Chapter Ten

January

In the morning, Ryan woke up to the sound of Eric moving around in the kitchen and, specifically, the sound of a teakettle whistling. He sat up in the crumpled sheets and blankets and thought, briefly, about what they'd done yesterday. He felt embarrassed for approximately five seconds before curiosity drove him out of bed and into the apartment's living area.

Eric was doing something complicated with the kettle and what looked like a glass vase of some kind, ringed by a wooden clasp where the neck narrowed. He was wearing only his boxers and Ryan took a second to admire the way he looked, the shift of muscle in the long line of his back.

Eric glanced over his shoulder when he heard Ryan come into the kitchen. "Morning, lazy."

"Lazy?" Ryan demanded, glancing at the clock. It said 5:00 a.m. "I'll have you know that I'm planning to go for a run in a minute."

"After last night?" Eric asked, his eyebrows raised above the line of his glasses. "Clearly, I need to fuck you harder next time. Also. Maybe put some pants on before you go."

Ryan looked down at his naked body and shrugged. He managed to resist the urge to press his fingers against the bruised imprints Eric's teeth had left behind, but it was a close one. It wouldn't have done to inflate Eric's head further, especially when he was clearly still smirking about how intensely he'd upended Ryan's world last night. Instead, Ryan looked suspiciously at the glass vase and asked, "What are you doing?"

"I'm making you some decent fucking coffee for once," Eric said. He was pouring the kettle over the wide mouth of the vase, a little bit at a time, and waiting before pouring again. Ryan, who had never had that kind of patience for anything in his life that didn't involve hockey, stared. "With the good shit and my Chemex."

"Oh..." Ryan said, doubtfully. "You know I'm not gonna be able to taste the difference, Eric."

"That's just because you've never tried it. You're so used to drinking sugar milk, of course you won't be able to taste the difference. But I'm going to make you the best coffee and you're going to try and it and I'm going to train you to like it."

Ryan stared at him. "Eric...buddy...the thought is a nice one. But there's a reason I like my coffee the way I like it. It's what I grew up with."

"Come on," Eric said. His voice had that coaxing edge that it had had when they were fucking around yesterday, when he'd murmured, It's okay if you want it. Ryan could feel himself getting a little hard, remembering, and Eric laughed when he noticed. "You'll like it, Ryan, I promise."

"If I don't like it?"

"I'll buy you Dunkin' Donuts coffee every day for a week."

"Isn't that against your moral code?"

"Yes," Eric said, and his eyebrows rose above his glasses again. "So that's how you know I'm serious about this coffee. It's Ethiopian and it has notes of milk chocolate, Concord grape and cherry."

Ryan, who had never been able to taste anything except coffee when drinking coffee, looked doubtfully at the Chemex. "Can I put sugar in it?"

"No."

"Milk?"

"No!"

He watched Eric pouring the mug of coffee for him with a small amount of trepidation. The fact that Eric cared enough to do this was, weirdly, the thing that stuck with him. Ryan knew he wasn't going to like the coffee. He already knew he wasn't going to be able to taste chocolate or grape or cherry or whatever it was that Eric was going on about. Ryan hadn't even tried drinking black coffee in decades, and there was a reason for it.

But Eric cared about coffee, and he had enough space in his morning to try to make sure that Ryan cared about it, too. Ryan realized, with a sinking feeling, that he was enough of a fool to actually drink this shit.

Eric held out the mug to him, and the hopeful look was out of character for him. Ryan took a deep breath and blew on the hot coffee until some of the steam rising had cleared away, and took one small, careful sip. It was still hot enough to burn the first layer off of his tongue, but even then, it tasted like black coffee. It wasn't as bitter as some coffee he'd had; he'd have to give Eric that. But it still tasted like—well, bitter bean water.

Eric was still watching him.

"Take one of your little pictures, it'll last longer."

Eric just looked at him, one eyebrow raised.

"Sorry," Ryan said, "it just tastes like coffee to me."

"Try some more," Eric said, crowding forward so that he trapped Ryan against the counter, without much space to escape unless he scooted sideways.

