be too obvious, and this is one of them.
“Fine,” Alex says, studying the countertop. “He gave me everything. I just wanted it from
someone else.”
Ryan’s struck speechless for a while, because that was a real answer. He’s asked Alex about his previous boyfriends before, and he’s never gotten past the surface of yes he’s nice, and the inevitable, it just didn’t work out.
Ryan doesn’t touch the subject again, even though the damage is already done, evident in that distant, almost remorseful look on Alex’s face.
0o0o0o0o0o
February fifteenth, Ryan doesn’t even make it into the locker room before he’s being dragged into the adjoining hallway.
“Uh, hi,” he says to Maxim, who’s opening the door to the weight room. “If you’re planning on murdering me, I’d rather it wasn’t in the gym. Sort of un-glamorous, isn’t it?”
“Right,” Maxim rolls his eyes, tugging Ryan in after him. He shuts the door, and Ryan can barely hear the sound of the rest of the team down the hall.
“So what’s up, then?” Maybe he should be nervous, he thinks, recalling what he did to Lappy the day before yesterday.
“I owe you one,” Maxim says, displaying that grasp he has on English slang that Alex can’t seem to get a handle on at all. “What you said-”
“I’m sorry about that,” Ryan says, because he regrets it more every time he thinks about it. “That was - well, a total asshole move, and I shouldn’t have.”
“It’s good you did, actually,” Maxim’s grin informs Ryan of exactly what happened after he’d left Kevin’s apartment.
“Please spare me the details.”
“In that case, don’t think about why there are bruises on Kevin’s-”
“Oh God just stop there, just, please.”
“Fine,” Maxim grins, and Ryan’s feeling less bad about what he did because, well, he’s never actually seen Maxim this happy, ever, not even when he was hanging out with Juice. “I wanted to repay you for it.”
“How?”
“Well,” Maxim pauses, “there’s something you should know. I mean should know, like, everyone else does, and you’re stupid for not seeing it, and no one’s told you.”
“What?” this is starting to sound highly suspicious, really, and suspicious things and Lappy put together just can’t be good.
“You have a thing for Burr,” Maxim says, and if that’s all he’s got, he’ll have to do better than that.
“I’m aware of that one.”
“Right, but no one else is.”
“Except you, apparently.”
“Ouais,” Maxim says, makes Ryan think of Alex. “You remember all of the guys Alex has dated, the last few?”
“Yeah.” As if he could forget, let alone stop thinking about it for more than an hour at a time.
“You haven’t noticed any… trends?”
“Uh, no.”
Maxim sighs, gives him this infuriating look that makes Ryan scowl. “You’re blind.”
“Thanks for telling me.”
“They’re all like you.”
Ryan stares at him, tries to remember how to speak. “What?”
“You haven’t noticed? Every guy he dates is arrogant and has the same weird sense of humour, they even resemble you a little.”
“So what? Does he finally understand irony?”
“Kes,” Maxim rolls his eyes, “he thinks he can’t have you, so he’s trying to find a second best, and when he leaves them? It’s because they’re not you.”
“You missed one thing, though, and it’s that he doesn’t want me.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Maxim starts back towards the door. “He does a better job of hiding it than you.”
“So I should-” he’s really having a hard time keeping up here because, what?
“Whatever you want,” Maxim says, “just, you know, something? Because if we have to put up with another almost-Kes, I’ll kill someone, because just the original is enough.”
“Don’t you think you should be nice to me?”
“I just was,” Maxim flashes him a grin, “I just told you he wants you, too.”
Ryan goes over this again and again as he pulls on his gear, still sort of stunned by the whole thing, because Alex wanting him just doesn’t seem possible. It’s easy to see what he missed, though, too busy hating Alex’s boyfriends to realise an extremely blatant pattern.
Suddenly, what Alex said last night makes a lot more sense. I just wanted it from someone else.
By the time he’s really registered it, Alex has already gone out to the ice, with several of their teammates. Ryan grabs his stick and goes out, still trying to figure out what he can say, if anything. The guys are skating in slow circles around the rink, pre-warmup, doing more talking than anything else. He spots Alex immediately, near centre ice, messing around with a puck.
“Hey,” Alex says when Ryan approaches, not looking up from the puck. “What’s up?”
“Not much,” Ryan says conversationally, and then he reaches out and grabs Alex by his jersey and kisses him hard.
