Archive of Our Own

Carts says, “When do you head back to LA?” They’re lying in bed. Mike was napping in an idle, leftover habit from when it was necessary for his job. He’s always been a guy who sacks out after sex.

Jeff is running his finger down the inside of Mike’s outstretched forearm. It’s light, ticklish. Mike rolls over and grabs Jeff’s hand, bring it up to bite at that finger.

Carts makes a face and then smiles slowly.

“I don’t know,” Mike says after they’ve made out for a stretch, getting lazier and lazier until their lips are barely moving against each other, almost more sharing space than kissing. Mike’s still feeling like he wants to run his teeth all over Jeff’s skin, but it’s a feeling without intention right now. He likes knowing that he could. He could bite Jeff’s kneecap and as long as he made sure to stay clear of Jeff’s reflexive kick he wouldn’t get any trouble. He feels proprietary about that.

One time he set his teeth along Jeff’s elbow and Jeff just gave that eyebrow raise and half a smile before reaching out with his other hand to cup the back of Mike’s neck.

“My elbow turn you on?” he asked later, still with that partial smile.

Not more than the rest of you, Mike could have said, but he just shrugged and Jeff let it go.

“Anyway,” Mike says now, “why do you want to know?” He doesn’t really want to talk about it. Jeff had a pretty good year last year. Mike’s was not so triumphant. He’s put in his necessary work over the past few months to prepare himself as professionally as possible. The season will start when it starts. There’s no point in over-thinking the end of summer, one way or another.

“Just wondering,” Jeff says. “You driving?”

“Got the dog, so, yeah,” Mike says.

“Shut up, I was just asking,” Jeff says, and rolls over so he’s bearing down on Mike’s chest, forcing the breath out of him in one quick burst.

“Oof,” Mike says.

Jeff kisses him once, like he’s proving a point, pressing down with his body and his mouth, and then eases off and kisses him again, softer. He shifts his weight back onto his knees and then sits up.

“Hey wait,” Mike says, “where are you going?” He puts his hand on Jeff’s bare hip.

Jeff slants a smile over his shoulder, but doesn’t say anything. He bends over and picks up his discarded t-shirt from the floor. When he stands up to pull on shorts, he drawls, “I was thinking I’d do something today.”

“I don’t see why that’s necessary,” Mike mutters. “When you could do me instead.”

Jeff laughs, and heads toward the door. “You’re tapped out for now, bud.”

“There’s some fighting words,” Mike says, but Jeff’s already out the door, and Mike hears his feet on the stairs.

Mike spreads out into a stretch and then relaxes. Realistically, he’s definitely tapped out. He’s not nineteen anymore.

When he gets downstairs Jeff’s already gone, his shoes absent from the backdoor and the keys to his rental car gone from the kitchen counter. When Mike pokes his head out the door, the car is absent from the driveway. Mike frowns, and goes to take the dog out for a run. When he gets back, he texts Carts, asking where he went.

Steak for dinner, Jeff sends.

What if I want fish, Mike writes back. He does live on a lake.

Steak for dinner, Jeff repeats.

Jeff brings it up again, on the deck, as they’re eating. Once is just making conversation, twice means he wants to talk about something. Mike puts down his fork.

“I think whatever you want to ask me, you should just ask,” Mike says. “‘Cause I already told you I’m not sure.”

Jeff cuts another piece off his steak. “There’s some stuff I’d like to see between here and there. So if you’re driving.”

“You want to come with me?” Mike smirks. “You want to go sightseeing with me?”

“How many times have you done the drive?”

“Coming and going, I guess, four times.”

“You ever stopped to look at anything along the way?”Jeff asks.

Mike shrugs, because to be honest he’s mostly been focused on getting to his end destinations. He’s stopped at viewpoints and pullouts, but he hasn’t gone out of his way.

“Huh.” Mike rubs at his cheek.

It’s been a long summer that he and Carts have mostly spent apart, as they usually do, though Mike had sent Jeff a text about coming to his end-of-the-summer lake party. Two weeks beforehand Jeff showed up at his door like a stray cat, looking almost surprised to be ringing the doorbell. His nose was sunburnt and his hair sun bleached-pale. He stayed for the two weeks, he stayed for the party, and he’s stayed ever since, taking up one side of Mike’s bed and cooking in Mike’s kitchen.

“You really all squared away to go straight from here to LA?” Mike nudges Jeff’s knee.

Jeff shrugs. “I closed everything up before I came here, so, either driving with you or I’ll fly directly there. Either way.”

“But you want to drive with me,” Mike says, because he finds it’s worth repeating.

Jeff squints at him. “Yeah.”

“Huh,” Mike says. “Okay, when do you want to leave?”

Jeff has a few maps, it turns out, that he picked up at some point. They’re new enough to still only be creased the proper way.

“Is Google Maps not good enough for you?” Mike unfolds part of the state of South Dakota.

“Some things you just need paper maps,” Jeff says.

“I hope you bring along a compass too,” Mike says. “I hear those are useful for navigation.”

“That wasn’t you bitching to me about losing cell service coming down through Wyoming?” Jeff has been spreading out South Dakota, Wyoming, Idaho, and Utah across the floor. Arnold comes over and sniffs at the edges of the paper, and Jeff shoos him away.

Mike leaves Jeff to it. They’re stopping in Las Vegas, and anything else seems like something Mike doesn’t have to care about.

“Oh, make sure we can take Arnold into the hotels,” Mike says.

“Obviously,” Jeff says without looking up.

Mike’s dad comes over a few days later to help close everything up. They start with winterizing the sport boat Mike knows no one’s going to use while he’s gone. It’s tedious and time-consuming like it is every year, and they work mostly in silence. Mike could hire a service to do it, but he doesn’t want to trust his baby to a stranger’s hands.

“It’d be like paying someone to tape my sticks for me,” Mike says to Jeff that evening, after he’s complained enough about the blisters he’s getting and Jeff has mostly laughed at him.

They’re watching the sun set over the lake. They’ve got citronella candles burning on the patio, and enough of an end-of-summer coolness in the air to keep mosquitoes off. Jeff has himself spread out in his chair at Mike’s side, one leg up on a padded footstool, flashing a lot of thigh in Mike’s direction where his shorts have ridden up. Mike’s been sneaking glances all evening, thinking about what he wants to do later. He catches Jeff’s eye this time and smirks. Jeff reaches over and takes Mike’s hand, and then goes back to watching the clouds turn color. The water is getting darker and darker, and the trees have turned into black silhouettes against the sky.

“You’re thinking a few more days?” Jeff says.

“I should be done with everything by then, yeah,” Mike says.

“Good,” Jeff says. “That’ll work.”

“I’m getting a little worried about your grand plan,” Mike says. “We’re not walking from here to LA, right?”

Jeff snorts. “Don’t be stupid. I wouldn’t do that to Arnold.”

“Oh, to Arnold.” Mike kicks out his foot and turns Jeff’s chair toward him, then uses their joined hands to pull them both to their feet.

