ROCKET

Nico does turn out to be pretty scary, or at least while hustling a group of around 40 of us into one big auditorium area in the practice rink. It's everyone here for tryouts and preseason. They'll cut ten tonight, another 5 throughout the preseason, or seven and eight, I don't really know how that works at this organization, I just know how it works in Boston.

I'm not betting on safety, but looking around and seeing only two guys that I know are goaltenders, Paxton and a terrifyingly tall Finn who goes by the name Gregor Paikkala and hasn't played a game since halfway through the season before last due to something mental that nobody knows, I'd pretty much say I'm alright.

Nico, in a terrifying manner, goes through introductions, embarrasses everyone, and then divides us up into offense and defense.

Goalies go with defense and I'm allowed to stay close to Steph who cracks continuous jokes through changing into gear, warming up to one of the second liners, Ukko Hokkanen, very kindly nicknamed Sushi for some reason.

I wrestle with my gear, getting my jersey stuck on the back of my pads like squirt level hockey players do when they've just learned how to dress themselves.

It's awkward, waving my arms around and trying to grab onto the back of the fabric above my shoulder blades. The locker room is buzzing, everyone is loud and excited and getting to know each other. I'm quiet and turning redder by the seconds, hair flopping out of the head hole of my jersey, the rest of my head still under the fabric.

"Steph-" I call to my side, trying to get his attention by kicking out my skate to hit him with it.

"Here," instead, I hear a gruff, worn out Swedish accent. A hand pulls down the back of my jersey, unhooking it from my pads.

I look over to my other side, not realizing who was sitting there beforehand but now definitely realizing that the accent belongs to the second assistant captain of the Wolves, Håkon Rex.

"Thanks," I let out a small, mostly nervous laugh. "I'm Rocket. We haven't met yet."

"Håkon, they call me Yeti, though." It sounds more accurate coming out of his mouth than half the reporters trying to talk about him. Something minimal and small about the way he shapes the letters behind his lips that makes it his name and not anything else.

"Do you want me to call you Yeti?" I feel my lips kick up in the corners, unsure how to approach his complacent attitude toward his name.

He shrugs, broad shoulders rising just a slight bit under his gear, "they'd look at you weird if you didn't. Do you want me to call you Rocket?"

"I'd look at you weird if you didn't," I joke, tightening down the straps holding my shin pads to my legs. "Even my Mom calls me Rocket."

He squints at me, white blonde eyelashes coming down over his eyes. "I can't tell if that's sad or not."

"Eh," I shrug. "She'll call me my name when she's mad, then it's all-" I flip to Czech and give him the 'you better not make any dumb decisions you hear me, Miloš? Do I make myself clear?' in the best angry Mom tone I can.

Yeti lets out a small hesitant sort of laugh, not flashing any teeth but giving me at least something.

I decide to press a little harder to make him smile, "she's a wonderful lady, a witch with a wooden spoon, but a good person."

"Just a Slavic parenting style then, huh?"

"Half Greek, half Slav, but hey, I turned out alright."

His lip twitches just a tiny, tiny, tiny bit.

"What about you? You're Swedish, yeah?"

"Norwegian on my Dad's side, Swedish on my mom's."

I raise my eyebrows at him, watching him lace his skates, strong hands making quick work in bending the plastic to get it tight enough, "so, you're like, a double dose of Viking then, huh?"

He shrugs. He seems to be into shrugging, "ancestry wise, yes."

"Then what's up with the Rex thing? Figured you'd be named like, Bjork or something."

He sits up, seeming to be uncomfortable with this conversation in a slight way but I want to know things and he hasn't stopped answering so I'll keep pressing.

"Grandfather was a Brit."

"Oh, ew," I stick out my tongue. "How did that happen?"

"World War Two." God, give me something to build a conversation on you uptight Viking.

"Yikes, so he was a deserter?" I don't know what else to say, I'm struggling. This is where Steph steps in normally, we don't do conversations without each other, well, I don't do conversations without him, especially these types of them.

Yeti's white eyebrows harden over his eyes, clearly done with me, "prisoner of war."