He should probably be offended by the fact that his teammates don’t even react to this, but all Ryan can focus on is the way Alex’s stick clatters to the ice, the way Alex’s hands curl around his collar, Alex’s soft little moans.
“I always wanted it to be you,” Alex says, still bright-eyed with surprise. Ryan grins, doesn’t let go of him.
“Always gonna be, now,” he says, and the way Alex smiles at him, he’s never seen it before, and it’s for him. “Sorta in love with you, you know.”
“I didn’t mean to do it right at fucking centre ice!” Maxim yells from the bench. Ryan flips him off without looking over.
“Sharing the love, Lappy. It’s Valentine’s Day,” he yells over.
“It’s not, that was yesterday!”
“Don’t care,” Ryan says, but it’s soft, just for Alex. “We’re gonna re-do it, okay?”
“I have high expectations,” Alex tells him, “I kind of think you’re perfect, so you have to live up to that.”
“Alex, somehow I got you to like me, I probably have fucking superpowers, okay?”
“Definitely don’t,” Alex laughs, and that, too, is just for him, and Ryan can barely handle how happy this makes him, getting to see a side of Alex no one else knows.
“Do too,” he retorts, leans in and kisses Alex until Alex is clutching at him, barely able to keep balanced on his skates. “See that? That was a fucking magic power right there.”
“Use it for good and not evil.”
“You know me,” Ryan says, and that devious grin he gets, Alex knows exactly what he’s thinking, because Alex wouldn’t use it for good, either.
“Just another reason why I love you. Makes up for how arrogant you are about it.”
He bolts for the bench laughing before Ryan can retaliate for that one, and Ryan takes off to follow him and exact his revenge. He’s been doing this for years, following Alex like it’s second nature, but this time it feels different. He can move around and after Alex all practice long like always, spend all day moving in relation to him. This time, though, at the end of the day, he’s got Alex in his arms, because this chase that was his life, they’ve won it.
They celebrate Valentine’s day on the fifteenth every year, because what they have, it’s something special, something different, and it deserves it’s very own day.
Le jour d’aprés Valentin, Alex calls it.
Ryan just calls it the day I finally got you.
Title: Le Jour d'Aprés Valentin
Pairing: Kesler/Burrows (also Bieksa/Lapierre. I don't know why! I can't stop!)
Rating: Like, nothing. NC17 for language.
Summary: Ryan hates Valentine's Day as much as he hates Alex's boyfriends, which is to say, more than anything.
Ryan hates Valentine’s day. He absolutely fucking hates it. It exists only to mock him, as if the world hasn’t been doing enough of that lately.
Alex’s last three boyfriends have all been the worst kind of insult, taunting Ryan with what he cannot have. The day before Valentine’s day, he sees Alex’s latest in the parking lot after their game, leaning against a sleek black car. He’s wearing aviators and an unbearable smirk, and Ryan walks past without punching him, which he thinks he should be commended for.
“Kes!” Kevin comes up as Ryan’s unlocking his car. “Everyone’s comin’ back to my place, you are too.”
“Am I.”
“Yup. See you in ten.” He heads off without waiting for an answer, because to him, invitations are non-optional. Ryan sighs, his breath a fog in the cold air. Better than going home alone, really.
He looks across the lot, to where Alex is greeting the brunette with the sunglasses, kissing him. Alex kisses in a way that’s so him, looks aggressive and gentle all at once; his hands are on either side of whatshisname against the car, leaning over him, kissing him. Ryan hates watching, can’t look away, wishes it was him.
The guys are only a semi-effective distraction. They’re watching some terrible horror movie in Kevin’s living room, bickering through most of it. Mason and Bally are arguing about whether hiding in a cabin is enough to deter a psycho killer. Cody and Dale are sitting on the floor, throwing popcorn at each other, increasingly violently. Jannik, Mike and Aaron look like they’re actually trying to watch the movie, and Sami and Steven can be heard from the kitchen. Ryan sinks further into his corner of the couch, tries to tune out the cabin argument. Loo’s got the chair next to the couch, Cory on the floor in front of him, leaning back against Luongo’s legs. They’re pretty much the worst-kept secret of the entire team, even worse than the Lappy thing, which Ryan considers to be so obvious, blind people could see it. Kevin can’t, of course, which just figures; Maxim’s sprawled on the other end of the couch, watching Kevin in a way he probably thinks is discrete. The entire thing is sort of weird, because Lappy’s a fucking loudmouth, and he hasn’t said a word about this to Kevin, which makes Ryan think Maxim’s got it pretty bad.
