#ok listen these have been sitting in my drafts since january last year

[jackharkness]

Shane Taylor as Craig Hanson in STRIKE BACK (2010-2020)

[drawacharge]

emperor’s new clothes

ok so hi. this has been sitting in my drafts for a .... while. and i’m gonna’ post it bc it’s long lmao. i also had an idea for a valentine’s day esque nsfw sequel to this but idk?? btw, just a warning-- this is in steve’s pov and billy’s pov is my comfort zone so if it sucks Sorry 

There’s something about almost dying too many times that makes the rest of the world around you seem minuscule. It makes school even more boring than before, it makes sleeping a distant memory, and pure, genuine laughter harder to come by. There are too many days Steve spends in class, the teacher droning on and on about Darwin and Natural Extinction Theory and all he wants to do is stand up and go, “Do you have any idea what’s out there? We’re in here, studying bullshit, and out there, right now, are things that wanna’ kill us, that know how, that will—“ but he doesn’t, because he signed too many legal wavers to count, because if he does they’d just throw him into a mental facility. So he sits and stays quiet instead, swallowing back all his anxiety and fear of the unknown and known, sleep-deprived eyes staring out the nearest window as if he expects something nasty with claws to walk on by.

Nothing ever does. Jane closed the gate.

Somehow, that’s worse.

Everyone else seems happy with the peace. The kids smile and laugh and ask Steve to take them to the arcade constantly. Nancy has never seemed happier, walking hand in hand with Jonathan. Jane has more freedom that she’s ever had, visiting her friends, learning about the world. Joyce and Hopper get closer every day, enjoying each other’s company, maybe even finding solace in it. Maybe that’s part of it. Maybe the kids use each other to deal with their shit. Maybe Nancy and Jonathan use each other too. They’ve all been through hell, the only difference was after it was all said and done Steve was the only one left completely alone.

He feels dead. He thinks, maybe, he’s felt wrong since the first time he took that bat to the Demogorgon, but this is different. Worse. He doesn’t feel like anything. He doesn’t feel angry, or sad, or even really scared, not anymore. There’s nothing there. And maybe that’s the only thing nowadays that actually scares him: the fact that nothing does.

It’s mid-January when he finally decides to do something about it. When the emptiness gets so bad he almost skips an entire week of school. When Mrs. Leery, his English teacher, calls him over after class and says, “Steve, your grade has been going steadily downhill. Is anything the matter?” with an expression so soft and concerned, that all Steve can manage is a tight smile and a, “Just tired,” before giving some half-assed promise that he’d try harder.

He does try too. He’s been trying since the beginning of fucking November. But he falls asleep when he should be reading Of Mice and Men, and it’s not even that boring of a book.  He knows something has to change, that something in him is broken and he needs to fix it before he’s nothing but some vague shadow of what he used to be.

Steve realizes just how he’s going to do that when he’s getting the mail one day. Billy Hargrove speeds by in his Camaro, probably going twenty over the speed limit, Tommy, Carol, and two other girls hanging out of the Camaro whooping, hollering, and laughing as the wind whips through them. Steve thinks he’s never seen a group of people seem so alive. He remembers when that used to be him driving, him hanging out the window, him laughing. It was a shallow happiness, perhaps, but it was happiness.

And he decides he wants that back

He knows where to start, and it’s not hard. Steve’s known Tommy since before puberty, and he knows that even if Tommy feels sorry for something he’ll never apologize first. Every fight they’ve ever had has led to Steve outside his door, an apology on his lips. Only then does Tommy apologize too and only then do they move the fuck on. Steve hopes that, even after a year of not speaking, that fact hasn’t changed.

He brings beer with him, just in case.

Tommy opens the door on the third knock and scowls when he sees Steve. Then he sees the beer and the scowl shifts, eyebrows raising in interest. “Want something?”

“To apologize,” he holds out the beer immediately, offers a halfhearted smile. “I shouldn’t have jumped down your throat that day. You were—“ in his own way “—you were trying to have my back.” And he really was, Steve knew that. Maybe not in the best way, maybe not in the nicest way, but he was.

There’s a long pause where Tommy just eyes him, like he’s considering, and then he reaches out for the beer and steps aside, wordlessly inviting Steve in. “Yeah, well… I coulda’ handled it better,” he’s grumbling, words half muttered. If Steve wasn’t an expert in Tommy Language he’d have to ask him to repeat himself. “I woulda’ been pissed if you’d said all that shit about Carol too, just—“ he takes a breath, starts walking towards the steps to the basement where they’d always hang out. “—I knew she wasn’t fucking good enough for you man. I knew she’d hurt you.”

And. 

That’s fair too, honestly. Tommy had known what kind of person Steve could be. How sensitive. How trusting. People assume their friendship had been shallow, but it really hadn’t been. Not always. Steve still remembered the way Tommy cried on his shoulder when they were kids and his dog was hit by a car. There was meaning there. Trust. 

They’re down stairs and Steve is cracking open two cans, holding one out when he goes, “Guess I should’ve listened to you,” before downing about half of it in one go. Tommy follows suit and wipes his mouth before glancing over his shoulder and then back at Steve, a grin pulling at his lips.

“How about I kick your ass at air hockey again? That always cheers you up.”

“Pretty sure that cheers you up,” Steve says, and Tommy laughs. “But sure, why not.”

Steve loses, five to two, but he feels like he’s won anyway.

Billy Hargrove quickly becomes his main problem. Of course, Steve knew he would be before he even found himself on Tommy’s doorstep. Billy did not like him, and the feeling was mutual. They had barely talked since the incident at the Byers’ and Steve was happy with that. He could handle the sneers and even the shoving during basketball. Billy had laid off the kids for the most part and that’s all that mattered to him.

Luckily, Tommy has more sway with Billy than Steve originally thought. He assumed their friendship was more symbiotic than anything. Billy claimed the crown that had been abandoned, and Tommy found it easier to follow than not. It was a familiar position for him, after all. But it seemed like a little more than that. When Tommy invites him over to eat with them that Monday, Steve’s actually surprised that Billy allows it. That he frowns, but otherwise ignores Steve, keeping his attention on the rest of the team. He doesn’t look at Steve again for the rest of lunch.

It’s not good enough.

For it to really be right, or this to work, Billy has to like him. Steve isn’t sure how to accomplish that, hell, he isn’t even sure if he wants to, but it’s necessary. 

He starts with buying them all alcohol. He pays for the booze, the weed, offers up his giant, empty house and heated pool. It’s how he woo’d Carol, even Tommy when they were kids ( minus the alcohol and weed ), and most of anyone else at school. He thinks it’ll work on Billy too.

It doesn’t.

Billy drinks his booze, and he smokes his weed, and he swims in his pool. But when it’s all said and done he still sneers at Steve, still ignores him at lunch, still checks him too hard at practice and mocks him in the middle of random conversations.

“He’s a fucking asshole,” Steve grumbles one night, laid out on the couch in Tommy’s basement. His head is in Carol’s lap and she’s playing with his hair. It’s nice. Not something he’s had since Nancy. He missed it.

Also, they’re all really fucking high. He missed that too. Getting high with his friends. 

“I’ve tried to be friendly, even after the bullshit he pulled--” 

Everyone knows that they fought. Or at least, they figured they did since Steve showed up to school that Monday looking like he got hit by a truck, and Billy showed up with a black eye and busted knuckles. It didn’t take long for the student body to put two and two together and guess who won. 

“I don’t think he’s impressed by money,” Tommy says from the floor. He’s leaning back against the couch, head on the cushion, and a joint between his lips. “I mean, he’s poor as shit,” he continues bluntly, “like Byers level poor.” Steve shoots him a look and Tommy holds a hand up in mild surrender. He doesn’t see why Steve is protective of them, especially after Jonathan and Nancy, but he’s gotten better about how he talks about them anyway. 

“Wouldn’t that make him like... want to be around it?” Carol questions. It’s a natural conclusion for three well-off teens to come to, but Steve’s learned enough over his last year of bettering himself to know that’s not always true. He thinks maybe Tommy has a point. 

“You should like. Be real with him.” He leans his head further back until the back of it is leaning against Steve’s knee. “I don’t think he likes bullshit.”

Steve thinks about that night at the Byers’ and how Billy seemed furious that Steve lied about Max being there. He thinks about Nancy going you’re bullshit and wonders if maybe she wasn’t that far off. After all, he spent an entire year pretending everything was okay, and before that he pretended like having absentee parents didn’t bother him. Hell, he still did that sometimes.

“No bullshit,” Steve sighs, and reaches for the joint when Tommy offers it out. “I can do that.” 

Tommy throws a party that next weekend. It’s his and Carol’s anniversary so they celebrate it in the way they know best: by making everyone else celebrate for them. They get booze and pot and set the house up so that all of Tommy’s mom’s breakables are hidden away. Billy arrives thirty minutes before the party dressed to the nines and with a keg. Steve wonders how he can stand wearing an open shirt in fucking January but doesn’t bother asking.

Six hours later the party is headed into the A.M. and Steve’s completely fucking wasted when he beats Billy as beer pong and grins like he won Olympic gold. Billy looks just about ready to kill him, and Steve can tell he’s significantly less drunk than him and wonders why since Billy always seems to get shit-faced at these kinds of things. 

Billy leaves to grab a smoke outside, and Steve-- in all his drunken genius-- decides this is the best time to approach him.

It’s not.

There’s something dangerous in Billy’s eyes when he sizes him up, something that reminds Steve of that night, something wild. He asks what the fuck Billy’s problem with him is anyway, and Billy grins in the kind of way that reminds Steve of a shark. He gets real close, encroaching on Steve’s personal space, and he can’t help but think about Darwin and the Natural Extinction Theory. How man is just stupid enough to kill itself. How, right now, Steve is the perfect fucking example of that.

“My problem with you,” Billy breathes, right in his face, smelling like beer and cigarettes, “is that you’re a little spoiled rich boy who’s used to getting everything he wants.” Steve opens his mouth to argue, to say that if he really got everything he wanted he’d still have Nancy and not nightmares. That he’d have parents who loved him and a father who didn’t think he was a failure. But, Billy continues. “And now, what? You’ve decided you wanna’ be king again, yeah? That it? Make Hill think you give a shit about him--”

“I do.”

“Bullshit,” Billy snarls, flecks of spit hitting Steve in the face, almost making him flinch. “Your girl dumped you for a freak and now you’re desperate for friends and fans again. So, here you are, making nice, buying them whatever they want just so they’ll like you--” 

“Fuck you,” he hisses back, “I’m not. I missed Tommy and Carol--” and he had, in the same weird way they had probably missed him. “--you’re just their baggage I have to deal with.” It’s fucked up. He knows it’s fucked up as soon as he says it, nasty and not what Steve meant to do when he came out here. And it gets him punched in the face.

No surprise there.

He probably deserves it.

Steve reels back, his jaw fucking aching, and Billy prowls in close, grinning wide like a great white, like he had that night. He must not expect Steve to hit back, because the punch actually lands and Billy looks fucking surprised when he rights himself. 

“Is that you’re fucking problem?” Steve demands, filling the space Billy had stumbled back out of. “You think I wanna’ be king again? That I’m gonna’ push you out--”

Billy laughs, “You couldn’t even if you wanted to.” But Steve thinks he’s wrong, and he thinks Billy knows he’s wrong. They were both charismatic, both handsome, but Steve was nicer. He was friendlier, more easy going, and at the end of the day that’s someone everyone would rather follow than someone like Billy. Some angry, aggressive, and volatile. Someone they fear. They both know it, and it’s clear on Billy’s face even when he says the opposite. 

“Newsflash, I don’t care about being king.” And he doesn’t, he actually really doesn’t. He just-- “I just don’t wanna’ be alone, anymore.” And it’s probably the pussiest thing he could have said. I don’t wanna’ be alone, like some kind of fucking girl. He expects Billy to laugh at him, to make fun of him, maybe punch him again, maybe shove him back and go inside to tell everyone what a little bitch Steve Harrington is. 

He does laugh. But it’s after a moment of surprise, and the sound is more dry than it is mean. “You’re a fucking piece of work, Harrington.” Billy sighs, and looks up at the night sky like there’s something up there beside stars before looking back down. “And I’m watching you.”

And with that, the most ominous thing Steve’s ever fucking heard, Billy saunters back inside. 

Only after the door has shut behind him and Steve tastes copper does he realize his nose is bleeding.

