afraid of standing still [3/4]
Title: afraid of standing still
Author: sherlockelly
Pairing: Dany Heatley/OMC
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: Real people, fake story.
Word Count: 25,795
Summary: Dany Heatley continues to drift violently away from the idea of the man he had wanted to be.
one . two . three . four
March 10th, 2005
Kazan, Russian Federation
Dany could get used to this, he thinks. He’s always been a good traveler, and there’s something amazing about waking up in a new place, with new people. No one here that knows anything about who he is, or where he’s come from.
Or what he’s done.
He’s being far too optimistic, he knows. For one, Ilya knows practically every little thing about him down to the way he takes his coffee and the way he likes his eggs in the morning, and Slava has him practically memorized from the inside out. It’s the indifference from the rest of them that he thrives on.
No one here looks at him like he might shatter into a million pieces with a slight breeze; they don’t know what he was like before and nothing to compare him to. There hasn’t been a single phone call just to ‘check in’, and not once has anyone asked him ‘are you okay’ when he only so much as sighs.
After the surgery to repair his eye, Dany had been anxious to get away from the Swiss apartment. He’d felt cooped up from his weeks of recovery and he didn’t like the way Briere had started looked at him when he walked around their apartment; a constant mixture of pity and remorse. There were only so many apologies that Dany could hear before he started getting angry. He didn’t need that hanging over him; especially not now that he was a New Person.
He’d flown back the States for his hearing in February and it was the first time he’d been back to Atlanta since the end of last season. He’d stayed in a hotel with his parents; his house didn’t feel like it belonged to him anymore. He’d asked Michael not to come.
But now here he is, he thinks, in Russia. One glance around the locker room and he’s grinning like an idiot. He can’t understand 99% of the things being said, and what he can understand has nothing to do with him at all.
It’s all ahead of him now. There’s a tiny realist voice in the back of his head that likes to remind him at the most inopportune moments that this new Dany is all just temporary. When the lockout is over, it’s back to the grind.
His skate is halfway off his foot when the voice speaks up again loudly from inside of him. He still has to go back there. Back to Atlanta.
The realization hits him like a bucket of ice water. It had been so easy before to think of ‘back there’ as ‘back to the NHL’. It hadn’t been such a specific, tangible thing to him yet. Even when he had been back in the city, hockey hadn’t been a part of it.
He has to return to his house, to Philips Arena.
Just the thought of having to step foot back into that locker room is enough to make him want to throw up. If he closes his eyes, he can picture it. Exactly where his stall is, equipment still neatly placed. He knows the route to the arena by heart, every fucking twist and turn on the roads back to his house. (Lenox Road, the rows of fir trees and condominiums that loom as tall as skyscrapers in his memory.)
His stomach churns. The voices around him are foreign and muffled as the room swallows him up. He feels like he’s choking on his own tongue, his mouth is too dry and his throat is too narrow and he can’t breathe, can’t breathe. Again.
Vinnie Lecavalier places a hand on his shoulder. “Are you okay?”
Fuck.
October 5th, 2003
Atlanta, GA
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He squeezes Lu Anne’s hand. “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
She squeezes back. “You have nothing to be sorry for. We forgive you.”
But, he wants to protest, it’s not enough. That’s not enough. He cannot forgive himself.
“I’m so sorry.”
May 15st, 2005
Vienna, Austria
Canada loses the World Championship game and Dany goes back to his hotel room with the silver medal tucked into his bag. He doesn’t take it out, doesn’t even set the bag down, his fist locked around the nylon strap in a vice grip.
He’s not sure how long he’s been back here even, he barely remembers the last two hours, the final period, buzzer, handshakes and medals, press, undressing, redressing. It all bleeds together like any other game. He didn’t even want the medal, had stuffed it in his pocket between the locker room and the pressroom so he didn’t have to see it hanging around his neck. It felt like a noose.
He wonders around the room alone, the gym bag still swinging at his side, bumping into his legs.
His feels the buzz of his phone in his jacket pocket and the vibrations thrum through his entire body.
‘Shouldn’t you be in jail?’
Vokoun spat at him through the bars of his mask, a crooked grin on his face as he spoke and something inside Dany snapped. He lunged for the man, grabbing anything he could, jersey, mask, gear. He could hear himself swearing as he did and he felt the hands around him that tried to hold him back. Vokoun looked scared and it mades Dany want to hurt him all the more. The refs screamed at him as they pried his fingers off of the goaltender, twisting until his knuckles popped and he finally let go.
After they tossed him from the game, he’s numb. He inhaled, exhaled, looked at the clock. He didn’t feel better afterwards.
Dany can’t extricate himself from his head, his fist tightening more about around the bag as he flashes back through the memory. He feels himself nodding along to nothing. He misses Russia; Ilya and Slava were close enough but far away there and it was safe. He doesn’t feel that way anymore, especially not with Atlanta hanging over him like a nightmare he can’t shake off, can’t wake up from.
The voice in his head speaks up again; you should be in jail, Dany. He wonders if this might not be the last time he hears mention of it on the ice. His stomach lurches.
Dany grabs for his cellphone, ignoring the missed call from his father and searches for the name he wants. He should be in jail. His knees buckle and he hears the clank of the medal in his bag as it drops to the floor.
Slava answers on the second ring, but when the first thing out of Dany’s mouth is ‘what if’, Kozlov shushes him.
“No, Dany. Don’t do that.”
May 18th, 2005
Vienna, Austria
The waiting is the hard part, Dany thinks. His Superleague season is long over, the World Championships are behind him, and he will be the first to admit that his showing in each was poor by the kindest stretch of the word.
He heard the talk of his coordination, dedication; whether or not he’d ever be the player he was before. Everyone says ‘before’ in the abstract, like they’re afraid to pinpoint one moment. Before his accident; before his eye got fucked.
But he doesn’t want to go home to prove them wrong. Home, wherever that is. It doesn’t feel like Atlanta anymore. It doesn’t feel like Russia or Austria, or even Calgary after all this time.
His hotel room is still littered with clothing from his suitcase, but his silver medal hasn’t moved from the bottom of his gym bag. He’s dragging his feet about leaving, already booked the room for another week, long after all of his teammates and opponents have headed back to wherever they call home.
He feels as though he’s entered into a different world in Europe, with the New Dany. The new face, the constantly changing scenery; he’s never stuck in one place long enough to get tied down by the commitment. This Dany has no home, no responsibilities. He isn’t recognized as anything but another warm body by the boys here and it’s easy to come and go.
He has to constantly remind himself all of the things he’ll miss if he stays and it’s ultimately the only reason that he’s sure he won’t.
His parents, his brother. Michael. Hockey.
He has to go back, but it is with a sudden, life-changing realization, when he thinks about how easy it was to leave Switzerland and for Russia, that it becomes clear it doesn’t have to be to Atlanta.
It takes all of the courage he has in his entire being to make the call to the people he’d needs to explain this to most of all and he does it before he can second guess himself. He feels guilty, unbelievably and unforgivably guilty as the tinny noise fills his ears.
The answering machine picks up after the seventh ring. He holds his breath as he waits and counts. They’ve had the same message for years and Dany knows it by heart now.
“Hello, you have reached Graham,” the voice is rich and as familiar to him as his own father.
There is a shuffling as the phone is handed off, “Lu Anne!” She’s cheery and breathless, like they’ve been recording this over and over, trying to get it perfectly. Pause.
“Jake!” Pause. Dany holds his breath as his heart thunders in his chest.
“Dan!” Everything in the world stops. Except for the fact that it doesn’t.
“And Erika Snyder! We’re not home right now, but if you leave a message! We’ll call you right back when we can.”
They all shout ‘goodbye’ in unison and Dany’s throat closes up. He can’t speak, not even after the beep sounds, harsh in his drumming ears. His mouth opens and he wants to say something, anything.
But, his hand slams down the phone before he can.
October 5th, 2003
Atlanta, GA
His parents had bowed out of the room, leaving him a private moment with Lu Anne that scares him to the core the second they’re alone.
