HIS LUCKY PUCK

DMITRY POV 

The hallway stays empty for a long time after he leaves.

I don't move. Don't follow. Don't do a single thing except stand there with my back against the cold concrete wall and listen to the sound of the exit doors swinging shut behind him, the metal clang of it echoing down the corridor like a period at the end of a sentence neither of us finished.

*I'm leaving. Don't follow me.*

So I didn't.

And I hate that I'm still thinking about it ,the fact that I listened, the fact that for once in four years of going to war with Caspian Beckett over every small and stupid thing, I actually just… let him go. No parting shot. No last word. Nothing.

I push off the wall eventually, because standing here like an idiot isn't going to accomplish anything, and head for the parking lot. The cold hits me the second I step outside  that particular Chicago bite that doesn't ask permission, just gets straight to the point. I pull my jacket tighter and keep walking.

The drive home is automatic. Lights, turns, familiar streets I've taken so many times my hands know the route without my brain having to weigh in. Which is probably a good thing, because my brain is somewhere back in that hallway, stuck on a loop it can't seem to break.

*You came to remind me you disapprove, I'm replaceable, and I'm wasting my time.*

He said it so quietly. That's the part I can't shake. Not the words themselves , those were brutal enough ,but the way he delivered them. Flat. Worn down to the bone. Like he'd had that exact conversation so many times the sharp edges had finally gone smooth from overuse.

I've heard Caspian Beckett be a lot of things over the years. Loud. Reckless. Infuriating. The kind of person who takes up more space than any one human reasonably should and somehow makes it everyone else's problem. I've heard him seething. I've heard him laughing at his own jokes before he even finishes telling them. I've heard him at his absolute worst on the ice, running his mouth at officials and opponents alike with the particular brand of chaos that makes me want to put my head through a wall.

I have never heard him sound like that.

Tired in a way that has nothing to do with the game.

I pull into the driveway and sit there for a moment with the engine idling, my hands loose on the wheel, staring at the lit-up windows of the townhouse. The bass from the basement is audible even from out here. Someone's laughing loud, uninhibited, the kind of laugh that belongs to a person who hasn't lost anything recently. I envy that, right now. That particular lightness.

I cut the engine and go inside.

The chaos greets me exactly the way I knew it would. Rafael's music is rattling the walls, Dax is in the kitchen again, and the living room looks like someone threw a party and forgot to send me the invitation. Which they probably did, actually. On purpose. Because they know I wouldn't come.

Knox is on the sectional.

Of course he is.

He looks up when I come in, already reading something in my face that makes him straighten slightly. "Hey. You good?"

"Fine," I say, not breaking stride.

"Dmitry—"

"I said I'm fine, Knox."

I take the stairs two at a time and don't look back. Behind me I hear him settle again, the creak of the sectional absorbing him back into it, and I tell myself the relief I feel at not having to look at him right now is just exhaustion. Just the aftermath of a bad game and a worse night.

I tell myself that.

My room is dark and quiet, which is the only thing I have going for me at this point. I drop my bag by the door, shrug off my jacket, and sit on the edge of the bed without turning the light on. Just sit there in the dark for a minute, elbows on my knees, staring at the floor.

The game replays itself behind my eyes whether I want it to or not. The shifts that didn't connect, the passes that went sideways, the goals we gave up because the team couldn't find its footing. We've been off-kilter since Caspian's suspension I know that, and I suspect most of the team knows it too, even the ones who haven't said it out loud yet. There's a particular rhythm to how we play when the full lineup is intact, and without him in it, the whole machine stutters.

Which is its own particular irony, given how spectacularly we don't function when he's actually there.

I lie back on the bed, one arm behind my head, and stare up at the ceiling. The plaster has a crack running along it that I've never bothered to report to the landlord, a thin jagged line stretching from the light fixture toward the corner of the room. I've spent a lot of late nights staring at that crack. Thinking about the season, about hockey, about what comes after. The NAHL draft. My father's expectations. Whether what I want and what everyone expects of me have enough overlap to live in the same body without tearing me apart.