That Monday they’re all sitting at the lunch table when Billy asks Tommy if he’s seen the new Rambo yet. He hasn’t, and while Carol wrinkles her nose at all the violence, she admits that Sylvester Stallone is pretty hot, so she’ll tag along if they go to see it. Steve doesn’t comment, figuring if Billy’s inviting people then he’s not going. He’s thinking about taking the kids when Billy looks at him and goes, “You gonna’ come?” And Steve’s so fucking surprised it takes him a second to find himself and go, “Yeah, sure.”

That Thursday Billy eats his lunch like a man starving. Without thinking, Steve offers up his meatloaf and Billy stares at him like he’s crazy but takes it anyway. In response, Billy offers up his applesauce and he accepts it, feeling not like he’s won, but that he might be close. 

“I think he doesn’t eat at home sometimes,” Tommy says while Steve’s BMW is idling in the McDonald’s drive-thru. They’d been talking about Billy’s massive appetite, and how it even puts theirs to shame. “He eats my entire pantry every time he comes over.”

Steve frowns and thinks about it before he’s leaning back out the window and ordering two more burgers, fries, and nuggets. Tommy doesn’t comment on it, but he shoots Steve a look when they get back and Billy goes, “What’s with the extra food?” and Steve shrugs and replies, “Must of got the order wrong.”

A week later he’s driving Dustin home from school and figures something is wrong because the kid isn’t jabbering like normal. He almost looks like he’s pouting, eyes out the window. Finally, Steve can stand it anymore, “What’s up, man?” He never thought he’d be bothered by Dustin being quiet, but he is. 

With his arms crossed over his chest, Dustin purses his lips like he doesn’t want to say, but when Steve prods him he finally blurts, “Are you going to turn back into a douchebag?” And Steve’s, well, Steve’s caught a bit off guard because he definitely hadn’t expected that, figuring maybe it had to do with Max. 

“You used to think I was a douchebag?”

Leveling him with a look that says seriously? Dustin goes, “Uh, I didn’t think you were one, you were . Before Nancy you were all look at me I’m so cool, and you hung out with Tommy Hill, and now you are again and with Billy Hargrove of all people, and--” 

“Whoa man,” Steve breathes with a little laugh, “Cool your jets, okay? I’m not--”

“He kicked your ass!”

“I know.”

“And threatened Lucas!”

“I know!”

“Then what are you doing?” Dustin demands, fixing him with an incredulous look. “Did he knock something loose when he punched you? ‘Cause, like, he’s not a cool dude, and you-- if you hang out with him you might--” 

“Dustin,” he sighs, pulling up to the others’ house. Steve puts the BMW in park but doesn’t unlock the doors just yet. “I’m not... look, you’re right. I was probably a total douchebag.” Especially to a kid. “But I’m not going to just... change back, okay? I just... need people that aren’t kids or my ex to hang out with.”

“But we’re cool kids.”

He laughs a little, and it’s more fond than mean. “You are,” and okay, Dustin and the rest of the party are total dorks, but they’re cool dorks, and while Steve would never tell anyone that except Dustin, it’s still true. “But it’s not the same.”

And he thinks Dustin must agree on some level, because instead of immediately arguing he just pouts, taking a breath and blowing out his cheeks while he thinks. Then he finally he goes, “Fine,” before adding, “But if you start turning into a douchebag again I’m like totally gonna’ hit you or six El on you. Or something.”

Again, Steve laughs, “Man, if I start acting like that again I encourage you to hit me and/or six El on me, okay?” Dustin nods, seemingly okay with that deal, but just in case--

“Hey-- how about I take you and the other brats to the mall on Saturday?”

Dustin immediately brightens at that, “The one outta’ town?”

“Yup. You guys just have to ask your parents if it’s okay.”

“Totally! I’ll let the guys know! Hopefully Hopper will let El go too. Thanks Steve,” and then he’s hopping out the car and heading for his house with a quick wave as a good-bye. Steve waits until he’s safely in before driving on home.

The very next day Dustin tells him that Max’s mom said she can’t go unless Billy comes to look after her. “It’s stupid,” he huffs, “She’s safer with you than she’d ever be with Billy,” and even though Steve doesn’t disagree with that point he’s heard enough about Max’s parents to know there’s no arguing with them.

“Okay. Billy will come then.” And Dustin looks so fucking betrayed that he can’t help but laugh. “What? You want Max to come, don’t you?” 

A pause then, “Fine. But you gotta’ like. Keep his ass in line, got it?”

“Yeah, yeah, shithead, I got it.”

Convincing Billy to go with him and six kids out of town won’t be easy, though.

He figures the next party coming up will be the best time. It’s right before Saturday, and Steve hadn’t planned on going for the sake of his pride, but a drunk Billy is a Billy more likely to accept Steve’s proposal. He was always nicer drunk. Okay, no he wasn’t, but... he may be more agreeable. If he’s drunk enough.

And friendly enough.

“A Valentine’s Day party?” Billy asks, nose wrinkling at the flier Steve had just stuck in his hands. 

“Singles party,” Steve corrects, and Billy somehow looks more disgusted.

“Those are a thing?”

“Well,” Shoving his hands into the pockets of his jacket, Steve shrugs. “Last one Lisa threw was like? When we were fifteen? Then she got into a relationship with Jimmy P, but they broke up in December, so--”

“So she’s throwing a singles party.Yeah, no thanks.” Billy pushes the flier towards Steve’s chest. “Sounds pathetic. I’d rather get wasted at the quarry.”

“That’s pathetic too.” He points out, “And at Lisa’s the booze and food will be free. Plus it’s mostly an excuse to get wasted, make out with people, then never talk about it come Monday morning.” That wasn’t a lie. Steve had probably kissed a countless number of girls the last time the party was thrown. Hell, he was pretty sure he kissed Tommy too, but that was three years ago and Steve decided he was too drunk to remember it. 

Billy barks a laugh and Steve thinks maybe he’s convinced him, “God, that’s fucking ridiculous. Why do you want me to go so bad?”

“Because, I want to go.” Okay, he actually doesn’t. It is pathetic. “But Tommy and Carol can’t go, and you’re single so--” he shrugs again, reaches out to nudge the paper against Billy’s hands. His knuckles are cut up again. It’s the second time that month and Steve wonders who’s the unlucky soul that's been on the other end.  “Okay. What do I get if I do?” 

“Pot?”

“I got pot, and Cali pot is better than Indiana pot.” Fair. 

In all honesty, Steve had no idea what to give him. He can’t think of anything so he settles for, “I’ll owe you one,” and a smile that promises just about anything Billy could want. It’s a good deal, so good that Steve’s almost nervous about making it. What kind of favor would Hargrove ask of him one day?

Billy, of course, brightens at the suggestion. “You’ll owe me one,” he repeats. “Alright, pretty boy, you got yourself a deal.”

[fanaste]

New Years? I’ll Parse.

December 31st 2014 – 11:57pm (three minutes to midnight)

They were fighting.  He got that.  They’d had a fight, he got that too.  But Jesus fucking Christ they’d had lots of fights before.  He was familiar with the silent treatment okay? He was.  But it’d been weeks.  Weeks that had morphed into months and now he’s sitting here staring at his God damn phone at a number he hasn’t seen flash up on his screen since last December.

And maybe because of that someone could say they had officially parted on bad terms but if you’d asked Kent, if you ask him now even he’d tell you they weren’t the worst terms they’d ever parted on.  At least Jack was still breathing when Kent left him.

Someone pushes the door to the smoking area open and Kent hears the tantalising notes of the Beyonce song that always makes him think of fucking.  It’s about drinking and fucking and she’s on the beach writhing around and if Kent were into women he’d be into that.  As it happens he’s not into women.  He’s into emotionally unavailable French Canadians with an ego the size of his home country.

“You can’t…you don’t come to my fucking school unannounced-“

“Because you shut me out!”

“And corner me in my room.”

“I’m trying to help-“

“And expect me to do whatever you want-“

He was just trying to help.  Kent promised Jack he’d come back for him.  Maybe not out loud, not with words Jack could take and keep inside him for cold nights when Jack thought he’d left all possibility of Hockey behind in a sick puddle on the bathroom floor.  Jack had to know he hadn’t stayed away because he wanted to.  His parents must have told them he’d tried to visit but that Alicia had told him not to come.

“Don’t come Kent.  He need to rest.  He needs to know there’s life outside of Hockey.”

And like an idiot.  Like a newly drafted NHL player idiot he listened.

But he never forgot.  How could he?

Jack was the love of his life.

In the background Beyonce sings about being in love.  Kent’s in love all right and he’s shit faced.  And this song reminds him of frat house hallways and hands groping desperately at a body he hadn’t touched in too long but that felt familiar as his own.

“Fuck Jack! What do you want me to say? That I miss you? I miss you, ok? I miss you.”

He was just trying to fucking help! But Jack was too stubborn, to determined to try and fail on his own and face his father’s rejection like some martyr.  And Kent knew he’d hate it, he’d hate it and he’d love it because deep down he wanted it because he felt like he deserved it.

“You always say that.”

In the spaces between his hammering heart beats Kent felt the edges of his longing turn to anger.  Why was Jack being like this? Why was he throwing Kent’s help away? Why was he trying to throw Kent away? And on the wave of those questions came more questions like, why hadn’t Jack tried to call? Kent found his fucking body didn’t he remember that? Hadn’t anyone told him? Didn’t he care?!

“You know what Zimmermann? You think you’re too fucked up to care about? That you’re not good enough? Everyone already knows what you are but it’s people like me who still car!”

“Shut up.”

Jack didn’t want his help then fucking fine.

“You’re scared everyone else is going to find out you’re worthless right? Oh don’t worry! Just give it a few seasons Jack trust me!”

“G-get out of my room.”

Heaving in the silence Kent swallowed around the jagged parts of his heart and in the hardest voice he could muster said,

“Fine.  Shut me out.  Again.”

Truthfully Kent expected to ride out the next few days of the silent treatment, give Jack a chance to calm down, to realise that his pride wasn’t going to get him anywhere fast.  Magnanimously Kent gave him a week to sort his shit out before texting,

‘I’m sorry about last weekend.  Please consider my offer’.

But all he got was more silence.  Silence in January, silence in February and come draft day there was more of the same except this silence was worse because it was screamed all over the sports networks and blogs.

Zimmermann signs with Providence Falconers

Kent skated so hard that day he puked.

Now Kent stands in the smoking area of a club on the strip with too much coke in the air and too much liquor in his body and he’s staring down at his phone and cursing Jack Zimmermann’s name.  Sagging against the dirty brick wall he takes a deep breath and with every cell in his body and all the power in his mind he makes a wish.  He makes several wishes, actually.

I wish I was happy.

I wish I was stronger.

I wish I didn’t know how to love.

I wish I’d never fallen in love with Jack Zimmermann.

I wish I’d never met Jack Zimmermann.

Something in him shifts anxiously after that last one and his eyes snap open.   No.  He doesn’t wish that.  He doesn’t.  He can’t because…because he doesn’t know who he is if a part of him doesn’t love a man he can’t have.

He pulls up Jack’s number again.  Sooner or later he’ll see Jack.  They’ll face off on the ice and even though they’ll be playing against one another he’ll remember what it was like to play in the Q.  He’ll remember that when they played together nothing could beat them.  When they hit the ice Kent will look at Jack and Jack will smile and he will know that whatever happened last year doesn’t matter.

Maybe Jack will love him again.

He brings the phone to his ear and listen to the ring.

“You’ve reached the T-Mobile voicemail service for ‘Jack Zimmermann’,” Kent’s heart clenches at the sound of his voice.  “This person is unavailable to take your call.  Please leave a message after the tone.”

Kent hangs up.

In the background the music stops and a voice, muffled by the thick walls of the exterior, announces.  “It’s almost midnight! Countdown with me!”

Ten

Kent brings the phone to his ear again.

Nine

It rings.

Eight

Seven

“You’ve reached the t-mobile voicemail service for ‘Jack Zimmermann’,”

Six

“this person is unavailable to take your call,”

Five

“Please leave a message after the tone.”

Four

Three

Two

One

“Hey it’s- it’s me.  Happy New Year.”

December 31st 2015 – 10:55pm

Kent Zips up his pants, fishes his cell out and leans against the stall door.  The music is muted in the bathroom but he can’t tell if it’s because it’s any quieter in here or if it’s just the ringing in his ears.  Occasionally the hiss of urine hitting porcelain reminds him where he is but soon his focus on the little glowing screen drowns even that out.  The little glowing screen all lit up with the sky blues of twitter.