He wants to apologize again but he’s already spent what feels like hours crying those words into her blouse and her protestations are starting to wash right over him. There aren’t enough sorrys in the world to change the past and he’s starting to realize this all over again.
“All that I ask,” she starts carefully, her voice coarse with her own stifled sobs, “is that you don’t let this destroy you.”
He wants to laugh at that idea, how absurd it seems, his life going on after this with any semblance of normalcy, but the genuineness of her face is enough to make him consider her words.
“You can’t let this be the end for you, Dany. It’s not what Dan would have wanted, and it’s not what we want either. I want you to promise me that, please. That you won’t stop playing.”
He touches his shredded knee without thinking, well aware that there were more than just physical reasons he might not come back to hockey this season. Or ever. He scoffs aloud.
“I mean it, Daniel,” she’s practically scolding him. “There’s no sense in ending two careers.” She doesn’t say it with any bitterness, not a single undertone of resentment or anger and that is what breaks him down.
“I promise.” His voice sounds like his larynx has been raked over coals and his mouth feels dry and thick, but he means the words he says. If she can stand to hold his hand after all he’s done, he can make this promise.
August 9th, 2005
Vancouver, BC
Dany waits until Michael is in the shower to call. He’s forced it to be inevitable at this point; he’d taken a bath selling his Buckhead house over the summer, furnished no less, though he was grateful it was gone either way. He’s been setting the stones for this since that May night in Vienna.
Maybe the organization has already read the writing on the wall; everything Dany owned was in a storage shed on his parent’s property in Calgary and he’d been practically squatting at Michael’s for weeks, avoiding his teammates and management.
He’d needed the company and companionship, and Michael had helped him rehearse what to say when the time came to let Atlanta know what he wanted. They practiced the right words, the proper approach, assuring everything would work out in an agreeable way.
Dany’s fingers dial Don Waddell’s number by heart; he’s been staring at it for hours this summer, working up the courage to call. Don answers on the second ring and every bit of preparation is suddenly for naught when he hears the paternal sigh of his own name as a greeting.
“I can’t come back there. To Atlanta.” It’s out of him in a rush and his stomach knots; he’s embarrassed when he starts to cry. “Please, I can’t go back.”
Don inhales sharply. “Oh, my son.”
And Dany loses what composure he had left.
August 23rd, 2005
Kelowna, BC
The call comes at nearly midnight on Michael’s twenty-fourth birthday, two days after he’d moved out of graduate housing at UBCO in into his own place. Dany’s cell buzzes on the nightstand as the two lay curled together in an afterglow, celebrating two momentous occasions at once.
Dany sits up instantly when he reads the name and Michael moves away from him subtlety when his tone drops into something serious.
He listens best he can though his brain is running a mile a minute as he tries to keep up with Waddell. He hears himself utter several dozen terse thank yous and he keeps saying ‘sir’ after almost everything. Finally, the conversation is over and hangs up, left to wonder what he thinks about this, sifting through the muddled feelings that overwhelm him.
“They traded me.”
Michael looks at him with wide eyes, the icy blue nearly glowing in the dim light.
“Oh?” Dany can tell he’s trying not to sound hopeful or disappointed, his eyes flickering to read Dany’s own expression. “That was fast.”
Neither of them moves closer to the other, but Michael sits up taller and folds his hands carefully.
“To Ottawa,” Dany whispers in the quiet dark, answering the question Michael didn’t ask. He bows his head and watches as the other man’s fingers twist together.
“That’s good?” He’s treading painfully lightly. “It’s Canada,” he offers. “And closer to your parents.”
“And you.”
“Yeah.” Michael inhales sharply. “Are you happy?”
Dany chances a glance toward the other man, the longing question on his face. There’s not a doubt in his mind that Michael wants nothing but the best for him, but to see it so openly in the man’s expression takes his breath away.
“I’m very happy.” The smile breaks over his face and he couldn’t hold it back now if he tried. His arms wrap around Michael and he feels like a page has turned. The familiar dark presence in his mind speaks up again after so long that maybe a change in scenery is all he needs to start putting everything in the past. Maybe this time. Maybe now.
This he does not tell Michael.
September 9th, 2005
Ottawa, ON
Dany’s new apartment is sterilely white. The walls and the kitchen and the bathroom tiles. It reminded him of a blank canvas the moment he walked in the door and he’d signed the lease almost immediately.
Michael had commented on it when he was helping Dany move in, wondered aloud if he’d thought about painting the place, adding some color. Dany said he would consider it, but something about painting made it seem too permanent too quickly.
It had taken two weeks for the two of them to unpack all of Dany’s things but the time alone together was invaluable before the NHL season started up again.
They’d already christened the bed several times since the first night, but the first time after all of the packing is finished feels like the most culminating.
Dany is ready for his new season, his new team, but he’s not ready to give up Michael. His second year of graduate school at UBCO would be starting at the same time as Dany’s season and visits would once again be sparse.
The comforter pools around their waists and Dany shivers, choosing to curl up tighter against Michael’s side rather than use the blanket. He had been so good about being on his own in Europe, it felt natural; he’d needed the break from everything and everyone. Dany feels the sting of tears behind his eyes as he thinks about what it will be like his first night alone in this apartment, if he’ll be able to do it. Being here, back in the NHL, back in Canada, was different; it was too much like going home. Home without the most important parts of himself.
Michael’s arms wrap tighter around him and his breathing has almost evened out entirely when a knot of insecurity inside Dany tightens without warning.
“Why do you love me?”
“M’sorry?” He still sounds groggy.
“Why do you love me, Michael? I don’t understand why.”
“Dany,” Michael sounds defeated and Dany hates himself for ever asking, but he can’t rest now without an answer.
“Please tell me.”
“I don’t even know where to begin, Dany.”
“Would you ever lie to me?”
Pause. “Never to hurt you.” Dany is surprised that this confession is actually comforting.
“Then just tell me.”
He rests his head on Michael’s shoulder and listens to his heartbeat through the thin skin. There’s a rumble that begins in Michael’s chest before he even speaks and it reminds Dany of a cat purring.
“I love you because your laugh is infectious, because you always want to be better. I love you because you are strong, and you are thoughtful. Because you always remind me of things that I’ve forgotten, like my damned car keys. Because you look out for me.”
Michael twists one of Dany’s curls around his finger absently, shaping it into a perfect spiral. His hair is shorter now than it was, and even when it pulls just a bit too hard on his scalp, Dany doesn’t say a word.
“I love you because you have freckles on your neck and, like, nowhere else, and because your ass is just, un-fucking-real.” Dany smiles despite himself, the moisture in his eyes threatening to spill. “An’ ‘cause you aren’t afraid to tell me when I’m being difficult, and you let me get close to you even when you don’t want me to.
“I love you because you are beautiful to watch out on the ice; the way you move and the way you dedicate yourself. And because your eyes don’t match anymore, and you ruin almost every picture we take when the flash goes off,” Michael’s voice is wavering with a stifled laugh, but Dany can hear that he’s trying not to cry as well.
“Because you swear like a sailor and you can’t hold your liquor even though you pretend that you can. Because you never get lost and you always order the best dish on the menu no matter what restaurant we happen to go to, even if we’ve never been there before.
“I love you because you’re ferociously Canadian and because you call your mom every week without her ever having to remind you. I love you because you aren’t afraid to be scared and because you let me see you cry. I love you because you only let me inside of you, in more ways than one. I love you because you are a good person, and because you love me.”
Only twenty more days, his stomach churns despite Michael’s words. He’s not a good person.
When Dany cracks, he tends to crumble and Michael must feel it coming because the hand in his hair falls away and both arms wrap around him tightly again.
“Do you--,” Dany’s chest tightens and he coughs. “Do you think I’ll ever be forgiven?”
“Oh, Dany.” Michael sounds pathetically small and it makes Dany ache to think he’s hurting those around him just by being in their lives. Only twenty more days.