"Oh, is this a threat now?"

"Yes," Eric said, his arms bracketing Ryan in.

Careful not to spill the mug of coffee between them, Ryan went up on the tips of his toes to press his mouth against Eric's, morning coffee breath and all. For a second Eric resisted, like he was going to keep arguing, but then his body relaxed into the kiss and his hand came up to take the mug away from Ryan and set it on the counter behind them. That was all the cue Ryan needed to grab the sides of Eric's face with his hands, half an attempt at distracting him from making Ryan drink the rest of the coffee, half just eager, as always, to touch him.

"I thought you said you were going for a run," Eric mumbled into Ryan's mouth.

"I am. You just have to let go of me."

"Hmm," Eric said. He didn't let go.

Ryan's back dug uncomfortably against the edge of the kitchen counter, but somehow, his inclination wasn't to try to push free. It was nice, being in the kitchen in the morning together, even with the shitty coffee a constant threat behind him. It was nice, to have Eric's hands teasing him and Eric's breath hot against the shell of his ear.

It was—nice.

"I can cut it a little short," Ryan said breathlessly, and Eric laughed and replied, "You're always a little short."

"I'm going to kick your fucking ass at practice, you know that, right?"

"Can't wait," Eric said, and then Ryan wasn't thinking about the coffee or the practice anymore.

Eric was the kind of guy who didn't trust it when all of the parts of his life seemed to be going well. He wasn't the kind of person whose life worked out like that, not without more strife and struggle. His mom was in good health as far as he could tell. The team was still in its holding pattern of playing a decent game offset by a real fucking stinker, which was frustrating, but was about as good as he could expect given the quality of the roster. And things with Ryan had been—

The thing was that Eric didn't even know how to describe the situation with Ryan. They hadn't ever really talked about what they were doing and Eric, to his immense confusion, couldn't bring himself to ask. Forty-two years of bluntly saying whatever the hell he wanted to whoever the hell he wanted to say it to hadn't prepared him for the experience of waking up in the morning next to a short-as-fuck hockey savant from Boston and wanting nothing more than to tease a stupid smile out of him.

Every morning when he talked to his mother and she tried and failed to set him up with various women in her huge extended circle of acquaintances, he thought about telling her that he was seeing someone. That he was seeing a man, specifically. That he was seeing a divorced goy without children. And then, of course, the words froze on his tongue. He couldn't tell his mother about Ryan any more than he could ask Ryan to define what the hell they were doing.

It was fine. It was all fine. Everything was working, everything was running smoothly, he just couldn't actually put definitions or limits or labels on anything. And that was fine, too, because for the first time in a very long time, he was able to actually enjoy something sort of like a relationship.

He was able to enjoy shit like looking at Ryan's body for days following the role-playing incident and seeing the physical marks that he'd left behind. The signs that Ryan was his, even if he wasn't able to actually say it.

The kind of marks that had caused some raised eyebrows in the locker room before and after practice, but no one had been willing to say shit to Ryan about them. Eric had just looked at them instead, willing himself not to get hard thinking about it, knowing he could go back to his apartment and press them later, make Ryan squirm and sigh and demand whatever he wanted out of Eric instead.

The kind of marks that were still there almost a week later, although they were faded to the purple-yellow stage of bruising that meant they'd soon be gone, and Eric pressed his fingers against them in the shower that morning while Ryan looked at him reproachfully.

"They're almost gone, Eric, you've made your point."

"Should I make it again?" Eric asked, only half joking.

"No," Ryan said, severely, "I don't want more bruises this week. Murph's visiting with the kids today and it's already pretty ridiculous that I look like this."

"He is?" Eric tried to remember if Ryan had mentioned the visit before but came up blank. "I don't think you said anything about it."

"We'd been talking about it for a while," Ryan said, squinting against the spray of the shower. He still had fluffy soap bubbles clinging to his body, and Eric ran his finger through the ones on his chest, just to watch him shudder. "And he had some free time with their schedule and a school in-service day, so I told him to just come up."