That Bittle kid is tweeting up a storm.  He’s back in Samwell for the new year and there’s pictures of him leaning heavily into bodies twice as tall and twice as wide as himself.  Not that it’s hard when then guy’s the size of a thimble.

@omgcheckplease @clarissaexplainsitall showin’ bros how it’s done.

Kent’s signal is shitty in here and it takes his phone an agonisingly long time to pull up the picture of Lardo grinning as Holsom and Ranster(???) bow before her.  She has a heeled foot on Holsom’s shoulder and her shutter shades, that can hide a look of determination so scary Kent knew he was done for the moment he accepted the pong ball, do nothing to obscure the triumph she exudes.

@omgcheckplease reigning 2016 champion @clarissaexplainsitall

Kent closes the photo and scrolls up and down looking for a tweet, any tweet, that’ll clue him in to what’s going on in Samwell…or more importantly what’s going on with a certain dark haired, blue eyed Canadian.

Kent’s not a fan of Eric’s, not in the least, but he’s become an avid checker of his feed ever since a picture of Jack turned up over the fourth of July weekend.  A picture of him looking comfortable in a kitchen straight out of a Southern Homes Style magazine.

They haven’t spoken since the game.  They didn’t even speak at the game just exchanged passive aggressive jibes through reporters who resurrected all their old clips from the Q helping Kent to relieve the now excruciating memories of good times playing with a guy Kent thought to call his soul mate.

At the end of the game Kent tried to get hold of Jack but he was long gone.  At least Kent got the game winning goal.  If there was ever a better fuck you to someone it was a game loss for Jack.

Finally when his finger hurts from swiping and his eyes g smudgy Kent locks his phone and slips it back in his pocket.

A second later a smack on the door makes him jump so hard he nearly topples into the toilet.

“Hey open the fuck up!” A familiar voice bellows.

“We know you’re in there Parson! There’s a shot here with your name on it!”

Kent takes a deep breath and tries to pull himself together.  When he opens the door he covers any sign of heartache with a glower at two of his team mates.  “What the fuck were you doing in there?” Cray peers curiously past him.

“Making sure they’ve got the right number for your mom on the wall.” Kent retorts summoning the cocky half smile he wears in all he posters and cards he scrawls his signature over after games.  All it takes is this quirk and Kent’s untouchable again.  The boys follow him across to the sink.  There’s no soap and all the taps do is dribble water when he turns them.  He can’t believe they charge fifty bucks for tickets to this event and can’t even spring for decent plumbing.  If he was a better team captain he’d have sanitiser with him.

Jeff guffaws and Cray flips him off.  “Quit hiding like a bitch in here and come join the party.  The company got hotter.”

“How,” Kent scoffs, “I was in here.”

Cray gives him a sarcastic little smile, “You think you’re the hottest member of this team huh?”

Jeff ushers them both out of the men’s room.

“I am the hottest member!” Kent shouts over yet another terrible remix of a song he likes.

Cray mimes that he can’t hear him.

Kent rolls his eyes and pushes through the sweaty corridor of bodies that strain their necks to see the three figures heading up to the coveted VIP area.  Kent wipes sweat from his brow that he’s not convinced is his with a grimace.  He doesn’t want to be here and he’s not drunk enough yet to forget that he hates New Years.  It’s the same shit every year.  A different party, a different city but it’s always the same vibe.  He’s always with people he likes, he always drinks too much and then makes the same promise.

He’s going to live life like he never met Jack Zimmermann.

He’s not drunk enough yet though but luckily for him (or at least as promised by Cray) there are six women dressed in flirty little skirts and tops waiting for them on the leather seats specifically designed to make you feel like you can drink (and snort) as much as you like and it’ll all slide down you and not stain just like the liquor you’ll spill on their wipe clean couches.

Kent takes a deep breath and reinforces the face that makes it look like he’s into this.  “Where are the shots?”

Jeff gives him an indecipherable look and situates himself on the bench furthest from the girls.  Cray rolls his eyes as if to say ‘whipped’.

One of the girls leaps up, prompted by her friends, and crosses the small space towards him.  She’s wearing heels, not that Kent’s looking at her feet, but her tottering is unmistakeable and more prominent still because she’s obviously drunk.  “I’m Amber.” She says when they’re within shouting distance.

Kent smiles like his posters.  “Hi Amber.”

One hand rises to tuck her hair behind her ear and she smiles coyly down at her chest.  It’s dusted with glitter Kent can see it shimmering in the strobes.  “You like to party?” she asks withdrawing a little white baggy from her sparkly cleavage.  When she looks up Kent thinks her eyes flash black.  Kent wonders if this is a sign that he should give up now and just let someone drag him into oblivion the quick way.  His eyes snag on the baggy full of shit that gets guys benched Amber shakes in her long fingertips.

He thinks about it.  It’s a party.  There’s only the team up here.  The team and six women who won’t keep quiet about partying with the hottest members of the Las Vegas Aces.  Who will regale their friends with very detailed stories, from what they wore to what they took.  Time feels suspended as he tries to make his decision but his brain is foggy enough that he quickly bores of his pros and cons list and where he falls on the turns has him nodding faintly.

He’s nowhere near the ice now.  “Yeah.” He breathes, “I like to party.”

Amber’s grin is a mirror of his own as she pops open the bag and sprinkles a line across the rise of her left breast.  Kent feels like a rapper when he snorts it from her skin and accepts the chaser shot Cray hands him.

He feels like a NHL player.

He feels like the Kent Parson they write about on the blogs.

In the background someone mutters, “Just like Zimmermann.”

December 31st 2015 – 11:30pm

Kent doesn’t know who dragged who but he’s not moving anymore.  He’s pressed up against a toilet stall door and whoever it was that was giving him eyes from across the room is now giving him eyes from the floor as they kneel ready to make good on a threat delivered between the dancefloor and the sticky club hall.

I’ll show you a good time.

This isn’t Kent’s first rodeo, he’s made toilet stall fucks into an art form and so he bites down on his lips to smother the embarrassingly loud moan of relief when the guys plump lips wrap around his dick and a hot wet tongue circles the head.

Kent puts out a hand to brace himself on the stall wall behind his kneeled companion.  His hips jolt as he shifts and the guy pulls back with a protesting, “Dude.”

“Sorry.” Kent mutters and means it.  The guy gives him a sceptical look and Kent would reassure him that he isn’t into forcing strangers to deep throat him if he could find any of the words needed to articulate that and sound genuine.  Instead he prompt’s the guy with a “So?” desperate to drown out the droning remix of a Solvig song with the sound of this guy sucking his dick.

Mercifully the guy takes a breath and takes Kent into his mouth again.  He knows what he’s doing and when Kent feels the guys other hand cup his balls he thinks that perhaps this could be over before midnight, just in time for Kent to stumble out and say Happy New Year as if he thinks this year is going to be any different from the last.  Or the one before that, or any of the ones before his best friend tried to kill himself and cast Kent out of his new post suicide life.

Kent blinks slowly and slower still until a particularly lascivious lap of his friends tongue pushes him far from the bathroom at Midas and back to somewhere they’re not playing terrible remixes of songs he likes.  Somewhere the music is something with a bit more twang and completely ill fitting to the Canadian mansion he’s in.

The mouth on his there isn’t hurried or impersonal.  It’s slow and loving and a little shy because he’s just seventeen and both of them pretend to know what they’re doing with girls but with each other there’s nothing but honesty, and so when Jack takes him into his mouth it’s with an uncertainty that makes Kent both impatient and fond.  Kent reaches out to caress Jack’s cheek, to tell him he feels so good, that his mouth is amazing and that he’s about to come.  It’s crude and scripted but he hopes that between the stock phrases they’ve picked up from all those pornos that Jack hears what Kent is really saying.

You’re perfect.  I can’t believe you’re doing this for me.  I love you.

They never said they loved each other but you didn’t get chemistry on the ice like theirs without heart.

A tug on his dick pulls him from the tentative ministrations of the past and plants him back in the toilet stall of the club he wished he’d never fucking suggested for the night.  His hand hovers in mid air paused on it’s way to the strangers face.  The guy gives it a sideways look but doesn’t say anything.  Instead he pushes his face down and down and down until his nose brushes the hairs at Kent’s groin.

Kent moans.

“You like that?” The guy pants his lips spit slick and eyes glassy from too much fairy dust.

All he can do is nod because his throat is throbbing so hard he feels like he can’t breathe.

“Fuck yeah you do.” The guy smirks moving his tight grip up and down Kent’s flesh.  Kent’s belly quivers and his balls tighten between his legs.

Kent can’t remember the guy’s name and it doesn’t matter.  It won’t matter when he’s come, it won’t matter when they leave the stall and go back outside to toast another year of fucking around and being fucking miserable and wishing he’d never met Jack fucking Zimmermann and then taking it back because he daren’t risk the wish coming true.  Because what excuse would he have for burying his misery in every body he meets at a club three sheets to the wind if he can’t blame it on Jack?

What would he do with all the mental space freed up by getting over Jack?

The hand stops moving and clamps around the base of his dick.  Kent mewls belatedly realising he was close, so close.

“Not yet.” The voice below him growls.

Fuck you yes yet Kent scowls removing the guys hand.

The guy smirks at him and mutters something that doesn’t sound English.  Kent’s belly clenches and his dick pulses.  When he looks down again all he can see is dark hair.

“Can- uh, can you speak French?” he asks brokenly.

“Huh?” the guy frowns up at him shattering the bubble.

“Nothing – nothing forget it.”

The guy gives him another wary look like he’s deciding this is more hassle than it’s worth and Kent wouldn’t blame him but he could kill him if he stops now because he’s so, so close.

In the background the music the cuts off.  A second later the chant starts.

Ten

Nine

Eight

Seven

Kent’s once again enveloped in the wet heat of the strangers mouth.

Six

Five

Four

Three

His belly tightens and his leg shakes.

Two

One

In a rush his body tightens and the black behind his lids turns white as the cum painting his partners face.

The guy turns to spit what load he caught in his mouth, down the toilet.

Happy New Year.

December 31st 2016 – 3:00pm

“Last year Hudson said you all went to a club.” Lewsey says scooping up his Taco but leaving half the filling behind on the Styrofoam plate.

“Uh huh.” Kent answers taking care to keep his own Taco filling in the damn Taco because he’s not an animal and this is not his only meal of the day so he’s not going to act like it is…well not in front of the rookies who are acting every bit like the children they are when Lewis pouts and misses the hint to quit while he’s ahead.  “And?” Kent asks after he’s finally swallowed.

“I’m just sayin’ a house party…it’s a little…” he gropes around for the right word and Kent hopes to god it’s the right word because he’s in a pissy mood.  Killing himself in the gym was not the good mood shortcut he’d hoped it be and despite Cray engaging him in a squat competition (and losing sorely which always makes Kent’s gloating a little sweeter) the endorphin’s washed away with the soapy run off down the drain.

He’s tried to solve the problem with food but that’s not working either.

“High school?” Cray finishes because he loves watching a car crash.

Kent shoots Cray a dirty look that he brushes off with an obtuse smile.  Kent takes a delaying bite and when he’s finished he gives Lewsey the kind of look you reserve for the child that’s been winding you up all day.  It’s a look he inherited from his mum and makes him look just like her.  “We all went to a club and it was hella expensive and wasn’t that much fun.  Jeff’s got a huge fucking house, the booze is free and the music’ll be better.” He takes a breather and sips his soda, “But by all means go to a club and stand outside in line all night.  You won’t be missed.”

Lewsey gapes and Taco filling falls from his mouth.  He struggles to catch it back, “Erm.” He chews quickly, “No it’s-“ he looks at Cray for help but Cray’s too busy trying to smother his laughter.  “It’s fine.”

“Is it?” Kent asks tartly.  “You don’t have to come.”

Lewsey once again looks to Cray for help which is stupid because the guy lives for awkward moments like these.  Everyone thinks Cray’s a nice guy because he doesn’t verbally give the rookies shit, but none of them have wisened up to the traps he silently lays.

“No, no! I want to.” Lewsey insists.

“It’s not mandatory.” Cray says with artful nonchalance.

Kent looks down at the table for a knife but all he sees is a straw.  If he gets an eye it’ll shut Cray up but he’ll only get one shot and he can’t vouch for his accuracy.  Which is ironic considering what he does for a living.

“It isn’t?” Lewsey doesn’t sound sure.

