Chapter Text
The thing about king making, is they never mention the guillotine until after they’ve crowned you.
We were boys and we were vessels and we were dreams. Our parents’ dreams, our own, yours. Take a child and tell him he’s your hope. Your faith in the future. Your hero. Tell him that you have sacrificed for this. That people have been waiting for him. For years. Decades, sometimes. Tell him he is everything. And then give him his chance. His one chance to wear the crown. Careful though, blink and the moment’s gone. There are always more kings—young boys with big eyes and bright futures. Sometimes they don’t even wipe the blood off the throne.
This is a story about hockey. By the way.
The invitations to the World Juniors’ selection camp are made public at the beginning of December. My name listed there right under Andre’s. It’s only a fluke of the alphabet, his name coming first, and yet something about it feels prophetic. Andre Diaz and Nicholas Drouin. I stare at the screen until my vision starts to blur, something tender in my chest, like the way your face feels after a punch. Bruised. Swollen. Stop poking at it, I tell myself, but I never fucking listen.
Jealousy would be easy, sometimes I wish I was just jealous of him. But it’s more than that—we seem to be unavoidably tied together. The top two prospects heading into the draft, top two scorers in the junior league, stalls next to one another in the locker room, names one after the other on every list, in every article and blog post. There's no one else on our level, and that's a fact. No one who can touch us when we get on the ice together. I can never tell if I hate him for that or not. For making me share the spotlight. For making playing with anyone else so fucking dull.
“Your defence prospects are weak,” my father says without preamble, barely looking up from his phone.
“We have Battese,” stabbing a little aggressively at my eggs, my father grunting in response.
“The D-man from Kingston?” Like that says all you need to know. The ninth best team in the OHL. Not good enough for my father. Not even close.
“Chicago seemed impressed,” defensive, though I have no reason to be. I barely know Cole Battese, except that he was a bitch to play against when he was still in the O.
Another noise from my father. “Yeah well, Chicago’s desperate.”
I stare at him across the marble island in the kitchen, my mother flickering around us like a light about to go out—cleaning, cooking, smiling when she catches us looking at her. Some days, I imagine smashing my plate on the floor. Shards of porcelain debris scattering everywhere, food splattering onto the white walls. Maybe some of it gets on my father, ruins his dress pants, stains his shirt.
Like he can hear my thoughts he gets up, the stool he’d been sitting on screeching against the tile floor. “You better be ready to score is all I’m saying,” kissing my mother’s temple. “I’ll be back late tonight,” he murmurs, without explanation. She only nods, used to it by now. Accepting of his absences in a way I never have been. Not that I want him here. Not anymore.
“I haven’t actually made the team yet, so,” I don’t know why I say it. I’m feeling particularly petulant today I guess. My father’s cold eyes find mine as he stops in the doorway, brow arched.
“You planning on not making the team?”
Immediately I feel that familiar sensation of fear. You’re disappointing him again. “It’s not exactly up to me,” fidgeting on my stool.
“Yes, it is Nick. If you don’t make that roster it’s going to be because you didn't try hard enough, your ten times better than almost everyone else on that list,” except for Andre. He doesn’t say it but I hear the name anyway. My father shakes his head slightly, the way you do when you have something annoying buzzing around your ears. “You know, I don’t understand why you would waste all our time and money just to get this far and give-up.”
“That’s not what I’m saying,” cringing at the whine in my voice. “I’m not giving up, I just—”
“Then I don’t want to hear anymore about not making teams you know you can make, okay?”
My teeth clench, hand wrapped so tightly around my fork I’m surprised it doesn’t snap.
“Nick?”
“Yeah, okay. I’m making the team.”
“You’re going to be captain of the team.”
I bite back the immediate retort that Andre is going to be captain and we both know it. Just like he’s captain of the Knights. Always listed first. A fluke of the alphabet. A prophecy.
“Yeah,” I say instead. “Sure dad.”
I can tell he doesn’t like that answer, jaw hard, blue eyes narrowing, but then I watch them flick to the clock above the stove. “I’m late,” he says eventually. “But we need to work on that attitude bud,” a parting shot.
I listen to the sound of his dress shoes echoing through the house, the front door opening and closing, my eyes still trained on the empty doorway. People say me and my father look alike—blond hair, blue eyes, tall—I can never tell if they just do that to be polite though. Because they think it's what we want to hear. I’m not sure either of us takes it as the compliment it’s meant to be.
“Finish your breakfast sweetie,” I flinch at the feel of my mother’s hands on my shoulders, her lips against my temple. “We have to leave soon.”
“Yeah, yeah right,” but the minute she steps away I pull my phone out, staring at the list again. At our names pressed together. After a while they start to look like one.
