A/N: Disclaimer: If I knew Phil Keating personally I’d be dating him and wouldn’t feel the need to pair him with hockey players…. That said this is entirely fiction and not meant to harm or defame because none of this is true! I am not implying anything about the real people mentioned here. And if you think this isn’t fiction poo on you because that means you’re dumb!
Chapter 334: Modo XIV—Pain Still As Sharp
Mike smiled before he even opened his eyes. Warm, too warm, the morning already blistered with humid heat. He didn’t toss off the blanket however. It smelled like Brett. He pulled it over his head and inhaled. He could smell both of them on it, the heat, the tastes, and the pungency of their love. He opened his eyes and noticed that Brett wasn’t there.
Mike peeked from under the blanket and he saw Brett standing, his jeans on, his hands on his hips, staring out of the window. Pale flesh, white moonlight skin, his arms and neck reddish burned, ghostly pale hair sticking up in shocks all over his head. Ah yes, he’s mine, I am his… where does it begin and end.
“Good morning,” Mike whispered.
Brett glanced back, a flash of pale eyes. “Hi there.”
The grate of his voice crackled and tickled Mike’s ears. He sat up smiled. “Why are you up so early? It’s not like we have practice today or anything. We have freedom today.”
“Yeah, freedom,” Brett said quietly.
Dead. The tone of Brett’s voice worried Mike and he couldn’t pin why. He just instantly thought of something dead and rotted. Gray, cold. Impressionless… more than a few words went through his brain including the fact that impressionless could not possibly be a word. It would be a word Brett would make up, or perhaps he had already and Mike had forgotten. “Is there something wrong, Brett? Are the kids alright? Jude?”
“Yeah,” Brett said slowly and he turned around completely his arms crossed over his golden haired chest. He had a body built like a collection of tree trunks and stumps, some said it was a collection of too much fat, Mike knew better. He knew all of it was hard and solid, bulldog meat. “Yeah, Mike there is something that’s been bugging me.”
Brett had
been having so many problems with Hitchcock lately, daily battles with Eddie,
battles with everyone else. Keaner, that red haired old demon, had taken to
wearing a cap personalized with the words “Shut up
Brett jutted his chin out. “Yeah, Mikey, I don’t know.”
Mike closed his eyes and remembered that first touch, that first shock, that thunder! If he had been a woman, Mike wondered if he would have cried rape, but no that hadn’t been rape, not close to it. Bliss, bliss….
“Yeah, Mikey,” Brett said. “It’s you.”
Mike’s eyes snapped open and he felt his mouth open as well, and he knew instantaneously that his world was shattered irreparably and permanently. He knew that his bliss had ended. “Brett?”
“Look I’m not gonna fuck you around cause it ain’t fucking good to both of us to do that. It ain’t fucking fair.”
Mike could only hear the swear words, cutting, slicing…. “Brett?” He shook his head, “Brett no!” He reached out to him. A joke, a cruel, tasteless joke and he could laugh about it later but not now, he couldn’t forgive him now. “Brett come here!”
Brett obeyed, his eyes glassy like a doll’s, pale watercolors, he obeyed. Mike wrapped his arms around his heated, damp flesh and held him close. He kissed his chest, tasted his sweat, pulled him into his mouth, and did everything he could to reinforce the beauty of what they were together. He listened to Brett’s low, scratchy groans with satisfaction knowing that Brett could not deny the importance of their unity in the shambles of the team’s chemistry. Sometimes this was all they had!
And Brett’s hands, scratchy, calloused, large, swollen, brutal hands on his flesh, pulling his hair, forcing and guiding but never inflicting injury sent Mike into new revelations of bliss and pleasure. With the final twist on the sweat soaked bed sheets, the final groan, stiffening, and pain into relaxing, Mike sighed happily. Of course Brett had been joking to get a rise out of him, yes, he would find a way to punish him later…
“I wasn’t kidding Mike.”
Lips at his ear. Scritching….scratching…… The goosepimples on Mike’s flesh were painful, like a million needles scraping his skin. “I didn’t hear that.”
“Mike, I wasn’t kidding.”
“NO!”
` Mike tried to sit up, but Brett’s tree trunk arm slammed into his bare chest, pinned him to that bed. He swallowed, not allowing the tears to come to his eyes. Pale, emotionless, robotic eyes, Mike looked into them. The eyes of a creature, not a feeling, warm, caring man.
“Mike, I can’t do it anymore. Commitment, fidelity, love, attachment, CLINGING! Mike I can’t do it. Babe it’s killing me. You’re killing me.”