Jeff lets himself be moved, and then leans in close. Mike tilts his head back, squaring his shoulders automatically. Jeff moves his head down and then backs away as soon as Mike shifts his weight forward in a tease that makes Mike swear and put his hand on the back of Jeff’s neck to pull them together. He kisses Jeff with teeth and gets both their breath coming quickly, gets Jeff moving into him. When he pulls away, he leaves Jeff off-balance enough to have to take a step forward. He feels a quick bite of triumph at that.

“All right, asshole,” Jeff says, and Mike laughs.

He’s still laughing when they get to his bedroom, as Jeff watches him get undressed, then reels him in. He bounces on the mattress when Jeff fakes him out and then trips him onto the bed. They just wrestle for a little while, pillows falling off each side of the mattress, Jeff’s clothes rough against Mike’s naked skin, until Mike’s got Jeff pinned and shifting up into the thigh Mike has between his legs.

“You took an early lead but I got the advantage in the end,” Mike says, pushing on Jeff’s wrists.

Jeff groans, and his arms pull up against Mike’s. “The fucking worst line you’ve ever given me.”

“Not true,” Mike says.

He lets go and moves down the bed. He pulls Jeff’s shorts and underwear off, and then leans his forearms on Jeff’s thighs, feeling the muscles shift and contract as Jeff’s legs jump. He looks up Jeff’s body, at his rucked-up t-shirt and his flushed face, then down toward his cock. When he mouths his way around the head, Jeff hisses out a breath and his thighs flex against Mike again. Knowing that this is near the end of the summer adds an extra level of desperation to Mike’s hands on Jeff’s hips, makes Mike want to move fast and take his time simultaneously. After this they’ll have to be careful of each other’s bruises and strained muscles and the general wear and tear of the season.

If this lasts into the season.

They’ve done both before, depending on if they’re dating other people or not. Mike hadn’t been sure if they were still doing this at all, actually, after Jeff went quiet at the end of last season. Then he showed up at Mike’s door and that first night he’d followed Mike up into his bedroom after Mike had walked Arnold for the last time. They brushed their teeth side-by-side, and when Mike turned away to head to bed, Jeff put his hand on Mike’s elbow and kissed him like a hello.

Here and now, Mike’s got Jeff stretched out on his sheets saying, “Fuck,” up into the ceiling fan. One of his hands comes down and tangles in Mike’s hair, then slides down to Mike’s neck and shoulder to dig into his skin. Mike works at his dick with his mouth and hand, then takes a break to run his teeth along the expanse of Jeff’s inner thighs, riding the way it makes Jeff’s entire body quake. He drags his own dick against his sheets, teasing at the friction, then slides back up until they’re face-to-face again.

“Jesus,” Jeff says breathlessly. “Can I fuck you?”

“Hell yeah,” Mike says. “But you’re staying right like this to do it.”

Jeff licks at his lips. Mike feels his dick jump between their bodies. When Mike leans over to get lube and a condom, Jeff’s hands come up to brace on his hips, and he dips his fingers in to knead at Mike’s ass. Mike sits back and then makes Jeff take off his t-shirt. He never forgets what a big, solid body Jeff is, but right now, at the end of the summer laid out underneath him, Jeff is a revelation, all muscled core and bulked up shoulders, power constrained between Mike’s spread knees. At the end of the summer, Mike only wins because Jeff wants him to.

The thought makes heat prickle all through Mike’s body. He tosses the condom on Jeff’s chest to deal with while he fumbles with the lube, and then raises himself up to work his way down onto Jeff’s cock. Jeff makes a breathy sound and then goes silent, chest shaking against Mike’s knees. His hands are clamped around Mike’s hips, helping to urge Mike down, and then back up.

“Fucking-jesus, god. Love this,” Mike mutters in little punched-out sentences as they move together.

The burn turns into a slide, and Mike cants his hips. He’s sweating, has to wipe at his eyes with the back of his hand, and when he looks down Jeff is red as a tomato. Mike laughs, it’s funny, and the way his muscles tighten has Jeff swearing and balling up one fist to bang it down into the mattress as his entire body pushes up into Mike’s.

The paces changes. Mike rises up on his knees and back down, faster and faster, fisting on hand around his own dick and bracing the other behind him to keep Jeff lined up as he plants his feet and pushes back. When Mike comes, it’s in a friction-and-muscle burn, a release and a relief at the same time. Jeff is making noise in the back of his throat like he’s not even conscious of it, keeping perfectly still until Mike pats at his chest, and then he closes his eyes and thrusts a few times and comes.

“Jesus,” Mike says after his knees start protesting enough that he has to straighten back up and climb off Jeff’s lap.

Jeff is still breathing hard when Mike takes the condom off him. He flops his arm out in an invitation.

“Hah,” Jeff says after a while, when Mike’s started dozing.

“Clean me up,” Mike mumbles into Jeff’s shoulder.

“Not gonna want to fuck like that when we’re spending ten hours sitting on our asses in a car,” Jeff says, and rolls Mike to the side so he can get out of bed.

In the middle of the night, Mike gets up and walks around his house, checking windows and doors. He’s been sleeping lighter the closer they get to the start of the season, getting up later to compensate and waking up to an empty bed. Carts sometimes eyes him across the breakfast bar, but has been keeping his peace.

The doors are all locked. Mike goes back to bed and closes his eyes.

*

Jeff decides that two weeks gives them plenty of time to see the sights.

“You know I usually do this drive in a couple days,” Mike says. But Jeff wants to see the Badlands and Mount Rushmore, then Yellowstone and the Great Salt Lake. He thought about the Grand Canyon but decided on Las Vegas after Mike staged a protest. Apparently, to keep from rushing, they’re going to need some time.

“I still don’t see why we need to see a bunch of US presidents in stone,” Mike says as they’re loading up Mike’s SUV.

“I want to see it,” Jeff says. He shoves one end of a cooler into the back seat.

Mike shrugs, and goes back for one of his suitcases. He’s only got two, which isn’t that many, even though Jeff keeps looking at them and shaking his head.

The first day is firmly trodden ground for Mike. He points out a few familiar landmarks to Jeff that always tell him he’s almost home. They skirt the edges of Winnipeg and then head south. The US border passport control are their usual asshole selves with their self-created stop-and-go traffic, though the Manitoba-North Dakota crossing isn’t the most popular Mike’s ever seen. Every few hours they stop to run around with Arnold.

They stay the night at a Hilton in Watertown, South Dakota, in a room that smells strongly of bleach.

“Exciting,” Mike says as they’re eating at a diner. Jeff has scraped all the soggy breading off his chicken-fried steak.

“I’m figuring the Badlands and Mount Rushmore over the next few days,” Jeff says. “Then maybe a few days in Yellowstone.” He has one of his maps folded to show a single quadrant

Mike pulls his phone out. “Need to keep my twitter account interesting.” He slings his arm around Jeff’s neck and drags him forward so their shoulders are pressed against each other, making sure to get the map in the frame.

He tweets it out with the caption, welcome to America #southdakotaselfie. Jeff has his usual anemic press smile, off-center and looking at Mike.

“Beautiful,” Mike says. Jeff has retreated back to his side of the table. He’s looking at Mike with that same sideways smile that Mike remembers from when they were nineteen, twenty, twenty-five. Mike presses his foot into the side of Jeff’s. Jeff looks down eats another forkful of the steamed broccoli side that came with his dinner.