“Guess Burr’s too busy for us, eh?” Kevin says, coming over to sit next to Ryan. He pushes Maxim’s legs out of the way, missing the dark blush that creeps up Lappy’s neck.
“Mmhmm.” Ryan studies his pop can, which is disgustingly warm by now. “Probably with whats-his-fuckin-name.” He doesn’t mean it to come out the way it does, extremely bitter and nasty. Kevin arches an eyebrow, but doesn’t comment.
“I don’t know why he even bothers to break up with them,” Kevin says, “I mean, they’re all the same as the last one.”
“Yeah, he’s got a real definitive type,” Ryan says through his teeth. Maxim’s sat up, and is looking at Ryan, openly curious. Ryan does his best to fight the urge to reach over and hit him.
“Well, go figure, really,” Kevin shrugs, “they’re all arrogant and shit. The poor guy.” The look he couples with this, directed at Ryan and sort of mildly accusatory, Ryan doesn’t get it.
“I don’t tell him I hate them or anything,” Ryan protests, “I’m not that much of an asshole.”
“Okay,” Kevin says, and Ryan gets the distinct impression that they’re having two different conversations here. Possibly three. He’s following exactly none of them.
“I just wish he wouldn’t,” Ryan adds, “but just, whatever. It doesn’t matter.”
“You should tell him,” Maxim contributes suddenly, leaning over. The look he gives Ryan, though, Ryan really wants to hit him now, because he knows what Lappy’s saying Ryan should tell Alex. Maybe it’s his anger about Alex’s new guy, or his dread for Valentine’s day, or just the fact that everything about his situation sucks, but Ryan sort of snaps.
“Should I,” he all-but snarls, and he knows he’s being unfair, that of all people, obviously Maxim would understand this best, but at the moment, all he’s getting is the hypocrisy, because fuck Maxim. He’s been watching Kevin all season long, like Kevin’s a permanent shooting star, something to remember because it’s beautiful and painfully unique. He’s never told Kevin anything, so he must know how impossible that kind of thing is.
Kevin looks up at Ryan, bewilderment on his face, confused at the loud, biting tone that came out of nowhere. None of the other guys so much as look at Ryan, half focused intently on the climax of the movie, the other half loudly arguing.
“Yes,” Maxim says evenly.
“Yeah, I’ll be sure to get right the fuck on that.” He stands, grabs his car keys off the coffee table.
“I’m sure you won’t,” Maxim retorts, and Ryan hears everything in that, from anger to frustration to a private longing, all things that beg sympathy and condemn anger, the only thing Ryan can feel right now.
“You know what?” Ryan growls, turning back to him, and Maxim just glares. Ryan looks to Kevin instead, who actually seems speechless for once. “He’s in love with you,” Ryan declares, pointing to Maxim, “and he’s too fucking terrified to tell you.”
He hears a strangled, choking sound from Maxim, and Kevin’s eyes go wide, but Ryan stalks out before anything else happens.
0o0o00o0o0
They have an off-day on Valentine’s day, and Ryan spends it ignoring his phone as well as he can. He gets all the way to the evening without having to talk to anyone, until someone knocks on his door at eight.
He really, really doesn’t want to answer it, but when he sees it’s Alex, he’s powerless to do anything but open the door and let him in.
“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” he asks as Alex walks past him. Alex is actually kind of dressed up, and he yanks off his tie and tosses it with his jacket on a chair.
“Nope.” Alex heads into Ryan’s kitchen, and Ryan just follows. “Trade you that story for the one you haven’t told me about.”
“Which is…?” Ryan sits on one of the counter stools, watching Alex poke through his refrigerator.
“Juice says he’s been trying to talk to you all day.”
“Oh.” Ryan’s been trying not to think about that, to absolutely no success. “I, uh, I should probably… talk to him. And, um, apologise to Lappy. That too.”
“Apologise?” Alex shuts the fridge, comes over with Chinese takeout he found. He leans against the counter, opening the box. “What the fuck did you do?”
“Uh. I was kind of arguing with Juice? And then Lappy got involved, and I got mad and, uh.” He’s been thinking about it all day, and yet, every time, he manages to feel even worse. “Told Kevin that Maxim’s in love with him. So, uh, if they’re not speaking now, that’s why. And if Maxim asks to get traded to fucking Florida, that’ll be my fault too.”