Before he answers Kent finishes his Taco.  He takes his sweet time with it and Cray doesn’t fill the gap of silence which leaves their rookie to glance between them anxiously while nibbling on his own food.

By the time Kent’s done Lewsey’s practically purple.

“Look,” Kent begins, wiping his greasy fingers on a napkin.  “Come, don’t come, I don’t give a shit.” He screws up his tissue and punctuates his words by throwing it onto Lewsey’s plate.

“No, no! I wan-wanna come.” Lewsey stutters.

Kent shrugs and gathers up the their debris.  “Whatever man.  Be there or not it’s your night.” And with that he takes off for the trash can at the back of the restaurant.

While Kent’s in the bathroom Lewsey looks helplessly at Cray who shrugs like he doesn’t know what’s up with their captain but looks like he knows exactly what’s up with their captain.

“Did I- did I really offend Parser or something?” Lewsey asks slowly.

Cray makes to shrug again but he likes Lewsey the best out of all the rookies.  Lewsey reminds him of his sister (the only family member he can stand), he even kind of looks like her…or the male version of her at least which is more than he does because he got their dad’s looks which includes their dads unfortunate nose and tendency to put weight on round the face.  Cray takes a deep breath then on an exhale answers, “Parser hates New Years.”

Lewsey takes a moment to digest this.  He considers it for a moment after that and then says, “My brother hates New Years too but that’s because he got run over when he was a kid and I’m pretty sure he has PTSD from it.  Or at least that’s what my sister thinks.  I think he just hates that he never has anyone to kiss at midnight.” He shrugs as though it’s just one of those mysteries he’ll never figure out.

Cray loves this kid.

“Does Kent have PTSD?” he asks.

Cray blinks a little startled.  He doesn’t know if Kent has PTSD per say but he knows that when it comes to December thirty first there’s something ugly that unfurls inside Kent.  “Nah he just never has anyone to kiss at midnight.” Cray lies easily.

Lewsey rears back like this is the most confusing part of his afternoon so far.  Not the being abducted at two thirty to go get Taco’s from a tiny fast food joint right on the lip of the city.  Not being told to leave his phone behind on pain of endless drills.  Not being told that he can only order an everything Taco or a nothing Taco with extra refried beans.  Not being forced to wear shorts even though it’s a little too chilly for that.

“That doesn’t make any sense.” Lewsey declares.  “He’s Kent Parson! Captain of the Las Vegas Aces.”

Cray’s smile makes his face ache.  “And yet,” he tries not to laugh, “he finds himself puckering up into air at midnight.”

Lewsey lowers his voice, “Every year?” he asks disbelievingly.

“Every year.” Cray confirms.

“Is it a suspicion thing? Like Moller and the…” he makes a crude motion with his hand.

“No.  Not many people know this but,” Cray leans in conspiratorially, “Kent Parson has no game.”

“No!” Lewsey practically gasps.  “No way!” he almost sounds scared like if Kent Parson has no game then none of them do.

“Honest to God.” Cray crosses his fingers under the table.

When Kent returns it takes one look at Lewsey’s confounded expression for him to turn a suspicious one on Cray.  “What did you tell him?”

“I told him you woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning and not to take your piss poor mood personally.” Cray lies seamlessly.

Kent doesn’t miss a beat, “You told him I got not game didn’t you?”

Cray’s grin is shit eating, “He believed me too.  You need to pick up more, it’s getting too easy.”

Kent flips him off.  “Crays a liar and a scumbag,” Kent educates Lewsey, “and out of the two of us he’s been celibate the longest.”

“Helps me focus my game.” Cray replies sombrely.

“Right…” Lewsey’s eyes dart between them both.

“Let’s blow this joint.” Kent pauses, “If you’re not familiar with the term Cray it’s when-“

“Fuck you man.” Cray shoves his shoulder and they burst out into the white sun of the parking lot.

Cray cries shotgun and runs for the car like a child.  Kent walks slower because his hamstrings are fucking killing him and Lewsey hovers in the gap between them like an excited child but one that doesn’t want to lose sight of his parents.  When he reaches out for the backdoor handle Kent frowns.

“What are you doing?”

“Getting in the car.” Lewsey rolls his eyes.

“Rookies walk home.” Kent deadpans.

Lewsey laughs haltingly, “Har har.” He tries the handle again but Kent won’t unlock the car.  “Seriously?” Lewsey squeaks.  “How am I supposed to get back?”

Kent shrugs.

“Come on man.” He whines tugging on the handle.

Kent motions for him to back away from the car and Lewsey retreats a step.  “Next time,” Kent advises opening the drivers side and getting in, “don’t be so ready to believe Cray’s lies.” He slams the door down and a second later the window rolls down.  “See you at Jeff’s later.” Kent salutes him then starts the car.

Lewsey makes an aborted sound of protest but Kent’s car peels out of the lot and he doesn’t even break when he meets the road.

Lewsey stares after them long after they’re gone.  And even longer after that when he realises he doesn’t have his phone.

December 31st 2016 – 6:02pm

“You’re wearing that?” Kent leans forward to squint at the screen even though he can see Katie perfectly.

His sister gives an impatient little snort, “The hanger makes it look shorter.” She says to reassure him.

Not reassured in the least Kent remarks, “I think the dress makes the dress look short.”

Kate’s withering look is just as effective on screen as it is in person, “I don’t tell you how to dress.” She retorts.

“I don’t wear tiny dresses.” He argues.

“Only because you don’t have the legs for it!”

There’s a pause and then both Parson siblings dissolve into laughter.  Kent clutches his heart dramatically and in between guffaws pouts, “Wow babe.  Ouch.”

“Sorry, sorry.” Katie sighs giving a rueful little smile.

“You already had this talk with mom eh?”

“I already had this talk with mom.” She nods.

Kent sits back feeling like an asshole.  “Sorry.”

“It’s fine but it’s not like I can help being hot.” She smirks.

Kent rolls his eyes but says, “Well it is to be expected of the sister of Kent Parson.”

Katie looks confused, “Is this Kent Parson massive nerd and consistent loser of hungry hippos, pool, connect four, fuzboll and basically every other game that isn’t on the ice?”

“No it’d be the other Kent.  The one who’s good at everything.” He says sardonically.

Katie shrugs clueless.  “Never met the guy.”

“Christ put mom back on.” He groans.

Katie’s eyes bug out of her head and Kent’s about to tell her to calm down when she sputters “Is that Cray?!”

Kent does a double take over his shoulder when he sees what Cray’s wearing…or not wearing.  He thinks this is bad enough but Cray’s wearing the boxers with beavers all over them, a nod to a very lewd joke he will definitely not share with his sister.  From the screen there’s a wolf whistle and said sister sings, “Hey hot stuff! Where’d you get that body?”

Kent slams the laptop screen down.  “I was on skype to my little sister!”

“Yeah,” Cray laughs, “And she can chirp with the best of them.”

Kent will not tell Katie that in case she feels entitled to gloat.  “What the fuck are you doing in your underwear in my room?”

“I thought you liked that kind of thing.” Cray scoffs.

Kent feels his heart leap into the back of his throat.  “Why the fuck would you think that?” He chokes out venomously.

Cray rears back, “I was joking Christ.  Fragile masculinity much?”

Kent could howl if he were capable of finding anything to do with his panic funny.  He hasn’t been able to relax since Zimmermann and his stupid blonde boyfriend came out on centre ice after the cup win this summer.  He knows it’s ironic to feel even more trapped now when Zimm’s no doubt did it to unchain not only himself but many others living closeted life in the world of professional sports.  Kent doesn’t know if Zimmermann forgot what that sort of scrutiny would do to everyone in his life or if he just didn’t care but on the cusp of the big reveal came a litany of blog posts that spent way too much time looking for clues about his orientation in his past and unearthed some rumours about he and Kent that sat way too close for comfort.

Kent hasn’t said a thing about them but he’s been approached several times and even now, all these months later, he still has to watch what he says when Jack’s name comes up.

It also means he’s had to act like the big ol’ straight bro in the locker room just to convince the other guys that the rumours are just that, rumours for teenage girls who romanticise gay relationships between hot guys.

Honestly it’s more exhausting than the regular old pretending he was doing before.

“You’re still half naked in my room.” Kent blinks at Cray.

“I was looking for a spare towel.  I gotta shower.”

He couldn’t come in looking for a towel before he took his god damn clothes off? Kent girits his teeth.  “What’s wrong with your shower?”

“The waters still not back on.  Jesus Christ Parson what crawled up your butt and died? I shower here all the time.”

Cray’s right.  Parson lets him shower here all the time, he’s even peed while Cray’s been in the shower so it’s not like he hasn’t seen Cray’s bubble butt before.  But (butt!) it’s different now because before Kent was straight and now he’s…well he’s never been straight but the guys didn’t know that, and the ones who did suspect were such a minority as to be easy to ignore or convince otherwise.

Fucking Zimmermann.

“So can I use your shower?”

Kent deflates and hopes his expression is less anxiety and more apology for snapping ‘irrationally’, “Yeah.  Towels are in the airing cupboard it’s the door beside my bedroom door.”

“Ahh,” Cray hums, “So that’s what that room is.”

Kent almost doesn’t dare ask but he’s desperate for the distraction, “What did you think it was?”

“Your red room.” Cray snickers.

December 31st 2016 – 9:30pm

Swoops opens the door in a glittery green shirt that makes Kent question his whole existence.  “Parse, glad you could make it.” Swoops exchanges a handshake and when both men pull each other in for a back slap Swoops speaks against his ear, “mention the shirt and I’ll pee in your beers.”

When Kent pulls back he’s smirking.

“Kent.” Swoops warns.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“You two spend too much time together.” Swoops’ girlfriend sashays down the hall.  She looks stunning in a velvet grey dress that hugs her hips in a way that means Swoops is gonna be cleaning up everybody’s drool all night.  Jasmine hip checks Swops out of the way and embraces Kent.  “Glad you could make it.” She presses a kiss to his cheek.

Kent’s missed Jasmine and Swoops over Christmas while they went to Spain to visit Jas’ parents and he opens his mouth to tell them so when Hudson interrupts from over his shoulder.

“You almost sound like you mean it.” He guffaws shouldering his way past Kent through the front door.  Neither Swoops not Kent miss the stiffening of Jasmines spine or the tightening of her smile.

There’s a history there.  A history Swoops will never talk about because he’s been advised not to jeopardies team dynamics.  It’s a history he won’t tell Kent in case Kent feels obligated to do something.  It’s a history that makes Jasmine suddenly look self-conscious in her outfit.

Kent pulls away and he watches as Swoops and Hudson exchange a perfunctory handshake and back slap.  Hudson turns and does the same with Kent.  It’s full of just as much feeling as Swoops’.  “Glad you could make it Parser.  Missing the club?” Hudson’s eyes glint with innuendo.

Kent tries to head his flush off before it reaches his face.  “Only thing I’m missing is a beer.”

“Bar’s where you left it.” Swoops waves them in.

December 31st 2016 – 10:30pm

“You should have seen this guy! He looked like fucking Puff daddy snorting coke off that chicks tit.” Hudson claps Kent on the back so hard he sloshes beer on Swoops’ carpet.

“Shit.”

Swoops leaps up with him, “I got it Parse.” He puts out a hand to stop Kent from rising from the couch to do it himself but Kent’s sick of hearing Hudson tell a story that makes him sound like a grade A douchebag.  Kent’s a dick he doesn’t exactly work to prove otherwise but the coke thing was exceptionally douchey and he’s only ever done it once.  But once is all it takes and now it’s Hudson’s favourite story to tell.

He wasn’t even there until after Kent had done it but nobody ever seems to fact check him.  Hudson’s a good story teller and even Kent finds himself believing his version of events because it makes him sound less like a fratty white boy and more like the pimp people expect a professional athlete to be.

“Parse I got it.” Swoops assures him a second time for show when Kent is on his feet and following him into the kitchen.  Jasmine whirls round wine glass to her lips looking guilty that she’s been caught necking pinot.

“Having a good time baby?” Swoops laughs.

“It’ll be great when I get to bottom of this bottle.” She pours another generous glass and waves the bottle at Kent, “Want one sweetheart?”

Something in Kent will always soften when Jasmine calls him sweetheart.  It’s the way she says it with such fondness in her voice.  It fools Kent into thinking that Jasmine loves him too.  He’s five beers in and it’s easy to say yes to another drink and bask in the warmth of the press of Jasmines lips to his cheek and her hand cupping his jaw.  “You okay?”

