Page 11 of Game Misconduct

He wanted to do it again.

He couldn’t do it again.

Well: he could fight Garcia. But he absolutely was not going to fuck him. This wasit. Except Garcia, because he was a fucking asshole, hadn’t even let Mike even the score. He was still up by one and Mike had just let it happen because he had no self-control, because he was, what? Because he waslonely?

Mike walked naked into the kitchen and looked at the bar shelf. There was enough whiskey left to get extremely drunk but not enough whiskey left that getting extremely drunk wouldn’t finish it off. That was fine. Bee wouldn’t miss it. He drank the whiskey straight from the bottle, then set it carefully down on the counter. The taste of alcohol and toothpaste made him want to throw up, but he felt like shit anyway, so that was nothing goddamn new, at least.

He went into his room to sleep all of it off.

Mike woke up a few hours later. Motion sickness lurched in his stomach, behind his eyes. He closed them, counted to three. The room was still spinning. He rolled over and fumbled for his phone.

In the morning he felt a nausea that had nothing to do with drinking. He’d typedstop one upping me bc now i ducking owe u again asshole. Garcia had read it but hadn’t responded. Mike couldn’t remember typing it, but it was there, in black and white. Jesus Christ. He felt like puking again, but this time, it was humiliation. At least they didn’t have a game today. With the regular season starting that week, they were on their own to work out as they saw fit.

Mike, hungover and miserable, made his way to the boxing gym. Maybe letting someone beat the shit out of him or beating the shit out of someone would make him feel better. It usually did. Mike was on the lower end for light-heavyweight, but he fought cruiserweights or heavyweights pretty regularly. Just like on the ice, it felt right. Felt like the thing to do. It started off a good fight. He got in a few decent punches before Arjun Sharma jabbed him in the ribs, right where the bruises were deepest.

It took Mike’s breath away. The kind of pain you felt in your stomach, like you were going to vomit.

And then Sharma blocked a punch on his gloves, deflected Mike’s arm, and stepped back. “Bro.”

“What? Come on, comeon, try and hit me again. We’re not fucking done, dude.”

“Your head isn’t in this at all. And your chest is all fucked up. Doesn’t feel right, man.”

Mike looked down. They sparred shirtless and even though a good portion of his chest was covered by black ink, the ugly purple-and-blue bruise spreading across his rib cage was visible through some of it, like a spectacularly ugly watercolor tattoo.

“It looks worse than it is,” he lied.

“I’m not doing it, bro.”

And that was that. Mike spent the rest of his time at the gym slamming his fists into a punching bag until sweat ran down his back and the pounding headache had settled into a dull ache behind his eyes. On his walk back to the apartment, his phone vibrated in his pocket.

Stop making it easy for me then,Garcia had responded.

tell that to your face, motherfucker, Mike wrote back immediately, too tired to be creative, too angry to let it go.

I’m serious, though.

That was new. Mike stared at the message box and the first time Garcia hadn’t let him stew with the littleSEENmocking him at the bottom.

yeah well we beat your asses last time and we’ll do it again.

You guys got lucky, but I didn’t mean the team. I meant you.

well you can fuck right off

Creative. But I mean, it’s not hard to one-up a guy who’s too fucking scared to play to his potential.

wtf.Mike paused for a second, then said,just to be clear here are we talking abt bjs or hockey.

You figure it out.

Mike stared at his phone and realized, belatedly, that he’d started walking out into traffic against the light. He backpedaled and stared again. This was the longest conversation he’d had with Garcia since this whole thing had started and he didn’t know what to make of it. What the fuck did Garcia mean, he wasn’t playing up to his potential? That was like... That was a really good blowjob, if he had to judge. It was part of the rules he hadn’t entirely articulated but knew instinctively. It had to be better than what Garcia had done to him.

He had towin.

He’d put a lot of thought into it.

He was so unsettled that he never answered.