"So I'll get to meet the famous Murph?" Eric asked. It was half-teasing but half...he didn't even know. There was really no reason he should feel the way that he did about it. There was really no reason he shouldn't even be able to describe the way he felt about it.

"Of course," Ryan said, like he was surprised Eric would even ask. "I told them to come to practice. And that we could all go out for dinner later on, if they wanted."

"Wait, we?"

"Of course you're invited, too," Ryan said impatiently, pushing him out of the stream of water so he could rinse himself off. "And Petey and Heidi and her wife, if they want to come."

"Uh...huh," Eric said. It took him a second to try to wrap his head around everything that was going on here. "Well. That should be interesting."

"Behave yourself," Ryan said severely, frowning up at Eric. He looked about as threatening as a naked man in the shower could look, but he also looked a bit like a drowned kitten. Eric resisted the urge to ruffle his wet hair. "Murph's one of my oldest and best friends, and I want to...make a good impression. With the team, with practice, with everything."

"I'll be on my best behavior. Promise," Eric said, and the smile Ryan gave him was both blinding and exactly the kind of evidence that Eric was in fucking trouble. He let Ryan lean up to kiss him, let himself forget, with the heat of that kiss, exactly how much of a disaster this had the potential to become. Exactly why he was the kind of guy who shouldn't have trusted when it seemed like things had been too easy.

He felt ill at ease on the way into the practice facility for morning skate. They still left separately and arrived separately, and for the first time, it really hit him what that meant. As Eric was getting changed to head out onto the ice, he heard the commotion that indicated that not only had Murphy arrived, but his children as well.

Eric took a deep breath and turned around to face the music.

When he'd been playing, Sean Murphy wasn't the kind of player that he spent a lot of time thinking about. Sure, he had been a superstar in his own right, he was the captain of the Desperadoes, and he was a threat every time he stepped on the ice. But personally, beyond the stupid chirping that Eric had directed at anyone he squared off against, he hadn't spared one single thought regarding him.

It turned out that, years later and up close, Murphy was still a big guy. He was a little taller than Eric and even though he'd gone to seed a bit, he was still just as burly as he'd been during their playing days, and he looked... Well, the only way to describe him was that he looked like a guy from Boston. Like a guy who'd be an extra in the background of some Martin Scorsese flick about Boston cops and mobsters, or maybe an extra in a Dropkick Murphys video. He had a shock of red hair that was only partially gray, a face that was more freckle than it wasn't and a smile as wide as the Charles.

He grabbed Ryan in a bear hug that lifted him right off his feet, hooting an incoherent greeting of joy and excitement, and Ryan was hugging him back, his fists pounding against Murphy's shoulder blades as he yelled, "It's been too fucking long, brother," and Murphy said into his shoulder, " Too fucking long."

Eric hung back while Ryan and Murphy yelled excitedly at each other, occasionally pausing so that they could hug again, and he shook his head: it was like being around Murphy emphasized Ryan's accent tenfold. It was a reminder that they both came from the same place and that Eric didn't belong there at all.

The rest of the team and the coaching staff were all hanging around, watching, and Petey shot a sideways glance at him. "Ol' Murph's really larger than life, isn't he?"

"You can say that again," Eric agreed.

By that time, Ryan had grabbed Murphy by the bicep and dragged him over. Eric already felt snappish and on edge, like he'd rather just pick a fight with Murphy and get it over with than wait for anything else to happen. But Ryan was smiling so widely and so fucking happily that Eric bit his tongue and let him talk. "Murph, this is my coaching staff—Heids, Petey and Eric."

Murphy turned a somewhat suspicious green gaze on him when Ryan said Eric , like he was expecting something different from what he was actually seeing. "It's nice to meet you," he boomed. "Mason and Sophia are waiting out in the hallway since Sully said everyone was still changing, but I couldn't wait."

"It's really fucking good to have you here, buddy," Ryan was saying, still hanging on to Murphy's arm like he couldn't believe he was real. "I'm excited as hell to show you everything we've worked toward over the last half a year or so. The staff is just one of those things. We've finally got it clicking."

"Must be nice to be the one in charge, finally," Murphy said, his eyes dancing. "All of those years we had to bite our tongues, eh? And now you're the head coach."