Kent nods.

“Hudson’s telling the coke story again.” Swoops shuts the fridge.

Jasmine tucks her lips between her teeth in displeasure.  “What so he thinks you’re like him now?” her voice is sharper than the knife on the cheese board.

“He’ll get bored in a second when he realises all the women here have heard the story.” Kent waves it off.

“Which one?” Jasmine can’t fight snorting.

“All of them.” Jeff says meaningfully.

There’s that history again.  Kent’s got enough beer in him to give him amnesia and ask about these other stories but there’s a crash from the study that sends Swoops flying with the names of someone’s kids on his lips.

Jasmine swipes  a bit of cheese and holds it out to Kent, “Soak some of that up yeah?” She gestures to the bottle in Kent’s hand.  Kent waves off her concern because he’s very determined to get wasted before twelve and he’s only got – he checks his watch- ninety minutes left.  He chugs the rest of the beer and steals Jasmine’s glass.

“One day,” she sighs, “you’re going to have to get over him.”

“Who?”

Jasmine gives him a look.

“Who says?” he gasps wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Your sanity?” Kent reaches for the wine but Jasmine pushes it out of his reach.  “Come on Kent.”

“Don’t tell me how to live my life.” He scowls childishly.

Jasmine gives him a long look but when he doesn’t rush to apologise she leaves the kitchen.  Kent snags the wine bottle and takes a swig trying to fill the space that Jasmine’s disappointment hollows out of him.  When it doesn’t work he goes out to freeze in the garden.

December 31st 2016 – 11:25pm

Kent’s butt has gone numb but he’s still staring at the god damn app.

He wants to say he’s happy for them.  He wants to get behind them like everyone else and say words like ‘good for them’ and ‘that’s real progress they’re pioneering’ and ‘we should all representation’ and other sentences with buzz words like that but he just…can’t.  Kent can’t support them not because he’s a raging homophobe but because he’s broken hearted and bitter.

Silence he could take.  Being frozen out he could take.  But seeing them like that? On the ice in front of thousands of fans and cameras that broadcast to millions more all over the country, all over the world, kissing? Kissing like they were in love? Kissing like they’d waited their lifetimes to do it?

Kissing like they were fucking happy.

There was nothing but white noise in his head when he saw it on Cray’s phone but after they’d gotten outside, after Carly couldn’t be heard giving his opinion like anyone gave a shit, his brain filled up with the kind of howling Kent was terrified people could hear.

That was supposed to be us!

His brain still screams it sometimes.  It screams it when his eyes snag on a picture of Jack beaming at the camera holding a fucking pie that isn’t on any diet plan Kent’s ever prescribed to.  He screams it when he sees a picture of them kissing on instagram or twitter.  He yowls it when he sees the picture of Jack passed out in bed, covers hiked up to his waist and hair all sleep mussed.

Roadies are tough even on the veterans the caption reads.

It’s supposed to be cute but it makes Kent want to hurl.  Kent only met that bitty kid once but he’s pretty sure that whatever he has with Jack can in no way compare to what he and Kent had.

They were masters on the ice.  The bloody champions of the no look one shot goal for fucks sake! Everything they were on the ice they were a million times more off of it and each side fed into the other making them real contenders.  Kent and Jack were supposed to go in the draft together.  They were supposed to graduate to pro from their farm teams and get the A’s and then captaincy.  Kent was supposed to spend his days doing the two things he enjoyed most.  Playing hockey and loving Jack.

Sure Kent still gets to play hockey but he has to watch someone else love Jack and Jack love someone else.

Meanwhile Kent sits here on his ass too afraid to take a chance on someone else because lord knows Jack got all the luck.  He gets lucky enough to find a boyfriend at Samwell, a boyfriend who obviously understood the dangers of Jack coming out in the world.  Kent wouldn’t be so lucky.  Kent would probably tether his line to someone who would sell him down the river, out in him in the tabloids or blackmail him for their silence.  Or worse resent him for pulling them back into the closet with him.

Kent pitches the wine bottle into the garden and hears it smash somewhere down the patio.  He regrets it immediately.

Gluttonous for punishment Kent opens up Eric’s twitter.

@omgcheckplease start as you mean to go on.

Attached is a picture of a series of pies all laid out neatly and photogenically along a gleaming kitchen counter.  A kitchen counter Jack’s pay check paid for no doubt.

The next few tweets are a transcript of conversations they’ve been having with their friends and family during the day.  The next few are a saccharine sweet shout out to all the ‘fans’ who have supported them this year since the Falconers cup win and Jack and Eric’s big gay reveal.

Eric doesn’t type big gay reveal, Kent just adds that in because he’s angry and petty and self-destruction has no bite unless he’s adding in his own internalised (and really it has to be internalised because only six people in Kent’s life know he’s gay) homophobia.

The next tweet comes with a picture of a beer pong table set up.

@omgcheckplease @clarissaexplainsitall showin’ bros how it’s done again!

@omgcheckplease reigning 2017 champion @clarissaexplainsitall

Attached is a photo reminiscent of the photo taken last time except there’s only one guy beneath her foot and it’s Jack.  His face is all scrunched up and peculiar looking and Kent does a double take when he realises that it’s because he’s laughing so hard.

He sways on the wall and closes his phone.

He doesn’t know who the fuck that guy in the photo is.

Falling off the wall Kent starts the slow stumble back to the house and when he steps through the patio doors the warm air dries his lips and shrinks his bladder threateningly.

He hunts for the bathroom but the downstairs one is occupied and so he crawls, on his hands and knees, up the stairs too drunk to just hold onto the railing.  When he summits them he spots two girls leaning against the landing wall each staring at their phones.  Both are leggy and blonde and completely Hudson’s type

“They are goals.” The tallest leggiest one gushes.  Her gold dress makes her glow.

“Such goals.” Her less leggier but no less blonder friend agrees.

“I know it’s, like, not pc to say but I totally think them making out on centre ice was hot.”

“Oh my god hella hot.”

If you think that’s hot you should have seen him sucking cock Kent thinks to himself and because he finds himself so hilarious he snorts out loud.  The girls whirl around eyes saucer wide and full of guilt.

“Sssorry ladies,” he slurs passing them, “Please go back to…whatever the fuck you were doin’.” He sends an approximation of a grin over his shoulder before shutting the bathroom door behind him.

He throws the lid up, pulls his pants down and relieves himself.  Outside in the hall he hears the girls say,

“Kent’s hot.”

“Brett says he’s a fucking mess and a coke addict.”

Hudson invited them then.

“Do you think those rumours about him and Jack were true? You know the-“ she pauses and Kent wonders if she’s miming sniffing coke or a handjob.

“Regardless I’d still fuck him.”

After a beat the other girl says, “Yeah me too.”

December 31st 2016 – 11:48pm

“Kent? Kent? Open the door.  I know you’re in there.” The handle twists but Kent made sure to lock it so all it does is rattle against the frame.  “Fucks sake.  You better not be passed out in your own puke.”

Kent grunts.  Not his style.

There’s a muffled “Thank god.” Outside the door followed by a click of the lock and finally the door opening.  Swoops appears with a glass bottle in his hand and the first thing Kent slurs is,

“That better be vodka.”

“Ha ha.” Jeff says humourlessly.  “No.  You’ve had enough fucking liquor you can drink this.” He hands him the bottle and a slice of bread, “And eat this.  Why are you in my bath tub?”

Kent ignores the water but does take the bread.  Crumbs fall onto his chest.  “It looked comfortable.”

Jeff heaves a weary sigh, “And is it?”

Kent shakes his head and more crumbs tumble down.  It’s very uncomfortable but Kent was sad anyway and so he decided what was a little more discomfort in the grand scheme of things? “I should have come.” Jeff gives him a look.  “I’m ruining the…the…good times.”

“Hudson’s hitting on Maya.  You’re missing a hell of a crash and burn but other than that,” Jeff pushes the water at him again, “you’re not preventing anything.”

Kent doesn’t believe him for a second.  He’s always fucking up and getting too drunk and then too mopey and Swoops, no Jeff, he’s Jeff when it’s just them together, is always there to look after him.  To drag him from one drink too many, helping to smooth over fights that Kent swears to god he didn’t start.  Jeff’s like his guardian angel…or his carer.

“You shouldn’t have to look after me.”

Unexpectedly Jeff snaps, “Then stop needing it.” Taken aback Kent blinks up at him.  “Is this about Zimmermann?”

Kent sinks down in the tub, “No.” he mumbles into his chest.

“And last year wasn’t about him either?”

“No.”

“You’re the worlds worst liar I swear to fucking god.” Jeff mutters, “I don’t know how nobody has figured you out.”

“I’m Captain,” Kent pouts petulant, “you’re not supposed to give your captain shit.”

Jeff gives him a dry look, “Pretty sure the captains not supposed to get wasted and curl up to die in my bath tub, and yet.”

Kent flips him off.

“Real captainly.”

Kent swigs water and hopes Jeff is affected by the defiance in the violent gulping.

“It could be you, you know.” Jeff says softly after a minute.  “You could come out.”

Kent almost spits his water out.  “I’m not like Jack.” He says when he’s done.

“You’re not?” Jeff looks genuinely puzzled.

Kent might find it fond if he knew how to process that expression and all it really meant.  “I’m not…” he combs his soupy brain for the word, “beloved.”

“Beloved?” Jeff blinks at him in disbelief.

“Beloved.” Kent scowls at him.  It’s less effective every time he does it.

“How in the fuck is Zimmermann beloved? You think just cos his dad was a hockey star and his boyfriend started a black market jam trade that that makes him beloved?” Jeff snorts as if to say give me strength “It’s his boyfriend doing the baking not him.  Jack Zimmermann is no more or less ‘beloved’ than you.”

“I can’t come out.”

“Can’t or don’t want to?” Jeff replies swiftly.

Kent bristles, “Don’t want to.” Kent snaps.

At length Jeff decides, “I think that’s bullshit.”

“Don’t fucking assume you know anything about what I want.” Kent snaps viciously…or vicious for a guy drunk in a bath tub with crumbs all over his shirt.

“God forbid I do that Kent huh? God forbid I try to help you off this self-destructive fucking rollercoaster you are determined to be strapped into.”

“I never asked you to help me!”

“That’s what friends do!”

“I don’t need you as my friend!” he shouts.

“Of course you fucking do!” Jeff shouts back.  “Without me you’d be dead, or worse, slandered in all the papers for all the fucking bathroom blowjobs.”

Kent scoffs bitterly, “I never took you for a homophobe.”

Jeff sneers at him, “I’m not a fucking homophobe you asshole I’m trying to look out for you.  You don’t want to be out then stop fucking around with randoms who would sell you down the river if they ever found out who you are.  You don’t want the wider world knowing things about you you’d rather keep secret then maybe you should stop taking strangers into back rooms and working your way through Nevada one grindr user at a time and focus on getting over Jack fucking Zimmermann.”

By the time he’s done Jeff’s chest is heaving and the air’s turned thick and heavy with all the words he’s just said.  Kent can’t say anything for the giant lump in his throat and it takes him several tries before he feels like he can swallow it enough to make sound around it.  “Why couldn’t it be me?”

Jeff sinks down, turns and leans his back against the tub.  “You and Jack?”

“We used to date.” Kent whispers like he’s just admitted something huge.  Like Jeff doesn’t already know that the tear in Kent’s heart is shaped like Zimmermann’s knife.  “He thinks I forgot him and then when I went to talk to him at Samwell he just-“ Kent takes a shuddering breath, “he didn’t want to know.  He told me to get out.”

Jeff takes a breath, “That was a long time ago.”

“He gets everything.” Kent croaks miserably.  “The legendary parents, the money and the privilege.  He got the fresh start and every hockey team vying to be his first pick even after he left them hanging.  Then he gets the A and the perfect fucking boyfriend and now,” Kent’s head lolls against the tub, “now he gets a team who supports who he really is.”

Kent makes Jeff wait for the kicker.

“And he did it all without me.”

And there it is.

“We’d be there for you.”

Kent snorts, it’s a nice thought but it’s hardly true.  “You think Hudson and Macksey are gonna be there for me? You think the GM’s are gonna be there for me? You know what they’ll fucking say.  They’ll watch the ticket sales go down and the fights on the ice get worse and they’ll think maybe it’s best if I get scratched for a few games.  Then it’s me handing over my C and sending me down to ‘train’ kids at the farm and then come trade day,” he makes a whistle bomb sound, “they’ll sell me to the only bidder.”