“Hmm.” Alex is picking all the chicken pieces out of the box, like always, even though it’s pretty much the most annoying thing he could possibly do. “Weird.”
“Weird?” He’d use a lot of words to describe it; weird didn’t exactly make the list.
“Weird,” Alex agrees. Now he’s picking out the cashews. Ryan would stab him with that fork if the whole thing wasn’t so goddamn endearing. He waits for an explanation, but apparently, Alex is too involved with reducing his takeout to just rice.
“Well?” Ryan presses. Alex looks up, this ridiculously inquisitive, adorable look on his face. “Why is that weird?!”
“Oh, because, well. They’re, you know.”
“What? Fighting? Not speaking? Mad?”
“Uh, no?” Alex looks downright confused now. “Did you tell Juice just to be an asshole, and not because you knew he wanted Lappy?”
“What.”
Alex huffs out a sigh, seems to finally decide to give Ryan the entire story. “Kevin told me he is with Lappy.”
“So they’re speaking?”
“Speaking,” Alex scoffs, “sure, I guess they are speaking, in between everything else they are doing.”
“Alex,” Ryan growls out, “what the fucking even is going on.” He’s perfectly aware that barely makes sense, but Alex hardly looks phased.
“They are together,” he says, almost sounds patient, which is hilarious coming from him. “Kevin has always liked Maxim, and he said you-euh - made them be together?”
“Oh.” Ryan falls silent. “Well, uh, glad that worked out, then.”
“Guess so,” Alex returns to the apparently far more interesting takeout.
“So?”
“What?”
“You’re trading me a story.”
“But I just told you that one, more than you told me anything,” Alex sighs heavily, “so unfair.”
“Tell me!”
“Fine, fine.” He goes back to the refrigerator, presumably to see if there are any other dishes he can reduce to pointless by eating only the good parts. “I broke up with Rick.”
“On Valentine’s day.”
“Ouais.” He finds more takeout, this time Persian food. “Do you never cook?”
“Why bother? And, come on, dude, on Valentine’s day?”
Alex just shrugs. He does this sometimes, shuts down, and it’s fast, so Ryan has to backtrack if he wants anything.
“How’d he treat you?” he asks instead, the first thing that comes out of his mouth, which he didn’t actually want to say at all. Sure, he worries about it almost nonstop, but there are things that would be too obvious, and this is one of them.
“Fine,” Alex says, studying the countertop. “He gave me everything. I just wanted it from
someone else.”
Ryan’s struck speechless for a while, because that was a real answer. He’s asked Alex about his previous boyfriends before, and he’s never gotten past the surface of yes he’s nice, and the inevitable, it just didn’t work out.
Ryan doesn’t touch the subject again, even though the damage is already done, evident in that distant, almost remorseful look on Alex’s face.
0o0o0o0o0o
February fifteenth, Ryan doesn’t even make it into the locker room before he’s being dragged into the adjoining hallway.
“Uh, hi,” he says to Maxim, who’s opening the door to the weight room. “If you’re planning on murdering me, I’d rather it wasn’t in the gym. Sort of un-glamorous, isn’t it?”
“Right,” Maxim rolls his eyes, tugging Ryan in after him. He shuts the door, and Ryan can barely hear the sound of the rest of the team down the hall.
“So what’s up, then?” Maybe he should be nervous, he thinks, recalling what he did to Lappy the day before yesterday.
“I owe you one,” Maxim says, displaying that grasp he has on English slang that Alex can’t seem to get a handle on at all. “What you said-”
“I’m sorry about that,” Ryan says, because he regrets it more every time he thinks about it. “That was - well, a total asshole move, and I shouldn’t have.”
“It’s good you did, actually,” Maxim’s grin informs Ryan of exactly what happened after he’d left Kevin’s apartment.
“Please spare me the details.”
“In that case, don’t think about why there are bruises on Kevin’s-”
“Oh God just stop there, just, please.”
“Fine,” Maxim grins, and Ryan’s feeling less bad about what he did because, well, he’s never actually seen Maxim this happy, ever, not even when he was hanging out with Juice. “I wanted to repay you for it.”
“How?”
“Well,” Maxim pauses, “there’s something you should know. I mean should know, like, everyone else does, and you’re stupid for not seeing it, and no one’s told you.”
“What?” this is starting to sound highly suspicious, really, and suspicious things and Lappy put together just can’t be good.
