King of the Clouds

by rayemars

Summary:

Scrappy doesn't normally go into other people's dreams. It's rude, after all.

The first time he enters one of Parse's dreams, it's early preseason and Scrappy doesn't actively go in there so much as he just ends up inside. That's never happened before.

Not to Scrappy, at least. Turns out it happens a lot to Parse.

Notes:

This didn't feel quite up to the level of a Psychological Horror tag, but heads up that a couple people do pretty harsh things to each other inside shared dreams.

Quote from Danez Smith's "at the down-low house party" in Don't Call Us Dead.
~

Scrappy doesn't normally go into other people's dreams.

It's rude, after all. And sometimes people get really angry if they realize he's doing it. Or he might see some weird things in somebody's subconscious that make it kind of hard to keep working like normal around them. He went into other people's dreams a lot more as a kid; but then he grew up and learned manners and consequences, and mostly stopped.

He did it a little more when he got drafted into Juniors and moved to Canada. Scrappy spent the first few months on his new North American team wandering through the dreams of his teammates and coaches, trying to learn more about them than he could understand in the awake world, where everybody was always speaking rapid-fire English all the time.

He felt a little bad about it. But everything in his new home was confusing and weird, and he wanted the help.

In dreams, he doesn't have a language barrier to deal with. Everybody speaks the same in dreams. Their brains just translate all those subconscious cues or metaphysical projections or whatever it is that makes going into other people's dreams possible.

There's scientific explanations for it, but they change every several years. Scrappy read more of those papers and books and things when he was younger, but it always took forever: his eyes would get unfocused and his mind would start wandering. These days, he doesn't really keep up with all the changing theories.

His second year in Juniors, another guy who could go into dreams joined Scrappy's team. These days, he mostly gets information about new sleep studies or dream theories from him. Although Andy refuses to read anything that calls it 'dream invasion' or 'dream theft,' instead of 'dream reading' or 'dream entering.'

Andy calls himself a dream reader and he's kind of bad at it. But Scrappy was still grateful to have someone else like him around during Juniors. He still is, even if they went to different teams.

Ultimately, there's not much in the papers or books that changes anything about Scrappy's life. He's always been able to go into dreams; he doesn't do it much anymore; that's all he really needs to know. It is what it is.

*

The first time he goes into one of Parse's dreams, it's early preseason. And Scrappy doesn't actively go into the dream so much as he just ends up in it.

He thought it was his own at first. But he doesn't recognize the house he's standing behind, or the backyard, or any of the people at the pool party going on around him. Scrappy doesn't really dream about unfamiliar places, so he must be in someone else's.

That's pretty weird. Normally he has to actively go into somebody's dream. Like, he has to fall asleep, drift toward REM without falling into it, and then just kind of...wander, drift, neither of those are right but Scrappy doesn't know a word to describe the feeling, around in that dream state until he feels someone else's dream touching him. And then he has to step into it. He's never . . . shown up in one without trying.

It's really weird.

But this dream's hazy. Things and people in the distance are washed out and indistinct. Scrappy can probably find the edge of it and get out pretty easy.

He's heading for the gate in the fence, picking his way around all the chairs and the teenagers talking and hollering at each other, when he feels the dreamer come up behind him.

It's always obvious where and who a dreamer is. It's kind of like watching TV, only then one of the actors steps out of the screen and into the room. It's the real weight of an active dreamer in the middle of an unreal landscape.

"Hey, Scrappy," someone says pleasantly. Scrappy turns around to see an Aces' rookie lifting a hand to greet him.

The Aces' rookie. He might have just blundered into Kent Parson's dream.

Well, crap.

Parse lifts the corner of his mouth in a small grin. "You came to a pool party in sweats?"

Scrappy looks down at his bare chest and new sweatpants, and shrugs uncomfortably. "I didn't mean to come here," he says. The last thing he wants to do is get off on the wrong foot with the teenager who's living up to all the hype the NHL and the Aces' media have been saying about him all summer. "Sorry. I'll head out."

Parse gives him an odd look. "Everything cool?"

"Yeah, naw, it's just...." He's never been good at lying on the spot. "Uh, I had to do some stuff today. So I can't really stay." He looks down at his wrist and remembers a second too late that he doesn't wear a watch. Crap.

"Okay," Parse says agreeably. "You want me to say hi to Jonah for ya?"