“They can’t kick you off the team for being gay Kent.”

“They can make it hard to stay on it.” He snaps, “God Jeff I love you but you’re fucking naïve.”

Jeff makes an angry impatient noise in the back of his throat, “You think you’re the only one who has a secret on this team? Do you think you’re the only player on this roster who has things they think they need to hide for fear of being benched or sent down to the farm? Jesus Christ Kent you’re the fucking captain.  You could help these peoples!”

“I don’t owe anybody anything.”

“Then you’re just like Zimmermann, or worse because he just did that.”

“For himself.” Kent refuses to believe that Jack did that for anybody but himself.  He won’t have thought about the wider world.  Jack’s only ever crippled under the public pressure, he’s never risen to meet it or change it.

Jeff makes that sound again, “For himself or not he’s not opened a door that the leagues been trying to hold closed for decades.  Whether he continues with this or not it’s out there now and pretty soon other players are going to gently nudge their way out and declare themselves too.  You could be one of them.”

Kent’s silence is considering.  “But I’d be alone.” He says quietly.

“You wouldn’t be alone.”

“You think I could find someone to kiss live on air after a game?”

Jeff rolls his eyes, “Now you’re just being facetious.  I’m saying that if you came out you’d have people in your corner.  Your family for one and me and Jasmine and loads of other guys on the team.”

Kent makes a sound, “You sure of that?”

“I am.  If this bullshit,” he waves over his shoulder to Kent wasted in the bath, “is about more than your heartbreak with Zimmermann just know that you don’t have to be afraid of walking out there alone if you want to be honest with the world about this part of you.  But if this is only about Jack then I have some friendly advice for you.”

Jeff pauses so Kent has to ask ,”And that is?”

“Get some therapy and get over him.”

“I thought the best way to get over someone was to get under someone else.”

Jeff thinks he hears a smile in Kent’s voice.  He answers with his own, “The rate you’re going through them don’t you think if that were true it would have happened by now?”

“You can’t slut shame me.” He grumbles sinking down into the tub.  His sneakers squeak on the porcelain.

Finally Jeff turns hooking his muscled forearms over the lip of the tub and staring down into Kent’s tear streaked face.  Gently he wipes one away from his cheek.  “Kent.  I love you okay? I can’t watch you do this anymore.  You’re too fucking talented and amazing to be sitting in my tub thirty seconds from midnight drunk crying over a boy who doesn’t love you.”

Kent sucks in a breath.

“Yes you idiot I love you.” Jeff rests his cheek on the tub and regards Kent with a fond smile.  “And so does Jasmine.”

“It’s not exactly the kind of love that has us making out on centre ice is it?”

Jeff shrugs, “You never know”

Kent’s belly does something clenchy that he’ll only start to understand when he’s hungover, “but if you want it to be you’ll have to start picking up the tab at meals.  You can even start at brunch tomorrow.”

Kent burps.  “Oh God.” He scrambles to get up.

Jeff fights to lean back before Kent’s flailing limbs can smack him in the face.  “Jesus okay? We can ease into it you can get the coffees.”

“Nope!” Kent falls half out of the bath in his haste to get away.

“Christ Kent you’ll never get that-“

Kent pushes violently past him and falls face first into the toilet.  Then vomits.

“-kiss now.”

“Urgh.” Kent gasps into the bowl.

Jeff leans over and presses his hand to the space between Kent’s shoulder blades and slowly rubs up and down in what he hopes is a soothing manner.  Kent opens his mouth to thank him then vomits again.

“Happy New Year Kent.”

Kent flips him off.

“No really.  It’s midnight.” He slides his phone under Kent’s face.  “See?”

On the screen 00:00 flashes up.  “Fuck.” He sighs.  “Happy New year man.”

Jeff’s hand returns a steady slow comforting stroke along his spine.  “Happy New Year bro.”

Staring at the rancid water at the bottom of the toilet bowl Kent doesn’t know how happy the new years going to be but when he wakes in the morning to find two Advil’s and a water with a note propped against it that reads;

Hi sweetheart.  Breakfast’s on you yeah?

He begins to reconsider.

[dnowit41]

The many stories of Mavs icon Dirk Nowitzki as told by Donnie Nelson, Rick Carlisle, and Mark Cuban

Brad Townsend

Donnie Nelson met then-19-year-old Dirk Nowitzki in the lobby of Dallas' Hyatt Regency late one night in March 1998.

A most likely drunk Mark Cuban briefly met Nowitzki and Steve Nash in Dallas' Starck Club in early January 2000, with the players not realizing that Cuban would become their boss the next day.

Rick Carlisle met Nowitzki at the 2004 NBA All-Star game in Los Angeles, then, more formally in May 2008, when Carlisle came to Dallas to interview for the Mavericks' coaching job.

The 2008 meeting was the merger - Cuban, Nelson, Carlisle and Nowitzki, gathered in Cuban's Preston Hollow home - that laid the groundwork to the Mavericks' 2011 NBA championship and the final 11 seasons of Nowitzki's 21-year career.

Cuban and Carlisle have unique perspectives of the Nowitzki Era. Here are their oral accounts of a 22-year timeline, from the Mavericks' great fortune of landing Nowitzki, to his retirement this week: Meetings, first impressions, pivotal moments and lasting takeways.

When Dirk met Donnie

Q: When did you first hear of Dirk?

Donnie Nelson: "The first time I heard the name, I was working for the Phoenix Suns and I was working on our draft board and I overheard Charles Barkley and Scottie Pippen talking about a kid that they played against and they couldn't pronounce his name - Numinski, Rumanski.

"It was just a pregame conversation and they were talking about this guy in Germany that was good. That was the first time I heard the name being attempted."

Pippen, Barkley, Michael Jordan, Jason Kidd and other top NBA players had faced teenager Nowitzki in 1997, when the Nike Hoops Heroes exhibition tour stopped in Berlin.

"The next time I recognized his name was when the list came out for the 1998 Nike Hoops Summit and I said, 'Man, that's got to be the same kid from Germany.”

Q: When and how did you meet Dirk?

Nelson: "In the lobby of the Hyatt Regency. I was the assistant coach of the [Hoops Summit] international team. I was the assistant coach for the event's first three years because I was the 'international guy' and was familiar with a lot of the players and worked the Euro camp overseas and was the Lithuanian [Olympic team] assistant.

"I just kind of donated my time, with permission of course from my team, the Suns. And then ironically -- this was very serendipitous because as you can remember I came to the Mavericks halfway through the season. If I still was with the Suns I would not have been able to help with the Hoops Summit because the Suns were playoff-bound and the Summit was moved [to late March] because they wanted to couple it with the Final Four in San Antonio.

"So all of a sudden, halfway through the season, I go from the Suns to the Mavericks and I find out that they're going to have the international team training camp in Dallas. And it just happens that I called and I said, 'Hey, listen, now that I'm with the Mavericks we're obviously not going to be playoff-bound, so I'm free to help again if you guys need me to help.'

"I think we can thank DFW Airport for having this be the training camp site because the players came from all over the world and DFW Airport is DFW Airport. Largely for logistical reasons, training camp would be in Dallas and that we would jump on a Southwest flight and go down and play in San Antonio."

Q: And that first Dirk meeting?

Nelson: "The first time I saw him, my first reaction was, 'Well, holy crap, he really is close to 7-feet.' Because a lot of these guys, you hear about them and then by the time they show up on American shores they've shrunk by six inches.

"I had really very little background. Him and Holger [Geschwindner] show up in the middle of the night, literally they were the last ones in, he and Holger. Because Holger thought it was very important for Dirk, he had to sneak him out in the middle of the night from his team over there, get him on a plane and bring him over here.

"It was so late, the team was already in the spaceball in the Hyatt having dinner. The Nike guy leans over to me and says, 'Hey, the German kid has shown up. Go get him and bring him up here.'

"I go down into the lobby, I guess they'd had some hellacious flight that had a couple of redirects. I didn't know Holger was going to be there. I called up to the spaceball and said, 'Hey, Dirk is here, his coach is here, should I bring him up?' The Nike guy was like, 'Dirk can come but his coach can't.'

"I took Dirk up to the spaceball up there and did like anyone would from the friendship state and that was went back down and there's Holger sitting on a chair in the same flannel shirt and jeans that he wears today, and the leather jacket that's like out of some movie. ... I bought him dinner and beer and just kind of made him feel welcome.

"And that's basically how our relationship started, which was just extending the hand of goodwill. Any red-blooded American would have done that, but I did it and that just happened to be how Holger and I kicked off our relationship."

When Dirk met Cuban

Q: When did you and Dirk meet?

Mark Cuban: "It was the night before I took over the team, at the Starck Club, and he was there with Steve. And I knew I was going to take over the team the next day, so I was out celebrating with my buddies and we were looking stupid and acting stupid.

"And I tried to buy him and Steve beers and they looked at me like, 'Uh, no.' I'm like, 'OK, I'll see you tomorrow,' and walked off. They just thought I was some idiot trying to buy the drink, and if you saw the picture you'd think I was an idiot, too.

"Then I saw them the next day when I got introduced to the team."

Q: How did Dirk react?

Cuban: "Dirk and his 20-year-old face, I'm sure he's was thinking, 'What a [expletive] circus. This is what we're getting?'"

When Dirk met Carlisle

Q: When and where did you meet Dirk?

Rick Carlisle: "The first time I met him was at the 2004 All-Star Game in L.A. I was coaching the East. There was an organizational meeting of both teams and coaching staffs. I ended up sitting near him. We struck up a conversation, talked for five or ten minutes about things.

"He had known that I had played with Larry Bird back in the day. We talked a little bit about that. For me, I could tell from that conversation the purity of who he was as a person and a player and a competitor.

"The next time I met him, officially, was when I came down here to talk to these guys about the job in the spring of 2008. It was a meeting at Mark's house and I just remember, when I said 'Hello' again it struck me, 'Wow, I can't believe how tall this guy is. He's taller than I even thought from coaching against him.

"We had a three-hour meeting at Mark's house with me, Mark, Dirk, Donnie. Just talked about a lot of things, philosophically, competitively. I just got the same vibe that I did in L.A., that the guy was a sincere competitor that was only interested in winning a championship."

First impressions

Q: In those Hoops Summit international practices, at the Dallas YMCA, what stood out about Dirk?

Nelson: "I actually didn't know what to expect. The first day in practice and then you're just seeing a 7-foot fluid athlete. And then when he started shooting I was like, 'Man, that's not bad.'

"You'll hear this adage in scouting: One look can be dangerous. ... But about the second, third day, I was like, 'Boy, that wasn't a mirage and that second day wasn't a mirage. He sure looks like he could be a player.'"

Q: When did you alert your father [Mavs coach and GM Don Nelson] and put Dirk on the Mavs' radar?

Nelson: "I would say it was probably a couple of practices in. We in the NBA, it's like a pretty girl walking into the room. You can't not notice those things. Especially if you're in coaching, you definitely understand that success is 90-percent Jimmys and Joes and 10-percent X's and O's.

"We get through training camp, go to San Antone, the first half, we had a challenged backcourt and the U.S. team in the first half literally was putting on the full-court press. Dirk, we just couldn't get the ball to halfcourt.

"After halftime, Dirk, on his own, starts coming over halfcourt. If you're one of these poor guys trying to get the ball in and you see this 7-foot target and you can just lob it up there and go over the press.

"It just shows the software of Dirk and the problem-solving and team player is he just starts, on his own volition, going to the backcourt and they hit him with the ball and he just does what he's been taught by Holger to do since Holger started coaching him and that's going coast-to-coast and shooting threes.

"Every NBA team was there in droves. The first half was, let's call it less than stellar on the part of the international team. But I think once Dirk started being Dirk and kind of taking the bull by the horns."

Nowitzki finished with 33 points and 14 rebounds as the international team rallied for a 104-99 victory over the USA Team.

"There again is the adage of one look being dangerous. Other GMs, they're literally going off a half a game. They didn't have the luxury of seeing him at additional times like we did."

Q: What did you think when you first saw Dirk play, as a Mavs fan, before you bought the team in January 2000?

Cuban: "Back then it was hard to know. Because our track record wasn't very good at picking international guys. Like every Mavs fan I had high hopes, but I really didn't know. All I knew is he did really stupid commercials about being tall and pulling things out of trees."