Mike cringed. “No, you… you care for me! I know you do.”
“I do,” Brett said, “Which is why we had one last fuck, to soften the blow. Mike I wanted to wake you up but I didn’t want you to be my fucking prisoner? Get it? I only wanted to help you into a different world but I didn’t want to be chained to you. Mike, you’re awesome, fucking awesome but I can’t go through life thinking about those soft brown eyes of yours wanting more and more. I can’t take the want!”
Mike had nothing to say…..
Present Day
Modano took a long drink from his beer and he stared at the bottle, he sniffed and rolled it slowly in his hands. The apartment’s silence cut into his ears and rubbed into his heart with a pain still as sharp as the first time he felt it. Mike couldn’t fathom how he hadn’t felt it so acutely weeks ago. The only explanation he could think of was that Muller had been with him, growling about this and that, keeping him distracted. Now Kirk was with his family, settled into a home, into his own life. This left Mike alone.
For five whole minutes elation filled Mike, helping Kirk move out his last box, watching him leave. Ah freedom! No more hanging around with that grumpy old dog. Mike had grabbed a beer, popped it open sat on the couch…. Took a long drink… Nothing tasted good about this.
Mike sighed. He closed his eyes, listened to more silence. And silence in real life did not consist of the absence of noise, not with the traffic sounds from outside, the ticking of a clock, the sounds of the beer sloshing in the bottle. No silence in reality, consisted of the absence of presence, the absence of another human, shit even the absence of another animal could be something. Mike opened his eyes.
He clunked the beer heavily onto the coffee table and he went to his bedroom. “Where the hell are you?” he muttered. He rifled through all the pants scattered on the floor, through the mess of clothes in his dresser, the folds of the crumpled blanket on his bed. He half grinned. “Who says gay guys are tidy?” Saying it out loud, gay, tickled his throat and Mike blushed, he looked around. Of course no one heard that.
He coughed and then ran his hands through his hair. Where the hell could it be? He groaned and turned around swiftly and in the process stubbed his toe on the bed. “Christ!” he howled and jumped up and down on one foot, clutching his pained foot. He lost his balance and fell onto his butt sending shock waves of pain up his spine. “YOW!” Tears sprung into his eyes, and even though no one was there to see it, Mike felt embarrassed about it.
Slowly, he sprawled on the soft carpet of the floor and stared at the ceiling. “Ow.” He let go of his throbbing toe and let his arms fall to his sides. He could stay here all night, crying and dreaming. He’d done it before in the days after Brett had left him, after that whiskey soaked voice drawled in his ears that they were through, backed up by those icy Nordic eyes. He had cried.
But why should I cry now? Mike thought. Who would have caused me to? What relationship has ended?
“Exactly!”
Mike turned
his face from the ceiling and he could see under the bed. “Oh.” He rolled onto
his side and reached under the bed and grabbed the slip of paper. He sat up,
looked at it. Ten numbers, a phone number. In
He watched the white smile, clean face, gorgeous face of the reporter. Yes, he watched this news program nightly, just for this man. Mike grinned, and he was interested in me? He looked back at the phone number. Well of course he wasn’t at home now, but he would be later, his machine could be on right now. He ran his fingers over the paper. “So what’s the news for today, Phil?”
“And now for an interesting story… Phil…”
“Thanks Shaul,” Keating said brightly. “A young boy with wealthy famous parents suddenly reveals that he alone holds the secret to deciphering Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphics and other ancient manuscripts that have previously remained unread becoming sought out by museums and experts from all around.”
“Oo sounds like the plot to an adventure movie!” Shaul said with a coy smile.
Keating winked. “No, it’s not at a theater near you, it’s a true story! And the little boy in question happens to be no less than the son of Colorado Avalanche Captain Joe Sakic! I personally had the privilege of interviewing young Mitchell Sakic earlier today while….”
Mike clicked off the television, his pulse ramming into the back of his tongue. His whole body prickled with sweat and he took another long drink from his beer, finishing the entire bottle. He then rolled onto the couch pulling a woolen throw blanket around his body and he folded into a fetal position. He knew he couldn’t call the number now!
Joe!
Hearing the captain’s name, just roll off Phil’s lips, Joe! Sakic! Mike felt untrue, despicable for even thinking of anyone else. Joe! This was where he felt the pain, the pain as sharp as the first time he had fallen in love with a man. If he hooked up with Phil, then Mike knew he would be lying to himself, trying to pretend not to be feeling a love that cut so sharply into his soul.
But what could he do now?
All he could do was fall asleep.