They go for a short run with Arnold in the early evening around the shoreline of one of the lakes that Mike guesses gives the area its name.

Three wind-sprints in as they’re running, Jeff wipes at his forehead with his sleeve. “Pretty much every English-speaking country has about five Watertowns.”

“And you decided we should see this one,” Mike says. Arnold looks back at him, then veers off toward a lamp post.

“It was on the way,” Jeff says.

“Sprint,” Mike says. They dash forward for half a minute.

“I’ll be sure to mention this in my next interview,” Mike says when they’re recovering at a jog. “How do you even know that? How many does Canada have?”

“Maybe not Canada,” Jeff admits. “I didn’t find one for Canada.”

“Useless fucking piece of information,” Mike says. They both slow down as they approach a pier. As a connoisseur of lake views, Mike gives this one a B. It’s okay. He doesn’t say anything to Jeff about it, though. He doesn’t want to seem ungrateful.

Jeff throws a clump of mowed grass at him almost like he knew what Mike was thinking, then takes off running. Mike chases after him and tackles him from behind. They stagger forward a few steps to the sound of Arnold barking excitedly, then Mike lets go. Jeff slows to a walk before stopping at a bench to stretch out his hamstrings. His shirt is dampened in a line down his back, clinging to the planes of muscle that are shifting as he leans forward. He turns and catches Mike looking. Mike raises his eyebrows, and Jeff gives him a slow, deliberate up-and-down.

“Come on, champ.” Mike smacks him on the ass and they turn to make a slow steady cool-down jog back to the car.

Mike hasn’t spent much time in a room with Jeff on the road, not in years. They don’t share a bed, two doubles not large enough for Mike to want to cram in next to Jeff on cardboard-stiff pillows and scratchy sheets. He appreciates the freedom to watch Jeff, though, as he wanders around shirtless after his shower. Arnold jumps up on the bed with a jangle of his collar.

Jeff laughs. “Guess you get to share a bed anyway.”

“Takes up less space than you,” Mike smirks.

“Drools more, though,” Jeff says. He gets into the other bed and doesn’t try to start anything, leaving Mike feeling restless and a little discontented. Mike pets Arnold and looks over at Jeff as he scratches something in a notebook. The dim hotel lamp is casting shadows across Jeff’s face and making him look more studious than he is.

Mike slides under the covers and settles on his side facing Jeff, with his arm over Arnold. He stays looking for long enough that he starts to feel sleepy, blinking longer and longer.

Eventually he says, “You gonna tell me what’s going on with this trip?” The words feel syrupy-slow in his throat.

Jeff looks over. “Nothing to tell,” he says quietly.

“All right,” Mike sighs. “Good night.”

“Good night,” Jeff says.

Mike closes his eyes and listens to the sound of the dog’s breathing in his ear. Jeff’s pen scratches on for a few more lines, then he sets it on the nightstand and clicks off the light.

*

Jeff has a deep fondness for reconstituted eggs that sees them hitting up the free continental breakfast the next morning before they head out, though they stop in town for stronger coffee. They drive through the morning to their next hotel in Rapid City, and Mike entertains himself by flipping through all the country music stations on the radio. There’s a nice number to choose from. Eventually, Jeff demands a turn behind the wheel and switches to the new Jay-Z album, which is acceptable as well. He rolls his eyes when Mike says so, threatening to try and find some Mumford and Sons, which he knows Mike can’t stand.

“No one needs that much fucking banjo unless they have a soup-catcher beard down to their knees,” Mike says, disgusted.

“You’re just jealous they wear waistcoats and you can’t,” Jeff says.

“I can wear a waistcoat,” Mike says.

“They make you look stocky.”

“Are you really making a short joke when you’re stuck in a car with me?” Mike says.

“Look, another sign for free ice cold water at Wall Drug,” Jeff says, and smiles.

“One hundred miles.” Mike cracks his neck. The previous one said two hundred miles, and the one before that had said three hundred. Mike’s seen them for years, up and down the highways from North Dakota to Wyoming, and never known what they meant.

“Just in time for lunch.”

Wall Drug is a complex of aging buildings set around a grassy square. It has a decaying player piano, fifteen-dollar burgers for a patty on a bun and two pickles, a horde of tourists, and about fifty of the largest gift stores Mike’s ever seen. It also has free water. He and Jeff get recognized and have to stop for pictures a few times, but are otherwise left alone to eat their limp burgers and soggy fries.

“Everything else we see better be more impressive or I’m cutting this sight-seeing short and just driving straight to Vegas,” Mike says.

“Ghost pianos aren’t impressive to you?” Jeff says.

“Show girls are impressive to me,” Mike says. “You want to start wearing one of those feathered headpieces and doing the can-can, I wouldn’t say no. You’ve got the legs.”

“If I’m wearing feathers and doing the can-can, you’re going to be up there with me,” Jeff says.

“If you and I are up on stage in feathers doing the can-can, we better be up there with the entire team,” Mike says.

“I can just see that as the next Cabbie Presents segment.” Jeff shakes his head. He opens his burger and stuffs a few french fries into the bun.

“Jesus, what are you doing.”

“This is a thing,” Jeff says. “I’m making it taste better. Like poutine.”

“You been in California too long, bud. They’re taking away your citizenship,” Mike says, and watches Jeff eat the entire rest of his burger.

They stop at their hotel in Rapid City to drop off their stuff and the dog, then Jeff pushes them on toward Mount Rushmore. It’s getting toward the long shadowed side of the afternoon, so the monument isn’t as crowded as Mike expected. They spend a long moment staring up George Washington’s nose.

“You guys have the same nose,” Jeff observes.

“I am pretty impressive,” Mike says, and ducks Jeff’s punch toward his shoulder. He makes Jeff stand in front of Washington and give a thumbs up as he takes a picture. “Man, that is a whole lot of work,” he says, staring at the slope of talus stone below the statues, the remnants of the cliff-face that were carved to make the stone faces.

He heads off to the bathroom, and when he gets back he finds Jeff cornered by a family in aggressively-lured fishing hats and vests.

“Oh wow, you’re both here,” the dad says in a disturbingly breathy voice for a forty-year-old sunburnt white guy with a beer paunch and a patch on his vest—which Mike approves of—that reads, “eat, drink, fish.”

“Uh, yeah,” Jeff says.

“Hi, Mike,” Mike says, coming up on Jeff’s right side and sticking out his hand.

“Don,” the guy says. His ten-year-old son and daughter have already wandered off to look at some of the explanatory plaques, but he motions toward his wife. “Cheryl. We’re big fans, man, from Philly, jeez we miss you guys.”

“We had season tickets,” Cheryl says. She has a blond perm and a commemorative block t-shirt from the Grand Canyon underneath her fishing vest.

“Always nice to meet people who want to see us play,” Mike says.

“Tough season last year, but we were rooting for you,” Don says, and Mike holds onto his smile with effort. They both end up signing a brochure advertising ranger talks at the Monument, and Jeff gets another map and some urgent advice about the sights to see in the Black Hills, including something called The Needles.

After they’ve walked back toward the stone courtyard with its half-circle of national flags in front of the entry gates, Jeff looks over.