“You have a thing for Burr,” Maxim says, and if that’s all he’s got, he’ll have to do better than that.
“I’m aware of that one.”
“Right, but no one else is.”
“Except you, apparently.”
“Ouais,” Maxim says, makes Ryan think of Alex. “You remember all of the guys Alex has dated, the last few?”
“Yeah.” As if he could forget, let alone stop thinking about it for more than an hour at a time.
“You haven’t noticed any… trends?”
“Uh, no.”
Maxim sighs, gives him this infuriating look that makes Ryan scowl. “You’re blind.”
“Thanks for telling me.”
“They’re all like you.”
Ryan stares at him, tries to remember how to speak. “What?”
“You haven’t noticed? Every guy he dates is arrogant and has the same weird sense of humour, they even resemble you a little.”
“So what? Does he finally understand irony?”
“Kes,” Maxim rolls his eyes, “he thinks he can’t have you, so he’s trying to find a second best, and when he leaves them? It’s because they’re not you.”
“You missed one thing, though, and it’s that he doesn’t want me.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Maxim starts back towards the door. “He does a better job of hiding it than you.”
“So I should-” he’s really having a hard time keeping up here because, what?
“Whatever you want,” Maxim says, “just, you know, something? Because if we have to put up with another almost-Kes, I’ll kill someone, because just the original is enough.”
“Don’t you think you should be nice to me?”
“I just was,” Maxim flashes him a grin, “I just told you he wants you, too.”
Ryan goes over this again and again as he pulls on his gear, still sort of stunned by the whole thing, because Alex wanting him just doesn’t seem possible. It’s easy to see what he missed, though, too busy hating Alex’s boyfriends to realise an extremely blatant pattern.
Suddenly, what Alex said last night makes a lot more sense. I just wanted it from someone else.
By the time he’s really registered it, Alex has already gone out to the ice, with several of their teammates. Ryan grabs his stick and goes out, still trying to figure out what he can say, if anything. The guys are skating in slow circles around the rink, pre-warmup, doing more talking than anything else. He spots Alex immediately, near centre ice, messing around with a puck.
“Hey,” Alex says when Ryan approaches, not looking up from the puck. “What’s up?”
“Not much,” Ryan says conversationally, and then he reaches out and grabs Alex by his jersey and kisses him hard.
He should probably be offended by the fact that his teammates don’t even react to this, but all Ryan can focus on is the way Alex’s stick clatters to the ice, the way Alex’s hands curl around his collar, Alex’s soft little moans.
“I always wanted it to be you,” Alex says, still bright-eyed with surprise. Ryan grins, doesn’t let go of him.
“Always gonna be, now,” he says, and the way Alex smiles at him, he’s never seen it before, and it’s for him. “Sorta in love with you, you know.”
“I didn’t mean to do it right at fucking centre ice!” Maxim yells from the bench. Ryan flips him off without looking over.
“Sharing the love, Lappy. It’s Valentine’s Day,” he yells over.
“It’s not, that was yesterday!”
“Don’t care,” Ryan says, but it’s soft, just for Alex. “We’re gonna re-do it, okay?”
“I have high expectations,” Alex tells him, “I kind of think you’re perfect, so you have to live up to that.”
“Alex, somehow I got you to like me, I probably have fucking superpowers, okay?”
“Definitely don’t,” Alex laughs, and that, too, is just for him, and Ryan can barely handle how happy this makes him, getting to see a side of Alex no one else knows.
“Do too,” he retorts, leans in and kisses Alex until Alex is clutching at him, barely able to keep balanced on his skates. “See that? That was a fucking magic power right there.”
“Use it for good and not evil.”
“You know me,” Ryan says, and that devious grin he gets, Alex knows exactly what he’s thinking, because Alex wouldn’t use it for good, either.
“Just another reason why I love you. Makes up for how arrogant you are about it.”
He bolts for the bench laughing before Ryan can retaliate for that one, and Ryan takes off to follow him and exact his revenge. He’s been doing this for years, following Alex like it’s second nature, but this time it feels different. He can move around and after Alex all practice long like always, spend all day moving in relation to him. This time, though, at the end of the day, he’s got Alex in his arms, because this chase that was his life, they’ve won it.
They celebrate Valentine’s day on the fifteenth every year, because what they have, it’s something special, something different, and it deserves it’s very own day.
Le jour d’aprés Valentin, Alex calls it.
Ryan just calls it the day I finally got you.