Q: Donnie Nelson has said he and his father are fortunate because when you bought the team, you could have cleaned out, brought in your own basketball people. It's not like the team was winning.

Cuban: "Yeah, but I didn't know any better. What was I going to do? How was I going to pick anybody? I didn't know (expletive). I figured I was just going to take time to learn and there was no downside. I mean, it wasn't like the pressure was on to keep winning games. There was no downside to me just keeping it as it was and learning."

Q: When did you notice the tide turn for Dirk?

Cuban: "The first year when I bought the team and was there and I got to pay attention. From the time I took over, for the rest of the year we had a winning record. You saw progress from Dirk and everybody. Teams weren't really taking us seriously because when I bought them we were like 9-23, but you could just see it from all three of those guys [Nowitzki, Steve Nash, Michael Finley]."

Q: What was it like coaching against Dirk when you were with the Pacers and Pistons?

Carlisle: "It was him, Finley and Nash together. And then their team changed. They became more defensive-oriented and changed their style when Avery [Johnson] got here. They presented different challenges then. But you have a 7-foot-1 guy that can score from any point on the floor, I mean, that's a big problem, trying to find someone to guard him.

"How are you going to deal with him in the post if he goes in there? How are you going to find him in transition? All those things. He sets a screen, it's like a double-screen on your guys because you've gotta hug him. It was a myriad of problems to deal with. It was very difficult."

Q: What was your perception of Dirk before you took over as coach in 2008?

Carlisle: "He was a perennial All-Star and a great player, a guy that I had really felt at that point of time had redefined the power forward position, for sure. I watched the 2006 series with Miami very closely. And I knew how close they had been and how painful that was.

"When I got here in 2008, we were fortunate to make some really critical moves to get the team in position and then get on a historic run, at the exact right time. He had everything to do with that.

"Dirk, one of his real legacies is going to be the way that he has helped this game evolve to what it is today.

"In the 90s and early 2000s, there was a real crisis. Scoring was down. It was, people in decision-making positions were trying to figure out what to do. But the way Dirk approached the game and the way Nellie converted him from a 3 to a 4, helped nudge the game along, open up space. Eventually the value of the 3-point shot to open up space became a reality.

"So the game today now, you don't hear anybody talking about how there's not enough scoring, or it's not exciting, those kind of things."

Q: What do you remember about your first game of coaching Dirk?

Carlisle: "The first game was an exhibition game. I do remember that. I think we were playing against Washington. He had a very short-hair thing going at the time. I was just trying to get the lay of the land around here. Dallas, I was so new. We had a new coaching staff, still getting used to what Mark was all about.

"But in that summer leading up to the first particular game, [Dirk] had established he was going to be on an even keel all the time, unwavering, all those kinds of things. I know he played well in that game. He was coming off of the Olympic appearance by Germany that year. We had kind of watched his reps in training camp and stuff. But it was pretty clear to me at that time that this guy was an absolute rock in terms of being that guy."

Pivotal moments

Q: What do you remember from the draft night of 1998 trade with Milwaukee that brought Dirk here and sent Robert Traylor to the Bucks?

Nelson: "That trade was contingent upon Dirk being there and available. And then we traded down and rolled the bones on Nash. So, yes, it was agreed to before, but if Dirk would have gone 3 or 4 or 5, the deal would have been off.

"When it got to 9 and he and Paul Pierce were still there. We had them both in the top three of that draft. We were floored.

"It's funny because when that happened, my dad looked at me and said, 'What are you going to do now, son?' It was tongue in cheek, but it was also, I think, in his mind, he knew the challenges that we were going to go through with Dirk. He also knew that Paul Pierce was plug and play.

"We're at the conference table and I think he knew we were going to do what we were going to do. But I think he wanted me to understand the weight of the decision of what we were about to do.

"When you're a guy like my dad and you've coached a lot, the difference between Paul Pierce that is a plug and play, he's going to come in his rookie year and he's going to put up 20, 8 and 6 and you've got Dirk and he's going to put up 5 fouls and three points. It's a much steeper learning curve.

"Even after we got him on draft night, we still had to convince him that we were the best option. Honestly, we were about two years ahead of Holger's plan. Holger's plan was to take him to the Hoops Summit and then give him a couple of years, whether overseas at Benetton or a Real Madrid or Barcelona, or go to colleges. He had Cal and Kentucky and I think it was Kansas. He had three full rides.

"In Holger's mind Dirk wasn't quite ready for the NBA. It became Nellie and myself, going to Germany, sitting down with Holger, mom, dad, Dirk, and a big part of it was playing time. We had to commit to, 'Look, Dirk's not just going to come sit the bench. We're going to take Dirk in like he's our own. We're going to put the ball in his hands. We're understand we're going to lose, to develop Dirk, that's part of the rebuilding plan.'

"Then, look, when Mark came in as owner, he really embraced us in our darkest hour. We had everyone who wasn't happy with the win-loss record at the time. Mark had every right to come in and say, 'Hey, I'll take the keys from here in, boys. I appreciate it.' And he embraced us and Dirk and Nash and the whole program."

Q: How has your relationship with Dirk evolved during the 19 seasons you've owned the team?

Cuban: "I don't how many players and owners have gotten drunk as many times together as Dirk and I have. Or sat for 10 hours together at a blackjack table. Or gotten kicked out of places.

"The good and the bad and everything. It's more off-the-court, really where you connect with Dirk. He's in his own little world when he's working out and when the game starts. The rest of the time, it's been an adventure, to say the least.

"We've been through a lot of hassles. A lot of sorrow, on the court and off. And we were always there for each other. That bonds you. You just can't help it. It bonds you.

"It's not like we're best friends, but it's like where we have a really, really strong relationship that we both know we can go to each other any time and we're always there for each other.

"We usually make sure we spent a couple of times over the summer just to hang out and have fun. Up until last year, we went to Vegas together 15 out of 16 years or something ridiculous."

Q: Is he a good gambler?

Cuban: (laughing) "No, he's horrible. He plays like $25 hands so he can sit there and drink. His drinks have evolved over the years, I guess. Being at his sister's wedding in Vegas was a treat, too."

Q: What were your impressions as you got to know Dirk, the player and person?

Carlisle: "One of the special things about Dirk is he is a guy who has never looked for attention, never wanted to be in the spotlight, other than to serve his teammates, fans and certainly ownership, because he and Mark certainly have a special relationship.

"The points were obvious. That's never going to go away. But for those of us who have had the great privilege to be in the trenches with him for a long time, the competitive integrity, the way he prepares on a daily basis, the way he gives of himself to his teammates, to the franchise, to the community in such a humble way, those are the things that, for me, really are big-time things about who he is."

Q: What did winning the championship mean to you personally, in terms of your relationship with Dirk?

Carlsile: "That moment obviously was a very emotional moment for him, but very gratifying for me and Mark and Donnie, too, because being able to get this team in a position to have that kind of success for guys like Dirk, Jason Kidd, Jason Terry, Tyson Chandler, Shawn Marion, was very special."

Biggest takeaways

Q: It's one thing to have your face of the franchise be a uniquely talented player. It's another thing for him to have an NBA-record 21-season career, all with one team. But it's still another to have that player be humble and self-deprecating and community-minded. How do you place a value in having all of these things in one player?

Nelson: "In this business, it's so easy to get big-head. With Dirk, he's in a lot of respects the same guy that had the Scottie Pippen poster his room and living in mom and dad's flat. He just never let any of that outside stuff get to him. He always saw himself as part of a team that wanted to win a championship.

"He didn't see himself as a brand. He could have had millions and millions of dollars of endorsements, his 'own this and that,' TV shows. He could have gone in so many directions, but his entire career saw himself as a basketball player that wanted to be the best that he possibly could be. And he let nothing else distract him. Nothing.

"One big reason is Holger. From day one, Holger was the one who saw him playing pickup and saw promise and wanted him to be what he's become and showed him, both on the court and off the court how to get there. Dirk's dad is an absolutely hard-working competitive former athlete, as is mom. They understand the value of athletics and staying humble.

"Things like power and money and fame and fortune, all that stuff that generally takes a young mind and twists it and warps it, it never happened. The only thing I can do is credit mom and dad and Holger and the people who surrounded him. When you're sitting there with a guy like Steve Nash and Michael Finley, Nellie back in the formative days, these are people that are honest, straight-shooting and are workaholics and passionate about the sport and winning. That's it.

"It's a very, very special human being who has occupied that locker and that uniform that's got 41 on it."

Q: What's next for Dirk?

Cuban: "Dirk's family. I'm happy for him in a lot of respects because the best part of his life comes afterwards. You think in any career that, 'OK, this is what you've done and this is who you are,' but Dirk's so much more than just being a basketball player.

"It's going to be hard for him to adjust initially, but the best part of his life is yet to come.

"Twenty years on the court here, plus when he was a kid. But he's got a lot longer off the court. I think that's where he'll continue to be the guy we all know and really blossom. Because I think everybody will get to know him better because he doesn't have to focus on being so disciplined. He doesn't have to have that same discipline.

"It wouldn't shock me if we saw him at 280, 290 with a pot belly."

Q: You're kidding, right?

Cuban: (laughing) "No, no, no. I'd be willing to bet. He already knows he has any job with us that he wants. He'll probably spend most of his time designing his statue."

Q: What will you miss most?

Carlisle: "I'll miss everything, but the way Dirk approached things, each day was a set of challenges. There was almost a checklist of things he would do to prepare. It was so meticulous. It was so precise, and yet it was so workmanlike. You could set an atomic watch to it.

"When it came time to throw the ball up, he was going to be ready to play. If he wasn't a hundred percent, you weren't gonna know it, really, because he was going to slug through it and he was going to find a way to make a major impact on that game."

[raysondetre]

U2′s Songs of Experience

Here are the things in the album and release that U2 have done that tie into this book, summarized without substantiation. I reiterate the list with substantiation below if you actually want to find out if this is going on.

Why this is important: -the book was published January 9th, 2016. Bono received the same book at the halfway mark as a draft in 2011. It was submitted for copyright April 2014 and received its copyright license at the end of that year. So you're dealing with a situation where the book can in no way have been contrived to fit U2's actions with their subsequent album, Songs of Experience. Which implies that Bono contrived his creative output in response to the book, because there are enough of them that it appears it could not have been chance. To find out why that could be of pivotal import, it would pay to read the book, but I'll give you the shorthand, -for the book's entire premise to fly, -Bono was so creatively involved he'd have to agree to its existence on some level. And this is enough to assert that he does. But to understand why that statement can be made that strongly, you'd have to understand what was in the book. Same goes for understanding why that may be so important, but U2 themselves have framed the import themselves quite perfectly by this choice quote they released on the day of the US recent eclipse, "Blackout, it's clear, who you are will appear".

1) Bono appears to have read the halfway draft of this book he got in 2011 -in terms of creating a song that manages to juxtapose finishing the book, along with what might be a reaction to the fact that I have lately published a spate of negative investigative articles about the band with regards to their philanthropy sources, -with the fact that I was on Killiney Bay in the draft right before the first time I met him personally, -a song which actually manages to tie into this circumstance three different ways (relying on the journal entry from the night prior)

2) Bono's preview interview for the album's release (the exclusive Amazon Alexa podcast) had him pulling out and talking about an incident he's practically never discussed, -the theft of his lyrics for U2's album ATYCLB on his laptop - an incident that happened right after I first met him, and was thoroughly documented in the draft he received (as well as the current book), -a theft that happened 18 years ago.

3) U2 have deliberately timed their album's release with both an eclipse (to the day) and a supermoon (which happened two days after the album's release) -both events which happened before and after the first and second time I met and spoke to Bono in person in Dublin in 1999. An eclipse happened at almost at totality over Dublin (over 98%) just days before I met Bono, and the supermoon occurred two days after I met him the second time. U2 timed the release of the album with a supermoon occurring two days after the album's release. All this occurrence was documented in both the draft and the current (pre-published 2016) book.

4) Bono snippets "Walk to the Water" in the BBC promotion of the new album's release, -a song that has never been performed and has only been snippeted four times in all of its existence (including this time). He edited the lyrics so that they emphasize the song's (female) subject, opening by her saying it wasn't cold, and how she walked down the "North Strand" to the sea, -which is exactly where you'd walk to go to U2's secret studio then (in 1999, not when this song was written). This is exactly what transpired when I met Bono the first time. Bono was in a position to know that this was exactly what transpired the first time, because I described the process of finding the secret studio in the draft, including describing which streets, -not to mention the conversation itself.