Tonight, though, my eyes keep sliding off it.

*Your daddy's money and connections get you everything.*

He said that to me four years ago in a high school hallway with blood on his lip and fury in his eyes, and I hated him for it. I hated how certain he was, how easily he reduced everything I'd worked for into a transaction someone else had made on my behalf. Like I wasn't even in the room. Like I was just a name on a check.

But tonight I watched his father stand in front of him with that particular expression  composed, disappointed, immovable  and I thought, *oh.*

*So that's where it comes from.*

The anger. The chip on his shoulder the size of a continent. The way he plays like he's got something to prove and the world has exactly thirty seconds to acknowledge it before he decides to prove it through someone's face instead. I always thought it was arrogance. Self-importance dressed up in volatility. The ego of a guy who's talented enough to get away with being difficult and knows it.

I didn't think it was survival.

I don't know why that distinction matters to me. It shouldn't. What Caspian Beckett is dealing with at home has nothing to do with me, nothing to do with this team, nothing to do with anything except the two of them and whatever cold war they've been running for God knows how long. It's not my business. It's not my problem.

Except I keep hearing his voice.

*One more season. My team needs me.*

Said through clenched teeth, like the words cost him something just to get out. Like admitting that hockey matters that it's the only thing that matters, maybe, the only place he's ever been fully himself  was a vulnerability he couldn't afford to show and showed anyway, because there was nothing left to protect.

I exhale slowly through my nose and close my eyes.

The thing is and I am fully aware of how inconvenient this is  I don't actually disagree with him. About the team needing him. He's our captain. Whatever else he is, whatever else we are to each other, when Caspian Beckett is on the ice and locked in, he is something that is genuinely difficult to look away from. The kind of player who makes the game feel like it has a pulse. Without him in the lineup, we've been technically competent and completely lifeless, and I can feel the difference in my bones every single shift.

I would never say this out loud. I would sooner retire from hockey entirely than say this out loud.

But it's true.

I reach up to shove the pillow into a better position beneath my head, already feeling the pull of sleep starting to drag at the edges of my consciousness, and my hand closes around something unexpected.

Something small. Round. Solid.

I go still.

Reach back. Close my fingers around it properly and bring it up in front of my face, squinting in the dark until my eyes adjust enough to make out the shape.

A puck.

I sit up slowly. Turn it over in my hands. It's regulation size and weight, no different from the hundreds of pucks I've handled in my life, except for the fact that it is clearly old  worn at the edges in a way that speaks to years of handling, the rubber surface smooth in places from contact, the NAHL stamp on the face so faded it's barely legible anymore.

Not mine.

I don't keep pucks. Never have. I'm not sentimental that way  or at least that's what I tell myself. My superstitions run in other directions, socks and pre-game meals and the particular order in which I put my gear on, none of which involve holding onto objects like talismans against bad luck.

But I know someone who does.

I turn the puck over one more time, slower now, and something cold and strange moves through my chest.

Caspian carries a lucky puck. Has for years, apparently  I overheard Riven mention it once in passing, something about how Beckett sleeps with it under his pillow, how no one's ever supposed to touch it or even acknowledge it exists because that's the kind of superstition that runs so deep it's become structural, load-bearing, the kind of thing you can't remove without something else collapsing.

Under his pillow.

I look down at the puck in my hand. Look at my bed. Look at the pillow I just pulled it out from under.

The math of this is not complicated, and it doesn't add up to anything good.

I don't know how it got here. I genuinely, completely, have no explanation for how Caspian Beckett's lucky puck ended up underneath my pillow in my locked bedroom in a house he has never once set foot inside. There is no logical sequence of events that ends with this outcome.

And yet.

Here it is.

I close my fist around it slowly, feeling the worn rubber press into my palm, and lie back down in the dark with it still in my hand. The ceiling stares back at me, indifferent. The crack in the plaster runs its familiar jagged line from one side of the room to the other.

Somewhere downstairs, Rafael's music shifts into something slower.

I don't sleep for a long time.

And when I finally do, I'm still holding it.