"It's a collaborative process," Ryan was saying, shaking his head. He'd finally let go of Murphy's arm, and he was smiling at Eric instead. He must not have realized he was doing it, but his fingers rubbed at the bruise Eric had left on his neck, getting some kind of subliminal comfort out of pressing against it. "Some of us got off to a bit of a rough start, but we're all on the same page now, and it's been really—really nice to work with these guys."

"And you," Murphy said, turning to look Eric over with more attention. His glance flicked from Ryan's neck and back. " You've come a long way since the biting days, huh?"

"The biting days were because I didn't appreciate being called a fucking kike, Murphy," Eric said shortly.

The abrupt silence after he said it was awkward and felt like it went on a long time, until Ryan took a deep breath and said, "Murph, Eric might have been a scrappy player back in the day, but he's been a great and levelheaded addition to the coaching staff. All of us have grown and changed since those days, right?"

"Sure," Murph said, agreeably, and Eric frowned at him, just so he'd know exactly what Eric thought about him.

It wasn't much better on the ice. They were doing small-area drills again, with a heavy focus on 5v5 situations because there was only so much they could do special teams work without the even-strength game slipping. Murph's kids were admittedly very cute, small, violently redheaded versions of him, and both of them played hockey. Sophia was a goalie, but she could skate and hold her own with her brother, easily.

Ryan ran the practice, but he also took the time to goof off with them, "checking" Mason into the boards and grabbing Sophia's hands and spinning her around and around and around. It was, Eric thought, very grudgingly, very fucking cute. Of course Ryan was also good with children, on top of everything else. He tried not to let himself get too distracted, watching them, because he still had a practice to run as well. But it was difficult, when Ryan was so clearly bursting at the seams with pride and joy, both showing off his team and showing off Murph, his best and oldest friend.

The small-area drills were easy to show off to their greatest effect, because the guys loved them. It wasn't just that they were closer to game simulations than endless repetition drills, but Ryan made them fun, and switched them up often enough that they had to keep on their toes. The specific drill they were running today involved both the forwards and the defensemen, focusing on gap control and puck battles, but only within a tiny, proscribed area. The players could tag in as necessary.

Maybe because Murphy and his kids were there, maybe not, but the pace and intensity seemed to have been kicked up a notch. Eric, who wasn't in awe of anyone, was still aware that for a lot of the younger players, having Sean Murphy watching them play was probably a big deal. As big of a deal as it was to have Ryan Sullivan as their head coach.

Eric took a break by the bench, squirting Gatorade into his mouth, when he heard the sound of someone skating toward him, the snick of blades stopping on the ice. He turned around to find Murphy in front of him, broad frame barely shoved into his Desperadoes-branded sweats.

"Aronson."

"Murphy."

"Sully talks about you a lot," Murphy said. His voice lacked inflection, but it was the kind of forced casual tone that said more than anything else.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. He talks about you...pretty much constantly."

They stared at each other in silence for a second. Murphy looked away first. "We work together," Eric said, unnecessarily.

"Uh-huh," Murphy said. "I don't—look, Aronson. I'm not assuming shit about you. About him. But I want you to know that I've got my eye on you."

"Really."

"Yeah. And if you do anything to, I don't know..." Murphy said. For someone who was always smiling, the expression he had on his face now seemed highly out of character. He wasn't smiling at all. He didn't have any expression at all: he just looked Eric straight in the eye, so serious that Eric felt for a second like he was actually facing the Department of Player Safety again, and not in a sexy way. "Anything at all to make him unhappy. I just want you to know that I'm fucking watching. And I'm not going to be happy about that."

"Funny," Eric said, and smiled.

"I'm not joking."

"Neither am I. You know. A lot of shit about you makes sense, eh?"

"How do you mean?" Murphy asked, leaning into Eric's personal space, as though he were the sort of person who could be easily intimidated.

Instead, Eric reached out with one finger and pushed it against Murphy's chest, sending him back on his heels in the skates. It was rearing up in him, the vicious little animal that always had the urge to go for the jugular in any fight. "I'm just saying. I know how these things went, back in the day. Things you maybe thought about saying but never did. Things you didn't even know how to put into words, maybe, eh?"

