Fic: Never To Break You (2)
It’s bothering Kevin more than it probably should. He should just shrug it off, accept that things happen, promises get broken, people disappear.
But they don’t. He can’t stop thinking about it because people don’t just do that, especially not people like him. People like that get called up to a team, fill up arenas with people who just want to watch them play. Kevin can’t stop thinking about it, so on the morning of a Thursday without practice, Kevin has a plan. He decides to start on the west and work his way east across the lower mainland, and he gets up at six because he just can’t sleep.
The UBC ice rink is already alive with movement when he gets there, even at seven-thirty AM. Two of the rinks are empty, but there’s a game in its second period on the third rink. Kevin wanders down to the dresing rooms; there’s a list of names posted on each one. Neither one gives Kevin what he wants, so he heads upstairs to the proshop. It’s open, but no one’s behind the counter. There’s a clipboard sitting there, though, with a stack of sign-in sheets for stick and shoots, and drop-in sessions. Kevin glances towards the back room, but no one appears. He flips through the pages of names, dating back to nearly June, but there’s nothing. The next three ice rinks he tries yield the same results, in Burnaby, Richmond and North Van. There’s nothing.
Kevin spends every off-day he has for three weeks looking in ice rinks, gear stores, proshops, gyms, but nothing works. No one’s heard of someone named Lapierre.
“Hey,” Ryan says to him after practice one Wednesday. “We’re gonna get dinner tonight, wanna come?”
“I’unno.” Kevin tosses his gloves into his stall. “Might be busy.” He’s been thinking about looking in Washington, maybe caling places on the east coast, because he’s running out of ideas.
“You’re always busy,” Ryan complains. “Since when do you have a life?”
“Yeah,” Alex contributes sulkily from Ryan’s other side. “You’re disappeared.” Kevin nearly flinches at that.
“Have not, I’m right here.”
“You can disappear and be here still,” Alex protests, like he’s an expert on this. Ryan nods his agreement. “Is different kind, not like disappearing.”
“Same word.”
“The kind where you go somewhere,” Alex elaborates.
“Yeah? Where does someone go when they disappear?” Kevin asks, maybe too much of a sigh to his words.
“Downtown east side?” Ryan guesses, and something in Kevin goes cold. “But whatever, man just come with us.”
“Next time,” Kevin hears himself say.
He doesn’t want it to be a possibility, but he has to at least look, so he can go back to looking in the places he wants to find him. He wants to find Lapierre in some forgotten ice rink, skating for an audience that is not there, ready and waiting with an explanation.
Where does someone go when they disappear? he wonders again and again, all day, keeps hearing Ryan’s answer in his head, and that’s why he ends up driving towards East Hastings that night. He wants to find Lapierre playing hockey alone on the ice, waiting to be found, not here, on these dark streets, this secret pocket next to Gastown, where things have gone so wrong so quickly. Kevin keeps that image in his head, a hockey star playing for no audience, holds onto it tightly, because there’s someone standing by a building that makes him slow and stare.
He disappeared.
Where does someone go when they disappear?
He comes over when he notices Kevin’s car hasn’t moved in a while, leans down by the open passenger window, one hand on the roof.
“Hey,” he says, and he’s all dark, intense eyes and a sly smile, “lookin’ for something?”
“Um.” Kevin wishes he’d talk more, but the guy is just looking at him now, face completely unreadable. “Kinda.”
“Yeah?” He smiles, slow and deliberate, easily the least genuine thing Kevin has ever seen, and he’s studying this guy’s face, trying to remember every detail of Lapierre’s face, just can’t tell. “So?” the guy prompts, and Kevin wants him to keep talking, wants to pull apart his accent, find out where this guy spent his life, if it was on ice at rinks in Montreal.
“Uh, yeah,” Kevin hears himself say, and he doesn’t really know what he’s thinking, just that he needs more time to figure this out, to study him and get answers. He watches the guy open the door, slide into the passenger seat.
“I get paid up front,” the guy informs him, something a little biting to his tone, but Kevin’s too busy wondering if Lapierre’s better at English than Alex is, wishing they did interviews of the AHL players, wishing he knew Lapierres’s voice, more than just an assumption of accent.
“Right, yeah. How, uh, much?” The reality of this starts to sink in as he pulls his wallet out of his pocket, because he’s paying a hooker, and his search was supposed to take him to ice rinks, not a dark street like this. Kevin clings to the image in his head, of the ice, empty of all but one player, whose play takes up an entire rink.
“Depends. I’ll blow you for eighty.”
Kevin hands over eighty, the memory of the beautiful slapshot that won a championship game held in his mind.
“Right, so you can drive up the street there,” the guy tells him, pocketing the money. Kevin wonders if he’s allowed to ask the guy’s name, or whether he’ll just get that intense stare leveled at him, already burning with embarrassment at wanting to ask the question. He doesn’t know how to ask, how he could possibly know; everything seems like it’s proof, everything seems to be saying of course it’s not him, all at the same time. The guy’s big hands and the muscles in his arms underneath his thin jacket, that all says hockey, but the guarded look in his eyes, his dark, torn jeans, they say no player could fall this far.
“C’mon,” the guy says, once Kevin’s parked, climbing easily into the backseat. Kevin wants to complain, as the toe of the guy’s trainer scuffs the seat’s leather, but he swallows back the words, climbs after him. The guy takes him by the shoulders, pushes him back against the door. (Hockey, Kevin’s mind whispers, thinking of checks and shuddering plexi-glass). He nudges Kevin’s legs open, settling between them, hands settling on Kevin’s knees. (Never, Kevin thinks, because the movements are too practiced, no one could step off the ice and end up here). “SUV’s are better,” the guy is saying, almost absent-mindedly, dark-eyed gaze flickering up to Kevin’s face. “More room in the backseat.” There’s barely enough room for the both of them, because while the guy’s lankier than Kevin, he’s still broad-shouldered and built enough. (Hockey, this body created for both moving fast and hitting hard).
