Nick reaches for the goalie’s mask, setting it in Picard’s lap, and watches as the kid cradles it carefully, his thumb brushing over the stylized Starship Enterprise painted across the back. When he looks back up at Nick, he’s grinning.
“I got this,” he says, and he sounds like he means it, too. Nick matches his grin.
“Hell yeah.”
Nick barely remembers his own debut game. He was awreck, his head all over the place from spending weeks trying to find Connor and too many late nights spent watching SportsNet chatter about whether he’d be able to live up to the hype. He has vague memories of staring at himself in a mirror before thegame, pale as a ghost with red-rimmed eyes, but the actual game itself is a blank.
They won, which is all anyone needs to remember.
Nick doesn’t have time to stress about the concert when he gets home from their tough-fought overtime loss in Nashville; he’s straight into training, and then a photoshoot for Bauer, and then most of the day of the 14th is spent working on face-offs with the rookies. He allows himself a small freak-out when he’s emailed three VIP passes, and then he zips it up tight and shoves it down into the space in the back of his mind to be dealt with later.
Suddenly, it’s later.
His buzzer rings out in warning and Nick swears loudly, looking at the pile of clothes strewn across his bed—all rejected outfits, which he definitely does not have time to put away before Marco and Lindsay reach his apartment, because they have their own keycard to his elevator, so he can’t stall them now.
He grabs Dolly under one arm and hurries out of his room, shutting the door firmly behind him.
“Ooh, you’re dressing from the twink closet tonight, I see,” Marco says by way of greeting, eyeing him over with a grin.
“I don’t have atwink closet!” Nick scowls, turning to check himself self-consciously in the mirror. Marco loves to chirp him about the small collection of clothes he owns that do not suit the hockey bro vibe he tries to give off. “I just don’t get many opportunities to go out for things that aren’t team events these days.”
“God, tell me about it,” Lindsay says, groaning in agreement. She looks punk as hell in a short red plaid skirt over knee-highboots and fishnets, with a cute black top and a patch-covered black denim jacket to go with it, her long brown hair braided up in a kind of faux-mohawk. A far cry from the glamour of her usual WAG wardrobe. “I’m amazed this skirt still fits. It’s been so long since I last wore it.”
“You look hot, Linds,” Nick tells her with a thumbs-up, then winks at Marco. “You too, babe.” He’s gone full emo kid, his tight black jeans ripped at the knees and a well-worn Green DayT-shirt under a black and red flannel. Looking at them, Nick feels self-conscious for a whole other reason. “This is okay, right? This isn’t exactly my kinda crowd.”
Shit, he’s not used to feeling like this. Nervous, unsure, out of his depth.
“It’s perfect,” Lindsay assures him, far kinder than her husband. “But if you want to change, we still have time. Maybe I could take a look at your options.” She moves towards his bedroom, and Nick flings himself between her and the door.
“Nope!” he blurts out. “All good, this is fine, no need to change! We should get going anyway. Traffic’s gonna be a bitch.”
“Your entire closet is on the floor right now, isn’t it?” Marco says, folding his arms over his chest with a look of amusement on his face.
“Shut up. Let’s go.”
While his best friend laughs at him, Nick puts food down for Dolly and locks up his apartment, wondering if it’s too late to back out.
Lindsay hooks her arm through his, giving him a grin that settles the nerves twisting in his stomach. Fuck it. If the media wants to try and make a story out of him going to a concert with his best friends, that’s their problem.
Nick’s eyes go wide when he sees the huge crowd gathered outside the venue, funneling in at a steady pace. That’s… a lot of people.
“C’mon.” Marco bumps his shoulder gently, nodding in the direction of the much shorter VIP line. He steps up to the security guard at the door, who fastens neon yellow wristbands on their arms.
They squeeze through a narrow, dimly lit corridor that pops out into a small bar area. No one looks at them with more than a passing glance; he doubts there’s much overlap between hockey fans and Sticks fans.
A doubt that is reinforced when, drinks in hand, they walk into the main body of the venue and see the packed-out crowd waiting eagerly for the opener to take the stage.
Nick has never seen so much black and so many Pride flags simultaneously in one room before.
Everyone’s dressed much like Marco and Lindsay, in black and mesh and leather and plaid. A lot of the skin on display is tattooed, and dozens of facial piercings of all kinds flash when the lights catch them. There are people with hair in all shades of the rainbow and all manner of styles, and Nick starts to feel a certain vibe.
The back of his neck starts to itch. Being here, in this crowd… it feels right in the kind of way that has his palms sweating, his heart pounding. The music might be out of his usual genre but the people… these arehispeople—or they could be if he would let himself acknowledge it. There are boys holding hands with other boys, girls pressing excited kisses to the lips of other girls, kids whose gender Nick wouldn’t dare to presumehugging their companions and grinning wide as they shuffle closer to the stage. All of them, gathering here in this space that welcomes them, that celebrates them, that lets them be exactly who they are.
He should probably stop staring at teenagers. But… they just look sohappy.
Nick isn’t sure he’s ever known that kind of happiness.
“You good, man?” Marco’s hot breath on his cheek snaps him out of his daze. He’s got one hand in Lindsay’s, stretched right out to tether her as she drifts towards the crowd. There’s concern in those dark eyes, and Nick hopes his smile doesn’t look as queasy as it feels.