I squint, trying to remember why that sounds like bullshit.

"In Norway," that does not help, thank you, Rexy.

"Well, ya know, the Czech Republic was kinda in the middle of all that shit, so."

"Haven't you been in Canada for most of your life?"

"Well, no, not most of it, less than half."

"But for the last eleven years."

"You're well versed with me, damn," I bicker back.

"I'm a captain, I have to know my team."

"Assistant," I correct. "And I'm far more Czech than I ever was Canadian."

He doesn't respond to that at first, then stands up, "time to go."

Ouch.

I don't have time to overanalyze it yet. I have to get through practice first and then deal with all that afterward. I don't have time to fuck up my first day of practice beacuse I was stressing out about making Yeti Rex, who is notoriously hard to please, mad. Everyone makes him mad. I have to come to terms to the fact that he's not a happy type of guy.

Reasoning, I'm reasoning.

I'm sure that Fenrir has found a way to like him despite that and I'm positive that Steph is going to have him laughing by the end of the next hour.

I was right about the Steph thing, they get paired off as lineys almost immediately. Steph works like a forward playing defense and Yeti plays like he can't be too far away from the red line. Steph is shoving shoulders jokingly with him by the end of the intro practice.

It's good, it means Steph's in solid with Yeti, their for-sure starter left defenseman. Might mean that he's a for-sure starter at right defense.

I get pelted with pucks for three hours straight and since the guys don't really know me and don't really respect me yet, a small percentage hit me in the helmet and make my teeth rattle. It's rude but I'll live.

I give Yeti another shot at lunch. For some reason I can't let myself live with him not liking me.

"Hi," I sit down in between him and Steph, who's making quick conversation with a guy named Hiro Takahashi, a second line left winger, on his other side. On Yeti's other side is Fenrir, drenched in sweat and looking straight off the cover of fucking GQ or something. My stupid little Slavic straight-edge nose and Greek hair probably look stupid next to a guy that looks like he could walk a runway in his pit-stained black compression shirt.

Yeti takes one glance my way and then focuses back down on his food.

"Hey, look, I'm sorry we got off on a weird foot this morning but I'd rather not have you giving me looks from across the rink this whole season because I called your grandfather a deserter."

He does not seem amused but gives me a slow nod, bite of sandwich in his mouth very conveniently preventing him from talking.

"So, like, I dunno, what do you like to do for fun?"

"Hockey."

"Favorite color?"

"Don't have one."

"C'mon, everyone has one."

"I don't."

I grumble under my breath a slow little 'fuck you, bitch' under my breath in Czech, positive he won't recognize what it means and even if he does he probably can't hear it because of how softly I made sure to say it.

"Hold on, hold on," Fen leans into the two of us, big perfect grin splitting his features, "you called his grandfather a deserter? Which one, the brit?"

"Yeah, the Brit, he gave me World War Two and Sweden so I went with deserter," Okay, yeah, maybe I'm being snippy about it, he's just a fucking dick, apparently. I'd take being called a pussy for not wanting to get with some girl in Boston over having this asshole as an assistant captain. That I at least am used to handling. This is fucking weird.

"Nice," Fen leans over and offers a high five, I take it, glancing sideways at the large man between us, looking pissed about everything from the high five to the plate his sandwich is on. "C'mon, Yets, lighten up, he's just trying to be friendly with you." Fen punches the defenseman's arm, then, quieter, "seriously, you're being a dick."

"Do you not remember what I said about this?" Yeti hisses back, gritting his teeth.

"Well, yeah, but that's no excuse."

"Not everyone is you, Von Albrecht," Yeti scoffs, then turns to me, giving me a once over that makes my body tense and my stomach flip over. Nothing but his stormy blue eyes picking apart all the things about my scrawny little goalie body that he can use against me.

I decide fuck it with him. I don't need to feed into his negative energy. I'm not that desperate for his attention. I don't need to please everyone.

I last fifteen minutes.

"You must not have a lot of friends, huh?" I turn my head back to him, half pissed about whatever this is, half pissed that Steph and Hiro are still talking and I have yet to share more than six sentences with him since the day started.