“Lie to me if you have to,” the wet tracks down his cheeks bleed onto Michael’s bare chest and Dany doesn’t mean to cry all over his boyfriend, he really doesn’t. He just needs to hear someone say it; give him a good answer, even if they don’t mean it. Through all the bullshit, Dany is sure he’d be able to hear the truth anyhow, whether or not Michael chose to lie.
“I don’t need to lie, my love. You’ve already been forgiven.”
“I don’t mean by,” he huffs like an impatient child when the words escape him. The ones he does have seem remarkably stupid and inconsequential.
“You mean forgiven by yourself.” It’s not a question and Dany bites his lip. That’s really only the half of it.
“Or maybe. I don’t know,” he trails off again. For the millionth time in his life, he has the question but is scared of the answer. He traces numbers in digits on Michael’s belly, and then he switches to longhand when Michael still hasn’t finished his sentence for him. Fifteen, thirty-seven, nine-twenty-nine. Not this time; this silence is his to fill.
He sucks in more air than his lungs can fit and it burns in his chest until he finally lets go. Dany closes his eyes against the ragged hitches of his own voice. “D’you think Dan forgives me?”
The moment that he finds he remembers the most is when he laces his skates before a game. His mind tends to wander as his fingers work to complete a task he’s done so many times in his life it’s become like blinking.
But it’s when he closes his eyes and breathes in the sweat and the deodorizer and the cold, he wonders if this is what Dan would have wanted. If he would have expected Dany to play again. To play for the both of them, earn twice the accolades.
Like lacing his skates, there are things that Dany doesn’t need to be reminded of to know implicitly. His home phone number from when he was little. How to brace himself along the boards when he fights for a puck. His brother’s laugh and the taste of his father’s barbeque ribs. The sound Michael makes when he’s dreaming about something scary. And how to carry the weight of two men.
But, he is always afraid that just because he doesn’t like to remember, everyone assumes he wants to forget.
“Michael,” it’s on his lips like a plea and the ache in his chest grows deeper. The man still hasn’t answered him.
Only twenty more days.
November 13th, 2005
Ottawa, ON
Dany wakes up alone, shaking and sweating in the middle of the night, though the sweat might be tears, he can’t ever be sure.
He grabs for his phone, like he always seems to do, his lifeline to the rest of the world, and dials a number by heart. Sometimes he waits for an answer, but sometimes he hangs up before the other phone can even ring. No missed calls, no evidence.
Tonight, he waits and waits and waits and only has time to wonder what time it might be, since he never looks at the clock on nights like these, before the ringing ends and heavy, sedated breathing ignites a strange fight or flight surge of adrenaline.
Swerve, brake, brace for impact.
“‘Allo?” The voice is exhausted, tinged with annoyance and Dany wants to feel guilty that he woke him up.
“D’you ever still think of him?” He bites his lip and waits for the answer. Nothing else needs to be said.
“All the time, Dany,” Ilya rasps over the line. There’s a guilt in the other man’s voice, but it’s nothing like what he can hear in his own. Even still, it’s comforting sometimes to hear; he’s not the only one that really, truly remembers.
December 26, 2005
Ottawa, ON
All Michael had told Dany he wanted for Christmas was one of his jerseys. “The real kind,” he’d put his hands on his hips and pursed his lips in mock-attitude. Dany had laughed and promised him one.
He’d opened it first thing Christmas morning and refused to take it off the whole day. Except once.
“I like seeing your name on me,” his voice was gravely and his eyes half-lidded. They’d taken it off for that, but Michael had thrown it right back on again afterwards.
Dany had also given him a lower bowl ticket to the game against the Rangers. Michael didn’t go to games often, maybe twice a year. He said they made him nervous, and after a few instances of seeing Dany hit in the shield or shin, even dragging him out to one game was a battle of constant reassurances.
However, tonight Michael had gone with little fight and Dany watches him from the corner of his eye all through warm-ups and the anthems, smiling to himself whenever he catches Michael looking back. The prideful grin on the man’s face is enough to make Dany blush every time.
There are a lot of Heatley jerseys in Scotiabank Place, but none of them stand out more to Dany than Michael’s when he searches the standing crowd after scoring the first goal of the game, a little over two minutes in on the power play.
He points to him and winks, playing it off to Chara when he asks about it as mere flirtation for the fans.
Dany likes seeing his name on Michael, too.
October 5th, 2003
Atlanta, GA
Dany curls up on his side on the hospital bed. He’s not small enough to fit yet, though he tries his best. His mother sits beside him; her head leaning on his bed. He can tell she’s asleep without even looking at her.
He hasn’t slept since Lu Anne and his mother came to tell him about Dan, too afraid to close his eyes. The delirium hasn’t quite taken over yet, though he doesn’t know how long it’s really been since Lu Anne left, and maybe he’s asleep right now.
The door to his room cracks open, a sliver of the hallway light seeping into the uneasy glow in his hospital room. Dany hates nights in the hospital, when the lights turn down and visitors are only outlines until they’re all the way inside. Any one of these shadows could be coming to tell him worse news. The unknown is scarier to Dany than anything else.
The door shuts but the figure stays, hand hovering on the knob.
Dany doesn’t try to speak first, and his mother doesn’t wake up to speak for him. His vision readjusts to the dimness and he locks eyes with Ilya, looking scared and perched to run.
They both breathe heavily, in sync. The Russian’s mouth is squeezed into a tight line and his eyes are puffy and red. His throat moves like he wants to speak but he keeps quiet. Dany is fairly certain moments like these call for English outside Ilya’s comprehension anyway.
The rhythmic breathing slows his heart rate and makes his eyes droop. He doesn’t exactly feel safe, but he’s not quite scared.
Ilya tips his head in a silent nod and pauses a beat before slipping back out of the room as quietly as he’d come. Dany closes his eyes, his hand still entwined with his mother’s, and he sleeps until morning.
January 2nd, 2006
Atlanta, GA
Dany isn’t sure what he’s expecting his first game back in Atlanta as a Senator. Nothing feels safe here, nothing is as familiar as it should be. He’s already anxious to get back to Ottawa the moment the plane touches down.
He knew that there would be a busy media scrum and tons of questions, all the unwanted reminders and triggers he’d wanted to leave behind in the first place. There’s still just no preparation for what it sounds like in his head the moment he sees Phillips looming in the distance.
By puck drop, just being in the building is churning his stomach. His eyes keep shooting to the home team tunnel; he knows exactly what’s down there. Dany wonders if the stall is still exactly the same. If he were a bigger man, he thinks, he would have thought to ask, or to go look for himself, at the very least to pay respects. But he’s not a bigger man; he’s just Dany, he’s a coward.
Every time he so much as touches the puck the building seems to shake with booing. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting being back here, but it certainly wasn’t this. He tries to play like he can’t hear it, the whole team does, but they’re down three goals by the end of the first and Dany can’t help but feel like he deserves this. He deserves every fucking bit of this anger and hatred and when it’s all over, it still won’t be enough.
The worst part, he knows, that he can’t tell why they’re doing this. If it’s the trade or. Maybe it’s because of Dan. He stomach drops to his knees and stays there. They’d never really forgiven him at all, had they? He spends the first intermission in the bathroom throwing up. No one comes to check on him.
He scores in the third, though he’s not really even trying anymore, having checked out mentally somewhere around the two-minute mark of the opening period. When the boos rain down on him as his name is announced, it takes all that he has not to stand up and scream at the fans that they can do better. Their worst is still not enough.
The Senators lose 8-3 and Dany spends the rest of the night lying in bed in his hotel room, thinking about those outraged voices, screaming.
There is a beauty to their rage, he reasons. They’re trying to voice a betrayal he can’t even begin to understand. At the same time, it’s not likely anyone in that arena understands him either. The sounds of the voices lull him into a semi-sleep as he promises not to allow himself to forget what that felt like. To be hated.
July 9th, 2006
Kelowna, BC
Michael’s townhouse is starting to look like Dany actually lives there year round and not just like he’s here about a month and a half in the summer. He’s got some gear piled in the living room that he uses for shinny games at the local rink, more clothes than he’s got at his parent’s house in Calgary, and Michael. It’s perfect.