"Yeah, thanks," Scrappy says. He doesn't know who Jonah is, but if he's lucky, Parse isn't going to notice. Dreams operate on their own self-centered logic: the dreamer knows everybody in their life, so the dream-versions of all those people all know each other, too.

"Gotcha," Parse says. He shifts to keep on walking, and slaps Scrappy's shoulder briefly. "Your English is really good, man. You should talk more."

"Uh," Scrappy says; and before he can think of anything to add to that, Parse pauses.

Parse frowns slightly, and then shifts back toward Scrappy, turning his full attention on him. "--Did you get a lot better all've a sudden?"

Okay, he's screwed up. All right. He'll just have to apologize, and hope Parse doesn't get weird about it. And then try and figure out how this happened so he won't do it again. "Uh, no. Not really."

"Oh," Parse says neutrally. His expression's gotten more guarded. "You're one of those. I'm dreaming, huh?"

Scrappy lurches as the dream suddenly hardens and sharpens, abruptly turning more controlled.

. . . Huh.

Parse is a--he's a really lucid dreamer. Scrappy's never felt someone take control of their dream that fast and intense before. It's as disorienting as a brutal hit.

Parse takes a sip of his soda, watching him.

"--Yeah," Scrappy says a couple seconds later, once he's got his footing again. He can feel the nubby texture of the concrete under his feet now, and smell the chlorine. The sun's going down, but nobody's turned on the party lights strung around the patio yet. Somebody's grilling meat. A song he's heard on the radio a bunch lately is playing on a boom box sitting a safe distance away from the pool.

"I didn't mean to come in here," he says. "I just--showed up? It was weird. I'll go."

"It happens," Parse says. "Anytime I'm in the same city as you guys, you come in."

He shrugs slightly and adds, "Don't be a dick about it, I guess. And we'll be cool."

Parse sounds a little less dead-voiced than he did, but still. Scrappy's got some questions. "'Us guys'?"

Parse waves a hand at him as he takes another sip of soda, which doesn't give Scrappy much to go on. "You know. Uhhh...the name I always heard is 'dreamwalkers,' but that sounds so cornball."

"Oh." Scrappy nods. "Yeah. That's me."

"Alright," Parse says, lifting a shoulder. "Well, you're already here. Wanna swim?"

"...You don't mind?" Scrappy checks. It's not like everybody gets really angry if they find out he's in their dreams, but nobody's been this laid-back before.

"Nah. It happens," Parse repeats with another shrug.

He turns away from Scrappy and yells over at the grill, "Yo, Jonah! New teammate 'a mine showed up!"

"Cool!" the other guy bellows back without looking up.

Parse turns back to him. "Chill here if ya want."

". . . Okay," Scrappy says.


He stays, rolling up his sweats and sitting on the side of the pool, kicking his feet in the water. Parse left, going to hang out with various other people around the backyard, which puts Scrappy in the weird position of being in someone's dream but not interacting with the dreamer even though they know he's there.

The dream gets a little softer around him after Parse moves away. Things become a little less substantial. Scrappy can still feel the water on his legs, but the concrete under his palms has gone--not smooth, not less solid, just less...there.

Scrappy hangs around anyway. He's used to that happening, and he's got more questions he wants to ask Parse.

Plus, this dream is way more relaxed than one of his own. Scrappy's not really interested in leaving and going back into his own mind and potentially having yet another stress dream about all the mistakes he made in training camp and their first preseason game tonight. There's still a bunch of guys he's competing with to earn a spot on the Aces' roster.

He knows his best shot at making the list is to be a heavy power forward: one of the physical guys. He's never going to be a thirty-points-a-season player, so he's going to have be a player who makes space on the ice for the Aces who are. He's going to have to hit hard, and push opponents out of position and drive them into the glass, and fight anybody who tries to do the same thing to one of his teammates.

It's a little scary. Scrappy's always been a power forward, but he knows there's a huge difference in what that means in Juniors and in the pros. There's a difference even between the AHL and the NHL. He's gonna get hurt, a lot. And he's going have to play through it all and not show weakness.

But not making the Aces' roster is scarier. Becoming a career minor leaguer is way scarier.

But other guys are also trying to show that they can fill the physical role the Aces need. He's always going to have competition. So his stress dreams aren't going away any time soon.