Yeti's eyes lock on mine and for a second I think I'm about to get beaten to smithereens right here on the rubber floor in the practice arena cafeteria. Wouldn't be an awful way to go out, considering I'm pretty sure I'll die of embarrassment the second I get home.

He doesn't say anything, just studies me and takes a sip of water. It's almost worse than a mean retort but I refuse to shrivel up under it.

"You don't know me."

Okay, thanks middle school for supplying me with a good way to respond to that, "I don't need to know you any more than I do now to know that you're a fucking dick."

"I've played along with your conversations, I don't see an issue with it."

Oh fuck. I panic at that, wondering if it really is me that's overanalyzing. It probably is, I overanalyze everything.

I run a hand through my long hair as a fidget, trying to get my head wrapped around that and maybe a good way to respond to it, maybe anything at all to say to that.

"I don't think we're going to be friends," Yeti states. "I'd suggest Joey or Milan, they're over there." He juts his thumb behind him to two guys deep into a conversation about whatever at the next table over. I can't just go sit with them. I can't really back away from this. I'm here, Steph's here. I can't-

"Dude," Steph pokes my shoulder, "do you wanna help me explain to Hiro how to play bottle rocket tag? Remember, from Michigan?"

"Yeah," I glare at Yeti out of the corner of my eye, "please. That guy's a fucking dick."

"Who, Yeti?" Steph peeks over at my shoulder at his new liney, now eating in silence between two conversations, one between Fen and Greenie and one between Steph, Hiro and I. "He doesn't seem that bad to me."

"Of course he doesn't to you, you're nice."

Steph pulls up on the top of my hair, "get outta that train of thought, that's not a good way to go about the day. He's just touchy."

"Yeti is scary, he takes at least a year to warm up to you," Hiro chirps from the other side of Steph. "I wouldn't bet on being able to do it in a day or two. He's not... easy. Easy to be around, easy to befriend, easy to talk to. Any of it."

I bite the inside of my lip, caught between 'wow he's a fucking asshole' and 'wow I want to be that guy just so I can say I did it' it's a bad spot.

"Well he's been a piece of shit to me all day so I guess I'm in the 'takes a year to get him to be nice' boat."

HAKON

I told Fen halfway through the summer that the Stojanovič/Sagamore trade was dumb. He agreed. We needed a solid defensive starter like Sagamore, granted, he's a shot in the dark considering his injury and mental health history, but he's expected to be a solid choice.

What we don't need is a statistically lousy backup goalie. We need a solid second option other than Paxton, who played all of last season basically straight through. We need a very very strong second goalie. I suggested to the coaching staff when asked that we should try to pick up Juris or Adams. They went with Stojanovič.

Yeah, granted, Steph and Rocket seem to be glued at the hip and I understand that Steph might have wanted to bring him along for a best-friends reason but the NHL doesn't do trade deals with friends. There's really no such thing.

We didn't have to take him.

No, we shouldn't have took him. He was fine in Boston backing up Swayman.

He was fine on the bench with his hockey hair tucked up under a hat looking poufy and stupid in his gear, massive grin on his face cracking jokes back and forth with the trainers every time we've played Boston since they drafted him except the twice that he's been in. He was fine never making headlines and never being present on any social media accounts and only having a few thousand followers on Instagram and never ever being in anyone's discussions of professional hockey.

Now he's big news because he was involved in the Sagamore/Osling trade. Ridiculous, if you ask me.

He's not going to be of use to us. Paxton is still going to have to play every single hard hitting game and he's going to sit and look pretty for the whole season just because the management can't seem to convince themselves to sign an actual goalie.

It's made even worse now, because the stupid boy cannot seem to come to terms with the fact that I am absolutely not interested in being his new little friend.

And he won't give it up. He's three inches shorter than me and half my size, I know I'd finish him off if I so much as laid a finger on him. I also know that fighting your new goalie on the first day of fucking practice is not looked kindly upon and also not something that I do but I might day dream about snapping his wiry body just to keep myself sane if he's going to keep this up.