“I should move out here, too,” Dany says on a whim as the two of them walk around the edges of Okanagan Lake, barefoot in the gravely shoreline.
“Yeah?” He can tell Michael doesn’t quite believe him.
“Shouldn’t I? I mean, you’re here; I got a lot of my shit here. It kinda makes sense in the long run, too. Invest in some property or something.” His father is into him doing that sort of thing but he can tell by Michael’s laugh that the man isn’t buying the idea as Dany’s own.
“If you really wanted to, I guess you could. I just figure the place would sit empty for most of the year anyhow. Not really a point in that.”
“You could live there if you wanted, keep it up while I’m gone.”
“M’not really sure I like that plan. It’s kinda far from work and school.” It’s not, Dany knows it’s actually particularly close to both, more so even than Michael’s townhouse. “And a waste of money, really, if it’s just going to get used for a little while.”
“I can afford it you know.” Dany tries not to sound hurt, even if he is, but he still knows that’s the wrong argument to make the second Michael stops short in his tracks.
“Fuck off, Dany, I know you can. I just don’t see the point. Living with you when you aren’t even there ten months of the year.” There’s an edge to his voice that makes Dany cringe.
“Fine. Forget I mentioned it then. Maybe I’ll just get it for me.”
“Go ahead.”
They walk in silence back to the car, both too stubborn to apologize first.
September 29th, 2006
Ottawa, ON
He lets all of his calls go to voicemail for a few hours before he finally just shuts his phone off. Let everyone be mad at him later for worrying them; right now he doesn’t need their sympathy.
He feels stupid for ever allowing himself to think that coming here would end up being different than going to Switzerland or Russia. It’s all the fucking same in the end.
Nothing has changed for him. Not now. Not ever. He feels an incapacitating guilt for even trying.
April 21st, 2007
Ottawa, ON
This is the farthest he’s ever been in his career. Everything he’s ever played for is just four wins away and he can taste the victory before their opponent is even decided. He can taste the failure, too, but that bitterness churning in his gut is familiar enough that he is able to look past it. He wants this. He’s dreamed about this since the day he first held a hockey stick.
Dany convinces himself that even at his lowest, the chance to be where he is now is what keeps him coming back. If not for this, then why?
But it always seems to be events like these that bring the dark voice back; at least the pattern is recognizable. Maybe if just the right amount could change, just the right combination of events. Maybe, if he wins, he will be able to move past this.
For the sake of optimism, he lies. He tells himself that he’s too busy to pay attention to the false hopes this time around, and instead of listening, he shuts it all off.
Everything becomes about the game. Every waking moment he has he’s watching old footage or skating or shooting or in the gym. He sketches out ideas for odd-man rushes on napkins.
He allows all his calls to go to voicemail for days and swears that he will be nothing but hockey. He will win.
June 8th 2007
Kelowna, BC
He’s in a fucking haze, that’s the only way to describe it. Autopilot in full force as he walks around in his suit and sunglasses and tries to make himself look just another guy here to watch the graduation ceremonies and not like two days ago he lost the biggest prize in his career to the Anaheim Ducks.
The rest of the team is in Ottawa, cleaning out their lockers and facing the brutal full-frontal assault from the press and he’s here, in Kelowna, watching Michael graduate with his Master of Education. He’d managed to get clearance to go from the team management by selling Michael as a cousin. Everyone seemed too weary to question him and Dany was grateful for that.
Though he’d be lying if he said this is where he would rather be. He’s a million miles removed from the convocation ceremony and every word from the stage washes right over him.
He feels guilty for not caring as the names are read, one after the other, lulling him into an anesthetized trance.
He wants to get out of here, get away from all these people. He had ended up buying the lake house on Okanagan, but, as Michael had suspected, it did sit empty for most of the year.
Now that he was back, even if only for the graduation as he still needed to clean out his locker and attend to some final business in Ottawa, it seemed the perfect escape, a way to put the Cup Finals behind him. He is itching to get to it as the hours drag endlessly on.
He claps for Michael’s name, and his smile in that moment is genuine, but he refuses to stay for the celebrations afterwards, slipping away quietly after giving Michael a platonic hug goodbye.
He’ll be himself again by the time he’s back for the summer for good, just not yet. He hopes Michael understands.
October 2nd, 2003
Atlanta, GA
Dan is back in surgery for the second time when Dany’s parents finally arrive from the airport. His mother holds him, whispers ‘Ich liebe dich’ in his ear and ‘We’re so lucky.’ She kisses his temple.
Dany doesn’t feel lucky. He doesn’t feel anything at all but shooting pain and cold, and it’s still not enough to make him feel human anymore.
January 20th, 2008
Ottawa, ON
Sitting out of games just reminds him, he finds out very early on in his injury. His arm is in a sling to keep his shoulder still and it’s the immobility that really kills him. He tries to keep it together for the sake of those around him, but there’s only so much he can really hide from those that know him best.
His mother flies out to keep him company for a while, but after five days of playing nurse to more than just his physical aches and pains, affairs at home in Calgary have her flying back. Dany wants to go with her but the team doctors are strict about his care and the most time he’d be able to get would be a day. It’s not worth it in the end.
Michael takes a week off from teaching to come help him once his mother is gone and Dany can see in his face that he senses something the moment he walks in to the apartment.
“Have you been eating? Dany, your face looks so thin!” He’s not in the mood for this, no matter what place the worry comes from.
“Fuck, Mike, I just went through this with Mom. Not you, too.”
“Well have you?”
“No, not actually,” he tries to sound bored and exasperated but the concern in Michael’s voice has him near tears. He’s been emotionally frayed since he first separated his shoulder, the doctors’ visits and sedentariness bringing him back to a time in Atlanta that would never really be behind him.
“Dany, Jesus!” The anger in Michael’s voice is visibly out of fear but it doesn’t help the situation at all.
“What? What do you want me to say? You want me to let you just walk in the door and start busting my ass? Like I don’t have enough people all over me about this fucking constantly, the last person that I want to hear it from is you! I didn’t ask you to come, you know!” It explodes out of him in a surprising burst of rage and if he didn’t hurt so fucking badly, he’d be forcing Michael back out the door.
“Actually, you did.”
“Well, I didn’t think you would.” Dany spits back as harshly as he can.
He barely recognizes this side of himself and he can tell by the look on Michael’s face that the other man is struggling with the same thoughts. He only gets like this when he has too much time to think.
They stand facing one another in the living room for a long while; Dany’s erratic breathing the only real sound in the room save the ticking of the wall clock.
Michael inhales sharply. “Tell me why you’re upset.” There are no accusations in his words, just a quiet trepidation.
And that’s all it takes before Dany’s anger is melting into something more like grief, the tears spilling down his cheeks before he can even register the switch.
“What good am I? If I’m not out there with my team, what good am I?”
“Dany! You’re plenty-,”
“No! I promised them!”
“They can’t make you promise things like that.”
“I’m not talking about the team!” His thoughts are moving faster than his mouth. “I promised them I would keep playing for him and if I’m not out there, then,” he wipes his eyes furiously. “It’s my only fucking purpose and goddamnit, without playing I’m just…” a coward. He can’t bring himself to say it, but his silence voices more than he could ever find the words.
Michael knows exactly who ‘they’ are and who ‘he’ is and it shows in the softening features of his face.
“That’s not a healthy way to look at this, you know that.”
“No, I don’t! What’s wrong with that exactly?”
“Because, you can’t play forever. What if, God forbid, you get hurt worse than this one day? Or what about when you retire?”
The thought isn’t unfamiliar territory to Dany, and he has spent more than a few nights staring at the ceiling thinking about that inevitable day. He believes he’s got it pretty well figured out, to be honest, what he’ll do when he’s done being useful, when he can’t keep his promise anymore.