The dream congeals around him again, although the sun's still stuck in its late afternoon position. A couple seconds later, Parse sits down next to him. "Hey."

"Hey," Scrappy says. He takes the beer Parse offers. "This is a nice place."

Parse nods. "Jonah's home. His parents let him throw a party after we won th' Memorial Cup."

A memory dream. "That's cool."

"Yeah," Parse agrees. He swings a leg loosely in the water.

He doesn't say anything else for a while. Eventually, Scrappy figures he better ask before Parse gets up and leaves again. Or before one of them cycles out their current sleep state, or just wakes up. It's going to be way harder to try and say all this in English in the awake world tomorrow.

But then out of nowhere, Parse says, "Nice hit tonight."

Scrappy purses his mouth and looks down at the water. "No they weren't. I kept getting out of position."

"Most'a the time," Parse agrees. At least he's not trying to feed Scrappy any lies. "But not that one late second period. You got that timin' perfect."

He had, that time. Scrappy hit the Oiler he was tailing into the glass solidly, and then got into position to catch the pass one of the d-men sent him. He'd skated it further out of their end, and then passed the puck to his center when another Oiler started chasing him to try and poke-check it off his stick. Joey had carried the puck straight into the Oilers' end and taken a shot at the goal. It'd all gone so smoothly. It'd been silky.

"Once you nail your timing, you're gonna be great," Parse says.

Scrappy kicks his legs a little harder in the water.

He's pretty sure he's being glad-handed. Parse is good, really good: he's got the ability to be both a speed and a finesse forward. Scrappy's heard a couple of the veteran players talk like it's inevitable that he's going to be the Aces' next captain.

Scrappy knows not to take the compliment at face value. Parse is just playing his role and pumping his tires.

But still. It's pretty cool to hear that the guy who racked up all those points in the rookies' Traverse City competition thinks he's good, too.

Scrappy scratches the back of his neck. "Thanks."

"It's true," Parse shrugs. "You gotta get better on your timin', though."

"Yeah," Scrappy agrees, because that's true.

Somebody claps his shoulder. He looks behind him and up, at the new guy: another teenager. Scrappy feels like he should know him--his face looks familiar, or like it should be familiar--but there's something twisting through the dream that keeps him from recognizing the guy. Parse must be blocking him.

"We can practice," the guy says. A French-Canadian. Scrappy hates trying to figure out English through those accents. At least the dream's translation takes care of it here. "This summer."

"Summer's over," Parse says, staring into the pool as he takes a way longer swig from his can. Scrappy isn't sure if it's a soda or a beer this time--it's hidden by a koozie. "He's on my team, I got this."

"...Still--"

"You ain't here," Parse says flatly.

The French-Canadian takes his hand off Scrappy's shoulder and leaves.

". . . Uh," Scrappy says.

"Nothin'," Parse replies, and that's a huge lie. But then the dream starts disintegrating. "See ya tomorrow."


Scrappy wakes up with a not-enough-sleep headache and rubs his sore eyes. His dog--who knows she's not supposed to sleep on the bed but always does--lifts her head and thumps her tail a few times.

But when Scrappy pets her and then fluffs his pillow into a more comfortable shape and lays back down, she puts her head down too. He doesn't bother telling her to get off the bed.

*

Parse doesn't get weird about Scrappy going into his dream. He stays normal in the dressing room.

*

The next time Scrappy ends up in Parse's dream, they're playing their first preseason game on the road and he still wasn't trying to go in there.

Parse recognizes him a lot faster this time. They're inside a house Scrappy doesn't know. Parse is sitting on a couch, watching a TV that's just showing blurs of colors instead of a real show. "Hey, man."

"I'm not trying to do this," Scrappy says, because one time was weird but two times is kind of freaking him out. "I don't know why I'm coming in here. I'm not--I didn't try to."

"It happens," Parse says again, shrugging his shoulders and looking back at the TV.

Scrappy hesitates, and then comes around the couch to sit on the other end of it.

"You said that last time," he says, because he never got around to asking Parse about it in the first dream, and it was way too hard and awkward to try and do it in the awake world. "Is...does this happen to you?"

"Dreamwalkers showin' up in my head? Yeah," Parse agrees.

"Why?" Scrappy asks. That's weird. Right? You're supposed to have to actively go into someone's dream.