“I don’t think I accounted for the people,” he says thoughtfully. “I wanted to see the sights, but I didn’t think about the people.”

“I can’t wait until it’s a regular part of my day again to talk about the importance of getting pucks in the fucking net,” Mike mutters.

Jeff flicks a glance at him and then back down toward the sidewalk, but he nudges Mike’s side with his elbow.

The road cuts in the Black Hills leading back from Mount Rushmore are black rock flecked with gold, totally different from the pale granite of the monument. Mike tries to take a picture. He even stops the car and gets out to focus on it, but the image doesn’t come out, either too dark or too washed out. Half a mile away, the rock has changed again to something veined and multi-colored.

“We’ll come back here tomorrow,” Jeff says the third time Mike’s almost veered off the road trying to look up through the windshield. “Do some hiking.”

“Are we going to use your new map?” Mike asks.

“It was a good tip, so maybe,” Jeff says. “Don’t be mad just because they said they support us.”

“What the fuck ever.” Mike cranes his neck to look at another rock formation.

Jeff smacks the back of his head. “Pay attention to the road. Or we can switch.”

“No.” Mike flexes his hand on the wheel.

They end up stuck behind a lumbering RV that keeps driving past all the turnouts, crawling around all the turns. Mike breathes sharply through his nose. Jeff settles back in his seat and shoves his hat more firmly over his eyes. It’s a strategy Mike knows Jeff has perfected because he thinks if Mike can’t make eye contact with him he won’t get mad at him just for existing.

After a while it gets meditative, breaking when the RV’s tail lights flare again, then coasting around the curves. Mike reaches over and takes Jeff’s hand, safe here in their own car away from anyone else. Out of the corner of his eyes, still looking straight through the windshield, he sees Jeff glance at him and then push his hat back up.

They spend the next two days hiking around the Black Hills, backtracking one day to see the Badlands, more than just the overlooks they’d had to speed past to get to their hotel that first day.

“Crazy country,” Jeff says.

“You can see why a bunch of farmers and ranchers called it the Badlands,” Mike says.

It looks like a giant dashed over the hills with a paint brush, layering pink over orange over yellow, all carved in rivulets. Even up close, the landscape looks delicate and temporary, like one good rainstorm would wash all the pigment away. It’s t-shirt weather, sunny, and so dry Mike keeps drinking water to try and stave off sinus headaches. Jeff is picking up color on his nose again.

Mike pulls the sunscreen out of his backpack while Jeff is occupied trying to frame a picture, and then lures Jeff over to him with a hand behind his back. He goes up for a kiss, gets Jeff to duck his head down, and then runs his sunscreen-filled hand over Jeff’s nose instead.

“You son-of-a—” Jeff goes after him, and Mike backs away holding his greasy hand in front of him.

“I’m protecting you,” Mike says, and ducks away from Jeff’s hands. “I’m keeping you from getting skin cancer.”

“Ugh, jeez.” Jeff grimaces and wipes at his face.

Mike comes in close and rubs at Jeff’s cheeks and chin until he doesn’t have any white spots, Jeff’s eyes closing as soon as Mike’s fingertips touch his face. His mouth settles in what Mike would call a pout if he didn’t want to get socked in the stomach. When he’s done, he goes up and gives him a real kiss for being a relatively good sport. Jeff opens his eyes and nips at Mike’s lower lip in a silent protest.

“That was a lame fucking trick,” Jeff says once they’ve started walking again.

“You always fall for it though,” Mike says. His lips taste a little like sunscreen.

“Fool me once,” Jeff says.

They have sex that night in one of the two queen-sized beds in their hotel room. Jeff goes down on Mike, a blowjob where he says, “Got something new for you,” and then pulls some sort of trick with his tongue, a back-and-forth with Mike’s foreskin that has him swearing loudly, then turning his face in to the crook of his elbow to mouth at his own skin when Jeff clamps down on his thigh in warning.

“Jesus,” Mike says weakly when he’s gotten his head back together enough for words. “Where’d you pick that up?”

Jeff shrugs. He’s got a girl he sometimes sees in Jersey, maybe named Carrie. Could have been her. He raises an eyebrow. “Good, eh?”

“Jesus,” Mike says again. He drags Jeff over to him, runs a lingering hand over his stomach, scratches his fingers though Jeff’s pubic hair, feeling Jeff arch minutely toward him. He bites down on a savage satisfaction and pulls back each time Jeff moves, until he’s twitching on the bed, his eyes fixed on Mike’s hand.

“I didn’t learn any new skills over summer vacation,” Mike says. “Guess we’ll just have to see if you still like the old ones.”

He thinks about it later. Jeff goes out and gets these new skills, and he comes back with them like it’s show-and-tell time. Sometimes he’ll tell Mike a story, sometimes he doesn’t bother. Mike’s less adventurous. Probably the most exciting thing he’s done was to lean over and lay one on Jeff when they were rookies, sweaty-palmed and hiding behind bravado and the sure knowledge that Mike could take him in a fight if he had to.

Mike rolls onto his stomach and turns his head to the side.

“You seeing a lot of people these days?”

Jeff’s been lying with his arm over his eyes, but he brings it down and raises his head at that.

After a moment, his expression goes guarded. “No. Saw Carrie a few times over the summer, but aside from that, no.”

“What about that guy in LA?” Mike’s not sure why he’s pressing, aside from that he wants to know. He feels a little vindicated that he’d remembered Carrie’s name right.

“Found a boyfriend,” Jeff says.

“He finally figured out that wasn’t going to be you?” Mike smirks.

“It wasn’t ever like that,” Jeff says.

Mike hums an equivocal noise and blinks slowly. He’d only met the guy once, by accident at a pizza joint halfway between his and Jeff’s houses. He’d seemed pretty into Jeff, but what does Mike know. Mike’s sometimes been pretty into Jeff, but he’s never been stupid enough to let Jeff know. Jeff runs away from feelings like they’re trying to kneecap him.

The thought is exhausting. Mike rolls over to fit his back into Jeff’s side, and listens to the wheezing of the air conditioner until it white-noises him to sleep.

He wakes up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom with Jeff is breathing heavily in his ear, with his arm tight across Mike’s middle. The lights have all been turned off. Mike slides free and stumbles to the bathroom, closing the door behind him before he switches on the light to find the toilet. The fan overhead rumbles to life, grating and loud. After Mike pisses, he rinses off his hands and stares at his bleary face in the mirror. He’s got bags under his eyes and a sallow cast to his skin from the fluorescent light. His low back feels tight from too much time in the car.

He switches the light off and opens the bathroom door. The room is pitch black as he edges his way back to the bed.

“Hm,” Jeff grumbles as Mike gets back under the covers.

“Shh, go back to sleep,” Mike mutters.

Jeff sighs, and when Mike lies down, he cuddles close again, his breath ruffling across Mike’s neck. Sometimes sleeping with Jeff fucks up Mike’s head pretty good, because it feels like a relationship. Usually, if it’s during the season, there are enough people around that Mike remembers where reality lies, and that makes it easier to remember the edges of this thing between them.