The top ten hockey nations in the world make-up the top division of the World Juniors championship. There are three lower divisions but if you're not playing for the crown who really gives a fuck? Each team is made up of players between the ages of sixteen and twenty. Canada has won twenty gold medals in this tournament, the Russians thirteen, the Americans seven. Suffice to say, this isn’t the kind of peewee game only parents care about. It matters to people here. Anything less than gold is a failure. Anything less than gold and you’ve let the country down. Which sounds hyperbolic, maybe even ridiculous, but it’s the truth. People say Canadians are nice, but in my experience, those are people who have never met a fucking Canadian.
There is something profoundly fucked up about anyone who grows up in the cold. Goes months barely seeing the sun. Barely going outside. Nothing thrives in the ice, it just…survives. Grits its teeth and bears it. You think Canadians are nice? Come to a hockey rink. Better yet, lose a fucking game.
“You have everything you need, you're sure?” My mom fusses in the parking lot outside the hotel they’ve stuck us in during selection camp. It’s grey outside—the building, the sky—everything drained and lifeless the way it always gets in December. Snow full of cigarette butts and dog shit.
“I got it mom, not my first rodeo.”
“I know, I know,” she gives me a tight smile, eyes creased with worry. I don't know what she thinks is worse about being here than being at home with dad breathing down my neck.
“Are you sure you don't want me to help you bring your stuff in?” I don’t know what my face does but it makes her laugh, lifting her hands up in surrender. “Alright, okay, okay. I’ll go. But you’ll call? If you need anything?”
“Sure,” I say, grimacing slightly as she leans over and plants a kiss on my cheek, the sickly sweet scent of her lipstick making my stomach lurch. “Okay, well…thanks for the drive,” throwing open the passenger door and fumbling my way out into the cold, feeling about ten times bigger than normal with all my winter shit. I pull my equipment and suitcase out of the trunk, I probably do actually need some help with this, but there is no way in hell I'm letting her come in that building with me.
“Good luck! Love you!” She says, as I slam the door shut, giving her a half-hearted wave and watching her pull away from the curb.
I exhale, shoulders finally dropping away from my ears, tension headache receding from behind my eyes. I don’t feel good that my first reaction to my mother’s clear desperation for affection is to cringe away. She’s lonely I’m pretty sure, and I don’t blame her, I’m lonely too in that fucking house. I don't know why the pair of us can never keep each other company.
“You trying to throw your back out before the tournament even starts?” the voice is low and quiet, though somehow still audible over the noise of the hotel lobby. I barely have time to turn my head before one of my bags is being slid off my shoulder.
“Show-off,” but there’s no heat in it as I look up into the smiling face hovering exactly two inches above me. I know. I’ve checked our heights multiple times.
“Good to see you Nicky.”
I smile back despite myself. “You saw me like three days ago you fucking loser.”
He shrugs. “Still true.”
It’s easy when he’s like this, all pretty and clean and standing under bright lights, to get the wrong idea about Andre. To think he's such a nice boy. All big brown eyes and dimples. I know better though. Canada’s golden boy is just as fucked up as the rest of us, maybe more. It shouldn't make me feel special that I know that, but it does.
“I can carry my own bags, you know,” I grumble as he starts moving towards the elevators. “I also need to check in.”
Andre turns around, walking backwards so he can face me, like a douche. “No need, already done,” pulling his hand out of his pocket and holding up two keycards, flashing me a smirk. “Roomy.”
I roll my eyes. Of course we’re together.
Always. Inevitable. Prophetic.
“If you snore again I’m filling the ice bucket with water and dumping it on your head,” shoving myself into the tiny elevator next to him. Andre only grins at me, looking like my bag weighs nothing, meanwhile I’m pretty sure I’ve sweat through all three layers of clothing I’m wearing.
“Nah, I don’t think you will.”
“Alright,” I concede, “maybe I won’t, but that’s only cause I’m lazy, it’s not because I like you.” Which is at least partially true, though Andre still laughs. The kind of noise that slips under your skin and skitters over your bones. It’s not comfortable, but then, nothing about Andre is.
I would never call him my best friend, partially because I'm not five fucking years old, and partially because it just wouldn't be true. Whatever is between us, messy and sticky and not nice to look at up close, friendship isn't quite right. We’re rivals, teammates, but never friends. If you need a label, which I did at first, something to explain the weight he’d become in my chest, he’s my centre. Andre is my centre. The only role in my life he's ever fit.
The elevator doors open on a noisy floor with beige patterned carpets stained by years of winter boots. The hotels usually try to separate us, not put our rooms all together, in the hope that it’ll stop us from congregating and causing a ruckus. It doesn’t work, but I appreciate the effort.