Parse shrugs again. "Dunno. It just happens."

"Oh." Scrappy looks away, at the TV. It's still only showing blurry colors, even though the dream went lucid after Parse recognized him. "...Okay."

"Gonna be weird if we're teammates, but. Whatever," Parse says. "I'll deal. Maybe it'll be good. It's easier to talk like this, yeah?"

"Yeah," Scrappy agrees.

"Alright," Parse says, like that's that. "That's somethin'."

"...I guess," Scrappy agrees.

And that's that.

*

He gets pretty used to ending up in Parse's dreams.

Scrappy makes the cut and gets onto the Las Vegas Aces' 2009-10 roster. He plays his physical role well, and earns the coaches' trust enough that he's only occasionally a healthy scratch.

By the time they're halfway through the season, he's used to Parse slapping him on the shoulder after practice or a game and saying "Tonight, yeah?"

"Yeah," Scrappy always answers, because it's harder to avoid drifting into Parse's dreams than it is to go into them.

He still stays out, most nights. It's not like it's easy to just walk into dreams. You have to fall asleep and move toward a dream cycle at the same time that somebody else is already in one, and then when you're in you only have a while before the dreamer's sleep state cycles around again and their dream disintegrates, dropping you back out. The only other person beside Parse who's let Scrappy stay in so many of their dreams is his half-sister, before she got married and moved out of the room next to his and went to another city.

But it's easier to go into Parse's dreams than it is anybody else's. Scrappy can recognize the way Parse's dreams pull at him now. It's like a groove: like automatically flipping the turn signal on streets he drives all the time around his home. If he doesn't think about it, he's sucked in before he even notices.

It's still kind of weird, but being able to go into dreams in the first place isn't normal, either. And Parse seems used to it, like Scrappy's not the only one it's happened to. So Scrappy wonders what the deal is occasionally, but mostly he lets it go too. It is what it is.

But whenever Parse says "Tonight, yeah?" then that means Scrappy has an invitation to go into Parse's dreams. And then he doesn't feel awkward about letting himself be pulled in.

Sometimes they skate, or run drills. Parse always plays around with way more trick shots in his dreams than he does in the awake world. Scrappy keeps telling him to do the one where he flips the puck up and then smacks it mid-air into the goal in a practice at least, but Parse says he doesn't want to make the other guys think he's being douchey. It looks cool, though.

Sometimes they don't do any of that. Sometimes Parse is already deep enough into his current dream that he doesn't remake it just because Scrappy arrived. So they just hang out in whatever dream Parse's already in.

Most of the time they talk. Parse rehashes the coaches' instructions in their meetings for Scrappy, or asks him what Scrappy and the Kazakhstan guy were joking about, or tells him a joke from earlier that day that Scrappy didn't understand all the words of, but still really wanted to know since it made their goalie laugh so hard he choked on his gatorade.

Scrappy's been working on his English as much as he has on his play style. It's gotten better. He still doesn't really like talking much, but at least he's better at it when he has to.

And it's pretty cool of Parse to take the time to go over all this stuff, to make sure that Scrappy's got it down. He's a good guy.

*

By the end of the season, Scrappy's gotten really used to drifting into Parse's dreams.

It's weird to go home for the summer, and go to sleep, and not feel that tidal pull dragging at him. But it's also kind of nice, too. He might have learned how to recognize it, but Scrappy still has no explanation for why it kept happening. During the summer, his sleep goes back to normal.

*

But that means he falls out of the habit of resisting.

Scrappy goes back to Las Vegas a couple days before the unofficial scrum that happens before the Aces' training camp, so he can air out his apartment and restock the fridge and let his dog get used to the place again while he's still got free time.

When he finally gives in to the jet lag and crashes into bed, he falls asleep fast. He almost immediately lands in Parse's dream.

He knows it's Parse's. That's obvious, since he ended up in there without actively going into it. But also, Parse's dreams have a lot of distinct, repeating architecture in them.

This time Scrappy's in the city with all the walkways that look like something out of a sci-fi movie. A bottomless gorge cuts through the middle of the city, severing it. There's no bridges across it. A lot of the walkways run right next to the gorge with no railing or anything to stop you from falling in, and any time Scrappy walks on one of those he gets an anxious feeling that's so bad that he wakes up sweating.