This trip where it’s just them and the dog, it’s harder for Mike to keep track of. The only time he can remember it being harder is when they first started, when Mike sometimes wanted to climb inside Jeff’s head to figure out what the fuck was going on, and two years ago, when they were living together in LA. This is the longest relationship Mike’s ever had from some ways of looking, which is a miracle considering how mad he gets about it sometimes.

He gets up when staring at the ceiling in the dark and feeling Jeff breathing beside him starts to grate, when the constant circling of his own thoughts makes him want to punch something. Arnold gets up too as Mike fumbles around for his shoes and a hoodie, and Mike feels him nosing at his knees when he walks to the door.

“All right, come on,” Mike mutters.

They walk together across the parking lot. Arnold ranges a little ahead, sniffing at cars and concrete curb bumpers, until Mike calls him back with a quiet word as they approach the street. It’s three-thirty in the morning. Hardly any cars are out.

Mike hates this wired tension he gets when he wakes up in the middle of the night. He’s tired but he can’t sleep. He doesn’t want to think, but he can’t stop worrying over ideas that have hardly any power in the daytime. For instance, now he’s thinking about that fucking couple from two days ago, and all the questions he’ll have to answer once the season gets rolling, depending on how it goes. He hates feeling like a failure more than almost anything, hates talking about it more. Last season was a frustrating grind, a let-down from the Olympic camp onward, and the more frustrated he got the more he wanted to both pull Jeff toward him and push him away.

“Fuck it,” Mike says aloud. “Fuck it, fuck it, fuck it.”

He stops at a street corner and looks at his phone. He usually tries to avoid turning on screens when he’s having trouble sleeping, because one of the trainers told him the light wakes you up more, but by the time he’s gone to the trouble of putting on shoes and going for a walk, he figures that ship has well and truly sailed. He checks through his email and then his twitter feed, sends some insults at Hartsy for his amazing hat hair picture, and closes his phone down without waiting to see if Hartsy is awake at six in the morning Philly-time.

The click of the lock opening under his keycard makes Jeff turn over with a muffled, “Huh?” Arnold goes over to say hi. Jeff says, “What? Arnold…” still sounding mostly-asleep.

“Sorry,” Mike says, closing the door as quietly as he can behind him. He dumps his hoodie and keycard on an end-table and toes his flip-flops off. “Went for a walk.”

“Oh,” Jeff mutters.

Mike goes over to the other bed and pulls the covers loose. “Go back to sleep.” He slides into bed, feeling the sheets cool under his bare feet. New bed, new start on going to sleep. Back in LA, he sometimes moves to the guest bedroom, or the couch. Across the room, he hears Jeff turn over twice. Eventually, he goes to sleep.

In the morning, Jeff offers to drive first.

“Nope,” Mike says, and gets in the driver’s seat.

The Rockies rise up slowly in front of them after they leave South Dakota behind, heading west into Wyoming. Mike hasn’t exactly driven this route before, but he’s driven the approach heading to and from the Rockies, both Canadian and US, enough times for it to be familiar, though still impressive to see the white-topped mountains rising up straight out of the plains. Mike remembers calling Jeff from the road that first drive, on his way from Kenora to Los Angeles, and narrating everything he could see until he lost cell reception.

Jeff had flown straight from New Jersey to Ohio. He’d sent Mike a picture of his departure gate from the airport. Fuck this place, he’d said.

He’s behind the wheel now, tapping a finger along to the radio station Mike found. “I read that people used to call mountains molehills on the Earth,” he says.

“Not a fan of nature’s majesty,” Mike says. “And since when do you read? Was this in grade nine?”

Jeff swerves the car in response. Arnold barks twice from the back seat.

“Riling up the dog, too,” Mike says.

“Don’t be an asshole just ‘cause you’re cranky,” Jeff says.

“I’m not cranky.” Mike slouches down and shoves his hat up so that it’s balanced between the top of his headrest and his sunglasses.

Jeff looks over and snorts. “You look like an idiot.”

“I’m not cranky, you’re cranky.”

“Someone woke me up twice last night,” Jeff says.

“Sorry,” Mike says.

Jeff glances over quickly, in between navigating a turn. He keeps whatever he’s thinking to himself, though, and they sit in silence for a few hours, aside from Mike offering him jerky from the bag at his feet and Gatorade from the cooler. They switch places when they stop for gas at Gilette, since Jeff thinks they’re close to leaving I-90, so that Jeff can open up his maps and drape them across the dash. The white paper flashes sun into Mike’s tired eyes, and makes him snap at Carts when they almost miss the turn-off for US-14 that’ll take them through Bighorn National Forest. In the backseat, Arnold slides off the seat to thump onto the floor in response to Mike’s tone.

“—if you want me to take that exit, tell me to take that fucking exit,” Mike finishes.

“I told you to take the fucking exit, Richie,” Jeff says. “Not my fault you can’t tell your right from your left. You want to tell me what’s so fucking mysterious about saying, ‘here, right here.’”

They both stew in silence as Mike drives through rural grassland studded with intermittent pines, dark green in contrast to the dusty orange and yellow of the hills. The road is paved with a reddish asphalt. The road turns its way up toward the mountains, the grassland rising up toward forest on chalky yellow rocky hills.

Jeff folds up his map with a meticulous attention to detail that sets Mike’s teeth on edge. Mike grabs the map out of his hand in one quick snap away from the wheel, crumpling it up and throwing it over his shoulder.

“All right, pull over,” Jeff says tightly.

They’re on a tight curve, a two-lane road with hardly any shoulder. Mike shoots Jeff an incredulous glance. “No fucking way.”

“Next pullout, you’re pulling over and we’re switching places,” Jeff warns.

Mike wants to say, who are you, my mother, but just grips the wheel tighter. On the other side of the opposing lane, the road slopes away from the guardrail, pale gravel leading down a canyon lined with scrub and stunted pines. The far side of the canyon ends in odd, flat-topped cliffs that have bands of green brush sandwiched in horizontal bands between the stone.

Ten minutes later he does pull over when he sees a spot, a turnout built into a road-cut. He gets out of the car and leave the keys in the ignition to beep an alarm at the open door. Jeff meets him near the front right corner of the bumper, and shoulders him back a step. He knocks Mike off balance, going back toward the hood of the car, but Mike rights himself and shoves forward.

“Don’t even fucking tempt me,” Mike says, pushing sharply with both hands, knocking Jeff back a step. “You want to drive the car, drive the fucking car.”

“Stop being an asshole,” Jeff says, but steps to the side and moves around the car toward the driver’s seat.

They round a few more bends in the road before Mike’s aggression leaks out of him, deflating him slowly, leaving him feeling tired in the passenger seat. He stares at the lines carved into the rock of the road cuts.

“Sorry about your map,” he says, feeling foolish. Jeff looks sideways at him a couple times, before he reaches out and taps Mike’s knee twice.

At their next stretch break, when Jeff is running around with Arnold, back and forth between ends of the turnout, Mike goes in to the back seat and digs out the balled-up map from where it had gotten lodged almost underneath the driver’s seat. It’s torn and stained from where Arnold had clearly started pawing at it. He unfolds and refolds it as best he can, trying to follow the original creases.

Jeff’s shadow falls over him, and then he feels Jeff press up against his back. Jeff takes the folded map from Mike’s hands and scuffs his face down Mike’s neck, taking advantage of Mike’s flinch sideways to press a kiss to Mike’s cheek.