Murphy's face looked a little green around the freckles. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Of course you don't. But I'll tell you this. The last thing I intend to do is do anything to—" To what—to hurt Ryan? To make him unhappy? Even a few months ago that would have been the furthest thing from his mind to worry about, and now it was something important and central. "I'll tell you this. Keep yourself out of business that doesn't concern you. Because you might not like the fucking answers you get."

Murphy stared at him. Eric stared back.

"Am I clear?" Eric asked, quietly, patiently.

In the distance, Ryan had caught sight of them talking, and something flickered over his face. Worry, concern, interest. Whatever it was, he was skating over toward them, and whatever Murphy would have said, he'd probably had to swallow.

"Smile," Eric said, with mock cheer. "Your buddy's back."

"Aronson," Murphy said, his face a little thundercloud, "I'm gonna—"

"Hey, boys," Ryan said, making a sharp stop next to them. "What're you two talking about over here?"

"Nothing," they said, in unison.

Ryan looked from one of them, to the other, suspicious. "Okay. Well. We got a practice to run. Murph, you want to help lead this drill?"

"Sure," Murphy said, more easily than anything he'd said to Eric. As he skated off after Ryan, Eric pinched the bridge of his nose, counted to ten and wondered how the hell he was going to get through this dinner.

The practice itself had gone well, but Ryan still felt despondent after it was over. Cook and Williams had done everything he'd asked of them: they'd been the sparkling center of attention, they'd signed jerseys for Murph's kids, they'd been generally charming and likable and perfect. The veterans had taken the time to chat with Mason and Sophia too, and Davey had let her come into his crease and take some shots from the boys. Her whole face had lit up talking technique with him and it was easy to forget that Davey was almost a decade older than her—they both looked like excited little kids, their expansive hand gestures and everything.

Everything had gone well. Except for the one thing that he had actually needed to go well, which was Eric meeting Murph. It was inexplicably tense, like cats fighting over territory, and Ryan couldn't figure out what had gone wrong. He'd caught them having some kind of Wild West standoff by the Beacons' bench, although both of them had flatly denied that anything was wrong. Ryan hadn't been born yesterday, though. He knew something was up, even if he couldn't put his finger on what it was.

He'd taken everyone to the Back Bay and one of his favorite new Italian restaurants. It was nice —the kind of place that he could show off his city, and feel good picking up the tab for everyone, and the food was fucking delicious. Ryan had always been someone who'd appreciated a good meal, and Faccia a Faccia definitely provided one. The dinner itself, though, was more of the same. The kids were out at a more child-appropriate spot with Murph's parents, and it was just the adults. Petey, Heidi and her wife, Melissa, had to carry most of the conversation, while Ryan picked at his lobster and attempted to get Murph and Eric to actually acknowledge each other's presence, wishing Tara hadn't taken the opportunity for a staycation of her own.

It was futile.

By the time they had ordered dessert—and Ryan, who had an unfortunate sweet tooth, was definitely ordering anything with a cardamom coffee crumble—Murph had stood up and said, shortly, "Excuse me, I gotta go outside for some air." Before Ryan could even respond, he had already hauled his big body out of the chair, loping for the door.

Eric looked at Ryan, and Ryan had to bite down the urge to snap, You couldn't even make a tiny fucking effort? But instead of fighting, he said, "Hang on, let me go check on him," and got up to follow.

The restaurant was located on one of those pleasant Back Bay streets, all redbrick townhomes and scrubby little leafless trees. Murph was standing by the door, looking up at the night sky, washed out with the city lights. Only the brightest stars and the trail of an airplane streaking across the skyline were even visible. Even though he was looking up, his posture sagged, exhausted in a way that Ryan had rarely seen him. When he noticed that Ryan had come out of the restaurant, too, he smiled, but it wasn't the kind of smile that reached his eyes.

"Murph? What's wrong, brother?" Ryan asked.

"Like I said inside," Murph said. It was evasive; he didn't look Ryan in the eye. "I just needed some air."