Scrappy doesn't have a fear of heights. He's pretty sure it's the gorge itself that makes him feel like that. There's other people in the city--insubstantial, but around--and they don't walk near it unless they have to. Parse stays away from it.

There's nothing to do in the city. There's the gorge, and the walkways, and a couple wide open squares, and the inaccessible other side, and not much else. There's no houses, no stores, no cafés. The people here interact with each other, but never him or Parse.

Scrappy doesn't like the place much. Going anywhere in it is a constant swing between boredom and panic.

It feels like Parse is pretty nearby: the dream's a lot more solid to Scrappy's left. But Scrappy really doesn't like this place.

So he heads in the opposite direction, making his way carefully along one of the walkways that curves way too close to the gorge, until he finds the edge of the dream and leaves.

Parse must be back in Las Vegas already too. Scrappy'll send him a text tomorrow, and see if he wants to get lunch.

*

He gets back in the habit of resisting the pull.

His English is better this year. He went to his usual conditioning camp, but he made himself re-work through the basic and then the advanced English audio-learning software he bought when he was drafted. He didn't want to get back to Las Vegas and end up stuck spending time working on English when he could be working on hockey instead.

He's a little rusty--too textbook-sounding, still forgetting all those articles English clutters up sentences with, and sometimes mixing up which verb is supposed to go with a singular noun and which with a plural--but he's a lot better. He and Parse don't have to rely on using dreams to discuss games or strategy anymore.

They still do, though.

*

Scrappy knows his English is a lot better this season, because nobody chirps him for asking stupid questions like they did last year. Like the chickens-fish one.

He knows he's hockey-smart. He wouldn't be a professional hockey player in the most competitive league in the world if he weren't. But that's not the same as being smart-smart. Scrappy knows he's not that kind of smart.

He's always been given a hard time for being slower to catch jokes or to make connections. A lot of the time it's not that bad--just the kind of comments that get old after hearing them for twenty-plus years. But sometimes he's gotten stuck on a team with a guy who went out of his way to be a dick to him, especially when that guy's smart. Then Scrappy got stuck waiting the season out, and trying to be friends with the good prankers on the team so the guy hopefully can't convince them to help mess with him.

He's been pretty lucky. He's never been on a team with a guy who was such a jerk that Scrappy wanted to punch him. He spent Juniors staying away from the smart guys and keeping his mouth shut unless he was talking about hockey, which was really lonely but got him mostly left alone.

That strategy didn't work in the NHL, though. Not after the first time Scrappy wound up in Parse's dream.

Parse is hockey-smart, but he's also smart-smart. Like, smart-smart.

Parse always shrugs it off, being humble about it, but Scrappy's pretty sure Parse is the smartest guy he knows. Sometimes it feels like Parse might be the smartest guy he'll ever know, unless Scrappy meets an astrophysicist or something.

The new guy traded to the Aces this season is smart, too. Parse and Swoops hit it off fast, chirping and pranking each other more and more and more in a way that kind of worried some of the veteran players about chemistry problems, until Parse and Swoops started hanging out more off the rink as well. Then everybody figured out that they were bonding in their own smart-guy way, and not about to start a pissing match.

Scrappy hung out with Parse a lot last year even in the awake world. And they picked up again almost as soon as they were both back in Las Vegas. So the more Parse and Swoops hang out, the more Scrappy ends up hanging out with Swoops too.

He likes the guy. Swoops is smart, but he's not a jerk about it. Not unless he's calling out someone else on their crap. He's really funny. Parse gets funnier around him, too--he's more relaxed this year, more willing to joke around, in a way Scrappy's only ever seen him act in dreams before.

It's good to see Parse relaxing like that in the awake world, too. Even if sometimes Scrappy doesn't get everything he and Swoops are saying, it's cool to see Parse starting to open up more.

*

The first time Scrappy actively goes into one of Parse's dreams, they're in a St. Louis hotel the night before an away game and he does it because something feels wrong.

Parse is in his gear and alone in the rink of the Blues' arena, panting hard and glaring at the empty net in front of him. There's a few empty buckets nearby, and pucks are scattered everywhere. None are inside the goal. Parse is favoring his right side, like he might've pulled something with all the extra shooting practice he's doing.

And someone else is here.

Scrappy can't see them, which is weird. There's three active dreamers in here: himself, Parse, and somebody else. But the third person's hidden.

