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Love Tap

last update publish date: 2026-03-27 06:15:56

POV: Khyle

The first run through went cleanly enough.

Khyle's side had control from the drop, and they moved the puck through the sequence the coach wanted with the mechanical efficiency of men who had run the same plays enough times that their bodies knew the pattern without being told. The opposing group pressed hard, won the puck back in the neutral zone, and put it in the net two minutes later. Clean, functional, unremarkable.

Khyle barely noticed any of it.

He was tracking Gunner.

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  • Pucking Around with Fate   Love Tap

    POV: KhyleThe first run through went cleanly enough.Khyle's side had control from the drop, and they moved the puck through the sequence the coach wanted with the mechanical efficiency of men who had run the same plays enough times that their bodies knew the pattern without being told. The opposing group pressed hard, won the puck back in the neutral zone, and put it in the net two minutes later. Clean, functional, unremarkable.Khyle barely noticed any of it.He was tracking Gunner.Not deliberately. Not as a tactical decision. His eyes just kept finding him the way your tongue finds a sore tooth, involuntary and persistent and deeply annoying. Gunner was playing his position with the same focused patience Khyle had observed on the bench during games, not chasing the play, not overextending, just maintaining his presence in a way that made the ice around him feel slightly more dangerous than the ice everywhere else.He hadn't come near Khyle yet.That was the part that had his nerv

  • Pucking Around with Fate   Penance

    POV: KhyleThree hours and change into practice, and Khyle was fairly certain the coach was trying to kill them.Not metaphorically. Not in the way coaches always pushed their teams and players complained about it and everyone secretly understood it was for their own good. Khyle meant this in the literal, actual, someone-should-probably-check-his-credentials sense. The man had been running them through skating drills since seven in the morning with the cheerful relentlessness of someone who had never once in his life experienced muscle fatigue and had no working theory about what it felt like.The extra conditioning sets had started somewhere in the second hour. By the third hour, three of the hardiest players on the roster were openly scowling, and Logan had said several things to the ice that Khyle was glad he hadn't been close enough to hear clearly.The coach called it whipping them into shape.It felt a lot more like penance. Khyle wasn't sure what they were all being punished fo

  • Pucking Around with Fate   Strike

    POV: GunnerThe ice was good this morning.Gunner could tell within the first two strides. There was a quality to fresh ice that you either learned to read or you didn't, and after twenty years on skates he could feel it through his blades before he'd consciously registered anything else. The overnight resurface had left it clean and fast, with just enough give in the top layer to hold an edge without fighting you for it. Good practice ice. The kind that made everything feel possible before the work started and reminded you why you came back every morning.He pushed into his warmup laps and let his body find its rhythm, the familiar sequence of muscle groups waking up and loosening in order, calves and quads first, then the hip flexors, then the long pull of his back as he leaned into the corners and let momentum do the work. Around him the rest of the team was spreading out across the ice in the loose, unhurried way of men who had done this so many times that the routine had become s

  • Pucking Around with Fate   Downpour

    POV: GunnerSome sort of spiritual assessment. That's what it felt like.Like whatever force ran the universe had looked at Gunner Jäger, taken stock of his general track record, and decided that before it let him anywhere near the afterlife it was going to put him through one final test to see if he had the basic moral and psychological infrastructure to handle eternity without causing a incident.And the test was Santos Khyle.Every conversation they had detonated. Every interaction on the ice turned into a war of wills that neither of them could walk away from without having left something burning. Gunner had stopped looking for resolution weeks ago. There was no resolution to be found. You couldn't resolve something that kept generating new fuel every time you got within twenty feet of it. All you could do was manage the damage and try not to let it take out anything structural.The problem was that Khyle was genuinely, specifically, infuriatingly difficult to ignore.Not just his

  • Pucking Around with Fate   Guy Was a Jerk

    POV: KhyleThe parking lot doors were heavy and cold to the touch, and the air that hit Khyle when Shane pushed through them was sharp enough to make him blink. Seattle in the fall had a particular quality to it, clean and dark and faintly hostile, like the city was reminding you it had a winter coming and you should probably be making arrangements.He let Shane and Logan carry the conversation for the first thirty seconds, which was not difficult because Logan was already deep into his theory about the Shoten's superior selection of draft beer and Shane was agreeing with the enthusiasm of someone who would have agreed with almost anything right now just to keep the atmosphere moving in a productive direction. They were good at that, both of them. The particular skill of filling space with noise when noise was what the situation needed.Khyle walked between them and said nothing and let it wash over him.His mind was still in the corridor."Khyle." Logan's voice shifted registers, dro

  • Pucking Around with Fate   My Team

    POV: KhyleThe corridor outside the locker room was the kind of quiet that only existed in arenas after the crowd had gone home. Not true silence, because buildings like this never went completely silent, there was always the hum of ventilation and the distant clatter of staff doing their jobs and the residual energy of nineteen thousand people that seemed to linger in the walls long after they'd emptied out. But it was quiet enough that footsteps echoed, and quiet enough that Khyle heard Gunner coming before he saw him.He'd been the last one out. Or close to it. The bulk of the team had already moved through, running home to wives or hot dates or just the relief of their own couches, and Khyle had taken his time in the shower, letting the hot water do what it could for the particular combination of physical and psychological damage the evening had produced. They'd won. A lone goal, late in the third, and it had been his. He should have felt better about that than he did.He was pull

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