"This whole night hasn't been like you. You live for this shit. Meeting new people. Talking. And I know you liked the food." Ryan didn't like how plaintive his voice sounded, but he had really just needed this day to go well. He'd needed Eric and Murph to hit it off, and they had done the furthest thing from that, and whatever Ryan had tried to do to fix it had only made it worse.

"The food was fucking great," Murph acknowledged.

They stood in awkward silence, Ryan's arms crossed over his chest, shivering a little. It was a bitter January, and the older he got, the less he could tolerate the cold. All of those years in Dallas had really ruined him.

They watched people walking by, heading into the restaurant, into other restaurants. It was the kind of area that had gotten trendier over the years; there were young parents with little babies, hipstery-looking twentysomethings and well-dressed older couples. And Ryan and Murph, both out of place without their jackets, eyes fixed firmly on their own feet.

"So what's the deal with Aronson?" Murph asked, finally, his voice forced and casual.

Ryan's head rocked back like Murph had actually slapped him, the shock of it vibrating through his whole body. "What do you mean, what's the deal with Aronson?"

"Come on, Sully," Murph said. He laughed, although there wasn't much amusement in it. "We've been friends for how long? I know you. Whenever we talk anymore, he's all you talk about. And I saw the way he looks at you. I saw the—your neck."

Ryan stared at him. He shouldn't have been surprised that Murph had figured it out. Not really. Murph was the man who knew him best of anyone. He'd known that Ryan was going to propose to Shannon before Ryan had even figured it out himself. From the very first day they'd met, Murph had just gotten him. But still, this was so outside of Ryan's own experience, that part of him had thought that maybe it wouldn't be so obvious to Murph, either.

He exhaled. It felt strange to say it out loud, to acknowledge it at all. Especially to Murph. But he couldn't lie to him. It just felt wrong.

"I don't know," he said finally. "We haven't actually talked about it at all."

Murph couldn't look him in the eye. "Okay," he said.

"Okay?"

"I gotta...you know. Process it. You're...?"

"Sleeping with him? Yeah."

"Okay."

Ryan kicked a pebble by his shoe tip, watched it spin out across the pavement. "Is that all?"

"Are you—what? Gay?"

He snorted. "No. I don't know. I loved Shannon, you know? That was real. I never even thought about being...you know. With a man. Until he kissed me. I never thought about it at all, and it's bizarre, but somehow it just—it just works."

He was starting to realize that coming out, even in this limited way, wasn't just a one-time thing. He hadn't been nervous with Shannon, but today...it felt like picking at a scab and waiting for the wound to start bleeding again. He knew he had to look at Murph, but it was difficult to do it. It wasn't that he was embarrassed about the whole thing with Eric—it had actually felt like a huge weight off of his shoulders to acknowledge it to anyone. It felt real . But Murph had sounded so upset about it that Ryan worried about what was coming next. He had never had any indication that Murph was homophobic or bigoted in any way, but this was not what he had expected. He hadn't expected Murph to look the way he did, almost like he was nauseous.

"Do you have a problem with it?" Ryan asked, finally. "Me? And him?"

"Not the way you're worrying," Murph said, again, with one of those short, humorless laughs. He looked up, finally, and for a second he looked so young and lost that Ryan was reminded of their first training camp together in Dallas, the first night they'd gotten fucked up down there together and Murph had confided in him that he was scared about being sent down, that he was scared he wouldn't live up to his draft pedigree, and Ryan had held him while he puked and said, You're going to be a fucking Hall of Famer, Murph, I know it.

And here they were, both of them Hall of Famers, and Murph was saying, "I never really had a way to put it into words, especially because of the way our lives ended up going, but now I—I don't know, Sully. Do you ever think about what could have happened? What could have been?"

Ryan's ears were ringing. It felt like he'd been slammed into the boards with a high hit. "What?"

"Us. Do you ever think about it. If we'd... I don't know."

"What?" Ryan said, again, stupidly.