"Where's the other guy?" Scrappy asks, making himself some skates and heading out onto the ice.

Parse startles and then twists around to look at him, visibly holding down a grimace. He's hurt. His right arm hangs loose to his side as he rests his stick on the ice. "Scraps?"

"Yeah," Scrappy answers. "Who else is here?"

"Huh?" Parse says. "Head on back, I'll walk to the hotel."

"No," Scrappy says, because Parse obviously hasn't recognized him yet. "You're dreaming, Parser. And somebody else is here."

"What?" Parse asks, looking more confused and a little more pained as he frowns at Scrappy. "'I'm drea'--?"

Parse goes silent and narrows his eyes as the dream shifts into lucidity.

A long breath later, he looks slowly around the arena.

And then he lifts the side of his mouth in a sneer as he looks over at the empty Blues' bench. "Still doin' your same Juniors shit, bitch?"

Scrappy almost reflexively reminds him about the sensitivity training video PR made them all watch at camp, but then the dream hardens around him so brutally fast that his skates slide out from under him. He hisses as he lands on the side of his unpadded knee on the ice.

"Fuck," someone grunts.

Scrappy looks over as he pushes back onto his feet. A guy is standing in the Blues' bench now, doubled over and clutching the rail.

"Fuckin' thought so," Parse says, lips still peeled back from his teeth. He keeps staring at the guy as he skates backward toward the goalpost. There's a lightswitch on the crossbar now.

The guy on the Blues' bench looks at Scrappy in confusion. "How'd--?" and then Parse flips the switch.

The arena goes pitch black.

Scrappy collapses to his knees as the dream completely reorients itself in the dark. There's ice under him, and then grass, and then void which oh god oh shit there's nothing he's falling is he falling there's nothing oh shit god there's nothing and then concrete.

Someone grabs the back of his windbreaker, hauling Scrappy back to his feet.

"C'mon," Parse orders, yanking him--somewhere. It's still black. He can't see.

Scrappy follows.


They're in the red brick building, the one with all the glass walkways and the high, high stairwell. Except this time the stairwell keeps connecting to pieces of Parse's other dreams: the fancy hotel where Scrappy and Parse have wandered around while they talk; the big café with all the sandwiches; the movie theater with the curved, sloping, underground rooms; the buffet line that's always got five trays full of potato wedges because Parse loves them but they're not allowed on his diet plan.

The connections aren't the natural loose shift between places that dreams usually have. Scrappy's used to that. Parse deliberately keeps changing the places, and it feels like the world is dropping out from underneath Scrappy's feet every time Parse yanks them through a door that opens somewhere it shouldn't. Parse grips his wrist and hauls Scrappy through the doors each time, and Scrappy holds on tight to Parse's forearm because he's afraid to let go and be lost in this shifting mess.

Something's chasing them.

The third dreamer, the guy from the Blues' bench, is following them. But that's not what's causing this low-grade tension in Scrappy. Every time they go back into the stairwell, something else begins chasing all three of them. Every time they circle through one of the connected areas to throw off the Blues' guy and then go back into the stairwell, it's gotten closer.

Scrappy's never been in one of Parse's nightmares before.

He's pretty sure he's accidentally ended up in some of Parse's stress dreams. Scrappy doesn't know what else the sci-fi city with the walkways and the endless, dark gorge with the stench of anxiety drifting up from it could be. But he hasn't been in a nightmare.

And definitely never in a nightmare that's a warped version of a different dream, one that Scrappy has been in.

Normally in the dream with the red brick building and the glass-and-steel walkways and the tall windowless stairwell, it's always sunny. But now it's dark outside as they jog through the walkways.

The dark isn't trying to get in through the glass; it's not a threat. But it's not right.

They loop around and end up in the stairwell again, but this time it doesn't open out into another walkway or hall. This time it just keeps going up, and up, and up. The third dreamer is still trying to stagger up behind them, a couple flights below. The thing chasing them is farther down, but it never gets tired.

"Parse," Scrappy finally pants, because he wants to leave so bad. If he could just get free, break out of Parse's grip, maybe he could find the edge of this nightmare and get out. He doesn't want to be here.

"Come on," Parse says hoarsely, tightening his grip on Scrappy's wrist.