“Thanks,” Jeff says.

“Asshole.” Mike elbows him in the stomach, but smiles. “Anyway. Sorry.”

Jeff pats his stomach and wanders toward the car. Arnold brushes up against Mike’s knees. He kneels down and lets Arnold nose at his chin, and scratches at the fur on his neck until he feels like getting back into the passenger seat and back on the road.

*

Yellowstone creeps up on Mike as he dozes off and on in the passenger seat. He forces himself to wake up all the way when they cross the park boundary, and the sign welcoming them to a national park. They check in at one of the Western cabins at Yellowstone Lake. The cabin is fascinatingly ugly, an asymmetrical brown box with four doors leading to four separate rooms in a row. Their room is decorated along Western or frontier themes, the bedframes and nightstands made of peeled logs. The bedding matches the curtains, a pattern of repeated oblong lake scenes on a dull brown background.

Jeff goes and checks the door to the bathroom.

“I’m guessing there isn’t a jacuzzi and sauna in there,” Mike says.

“Toilet, sink, and a bathtub.” Jeff comes back out and sits down on one of the beds.

“This is really making me miss my own cabin,” Mike says.

“These cabins let us have Arnold with us,” Jeff says patiently. He’s on his second repetition, the first time when they’d driven away from the main lodge and toward the line of shacks.

“Hear that, boy?” Arnold stops sniffing at the carpet to look over at Mike. “You gonna enjoy your new home? It’s a lot smaller than you’re used to. And more brown.” He’s been moving toward Jeff as he talks, and Jeff reaches out at the end of his sentence to curl his fingers around Mike’s hips, dragging him in to stand between his knees, pressing his thumbs into the tight muscle around the rise of Mike’s pelvis.

“Fuck, ow,” Mike says, and moves in closer. Jeff smirks up at him. He lets his fingers work around Mike’s flanks to massage at his low back with pressure that is both good and unsatisfying.

“What was that?” Jeff says. “Are you still complaining about our private room?”

Mike braces his forearms on Jeff’s shoulders, and shifts his weight between Jeff’s hands and his shoulders.

Eventually Jeff stops and lets his hands trail back down to cradle Mike’s hips. His head presses briefly against Mike’s stomach, and then he straightens up again.

“I want to see the sun set over the lake,” he says.

*

They stay at Yellowstone for four days, working their way around the different loops. Mike commandeers their last full day for fishing, since he bought a fishing license and his poles across the country. They sneak Arnold into their rented motorboat because Carts can’t remember whether dogs are allowed on the lake.

“Whoa,” Jeff says, after they’ve been idling for a while.

Mike has been going through his gear, readying his pole, but he looks up at that. Jeff is reading a pamphlet he picked up at the marina where they rented the boat and got their fishing license. It has a picture of a trout on the front.

“What,” Mike says.

“They’re serious about this cutthroat trout thing.”

“Uh, yeah. That’s why the park ranger talked my ear off about lake trout.” Mike threads a weight onto his line and crimps it closed with his teeth.

“Huh,” Jeff says after a while. “What are you going to do if you catch a fish? We don’t have anywhere to cook it. And these lake trout are invasive, so if you throw it back you’re damaging the environment.”

“If?” Mike throws an affronted look over his shoulder. “Whatever, we’ll buy some charcoal and grill it. Stop scaring the fish away. And shift your weight my way, I want to see if you remember anything I taught you about casting a line.”

They end up grilling next to a middle-aged couple from the Bay Area, two fly fishermen up on vacation.

“Beautiful fishing,” Bill says, when Mike spots their waders and heads over to ask how the fishing was. He’s got big glasses and thinning hair. Mike’s not surprised to learn that he’s a lawyer, though he might have guessed a professor from the way he extensively catalogues all the blue-ribbon streams in the area when Mike asks.

“I notice that you’re eating bratwursts, though,” Mike says.

Bill’s wife Wen laughs. “Billie likes catching ‘em more than he likes eating them.” She’s kicked back in a camp chair, a stub of a pony tail poking out the back of a beat up Oakland A’s hat, drinking beer out of a bottle Mike doesn’t recognize.

“I got a beautiful cutthroat this morning, right at dawn, you know,” Bill says, eyes going misty. “Can’t keep them, of course, but wow.” He holds his hands in front of him, measuring out an invisible fish.

Shortly before sunset Bill looks up and says, “Honey, I think the fish are biting.” He turns to Mike. “You want to come along? I think I’ve got a spare set of waders.”

Wen and Jeff have been talking about home-brewing, which Jeff sounds surprisingly interested in. “It’s pretty simple, three or four hours and then a few months of waiting,” she’s saying as Jeff cheerfully waves Mike off with a bottle of Wen’s latest amber ale. It is, Mike estimates, about fifteen percent alcohol by volume. “Hardest part is finding the space to keep it when it’s fermenting, but now that all our kids are off to college, we’ve got the room.”

“It’s good stuff,” Jeff says.

“Pace yourself,” Mike advises, and then follows Bill along to his truck.

Behind him, he hears Wen ask, “What is it you guys do again?”

It’s dark by the time Mike and Bill return. Wen and Jeff have one of those propane lamps lit on the picnic table, and Jeff is almost listing sideways in his chair. The remnants of a card game are scattered across the table.

“I think your wife drank my friend under the table here,” Mike says.

“The best woman I know,” Bill says happily, and goes over to give her a kiss while Mike is levering Jeff out of his chair.

“All right, you got to work with me here,” Mike says, trying to get Jeff propped up on his shoulder.

“I’m good, I’m good. Hey,” Jeff says, drawing out the word and leaning his head in close. His nose bumps Mike’s cheek. “Did you catch any fish?” His breath smells like beer.

“Yeah, bud, I did.”

“Wow,” Jeff says. He drags the word out again, “wowwwwwww.”

Bill has taken Jeff’s chair, and is shuffling cards.

“We’re gonna call it a night, I think,” Mike says. “Thanks for the company and the beer, guys. Bill, thanks for the fishing.”

“Have a good season!” Wen calls.

“Beer for a hat trick,” Jeff says, which Mike doesn’t understand, but makes Wen laugh until her hat falls off.

“Oh, you’re awful happy,” Mike hears Bill say behind them as Mike walks Jeff to their car.

“She’s going to give me a six-pack if I get her a hat trick,” Jeff confides as they pull onto the main road.

“This like a bet?” Mike says.

“Yeah,” Jeff says. He lolls his head sideways toward Mike. “Are you enjoying your road trip?”

Mike blinks at the non sequitur. He fends off Jeff’s reaching hand, holding it down on his own armrest. After a moment, he says, “Yeah. I am.”

“Good,” Jeff says, sounding satisfied.

Carts is intensely hungover the next morning, pale-faced and squinting, and grimly determined to go see Old Faithful before they leave. At one point he pulls his face out of his coffee cup.

“Did I promise a hat trick for more of this beer?”

“I don’t know, but it sounded kind of like that,” Mike says. Jeff shudders.