Murph ran his hand through his hair. He looked like he was torn between laughter and tears, his face twisted up with the kind of emotion that Ryan had never seen from him. Murph was always smiling; Murph was the kind of guy who should always be smiling. "Ryan, you fucking idiot, I'm trying to tell you that this whole thing—you and Aronson—it made me think about things. About us, about the way we used to be together, about the way I've—and you know what? You're it for me. You always have been. I just didn't know how to put it in words until we were married to other people. Until now."

Ryan wondered if it was possible to have to go through concussion protocol without anyone having touched him. He felt concussed, like the world was spinning and he was going to lose the entire dinner he'd eaten. All he could say was the same thing he had been saying. "What?"

"Ryan," Murph was saying. There was an urgency in his voice that hadn't been there before. "Can you please...say something besides that?"

"I just—I don't know what to say. What does this even mean? You're married. You and Tara have been married for years. You have kids! The kids are here , Murph, I'm seeing someone, I—what does this mean ? What?"

The air between them was vibrating with tension, the kind of sympathetic ache that had never been there before. Murph had always been easy. The easiest thing in Ryan's life, the one thing that had always been predictable, that had always made sense. And now everything was wrong, and he had to look back on their years together in a completely different light. Because Murph was being honest and Shannon had been right.

The friendship he'd had with Murph wasn't a regular friendship at all. It had never been. Right from the beginning when they'd battled each other along the boards in elementary school and Murph had laughed after knocking Ryan on his ass and Ryan had thought, right then and there, that he would do almost anything to make Murph look at him again. There had always been something else, simmering beneath the surface, and they'd both been too blind or too frightened by what it meant to look at it directly. It was easy not to look at it, in a sport as straight as hockey, when girls were so easy to meet and everyone got married so young.

Murph, who was looking at the ground again, saying, "I don't know what it means. I love Tara. I love my kids. I have a good life with them in Dallas, you know? I'm not...discounting that. I'm not expecting anything beyond that."

"I mean—I have the Beacons, and Eric, I wouldn't..."

"I know. I wouldn't expect you to. That's the thing, Sully, you know I'm like... I'm really fucking proud of you, for everything you've done, for everything you're doing. This team. The staff. You're really building something here. I should have told you earlier, before I—Jesus, Sully. I didn't even mean to do this tonight. Ever. You were just looking at me with those fucking big eyes and I..."

Any other time, Ryan would have embraced him, would have pulled him into a bear hug and hung on until he felt better. That was the thing about Murph; he had huge arms and he gave the best hugs, the kind of hugs that made everything else feel secondary. He couldn't do that now. "Murph... I don't want to lose our friendship. I can't lose our friendship. You're the most important person in the world to me. You always have been—nothing's changed about that."

"I'll always be your friend," Murph said. He looked sideways at Ryan, like facing him head-on was too painful. Headlights too bright to see. "I can't lose that either. I'm sorry I did this. I shouldn't have said anything."

"No, you should have. We've always been honest with each other, and I...this is too big not to..."

"I just...need some time to think about it. I need some space; I just need to..." Murph looked stricken again and Ryan had to fight the urge to hug him again. "Look, can you settle the tab for me? I think I'm just—I'm just gonna go back to the hotel. I just...have to go."

"Yes," Ryan said, "of course, I was going to treat everyone anyway, I... Sean?"

"Yes, Ryan."

"I'm sorry. For everything. I didn't know. I never, I never knew."

"How the fuck would either of us have known?" Murph asked, and he smiled. It was a sad, sickly smile.

Before Ryan could react, Murph had moved forward with all of the speed his big frame still possessed and thrown his arms around him. It was a bone-crushing hug, the kind of hug that lifted Ryan right off of his feet. Ryan took the opportunity to bury his face in Murph's chest, because it would probably be the last time for a very long time, if he ever had the chance to do it again. Even now, Murph still smelled exactly the same as Ryan remembered, the kind of familiar sense memory that shot him right back to all of those hours spent on buses and planes and in locker rooms together, how close they'd been, all of the time, without ever knowing.