“Got something against sportscars?” Kevin manages to say, gets a soft laugh in return.
“Just the backseat, it’s so small,” the guy says, and Kevin hangs on the way he says so, the lilt in his words, and maybe he’s imagining it. (Hockey, because how many French-Canadians could there be in Vancouver, what other accent could that be, faint though it is?) His gaze is fixed on Kevin’s face, a smoking intensity, like he’s thinking something Kevin doesn’t want him to know. He looks down before Kevin can puzzle it out, one hand easily popping the button on Kevin’s jeans, dragging the zipper down. His hands are so big, long-fingered, and all Kevin sees is that stickhandling, the way the puck would fly. (Hockey). His jeans are tugged down a little, and those hands flicker over the bulge in his boxers, lighting across the damp spot that’s forming. (No hockey player that good would end up here). The light friction makes him gasp, and then he feels fingers brush against the skin above the waistband of his boxers, calloused hands against his skin. (Hockey, has to be hockey). His boxers are inched down, agonisingly slowly, the anticipation making his breath shallow, and then those lips are closing around the head of his dick. The sudden heat makes his hips arch up, a sort of strangled moan escaping him. The guy makes a little humming noise - quite possibly laughing at him - but Kevin’s too distracted by the patterns the guy’s tongue is making against him. (Can’t be hockey). Kevin’s hands clutch uselessly at the seat, struggling not to jerk his hips up, as the guy adds the barest scrape of his teeth that has Kevin making the most desperate little noises.
“Wait- wait - can’t- gonna-” he chokes out, because this can’t be over yet, he needs to have a definitive answer at the end of this, but the guy between his legs ignores him. He swallows Kevin down suddenly, and the sudden burst of sensation is too much for Kevin. He comes hard with a strangled moan, hips jerking suddenly. The guy takes it calmly, pulling off Kevin a moment later. He detangles himself from Kevin’s legs and climbs back up to the front seat, opening the door. Kevin hears him spit before he closes the door again.
“See you around,” the guy says, as Kevin yanks his boxers back up, scrambles to get his jeans back on. He’s gone before Kevin can say anything, leaves Kevin there, wondering if he imagined the lilting accent in the words, wondering if the hands that touched him were the same ones that scored so many beautiful goals.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Kevin might have been the one who hid Ryan’s duffle bag behind a car while they waited for the plane; he wouldn’t admit to it if asked. It did buy him a few extra minutes though, which he used to get onto the plane after Alex and before Ryan. He found Alex sitting next to the window, opening up his laptop.
“Did you bring-” Alex starts, as Kevin sits next to him. “Oh,” he says, arching an eyebrow when he sees it’s Kevin next to him. “You’re not Kes.”
“I thank God for that every day. Want to do me a favour?”
“Euh… Can I say no?”
“Why would you want to do that?” Kevin pouts, and Alex just laughs at him, because he’s been spending too much time with Ryan, obviously, if he’s enjoying tormenting other people like this.
“I feel like favours for you would be dangerous.”
“This one isn’t, I swear.”
“Fine, fine.”
“Say ‘SUV’s are better.’”
“What?” Alex looks profoundly confused.
“Just say that.”
“Why?”
“Please?”
“Okay,” Alex gives him a thoroughly perplexed look, “Suv’s are better.”
“Huh. Again.”
“Again?”
“Yeah. Slower,” he instructs. Alex always talks fast, and that guy two nights ago, he was nearly drawling it, that sly look on his face like he somehow knew Kevin was hanging on his every word, like that gave him some kind of power over Kevin.
“SUV’s are better,” Alex repeats.
“Again?”
“SUV’s are better.” A bit of an exasperated tone has started to creep into it, which is close to the sardonic tone Kevin remembers. Alex has a really heavy accent; Kevin imagines it a few layers lighter, tries to clean it up in his head.
“Okay, now say-”
“Dude,” Ryan’s voice breaks in. “You’re in my spot.”
“You have a spot?” Kevin asks, grinning, but he’s already standing because, to be honest, he knows he’s in Ryan’s spot; that’s why he had to hide Ryan’s bag to buy himself some time here. “I’m not actually done with my favour,” Kevin says as he steps into the aisle. Alex gives him another confused look.
“I won’t ask why,” he says.
“Better that way,” Kevin agrees; he sits in the row in front of them, so that Ryan can have his seat back.
He gives them half the flight to Nashville before he interrupts whatever movie it is they’re watching on Alex’s laptop. “Hey,” he says, looking over the back of his seat, “do me a favour, Burr?”
“What?” Alex slides his headphones half off; Kevin’s pretty sure that the fancy plug-in that allows for two headphone sets to be plugged in is all Alex, because Ryan is useless with electronics.
“Say ‘just the backseat, it’s so small,’” Kevin requests. Alex sighs a little.
“Just the backseat, it’s so small,” he drags out the letters in that way of his, some a long slide, some a sweeping drop.
“Hmm,” Kevin says, “thanks.” He slides back into his seat. It’s all he can think about, the way that guy looked, settling in between his legs, looking at him with such an intense stare. He thinks about the deftness of the guy’s hands, his mouth, his tongue.
Kevin doesn’t want that to be Lapierre.
(next chapter)