Though, for now, he sighs instead of responding as the best answer he has is one no one is ready to hear. That is a problem for another day.
continue to 4
Author: sherlockelly
Pairing: Dany Heatley/OMC
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: Real people, fake story.
Word Count: 25,795
Summary: Dany Heatley continues to drift violently away from the idea of the man he had wanted to be.
one . two . three . four
March 10th, 2005
Kazan, Russian Federation
Dany could get used to this, he thinks. He’s always been a good traveler, and there’s something amazing about waking up in a new place, with new people. No one here that knows anything about who he is, or where he’s come from.
Or what he’s done.
He’s being far too optimistic, he knows. For one, Ilya knows practically every little thing about him down to the way he takes his coffee and the way he likes his eggs in the morning, and Slava has him practically memorized from the inside out. It’s the indifference from the rest of them that he thrives on.
No one here looks at him like he might shatter into a million pieces with a slight breeze; they don’t know what he was like before and nothing to compare him to. There hasn’t been a single phone call just to ‘check in’, and not once has anyone asked him ‘are you okay’ when he only so much as sighs.
After the surgery to repair his eye, Dany had been anxious to get away from the Swiss apartment. He’d felt cooped up from his weeks of recovery and he didn’t like the way Briere had started looked at him when he walked around their apartment; a constant mixture of pity and remorse. There were only so many apologies that Dany could hear before he started getting angry. He didn’t need that hanging over him; especially not now that he was a New Person.
He’d flown back the States for his hearing in February and it was the first time he’d been back to Atlanta since the end of last season. He’d stayed in a hotel with his parents; his house didn’t feel like it belonged to him anymore. He’d asked Michael not to come.
But now here he is, he thinks, in Russia. One glance around the locker room and he’s grinning like an idiot. He can’t understand 99% of the things being said, and what he can understand has nothing to do with him at all.
It’s all ahead of him now. There’s a tiny realist voice in the back of his head that likes to remind him at the most inopportune moments that this new Dany is all just temporary. When the lockout is over, it’s back to the grind.
His skate is halfway off his foot when the voice speaks up again loudly from inside of him. He still has to go back there. Back to Atlanta.
The realization hits him like a bucket of ice water. It had been so easy before to think of ‘back there’ as ‘back to the NHL’. It hadn’t been such a specific, tangible thing to him yet. Even when he had been back in the city, hockey hadn’t been a part of it.
He has to return to his house, to Philips Arena.
Just the thought of having to step foot back into that locker room is enough to make him want to throw up. If he closes his eyes, he can picture it. Exactly where his stall is, equipment still neatly placed. He knows the route to the arena by heart, every fucking twist and turn on the roads back to his house. (Lenox Road, the rows of fir trees and condominiums that loom as tall as skyscrapers in his memory.)
His stomach churns. The voices around him are foreign and muffled as the room swallows him up. He feels like he’s choking on his own tongue, his mouth is too dry and his throat is too narrow and he can’t breathe, can’t breathe. Again.
Vinnie Lecavalier places a hand on his shoulder. “Are you okay?”
Fuck.
October 5th, 2003
Atlanta, GA
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He squeezes Lu Anne’s hand. “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
She squeezes back. “You have nothing to be sorry for. We forgive you.”
But, he wants to protest, it’s not enough. That’s not enough. He cannot forgive himself.
“I’m so sorry.”
May 15st, 2005
Vienna, Austria
Canada loses the World Championship game and Dany goes back to his hotel room with the silver medal tucked into his bag. He doesn’t take it out, doesn’t even set the bag down, his fist locked around the nylon strap in a vice grip.
He’s not sure how long he’s been back here even, he barely remembers the last two hours, the final period, buzzer, handshakes and medals, press, undressing, redressing. It all bleeds together like any other game. He didn’t even want the medal, had stuffed it in his pocket between the locker room and the pressroom so he didn’t have to see it hanging around his neck. It felt like a noose.
He wonders around the room alone, the gym bag still swinging at his side, bumping into his legs.
His feels the buzz of his phone in his jacket pocket and the vibrations thrum through his entire body.
‘Shouldn’t you be in jail?’
Vokoun spat at him through the bars of his mask, a crooked grin on his face as he spoke and something inside Dany snapped. He lunged for the man, grabbing anything he could, jersey, mask, gear. He could hear himself swearing as he did and he felt the hands around him that tried to hold him back. Vokoun looked scared and it mades Dany want to hurt him all the more. The refs screamed at him as they pried his fingers off of the goaltender, twisting until his knuckles popped and he finally let go.
After they tossed him from the game, he’s numb. He inhaled, exhaled, looked at the clock. He didn’t feel better afterwards.
Dany can’t extricate himself from his head, his fist tightening more about around the bag as he flashes back through the memory. He feels himself nodding along to nothing. He misses Russia; Ilya and Slava were close enough but far away there and it was safe. He doesn’t feel that way anymore, especially not with Atlanta hanging over him like a nightmare he can’t shake off, can’t wake up from.
The voice in his head speaks up again; you should be in jail, Dany. He wonders if this might not be the last time he hears mention of it on the ice. His stomach lurches.
Dany grabs for his cellphone, ignoring the missed call from his father and searches for the name he wants. He should be in jail. His knees buckle and he hears the clank of the medal in his bag as it drops to the floor.
Slava answers on the second ring, but when the first thing out of Dany’s mouth is ‘what if’, Kozlov shushes him.
“No, Dany. Don’t do that.”
May 18th, 2005
Vienna, Austria
The waiting is the hard part, Dany thinks. His Superleague season is long over, the World Championships are behind him, and he will be the first to admit that his showing in each was poor by the kindest stretch of the word.
He heard the talk of his coordination, dedication; whether or not he’d ever be the player he was before. Everyone says ‘before’ in the abstract, like they’re afraid to pinpoint one moment. Before his accident; before his eye got fucked.
But he doesn’t want to go home to prove them wrong. Home, wherever that is. It doesn’t feel like Atlanta anymore. It doesn’t feel like Russia or Austria, or even Calgary after all this time.
His hotel room is still littered with clothing from his suitcase, but his silver medal hasn’t moved from the bottom of his gym bag. He’s dragging his feet about leaving, already booked the room for another week, long after all of his teammates and opponents have headed back to wherever they call home.
He feels as though he’s entered into a different world in Europe, with the New Dany. The new face, the constantly changing scenery; he’s never stuck in one place long enough to get tied down by the commitment. This Dany has no home, no responsibilities. He isn’t recognized as anything but another warm body by the boys here and it’s easy to come and go.
He has to constantly remind himself all of the things he’ll miss if he stays and it’s ultimately the only reason that he’s sure he won’t.
His parents, his brother. Michael. Hockey.
He has to go back, but it is with a sudden, life-changing realization, when he thinks about how easy it was to leave Switzerland and for Russia, that it becomes clear it doesn’t have to be to Atlanta.
It takes all of the courage he has in his entire being to make the call to the people he’d needs to explain this to most of all and he does it before he can second guess himself. He feels guilty, unbelievably and unforgivably guilty as the tinny noise fills his ears.
The answering machine picks up after the seventh ring. He holds his breath as he waits and counts. They’ve had the same message for years and Dany knows it by heart now.
“Hello, you have reached Graham,” the voice is rich and as familiar to him as his own father.
There is a shuffling as the phone is handed off, “Lu Anne!” She’s cheery and breathless, like they’ve been recording this over and over, trying to get it perfectly. Pause.
“Jake!” Pause. Dany holds his breath as his heart thunders in his chest.
“Dan!” Everything in the world stops. Except for the fact that it doesn’t.
“And Erika Snyder! We’re not home right now, but if you leave a message! We’ll call you right back when we can.”
They all shout ‘goodbye’ in unison and Dany’s throat closes up. He can’t speak, not even after the beep sounds, harsh in his drumming ears. His mouth opens and he wants to say something, anything.
But, his hand slams down the phone before he can.
October 5th, 2003
Atlanta, GA
His parents had bowed out of the room, leaving him a private moment with Lu Anne that scares him to the core the second they’re alone.