"Hey!" I hear his voice from across the parking lot and I reconsider my personal vow to keep fighting only on the ice and only during games.

I look over, his long legs making short work of the asphalt, beat up black converse and dark jeans that are just tight enough to let me see his thighs in. Not as bad as I thought they'd be, strength wise.

"You listen to me and you listen close while I'm not in there with other people that could overhear," he stops dead in front of me, red on his cheeks and a bit of brown scruff in front of his ears. "I did not get traded to buttfuck nowhere just to get handed a team with an assistant captain that refuses to let me be nice to him. I don't give a fuck if you don't like me but I do give a fuck if you wreck the entire afternoon practice just because you don't particularly want to be on my scrimmage team."

"I didn't wreck practice, I asked for a change."

"Five fucking people asked what I did to make you mad, that's wrecked in my book considering all five of them and all whatever number of others now think that we're on uneven footing. I don't care who you are, I'm not risking my chance at a spot on this team and risking fucking up the dynamic because your prissy Viking ass can't handle me. So tell me why you hate me without any good reason."

"Or?"

"Or nothing. You're going to tell me and I'm not leaving you alone until you do. If you think I'm annoying now it's fucking nothing compared to what you're gonna get if you don't."

I sigh, looking down at him and his little fiery temper tantrum. "I don't think you're good enough to be here."

He narrows his eyes.

"That trade sucked and half the team said it themselves. We shot below our weight in goalies and you're not good enough to back Paxton up."

"If I'm not good enough, then they'll cut me, and I'll be out of your hair, but considering that second goalie you have trying out for the spot I'm trying out for left halfway through today mumbling about something far more off putting than the shit I mumble about, you should probably learn to get used to me."

"That's what I'm fucking saying, are you thick or something?" I snap at him. "I think you're useless on this team. I think we should've looked to buy out Juris or Adams. You're not good enough to be who you have to be for this team and I don't doubt you won't be resigned because you're not in a good position for your skill," I bite down my tongue on the rest of what I want to say to him.

"Then what position should I be in? Because it's not fucking offense."

I guess he wants to hear it then, "the minors, or better, retired. You only left juniors because Boston needed fucking anyone to step up and you were just barely good enough not to get killed out here."

He lets out a quiet laugh, "wow, you really don't have any friends, do you?"

"You're changing the topic."

"It's an appropriate change," he laughs. "I can't tell if you don't have people that like you because of your attitude or if you have an attitude because nobody wants to spare the time to be around you."

"I have plenty of fucking friends," I hiss at him. I'm so fucking done with this petulant little asshole. "From what I know you only have one so I'd watch where you put that mouth."

"Yeah, but at least I have one and I'm not arguing with a-" he makes air quotes, "goalie that's not good enough to be here," he stops, "about whether or not I have friends, and with the way you're being oh-so defensive, I'd bet you're gonna go home and eat dinner at the kitchen table facing the window with no noise in the house and then watch something unimportant on TV in silence and then go to bed, alone still, because you aren't even nice enough that a puck bunny wants to stomach you."

My mouth is dry, I can't process what he's saying and I don't really want to, "you listen to me, Rocket,"

"Oh boy, here he goes, big and scary."

"I don't have time for you," I poke my finger into the center of his chest, backing him up against the passenger door of a run down old Chevy S10. Lord knows which one of the rookies drives this tank. "I won't ever have time for you. So drop the act like you wanna make nice with me."

"I think you do have time," he grins, seeming to flourish under my threatening finger, "I think you have all the time in the world. I just think you're in denial. Don't worry, baby," it rolls off his tongue like honey. "The rest of grief feels different once you come to terms with it. Don't deny it, denial will kill you from the inside out."

Don't I fucking know that.

I shove him backward against the cold metal of the truck, not pleased to say I'm somewhat satisfied with the grimace that goes across his features.

"You stay as far out of my life as you fucking can, Stojanovič."

"Just can't keep your hands off me, huh," he grunts, still trying to catch his breath.

I'm in my car before I can make any more stupid decisions regarding the goaltender.