“Hey Papi!” Boyd is too short to be throwing his arm around Andre’s shoulders but he does anyway. A player whose name and face I only know because I looked up everyone on the invitation list. He won’t be making the roster, I can pretty well guarantee it.
Andre gives him a vague sort of smile, and I bite down on the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing, because it’s obvious he has no idea who this guy is.
“Hey, you breaking the place in?” Eyes shooting over to the other guys down the hall.
“You know it,” too loud and too stupid. I look impatiently in the direction of our room. If it weren’t for the fact that Andre still has the keycards I’d take off. “You down for pool later? They have a table in the hotel bar.”
“Yeah dude, sounds good.” Boyd finally stops hanging off of him, palms slapping as they shake hands, the guy’s eyes sliding over to me.
“Hey Drousie,” laughing in a disbelieving kind of way. “Man, crazy to see you two together.” Thankfully he doesn’t have time to elaborate, his buds calling him from down the hall. He takes off with one final slap to Andre’s back. People are always doing that—touching him. It’s not a problem I have, something about my face and general demeanour giving people a pretty good idea of what’ll happen if they touch me.
“Crazy seeing us together?” I repeat dryly, as we watch the group disappear into someone’s room. “He knows we play on the same line right?”
Andre snorts, shooting me a look out of the corner of his eye. “You know what he meant.” Something twisting in my gut. Sure, I know what he meant. One of us is going first in the draft at the end of June. I’m not sure if the top two picks have ever come from the same team before. Ever been—well, whatever we are.
“Come on,” Andre elbows me lightly, not that I can feel it through the padding of my winter coat. “Lets put your shit away.”
I grunt in response, following him down the hall, luckily in the opposite direction of the others. “Papi is a stupid fucking nickname,” breaking the weird silence that's fallen between us. “You don’t even speak Spanish.”
Andre shrugs, stopping at the next door and pulling the keycards out of his pocket. “Yeah well, Diaz, you know?”
“Have you ever even been to Mexico?”
He shoots me another one of those grins, pushing his way into the room. “Nope.”
Thirty-two players are invited to the selection camp. Of those, only twenty-three will make the final cut, and if no one gets hurt, only twenty guys will actually dress. Still, most of the dudes who make the team will be irrelevant after a few years. Spend their careers in the minors or as fourth line grinders. There’s only a handful worth paying attention to, worth knowing—Cole Battese, the D-man from Kingston, drafted last year by Chicago fifteenth overall, and Sam Webber, the guy who’s going to be our starter in net unless the coaches are complete fucking idiots.
“Those are our guys then,” Andre says, shovelling food into his mouth like he’s never eaten before.
I give him a look from across the table. “Our guys?” I repeat, “And chew your food before you talk to me Jesus-fucking-christ dude.”
He makes a show of swallowing, like a brat. “Yeah, our guys,” nodding this time as his eyes scan the canteen, like he's just decided something. It’s lunch on our first day of camp. Everyone already exhausted, already dreading what they’re going to put us through in the afternoon. “I have a good feeling about this team.”
I make an exasperated noise, running a hand through my hair. “There is no team yet.”
He looks back at me, something dangerous in his eyes—Andre Diaz is the human incarnation of the voice in the back of your head that tells you to jump when you stand on a bridge. Don’t let the boy-next-door shit fool you. The devil wishes he could make trouble sound this sweet. “You, me, Battese, and Webber,” he says that like it means something, before taking another bite out of his sandwich. “Team.”
As if Andre manifested it, I end up playing with Battese and Webber in the afternoon scrimmage. I’m a forward, so it’s not exactly like we’re on a line together, but they still have my back. Every puck that makes it past me ends up on Battese’s tape, or in Webber’s glove. I’m pretty sure both of my goals are assisted by one of them in some way. There are three other guys playing with us but they might as well not even be there. Barely existing in my periphery. This is the kind of chemistry I’ve only ever had with Andre. Without talking we fit together, anticipating each others’ movements. I swear to god nothing feels better than this. Better than just clicking.
“Hell yeah!” Battese shouts in my ear as we collide after I score the game winner. I don’t usually like being touched, but it’s different on the ice. Different after a win—even one that doesn't matter.
“Couldn’t have done it without you,” I say, and I mean it. He grins at me. We're the same height—sweaty black hair slipping into his eyes. I grab the back of his helmet and tap our foreheads together, caught in the heat of the moment.
Andre skates up to me afterwards, jersey a different colour, the pair of us standing together as everyone else files off the ice. “Our guys,” he murmurs.
And still high off the win—high off beating him specifically—I can’t help but grin back. “Our guys.”
I didn’t realize what that meant.
What it would mean.
Some days I wish I could go back. Tell myself everything I know now.
Some days I wish I could go back. And not know anything again.