He wants to apologize again but he’s already spent what feels like hours crying those words into her blouse and her protestations are starting to wash right over him. There aren’t enough sorrys in the world to change the past and he’s starting to realize this all over again.
“All that I ask,” she starts carefully, her voice coarse with her own stifled sobs, “is that you don’t let this destroy you.”
He wants to laugh at that idea, how absurd it seems, his life going on after this with any semblance of normalcy, but the genuineness of her face is enough to make him consider her words.
“You can’t let this be the end for you, Dany. It’s not what Dan would have wanted, and it’s not what we want either. I want you to promise me that, please. That you won’t stop playing.”
He touches his shredded knee without thinking, well aware that there were more than just physical reasons he might not come back to hockey this season. Or ever. He scoffs aloud.
“I mean it, Daniel,” she’s practically scolding him. “There’s no sense in ending two careers.” She doesn’t say it with any bitterness, not a single undertone of resentment or anger and that is what breaks him down.
“I promise.” His voice sounds like his larynx has been raked over coals and his mouth feels dry and thick, but he means the words he says. If she can stand to hold his hand after all he’s done, he can make this promise.
August 9th, 2005
Vancouver, BC
Dany waits until Michael is in the shower to call. He’s forced it to be inevitable at this point; he’d taken a bath selling his Buckhead house over the summer, furnished no less, though he was grateful it was gone either way. He’s been setting the stones for this since that May night in Vienna.
Maybe the organization has already read the writing on the wall; everything Dany owned was in a storage shed on his parent’s property in Calgary and he’d been practically squatting at Michael’s for weeks, avoiding his teammates and management.
He’d needed the company and companionship, and Michael had helped him rehearse what to say when the time came to let Atlanta know what he wanted. They practiced the right words, the proper approach, assuring everything would work out in an agreeable way.
Dany’s fingers dial Don Waddell’s number by heart; he’s been staring at it for hours this summer, working up the courage to call. Don answers on the second ring and every bit of preparation is suddenly for naught when he hears the paternal sigh of his own name as a greeting.
“I can’t come back there. To Atlanta.” It’s out of him in a rush and his stomach knots; he’s embarrassed when he starts to cry. “Please, I can’t go back.”
Don inhales sharply. “Oh, my son.”
And Dany loses what composure he had left.
August 23rd, 2005
Kelowna, BC
The call comes at nearly midnight on Michael’s twenty-fourth birthday, two days after he’d moved out of graduate housing at UBCO in into his own place. Dany’s cell buzzes on the nightstand as the two lay curled together in an afterglow, celebrating two momentous occasions at once.
Dany sits up instantly when he reads the name and Michael moves away from him subtlety when his tone drops into something serious.
He listens best he can though his brain is running a mile a minute as he tries to keep up with Waddell. He hears himself utter several dozen terse thank yous and he keeps saying ‘sir’ after almost everything. Finally, the conversation is over and hangs up, left to wonder what he thinks about this, sifting through the muddled feelings that overwhelm him.
“They traded me.”
Michael looks at him with wide eyes, the icy blue nearly glowing in the dim light.
“Oh?” Dany can tell he’s trying not to sound hopeful or disappointed, his eyes flickering to read Dany’s own expression. “That was fast.”
Neither of them moves closer to the other, but Michael sits up taller and folds his hands carefully.
“To Ottawa,” Dany whispers in the quiet dark, answering the question Michael didn’t ask. He bows his head and watches as the other man’s fingers twist together.
“That’s good?” He’s treading painfully lightly. “It’s Canada,” he offers. “And closer to your parents.”
“And you.”
“Yeah.” Michael inhales sharply. “Are you happy?”
Dany chances a glance toward the other man, the longing question on his face. There’s not a doubt in his mind that Michael wants nothing but the best for him, but to see it so openly in the man’s expression takes his breath away.
“I’m very happy.” The smile breaks over his face and he couldn’t hold it back now if he tried. His arms wrap around Michael and he feels like a page has turned. The familiar dark presence in his mind speaks up again after so long that maybe a change in scenery is all he needs to start putting everything in the past. Maybe this time. Maybe now.
This he does not tell Michael.
September 9th, 2005
Ottawa, ON
Dany’s new apartment is sterilely white. The walls and the kitchen and the bathroom tiles. It reminded him of a blank canvas the moment he walked in the door and he’d signed the lease almost immediately.
Michael had commented on it when he was helping Dany move in, wondered aloud if he’d thought about painting the place, adding some color. Dany said he would consider it, but something about painting made it seem too permanent too quickly.
It had taken two weeks for the two of them to unpack all of Dany’s things but the time alone together was invaluable before the NHL season started up again.
They’d already christened the bed several times since the first night, but the first time after all of the packing is finished feels like the most culminating.
Dany is ready for his new season, his new team, but he’s not ready to give up Michael. His second year of graduate school at UBCO would be starting at the same time as Dany’s season and visits would once again be sparse.
The comforter pools around their waists and Dany shivers, choosing to curl up tighter against Michael’s side rather than use the blanket. He had been so good about being on his own in Europe, it felt natural; he’d needed the break from everything and everyone. Dany feels the sting of tears behind his eyes as he thinks about what it will be like his first night alone in this apartment, if he’ll be able to do it. Being here, back in the NHL, back in Canada, was different; it was too much like going home. Home without the most important parts of himself.
Michael’s arms wrap tighter around him and his breathing has almost evened out entirely when a knot of insecurity inside Dany tightens without warning.
“Why do you love me?”
“M’sorry?” He still sounds groggy.
“Why do you love me, Michael? I don’t understand why.”
“Dany,” Michael sounds defeated and Dany hates himself for ever asking, but he can’t rest now without an answer.
“Please tell me.”
“I don’t even know where to begin, Dany.”
“Would you ever lie to me?”
Pause. “Never to hurt you.” Dany is surprised that this confession is actually comforting.
“Then just tell me.”
He rests his head on Michael’s shoulder and listens to his heartbeat through the thin skin. There’s a rumble that begins in Michael’s chest before he even speaks and it reminds Dany of a cat purring.
“I love you because your laugh is infectious, because you always want to be better. I love you because you are strong, and you are thoughtful. Because you always remind me of things that I’ve forgotten, like my damned car keys. Because you look out for me.”
Michael twists one of Dany’s curls around his finger absently, shaping it into a perfect spiral. His hair is shorter now than it was, and even when it pulls just a bit too hard on his scalp, Dany doesn’t say a word.
“I love you because you have freckles on your neck and, like, nowhere else, and because your ass is just, un-fucking-real.” Dany smiles despite himself, the moisture in his eyes threatening to spill. “An’ ‘cause you aren’t afraid to tell me when I’m being difficult, and you let me get close to you even when you don’t want me to.
“I love you because you are beautiful to watch out on the ice; the way you move and the way you dedicate yourself. And because your eyes don’t match anymore, and you ruin almost every picture we take when the flash goes off,” Michael’s voice is wavering with a stifled laugh, but Dany can hear that he’s trying not to cry as well.
“Because you swear like a sailor and you can’t hold your liquor even though you pretend that you can. Because you never get lost and you always order the best dish on the menu no matter what restaurant we happen to go to, even if we’ve never been there before.
“I love you because you’re ferociously Canadian and because you call your mom every week without her ever having to remind you. I love you because you aren’t afraid to be scared and because you let me see you cry. I love you because you only let me inside of you, in more ways than one. I love you because you are a good person, and because you love me.”
Only twenty more days, his stomach churns despite Michael’s words. He’s not a good person.
When Dany cracks, he tends to crumble and Michael must feel it coming because the hand in his hair falls away and both arms wrap around him tightly again.
“Do you--,” Dany’s chest tightens and he coughs. “Do you think I’ll ever be forgiven?”
“Oh, Dany.” Michael sounds pathetically small and it makes Dany ache to think he’s hurting those around him just by being in their lives. Only twenty more days.