Mike doesn’t even bother to ask if he’s driving first, just lets Jeff slump into the passenger seat with his shades on and his hat pulled low, sweatshirt hood pulled up over all of it. He manages to doze off on the drive over. Mike lets him sleep for a while as he wanders the area, scouting out the observation benches and the educational plaques about the formation of geysers. There’s a helpful sandwich-board from the Park Service saying what time Old Faithful is next likely to blow, which is about twenty minutes from now.

Every once in a while, one of the other five or six geysers that aren’t world famous go off. Mike wastes a valuable couple of minutes trying to get a good photograph of himself with an erupting geyser, ending up with seven pictures of his shoulder and a quarter of his face, and absolutely no jetting water.

When there’s ten minutes left, he goes back over to the car and wakes up Jeff, who slumps over him on his way out of the passenger seat.

“I saved the best for last,” Jeff says dolefully.

“We’re going to get a selfie in front of Old Faithful as it goes off, it’s gonna be great,” Mike says. “I’m going to sent it to Cabbie so his face can melt off with jealousy.”

“I’m going to hurl on your camera,” Carts says with great sincerity, but that’s a lie, since Mike’s seen him way more hungover than this, and he always manages to keep down his breakfast.

He ends up looking surprisingly not-hungover in the final picture, though he does look like he’s tolerating craziness in the squint of his eyebrows over the sunglasses. They take a few test pictures, and manage to get a decent shot when the geyser actually goes off, in the one second before Jeff turns around so he can see it with his own eyes.

Jeff sleeps most of the way through the Grand Tetons. Mike pulls over three times to take his picture in front of increasingly impressive cliff faces. Jeff sleeps through every stop, including the one where Arnold starts barking at some brown furry animal that looks like an overgrown hamster, or a beaver without its flat tail.

It’s nice, driving relatively alone. He taps his hands on the steering wheel and sings along quietly with the radio, watching the landscape change around him.

Arnold pokes his head over the seat and sniffs at Jeff’s shoulder, then Mike’s.

“Hey, back, Arnold,” Mike says quietly. He takes one hand off the wheel to push Arnold off his shoulder.

He looks over at Jeff, who hasn’t stirred, tipped back as far as the passenger seat will go, face turned to the side, frowning slightly. The sunglasses slip askew and eventually slide off entirely. Mike still doesn’t know why they’re here, driving together. When they’re both awake, Mike is distracted from thinking about how in the entire history of their friendship they’ve never done something like this, travel like this that can’t be explained away with circumstance.

With Jeff sleeping beside him, he can’t help but think on it. At the end of the season, when he does this drive in reverse, he’s going to be thinking about this trip. The two of them and the dog alone in a car for two weeks.

Eventually, Mike stops to get gas again, and shakes Jeff awake.

“Gonna sleep through the rest of your trip,” Mike says. “I might just go all the way through to LA instead.”

“No, it’s my turn to drive,” Jeff mumbles, and staggers out of the car, rubbing at his neck.

Mike gets out of the driver’s side and starts refilling the tank. He sets the self-filling trigger-lock on the pump handle and goes over to wash the windshield clean of the hundreds of bugs that dive-bombed the car on the ride down out of the mountains. Carts comes over and starts cleaning the rear window. He’s still moving sleepily. The pump clicks and Mike bumps him with his hip, a quick hello as they cross paths, Mike heading back toward the gas tank, Jeff going to the driver’s seat.

“You awake now?” Mike asks as Jeff puts the car into gear.

Jeff rubs at his face with the hand not on the steering wheel. “Yeah.”

The highway grows larger as the terrain opens up, two lanes turning into a divided four-lane road. The forested mountains transition back into foothills and then grassland again. They’ve turned and are heading south and west. The change in direction has a line of tension starting to run up Mike’s back and into his shoulders. He can feel each hundred miles that takes them closer to the start of the new season. The last few days at Yellowstone made it easy to forget they were going somewhere specific.

They join up with I-80, and everything speeds up now, the divided four-lane turning into a divided six-lane with eighteen-wheelers and congestion. Coming down out of the final mountainous push into Salt Lake City, Mike can just see a haze of blue that might be the Great Salt Lake, a fuzzy boundary between the city’s edge and more mountains.

He points it out, and Jeff nods, before powering around a dented silver Camry going the speed limit in the middle lane.

They end up at a luxury hotel in downtown Salt Lake City, a suite with joined rooms and a large bathroom with a soaking tub facing a picture window looking out over the lake. It’s a nice series of rooms. Mike isn’t unaccustomed to nice places, he makes a good amount of money, and he’s still startled by the level of glossy luxury on display. Something about the rooms is setting his teeth on edge as he surveys the turned down bed, the marble tiling in the bath.

“Extra couple hundred dollars for the view,” Jeff says, “figured it was worth it.”

“This is the honeymoon suite,” Mike says.

He skirts the edge of an armchair and walks around the bed, not touching anything. The bedroom has a floor-length window that gives the same view as the bathroom. There’s no pretense here about two separate beds, which means that Jeff, when he was asked, specified the lone king bed. Mike has never in his life stayed in a set up like this except when he was dating someone.

Jeff had put his bag down and was pulling out his shower kit, but he stops, one hand still on the zipper. He looks up. “It’s a nice suite.”

“Yeah,” Mike says. He ducks his head into the bathroom. “I bet you had to tell them specially not to leave roses on the pillows and champagne in a bucket.”

“You bitched enough about Yellowstone, now you’re complaining about this?” Carts says. When Mike looks over, Jeff is looking straight at him.

Mike crosses his arms over his chest and looks around the room again.

“I mean, I thought it’d be nice to stay somewhere nice now that we have the option. If you want to go to the Motel 6 down the street be my guest,” Jeff says, mouth quirked quizzically. He takes his hat off and runs his hand over his hair, then resettles the hat.

The tension that has been growing in Mike all day has settled into his stomach, a tight knot of frustration.

“What is this,” Mike says.

Jeff looks around, too, then back at Mike. He raises his eyebrows, then finishes taking out his shower bag and moves it to the bathroom. When he’s back in the room he gets out a set of workout clothes and starts changing.

“I’m going to the fitness room, come with me or not, your choice,” Jeff says after he’s finished tying the laces on his sneakers.

“Seriously, what is this,” Mike says. “This fucking honeymoon suite.”

“You want to fight about this? Get another room if you want, it’s not a big deal,” Jeff says.

“I say talk, and you think I want to fight?”

“I want to go work out,” Jeff says. “That’s what I want to do right now, I’m tired of being in a car and I want to go work out.”

“Fine,” Mike says. “Fine, do your fucking workout.”

They look at each other, Mike facing him square with his arms folded, Jeff turned sideways with a hand on the doorframe. Angry body language, Mike knows, he had a girlfriend who’d always get on him about it when they fought, say that he’d started before they ever even opened their mouths. But Jeff looks like he’d run straight through the door if he had to, and that just makes Mike even more mad, makes him want block Jeff in with his body so he’d have to go through him to get out of this conversation.

“Do your fucking workout,” Mike repeats.

He paces the floor after Jeff leaves, from the beautiful bathroom to the king bed in one room, the living room and kitchenette in the other, and back, cataloguing the pillows on the bed, the draperies dressing the windows, the bath salts around the edge of the tub.