5) The new album, Songs of Experience has a bonus track, "Book of Your Heart" which actually has Bono describing having reading something given to him exclusively for his reading alone (in which he was a character), that corresponds with several appertaining facts of the book.

6) The most significant of these is that it mentions the name change I made to my legal pen name in order to publish the book. Or at least, this is alluded to as something the writer described in the song has done, and this is something I did to self-publish. This happened after 2011.

7) Prior to this, with Songs of Innocence -Bono titled track 10 after the "sincerely" line of my opening letter that presented the draft, word for word: "This is Where You Can Reach me Now". This is something I cannot document because that letter was saved exclusively to the flash drive that Bono received.

This got started as a reply, which I've kept the link to document because the reply thread is literally when I noticed, in real time, that there could have been a deliberate interplay between the song and my book draft. (As well as the embed code just in case which is not a hyperlink.) Facebook censored me from replying, which is how this analysis took flight.

Anthony: "Pamela Williams this is the stupidest crap I’ve ever read. So Bono stoled lyrics from you? Ok lol"

"No. And not insulting you back Anthony takes some restraint. The lyrics are not a quote -which is apparent to anyone literate. What is he doing by the look of it is tagging the period I was in Ireland and met him personally (and delivered an art theory to him as per lyrics with some pretty serious implications). You might register the fact that every one of these points I'm listing is in the book draft I managed to get to him personally in Chicago, -2011. The draft he got, the chapter I was in Ireland and met him personally was just being begun. I had to summarize it as a series of journal entries." So in the book draft he got:

1) I was crying on Killiney Bay the night after a Full Moon just days before I met Bono for the first time. The night before I was singing my lungs out and dancing on the roof of a Dublin Pub three stories up. -With the song "Love is Bigger Than Anything in its Way". -Bono lyrically suggests to start singing, instead of 'talking' -which would suitably reference the fact that I've done a series of five investigative articles in the last year and a half or so on the band's billionaire sponsorship etc. that were deeply negative. -That's probably the reason for the 'I know the rage in you is strong" reference.

-Now when I went back into writing the Chapter on Ireland in earnest after Bono received the book in 2011, I found I'd made an error and in fact these journal entries were several days apart, -not just one day apart. So the page I put in the book footnotes (that are in the existing published book as hyperlinks) that has these same journal entries (at a higher level of detail) -they're a week or so apart instead of a day apart. The quay I was sitting on (crying) at Dalkey is on Killiney Bay. I said, "I think my heart is completely broken." In the draft Bono got the entry is only two lines and the episode on the roof (June 28th) is listed as the Full Moon the night prior. In reality the second night I listed as June 29th in his draft really took place July 6th. (Yea, I have the original volumes (handwritten journals, -seven of them), the only way this would have even been the result.)

This is not asserting that he is taking lyrics from me. It looks like what happened in the book draft may be something he chose to write a song (actually maybe three plus one deliberate choice of snippet) about. There's a (big) difference between that allegation and alleging "Bono's copping my lyrics".

-Disclaimer, I have run across this interview in The Sun that says the song was written for his sons (heard the same thing about "13 (There is a Light)" -Bono says on record in the liner notes that this is the case, listing three songs by title as dedicated to his children). However, as explained in the book itself, (and further below) -both sons appeared to have been named after the document I handed to Bono the first time I met him, so it may have a dual intention. It may fit both situations and fits this one a little better, as the book puts a host of songs into one giant, narrative uber song. PS: From what I've seen, apart from this one song out of the three I'm referencing, despite the fact that Bono said all the tracks were letters of some sort to people in his life (including fans) the ones I'm mentioning have no such attribution by Bono or the band (fans assume attribution). I'm not sure why Bono would dedicate two songs to his two sons and only one song to his two daughters, and Bono has only attributed one so far to his daughters. So I'm wondering if the song was written with a dual intention, which is not a first in terms of song analysis where Bono is concerned. PPS: I’m not the type to make an assumption about one song because that song "just happens" to fit what he received in a draft. There’s a lot else going on.

2) Bono talks about his laptop getting stolen with all his lyrics on the Alexa interview special that was a retrospective preview to the album, and only broadcast before the album's release (since this individual didn't listen well enough I checked on this interview with second source). This theft happens in the book draft I gave to Bono in 2011, -right after I documented meeting him personally in the draft. "-But [Anthony is] too dim to consider how I might possess a scan of the newsprint article that documents when he recovered it, and exists as its own page because it is an actual book footnote in a book that was already published in iBooks January 9, 2016, -which means I've already written and published this so I cannot have possibly contrived any of these pages, -nor the book's existing context to fit what Bono has since written and U2 have done in releasing this album (same goes for all the links from my book page to follow) - They all exist as hyperlinks in a previously published book." The lyrics/laptop theft is dealt with in considerable detail. Bear in mind Bono's pulling out an event that happened in 1999, -18 years ago, for this interview. -And I know I got the true skivvy on this from a taxi driver because Bono talked in the Alexa interview about negotiating through bad people to get to even badder people. Ergo, The Mirror lied about the recovery.

3) I met Bono for the first time in person less than a week after an eclipse at over 98% totality took place right over Dublin, and this is in the notes Bono received in the book draft, -very shortly after the journal entry where I was crying on Killiney Bay. (Again that's original scanned newsprint that's already footnoted into the book for this very reason.) So, Bono and Co. notify everyone of "The Blackout" (the first single release to Song of Experience) -on the day of an eclipse passing very close to where I live now, it so happens, -in fact where I live it was it was 88% totality. -A blackout is what happens when there's an eclipse, btw. They quoted one song lyric from the song in this mail out to fans in the path of the eclipse: "Blackout, it's clear, who you are will appear". (They don't mention anything about "The Blackout" even being a single release that's in the pipe with this mail-out, what you saw is what people received.) "Eclipse" as both an event and analogy that have very serious occurrences; it is an existent analogy throughout the book. (You can search the term. -In fact the one line of lyric responsible for triggering this whole book, or even traveling to meet Bono in 1999 (let alone bothering to write about it), was "You know the sun is sometimes eclipsed by a moon, y'know I don't see you, when she walks in the room" - "The Fly".)

Interestingly enough, one of the very few (two) religious essays I did for the book centered on a female theologian whose entire religious practice centered on "learning to walk in the dark" - naturally, -because her system of thought was something the book explored doing existentially. (-This was released publicly at the time of writing.)

After signifying the first single with the eclipse, U2 released the album Songs of Experience, two days before a supermoon occurred. -In the book notes Bono received I recorded how I met him personally a second time at the Octagon Bar in The Clarence Hotel in Ireland and the supermoon, which was declared by the Irish Times to be the brightest in 136 years, happened two days after I met him the second time. That is why the book also has a footnote about that as well. -This is also in the notes Bono received that were the book draft at that time. Now what's absolutely mind-blowing about this, is that the supermoon occurs in the book draft two days after I met Bono the second time where we spoke and I gave him a Christmas gift, which is the exact date spacing of how U2 timed the album's release, with the supermoon occurring two days afterward.

4) Bono deliberately snippets "Walk to the Water" in the BBC broadcast promoting this album at the end of the performance of "All I Want Is You": "Walk to the Water" has never been performed. This is the 4th time it's been snippeted in all of its existence (30 years). These are the lyrics. He drops a very sensitive quatrain about the song's subject; she wore a "necklace given to [her] by [her] father".

Rabbit Hole #1

-Bono skips that part of the song in this snippet of "Walk to the Water" to go onto the Dublin streets: she "turned left on the Northstrand, and out towards the sea". -If you know where that is, in Dublin, -you'd know that it changes into Pearse Street when it turns left and later becomes Rings End Road, -and that was exactly how to get to U2's then (1999, certainly not in 1987 when "Walk to the Water" was written) secret studio (which was on Hanover Quay on the Grand Canal, and you can google that location now as they decided to let it go). -If you turned left on the North Strand you'd get to their secret studio, if you just took two more turns at the right place. Turning left on the North Strand is the same as turning towards the mouth of the River Liffey, and the sea. Which I walked before and after meeting Andy a couple of times by chance (Guggi's brother -Guggi is practically Bono's best friend in the world)) -I followed North Strand to Rings End (Rings End was overshooting it, actually the turn off was on Pearse Street) until I came to the secret studio and sat on the bench outside and first met Bono. The book draft Bono got in 2011 goes into these encounters and the walking to get there in a lot of detail because I was in a deadline rush of sorts to sort out to Bono how I actually met him, a deadline determined by a concert ticket. How finding Bono transpired was actually sort of odd and interesting, because it took a series of things happening by chance (Andy included), -and I had to blow Andy's mind by proving that with the song "The First Time" Bono was referencing a feminine Holy Spirit (not by trying to, it was that his mind was blown that prompted him to divulge the location). It took quite a convo to tease the location out of him. So the book mentions "Pearse Street" and "Rings Road". -You can search the book for terms after you've found them on Google Maps. The book has a search option. Incidentally Bono has written a song about Andy all of two times, "Bad" in 1984 (which reappeared and became a regular in their live set after the delivery in 2011 was made), and "Raised by Wolves", which appeared on the first subsequent album "Songs of Innocence" after Bono received this book draft. -Yes, made a note of that observation at the time. (Scroll down, to "let's meet under the cherry tree".)

Now practically the first thing that happens when I relate conversing with Bono the first time in this book (which was the same in the draft) is that Bono goes into a brogue about how cold it is today and waxes apologetic about the state of Ireland's typical weather. And I had to suppress my comment about how it wasn't cold at all, -being from Canada. (For what I avoided saying I interjected the thought "Oh puleez". "oh puleez" will pull up that first conversation with Bono.) -So Bono's literally teased out this verse snippet on the BBC broadcast and modified it (by dropping half of the first verse and going onto the second) -so that it happens to fit the actual context of when I first actually met him -that again (*sigh*) -was transcribed in the book draft I gave to him in 2011 and presently exists in the actual book. -The first line in "Walk to the Water is, "She said it wasn't cold". So the choice of snippet just happens to have fit the real situation.

All of these events happen in just a few pages in the draft that Bono got. They formed the substance of that chapter then, which is certainly not how it stands now.

Rabbit Hole #2

Rabbit Hole #3

5) The album has a bonus track called "Book of Your Heart" - the first verse sure looks like he might be reading a book he received personally that is his sole edition, doesn't it? (No one's ever going to see that draft other than himself.)

The song opens "Right from the start, you put this into words, how you think we should proceed" - I began writing in reference to the matter when I was 21, the "big" concept landed at 25, and then I began writing in earnest. "Love is Bigger Than Anything in Its Way" - has "So young to be the words of your own song". - If you follow the protagonist in this book the full course, you'll find out this linking situation - (-when the protagonist exists as object in an array of songs and you put that all together for the first time as a book, that book is the first elucidation of the whole song-) -this situation of the protagonist as object actually can be traced back to when she was just thirteen years old, with Bono coming into the picture at sixteen, not that any of this was known at those ages. The watershed moment that came on like a neutron bomb happened at age 21. The really freaky part is that in terms of becoming her own song, her own self-conceived myth that ends up playing out through the book, the character she came up with that becomes this myth personae in later years, she came up with at age 12; -first writing the story's beginning at age 14.

"Write a world where we can belong" -in "Love is Bigger Than Anything in its Way" -looks like an endorsement to finish writing (but that the writer is on their own). Bono got a draft that was at the less than halfway mark. And subject to some serious revision in key earlier chapters after he got it (one got added).

"Book of Your Heart" also has the lines "This is the promise that we'll stay, Through the long descriptive passages, Where we don't know what to say" -Also looks like reading a book (and first encounter, the entire intercourse was of what was not said). It's a wordy one that clocks in at 836 pages last I checked (in Word). The song also has "We are not fictitious characters, We don't belong to this world" -which again, indicates characters that exist as writ. It is very fitting for a book that centers on Bono and a protagonist between the two of them, plus an associated ensemble cast, and deals in pre-conception existence (post-death as well).

6) "Book of Your Heart" mentions a name change. When I met Bono and made the deliveries, both in 1999 and 2011, I went by a different name. The book's legal pen name is Pamela Williams. (It's right on the cover.) You'd have to be fairly aware of me, I know, to understand that I changed my name between 2011 and now to release the book, -but I did so on all my social media, it so happens. If you find this dubious, well, I decided on the pen name in 2000. It's on record in the book itself that I'm going to change my name for it -and what the name will be. You can search the name inside the book also to find this out.