“Lie to me if you have to,” the wet tracks down his cheeks bleed onto Michael’s bare chest and Dany doesn’t mean to cry all over his boyfriend, he really doesn’t. He just needs to hear someone say it; give him a good answer, even if they don’t mean it. Through all the bullshit, Dany is sure he’d be able to hear the truth anyhow, whether or not Michael chose to lie.
“I don’t need to lie, my love. You’ve already been forgiven.”
“I don’t mean by,” he huffs like an impatient child when the words escape him. The ones he does have seem remarkably stupid and inconsequential.
“You mean forgiven by yourself.” It’s not a question and Dany bites his lip. That’s really only the half of it.
“Or maybe. I don’t know,” he trails off again. For the millionth time in his life, he has the question but is scared of the answer. He traces numbers in digits on Michael’s belly, and then he switches to longhand when Michael still hasn’t finished his sentence for him. Fifteen, thirty-seven, nine-twenty-nine. Not this time; this silence is his to fill.
He sucks in more air than his lungs can fit and it burns in his chest until he finally lets go. Dany closes his eyes against the ragged hitches of his own voice. “D’you think Dan forgives me?”
The moment that he finds he remembers the most is when he laces his skates before a game. His mind tends to wander as his fingers work to complete a task he’s done so many times in his life it’s become like blinking.
But it’s when he closes his eyes and breathes in the sweat and the deodorizer and the cold, he wonders if this is what Dan would have wanted. If he would have expected Dany to play again. To play for the both of them, earn twice the accolades.
Like lacing his skates, there are things that Dany doesn’t need to be reminded of to know implicitly. His home phone number from when he was little. How to brace himself along the boards when he fights for a puck. His brother’s laugh and the taste of his father’s barbeque ribs. The sound Michael makes when he’s dreaming about something scary. And how to carry the weight of two men.
But, he is always afraid that just because he doesn’t like to remember, everyone assumes he wants to forget.
“Michael,” it’s on his lips like a plea and the ache in his chest grows deeper. The man still hasn’t answered him.
Only twenty more days.
November 13th, 2005
Ottawa, ON
Dany wakes up alone, shaking and sweating in the middle of the night, though the sweat might be tears, he can’t ever be sure.
He grabs for his phone, like he always seems to do, his lifeline to the rest of the world, and dials a number by heart. Sometimes he waits for an answer, but sometimes he hangs up before the other phone can even ring. No missed calls, no evidence.
Tonight, he waits and waits and waits and only has time to wonder what time it might be, since he never looks at the clock on nights like these, before the ringing ends and heavy, sedated breathing ignites a strange fight or flight surge of adrenaline.
Swerve, brake, brace for impact.
“‘Allo?” The voice is exhausted, tinged with annoyance and Dany wants to feel guilty that he woke him up.
“D’you ever still think of him?” He bites his lip and waits for the answer. Nothing else needs to be said.
“All the time, Dany,” Ilya rasps over the line. There’s a guilt in the other man’s voice, but it’s nothing like what he can hear in his own. Even still, it’s comforting sometimes to hear; he’s not the only one that really, truly remembers.
December 26, 2005
Ottawa, ON
All Michael had told Dany he wanted for Christmas was one of his jerseys. “The real kind,” he’d put his hands on his hips and pursed his lips in mock-attitude. Dany had laughed and promised him one.
He’d opened it first thing Christmas morning and refused to take it off the whole day. Except once.
“I like seeing your name on me,” his voice was gravely and his eyes half-lidded. They’d taken it off for that, but Michael had thrown it right back on again afterwards.
Dany had also given him a lower bowl ticket to the game against the Rangers. Michael didn’t go to games often, maybe twice a year. He said they made him nervous, and after a few instances of seeing Dany hit in the shield or shin, even dragging him out to one game was a battle of constant reassurances.
However, tonight Michael had gone with little fight and Dany watches him from the corner of his eye all through warm-ups and the anthems, smiling to himself whenever he catches Michael looking back. The prideful grin on the man’s face is enough to make Dany blush every time.
There are a lot of Heatley jerseys in Scotiabank Place, but none of them stand out more to Dany than Michael’s when he searches the standing crowd after scoring the first goal of the game, a little over two minutes in on the power play.
He points to him and winks, playing it off to Chara when he asks about it as mere flirtation for the fans.
Dany likes seeing his name on Michael, too.
October 5th, 2003
Atlanta, GA
Dany curls up on his side on the hospital bed. He’s not small enough to fit yet, though he tries his best. His mother sits beside him; her head leaning on his bed. He can tell she’s asleep without even looking at her.
He hasn’t slept since Lu Anne and his mother came to tell him about Dan, too afraid to close his eyes. The delirium hasn’t quite taken over yet, though he doesn’t know how long it’s really been since Lu Anne left, and maybe he’s asleep right now.
The door to his room cracks open, a sliver of the hallway light seeping into the uneasy glow in his hospital room. Dany hates nights in the hospital, when the lights turn down and visitors are only outlines until they’re all the way inside. Any one of these shadows could be coming to tell him worse news. The unknown is scarier to Dany than anything else.
The door shuts but the figure stays, hand hovering on the knob.
Dany doesn’t try to speak first, and his mother doesn’t wake up to speak for him. His vision readjusts to the dimness and he locks eyes with Ilya, looking scared and perched to run.
They both breathe heavily, in sync. The Russian’s mouth is squeezed into a tight line and his eyes are puffy and red. His throat moves like he wants to speak but he keeps quiet. Dany is fairly certain moments like these call for English outside Ilya’s comprehension anyway.
The rhythmic breathing slows his heart rate and makes his eyes droop. He doesn’t exactly feel safe, but he’s not quite scared.
Ilya tips his head in a silent nod and pauses a beat before slipping back out of the room as quietly as he’d come. Dany closes his eyes, his hand still entwined with his mother’s, and he sleeps until morning.
January 2nd, 2006
Atlanta, GA
Dany isn’t sure what he’s expecting his first game back in Atlanta as a Senator. Nothing feels safe here, nothing is as familiar as it should be. He’s already anxious to get back to Ottawa the moment the plane touches down.
He knew that there would be a busy media scrum and tons of questions, all the unwanted reminders and triggers he’d wanted to leave behind in the first place. There’s still just no preparation for what it sounds like in his head the moment he sees Phillips looming in the distance.
By puck drop, just being in the building is churning his stomach. His eyes keep shooting to the home team tunnel; he knows exactly what’s down there. Dany wonders if the stall is still exactly the same. If he were a bigger man, he thinks, he would have thought to ask, or to go look for himself, at the very least to pay respects. But he’s not a bigger man; he’s just Dany, he’s a coward.
Every time he so much as touches the puck the building seems to shake with booing. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting being back here, but it certainly wasn’t this. He tries to play like he can’t hear it, the whole team does, but they’re down three goals by the end of the first and Dany can’t help but feel like he deserves this. He deserves every fucking bit of this anger and hatred and when it’s all over, it still won’t be enough.
The worst part, he knows, that he can’t tell why they’re doing this. If it’s the trade or. Maybe it’s because of Dan. He stomach drops to his knees and stays there. They’d never really forgiven him at all, had they? He spends the first intermission in the bathroom throwing up. No one comes to check on him.
He scores in the third, though he’s not really even trying anymore, having checked out mentally somewhere around the two-minute mark of the opening period. When the boos rain down on him as his name is announced, it takes all that he has not to stand up and scream at the fans that they can do better. Their worst is still not enough.
The Senators lose 8-3 and Dany spends the rest of the night lying in bed in his hotel room, thinking about those outraged voices, screaming.
There is a beauty to their rage, he reasons. They’re trying to voice a betrayal he can’t even begin to understand. At the same time, it’s not likely anyone in that arena understands him either. The sounds of the voices lull him into a semi-sleep as he promises not to allow himself to forget what that felt like. To be hated.
July 9th, 2006
Kelowna, BC
Michael’s townhouse is starting to look like Dany actually lives there year round and not just like he’s here about a month and a half in the summer. He’s got some gear piled in the living room that he uses for shinny games at the local rink, more clothes than he’s got at his parent’s house in Calgary, and Michael. It’s perfect.