He takes Arnold and goes running, even though he should be trying to keep the bulk on for the season, should hit up the weight room with Carts. He doesn’t think he can share space with Jeff yet without clocking him with a dumbbell.

“What do you think, Arnold?” Mike says when they stop so he can take a drink of water. He pours some water out into his hand and kneels down so Arnold can drink too. “Am I overreacting?”

Arnold’s tongue is rough against his palm. Mike finishes by running his hand roughly over Arnold’s head, tousling his ears.

“You always think I’m right,” Mike says. Arnold just pants at him, which Mike takes as his cue to turn around and start running back.

Jeff is in the shower when Mike gets up to the room. Mike goes into the bathroom to fill up Arnold’s water bowl and put it down in a corner of the living room on a towel. Jeff is a dim shape in the fogged-in shower stall. Once Mike has seen to Arnold, he goes back into the bathroom to wait. The jacuzzi bathtub is set into a convenient ledge that he sits on, flipping a folded bath sheet back and forth between his hands.

The water stops running and the stall door opens. Jeff’s expression, once he stops wiping at his face and sees Mike sitting there, holding out a towel for him, is priceless. It shifts from surprise to chagrin and then resignation. He takes the towel warily. He runs it over his face and hair, mops at his chest before wrapping it around his waist. Light is slanting through those ridiculous windows and shining across his body, highlighting the blue of his irises and catching on the pale stubble on his chin and the water still beaded on his skin.

He looks like the guy Mike wants to fight with, and fuck, and play alongside. Mike never wants Jeff to go anywhere, he never has.

Mike remembers skating over to Jeff with the Cup over his head. He could hardly feel the weight of it his entire body was shaking with so much adrenaline and excitement. He remembers handing the Cup over, both their hands gripping the metal at the same time.

Jeff ducked his head down to shout in his ear, “It all fucking happened! It all fucking happened for this!”

It’s the closest Carts has ever come to true religion, as far as Mike’s aware.

He doesn’t look at it like that, he’s not that fatalistic. But Mike does think it was worth it, that season with its intense lows and that final high at the end. Being with Jeff is always worth it.

“I’m not sleeping well,” Mike says. “You know that sometimes happens. But. I’m tired of not sleeping well because I don’t know what we’re doing.” He makes a face when Jeff frowns. “It’s not keeping me up, but sometimes when I wake up in the middle of the night, it’s on the list of things I think about.”

“What else is on there?” Jeff asks.

Mike shrugs. “I don’t know, fucking earthquakes and hockey and my taxes and whether Arnold needs to go to the vet. And, like. We’ve been doing this a long time. That’s the bullshit I think about.”

He reaches out his hand and drags it down Jeff’s damp skin, anchoring himself on Jeff’s hip. “But you never want to talk about anything. And now you’re changing the rules on me.”

He can feel the breath Jeff takes, his side moving under Mike’s palm.

“I didn’t know we had rules,” Jeff says.

“I can’t tell if you’re lying to me or yourself with that,” Mike says. “Bullshit we don’t have rules.”

He tightens his hand, digging his fingertips into Jeff’s skin, then releases the tension and lets his hand press flat again. Jeff puts his hand over Mike’s and takes it in his, turning them so they’re holding hands.

“I don’t think of them like rules. Just. Things that work. Things that have been good for a long time,” Jeff says.

“Not anymore,” Mike says, gesturing with their joined hands. “It isn’t working for me now. I can do this.” He lifts Jeff’s hand to his mouth and runs his teeth along Jeff’s finger and then bites sharply at his knuckle. Jeff’s hand jerks, but stays where it is. “But I think if I ask if you’re going to be with me in LA, if I want you to tell me where you’re going to be every night, you’re going to be out the door.”

Jeff is quiet for a long time after that. A drop of water drips down his forehead from his wet hair, and he dashes it away with the hand Mike’s not holding.

“You get us the honeymoon suite on our own private vacation, and I don’t know what to think, because we don’t do this. I don’t ask you when you’re coming around, and I don’t think we’re dating. I like the suite, but I don’t know what the fuck it means.”

Eventually, Jeff shakes his head.

“I forget how you get so caught up in your own head sometimes,” he says. “You never asked me to tell you where I was going to be every night. You never asked me anything. Mike, you’re not someone I just met playing frisbee on the beach.”

The damp air in the bathroom is soaking into Mike’s already sweaty shirt, sticking it to his shoulderblades. He feels like Jeff is handing him a blank check for the first time since he kissed that tall, skinny blond kid who always watched him out of the corners of his eyes. But this isn’t making out in tiny billet beds and then eyeing each other later from across the room at a house party as they both went home with separate girls.

“You want me to tell you what I want? I want you to tell me where you’re going to be. It doesn’t always have to be with me, but I want you to tell me.” He puts his hand on the side of Jeff’s neck, makes himself look Jeff in the eye. “I want you to tell me.”

“Same,” Jeff says. He smiles crookedly. “Goes both ways.”

“Yeah,” Mike says.

Jeff says, “I booked this room because I wanted to fuck you in a big bed, and then sleep with you in it afterward. I’m not that complicated.”

“Did you have to ask them to leave off the roses and champagne, though?”

The creases around Carts’ eyes deepen like he’s trying not to laugh. “I don’t know where you came up with that. I think you have to request honeymoon service.”

Mike hooks his finger in the knot of Jeff’s towel. He says, “You wanted to fuck me in that big bed?”

“Yeah,” Jeff says. “And then maybe we can use that bathtub.”

“Now that you’ve told me about it, I could go along with this plan,” Mike says. Jeff’s hands are already flirting with the edge of Mike’s shirt. Mike lets him pull it off, and then comes back in close. Jeff puts his hands on Mike’s shoulders and leans down to kiss him.

That night as they lie together in bed, Jeff says to the back of his neck, “Earthquakes happen and there’s not much we can do, but if it’ll make you feel better we can get an earthquake kit for your house. You’re a great player and this season is going to be fine. You’ve got an accountant. Arnold is fine. You and me, we’re going to be fine. We’re going to be great.”

Mike takes a breath and lets it out slowly. He nods, still facing away, and feels Carts press a kiss to his shoulder. When his breathing evens out, Mike follows the rhythm along to sleep.

*

They spend two days in Salt Lake City, getting covered in brine flies while floating in the water just off the beach at Antelope Island, and kayaking around the edges of the lake. They stop at Vegas for a day so that Mike can make Jeff blow on his dice for luck, and end up winning a couple hundred dollars and getting drunk on free booze.

“It’s the damnedest thing, playing hockey in the desert,” Mike says, halfway through their last day of driving.

“Is that just now coming to you?” Jeff says.

“I mean, it’s not new.” Mike looks out the window. “But you sure fucking feel it a lot more when you’re driving through the Mojave.”

They’re close enough now that he can picture his house in LA, the sheets on his bed, letting Arnold go for a run on the beach. He is sick as hell of his car and the array of Gatorade and water bottles collecting in the cup holders and the doors. He’s even sick of gas station jerky. Jeff is looking at the line of windmills marching up the hills around them. He’s got tired creases around his eyes but he looks happy.

Mike settles his hand on the armrest between them. After a moment, Jeff reaches over and puts his hand on top of his, and Mike laces their fingers together.