And then Murph set him back down on the ground, and it was over. They stood there, a few inches apart, staring at each other. Murph said, "If he hurts you, I'll kill him," and before Ryan could say, Eric would never do that , Murph had turned and fled. Ryan watched him go, weaving through the evening crowds, watched him until he couldn't see him anymore. He was shaking, from the cold and from adrenaline, and for a second, he wished he smoked cigarettes or weed or anything that he could use to settle his fucking nerves.

Eventually, he realized that he had to go back inside. He walked up the steps and had to make the conscious decision to do each one.

"Are you okay?" Eric asked, concerned, when he sat back down at the table. "Where the hell is Murphy?"

Ryan didn't know what he must have looked like. Probably like he'd seen a ghost. In a way, he had. "Uh. I'll tell you later. After all of this. We should..." Everyone was staring at him now. "Let's get the check, eh? My treat."

And Ryan smiled, and took a deep breath, and prepared to go back to playing the part of the gracious host. Like his whole world hadn't been flipped on end. Somehow, Eric's hand on his thigh under the table, warm and comforting, was the only thing that got him through it. Somehow, he got through it. But he was a different person when it was done.

The fact that Murphy had disappeared before they'd even settled the bill was strange enough, Eric thought. Ryan smiling that fixed and fake-looking smile was stranger. He was by nature the kind of man who smiled often, but it was always genuine, always the kind of smile that reached his eyes. This one looked like he was a second away from screaming. Eric had thought about asking what was going on, but something told him that until they were alone, it would be better not to ask.

Even though Murph had driven the three of them to the restaurant, Eric and Ryan ended up walking back alone. Ryan was silent the entire time, distracted, and that too was unusual, since Ryan usually never shut the fuck up.

He was silent still when they went up the stairs to Eric's apartment, when he headed into the bedroom without saying anything else. Eric took the time to hang up their coats and do a quick run-through of the apartment to make sure there wasn't anything that needed to be put away, and then followed him in.

He found Ryan on the floor of the bedroom, leaning against the bed. His knees were pulled up to his chest and his chin was resting on them. He looked a million miles away, like he was anywhere but here.

Eric sat down next to him. "Ryan?"

"Yeah."

"You, uh...want to talk about it?"

Ryan laughed, although the sound was a little wet. He turned his head so he could press his face against Eric's shoulder. It was such a catlike gesture that Eric would have laughed, if they were in any other kind of situation.

"Murph's in love with me."

Eric exhaled. "Yeah, I, ah. Had kind of figured that out, too."

"Everyone knew but me," Ryan said, and laughed again.

"You okay?"

"No. Of course not. He's my best friend, Eric. He's been my best friend since I was eighteen years old." Ryan let Eric slip an arm around his shoulders. Leaned into the embrace. "He wanted some space."

Eric could feel the future stretching out like carnival taffy, pulled so thin it was about to snap. There were a number of ways this could go and none of them made him feel particularly confident. It was kind of insane, he thought, to realize how much whatever happened next meant to him. How much he didn't want Ryan to say what Eric thought he might say. "What do you want?"

"I don't know. I guess I need some space, too. To process this. It's just...he's always been the one thing in my life I could trust to be there, always. And now..."

The thought coalesced in his head. Thinking about it ached, like he'd been slammed into the boards without being able to tense up for it first. But even if it hurt, there were certain things that were the right thing to do. Before he could stop himself, Eric was saying, "You know. If you're in love with him, then I'd understand if you wanted to stop doing this, if you wanted to—"

Ryan's head whipped up to stare at him. "No! I don't want to stop doing this. I mean, shit, I don't know what I'm doing. I love Murph, I've always loved Murph. I don't think...maybe I was in love with him once, and I probably never realized it. But I'm here for a reason, Eric. I know we haven't fucking talked about anything we're doing and that's fine. We don't have to. But I don't want to throw this away."

The invisible weight on his shoulders lifted and Eric exhaled. "Okay. Well. I'm...shit, I'm no good with fucking words like this. I'm sorry, buddy. This can't be easy."

"It's a little better now," Ryan said. "Can we—can you kiss me?"

Eric kissed him. He didn't want to think about the relief behind it, the desperation. It was enough, for now, that they were here.