“I should move out here, too,” Dany says on a whim as the two of them walk around the edges of Okanagan Lake, barefoot in the gravely shoreline.
“Yeah?” He can tell Michael doesn’t quite believe him.
“Shouldn’t I? I mean, you’re here; I got a lot of my shit here. It kinda makes sense in the long run, too. Invest in some property or something.” His father is into him doing that sort of thing but he can tell by Michael’s laugh that the man isn’t buying the idea as Dany’s own.
“If you really wanted to, I guess you could. I just figure the place would sit empty for most of the year anyhow. Not really a point in that.”
“You could live there if you wanted, keep it up while I’m gone.”
“M’not really sure I like that plan. It’s kinda far from work and school.” It’s not, Dany knows it’s actually particularly close to both, more so even than Michael’s townhouse. “And a waste of money, really, if it’s just going to get used for a little while.”
“I can afford it you know.” Dany tries not to sound hurt, even if he is, but he still knows that’s the wrong argument to make the second Michael stops short in his tracks.
“Fuck off, Dany, I know you can. I just don’t see the point. Living with you when you aren’t even there ten months of the year.” There’s an edge to his voice that makes Dany cringe.
“Fine. Forget I mentioned it then. Maybe I’ll just get it for me.”
“Go ahead.”
They walk in silence back to the car, both too stubborn to apologize first.
September 29th, 2006
Ottawa, ON
He lets all of his calls go to voicemail for a few hours before he finally just shuts his phone off. Let everyone be mad at him later for worrying them; right now he doesn’t need their sympathy.
He feels stupid for ever allowing himself to think that coming here would end up being different than going to Switzerland or Russia. It’s all the fucking same in the end.
Nothing has changed for him. Not now. Not ever. He feels an incapacitating guilt for even trying.
April 21st, 2007
Ottawa, ON
This is the farthest he’s ever been in his career. Everything he’s ever played for is just four wins away and he can taste the victory before their opponent is even decided. He can taste the failure, too, but that bitterness churning in his gut is familiar enough that he is able to look past it. He wants this. He’s dreamed about this since the day he first held a hockey stick.
Dany convinces himself that even at his lowest, the chance to be where he is now is what keeps him coming back. If not for this, then why?
But it always seems to be events like these that bring the dark voice back; at least the pattern is recognizable. Maybe if just the right amount could change, just the right combination of events. Maybe, if he wins, he will be able to move past this.
For the sake of optimism, he lies. He tells himself that he’s too busy to pay attention to the false hopes this time around, and instead of listening, he shuts it all off.
Everything becomes about the game. Every waking moment he has he’s watching old footage or skating or shooting or in the gym. He sketches out ideas for odd-man rushes on napkins.
He allows all his calls to go to voicemail for days and swears that he will be nothing but hockey. He will win.
June 8th 2007
Kelowna, BC
He’s in a fucking haze, that’s the only way to describe it. Autopilot in full force as he walks around in his suit and sunglasses and tries to make himself look just another guy here to watch the graduation ceremonies and not like two days ago he lost the biggest prize in his career to the Anaheim Ducks.
The rest of the team is in Ottawa, cleaning out their lockers and facing the brutal full-frontal assault from the press and he’s here, in Kelowna, watching Michael graduate with his Master of Education. He’d managed to get clearance to go from the team management by selling Michael as a cousin. Everyone seemed too weary to question him and Dany was grateful for that.
Though he’d be lying if he said this is where he would rather be. He’s a million miles removed from the convocation ceremony and every word from the stage washes right over him.
He feels guilty for not caring as the names are read, one after the other, lulling him into an anesthetized trance.
He wants to get out of here, get away from all these people. He had ended up buying the lake house on Okanagan, but, as Michael had suspected, it did sit empty for most of the year.
Now that he was back, even if only for the graduation as he still needed to clean out his locker and attend to some final business in Ottawa, it seemed the perfect escape, a way to put the Cup Finals behind him. He is itching to get to it as the hours drag endlessly on.
He claps for Michael’s name, and his smile in that moment is genuine, but he refuses to stay for the celebrations afterwards, slipping away quietly after giving Michael a platonic hug goodbye.
He’ll be himself again by the time he’s back for the summer for good, just not yet. He hopes Michael understands.
October 2nd, 2003
Atlanta, GA
Dan is back in surgery for the second time when Dany’s parents finally arrive from the airport. His mother holds him, whispers ‘Ich liebe dich’ in his ear and ‘We’re so lucky.’ She kisses his temple.
Dany doesn’t feel lucky. He doesn’t feel anything at all but shooting pain and cold, and it’s still not enough to make him feel human anymore.
January 20th, 2008
Ottawa, ON
Sitting out of games just reminds him, he finds out very early on in his injury. His arm is in a sling to keep his shoulder still and it’s the immobility that really kills him. He tries to keep it together for the sake of those around him, but there’s only so much he can really hide from those that know him best.
His mother flies out to keep him company for a while, but after five days of playing nurse to more than just his physical aches and pains, affairs at home in Calgary have her flying back. Dany wants to go with her but the team doctors are strict about his care and the most time he’d be able to get would be a day. It’s not worth it in the end.
Michael takes a week off from teaching to come help him once his mother is gone and Dany can see in his face that he senses something the moment he walks in to the apartment.
“Have you been eating? Dany, your face looks so thin!” He’s not in the mood for this, no matter what place the worry comes from.
“Fuck, Mike, I just went through this with Mom. Not you, too.”
“Well have you?”
“No, not actually,” he tries to sound bored and exasperated but the concern in Michael’s voice has him near tears. He’s been emotionally frayed since he first separated his shoulder, the doctors’ visits and sedentariness bringing him back to a time in Atlanta that would never really be behind him.
“Dany, Jesus!” The anger in Michael’s voice is visibly out of fear but it doesn’t help the situation at all.
“What? What do you want me to say? You want me to let you just walk in the door and start busting my ass? Like I don’t have enough people all over me about this fucking constantly, the last person that I want to hear it from is you! I didn’t ask you to come, you know!” It explodes out of him in a surprising burst of rage and if he didn’t hurt so fucking badly, he’d be forcing Michael back out the door.
“Actually, you did.”
“Well, I didn’t think you would.” Dany spits back as harshly as he can.
He barely recognizes this side of himself and he can tell by the look on Michael’s face that the other man is struggling with the same thoughts. He only gets like this when he has too much time to think.
They stand facing one another in the living room for a long while; Dany’s erratic breathing the only real sound in the room save the ticking of the wall clock.
Michael inhales sharply. “Tell me why you’re upset.” There are no accusations in his words, just a quiet trepidation.
And that’s all it takes before Dany’s anger is melting into something more like grief, the tears spilling down his cheeks before he can even register the switch.
“What good am I? If I’m not out there with my team, what good am I?”
“Dany! You’re plenty-,”
“No! I promised them!”
“They can’t make you promise things like that.”
“I’m not talking about the team!” His thoughts are moving faster than his mouth. “I promised them I would keep playing for him and if I’m not out there, then,” he wipes his eyes furiously. “It’s my only fucking purpose and goddamnit, without playing I’m just…” a coward. He can’t bring himself to say it, but his silence voices more than he could ever find the words.
Michael knows exactly who ‘they’ are and who ‘he’ is and it shows in the softening features of his face.
“That’s not a healthy way to look at this, you know that.”
“No, I don’t! What’s wrong with that exactly?”
“Because, you can’t play forever. What if, God forbid, you get hurt worse than this one day? Or what about when you retire?”
The thought isn’t unfamiliar territory to Dany, and he has spent more than a few nights staring at the ceiling thinking about that inevitable day. He believes he’s got it pretty well figured out, to be honest, what he’ll do when he’s done being useful, when he can’t keep his promise anymore.
Though, for now, he sighs instead of responding as the best answer he has is one no one is ready to hear. That is a problem for another day.
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