His chance to escape was a long time ago. There's no windows in this stairwell, no more doors leading out. It's just stairs and stairs and stairs, going up forever. And staggering up behind them, the guy who drove Parse to twist this dream into a nightmare in the first place.

And below him, there's the thing climbing after them patiently. It knows it's going to catch all of them eventually. They're tired. It never gets tired.

"Come on," Parse says, yanking on Scrappy's wrist when he stumbles over a step. Parse pulls him forward more, and then drags Scrappy's arm over his shoulders, wrapping an arm around his waist. "Almost there. C'mon, Scraps. Just a little more."

His legs are sore by now, but that isn't what's slowing him down. It's the knowledge of how pointless this is that's making him stumble. It's going to catch them. They're just dragging this out. He wants to sit down and wait so it'll finally happen and this nightmare will end.

"No," Parse tells him. His breath is ragged. "Don't listen. There's a room. Get there and you're safe, outta bounds. C'mon, Scraps, almost there."

Out of bounds? This isn't a game.

Shit. Is this a game? To that thing?

Scrappy's so glad he's never been in one of Parse's nightmares before.

They climb another flight of stairs, and then another, and then another, and then Parse half-drags him up one more, and then he almost looks like he wants to drop Scrappy on the steps and just save himself, but instead Parse forces him up one more flight.

And then there's another hallway.

Parse hauls him down it, and Scrappy stumbles alongside him. He's not tired enough to justify this. It's the crushing inevitability that's cutting him down. It has to be that thing's doing. It's trying to make it easier to catch him.

"Yeah," Parse says, opening a wooden door in the wall. The bricks are black here. "C'mon."

He pulls Scrappy inside and slams the door shut, locking it. There's five deadbolts. None of them look strong enough; but the low-key terror that was sapping Scrappy's strength is starting to fade.

"One more," Parse tells him, heading into the center of the room. "This used to be enough, but then it stopped. It's the window. C'mon."

Scrappy looks over at the window set in the far wall. It doesn't feel threatening; but he can't see anything out it. Just darkness.

They're so high up. There can't be any way for something to reach it. It feels like they climbed for hours.

...But that window is still an opening in.

Parse climbs onto a low cabinet in the room and grabs at the ring of a trapdoor set in the ceiling. It takes him two jumps, but then he manages to hook his fingers through the ring and pull it down.

Scrappy boosts him up into the ceiling, and then he climbs onto the cabinet too so Parse can help pull him up.

Parse shuts the trapdoor behind them and bolts it. The two latches definitely don't look strong enough--but all the panic and terror is washing out of him.

Scrappy sits down on the floor. Then he gives up on dignity and flops onto his back on the wooden slats, breathing hard.

"Yeah," Parse says, sitting down heavily. "It's okay. Here's safe. It's the wood. Gonna be fine, Scraps."

Once he's got his heartbeat back down, Scrappy pushes himself back up into a sitting position and looks around. The whole room is covered in light-colored wooden slats.

Parse is sitting cross-legged on the floor nearby, bracing his forearms heavily on his thighs as he tries to catch his breath. There's enough light to see the room pretty well, but Scrappy's not sure where it's coming from. The floor, walls, and ceiling are all made of wood, and there's no lights anywhere that would break the pattern of the slats. The room's empty except for the two of them, and the trapdoor leading back down.

Maybe there aren't any lights. Parse knows what's in this room, so it's visible in the dream. Light sources aren't necessary. The light's just there.

Scrappy usually tries not to think too hard about dream logic. It usually gives him a headache sooner or later.

He jolts hard when someone starts pounding on the door into the room below.

"Serves him right," Parse says without lifting his head.

Scrappy sits up. "What's chasing us?"

"Dunno," Parse says with a shrug. "I never let it catch me."

The pounding's getting harder, like the guy is beating on the door with both fists. It sounds like he might be yelling, but it's too muffled to understand.

They can't just abandon the guy to the thing coming after him. Scrappy rolls into a crouch. "Parser--"

"Serves him right," Parse interrupts, his voice a little flatter. "If he's still tryin' to pull this shit, he needs to fuckin' learn I ain't that dumb kid anymore."

"Wait," Scrappy says. "This happened to you before?"

Parse shrugs again, a little sharper. "I toldja, any time I'm in a city with one'a you guys, you come in."

Scrappy doesn't like hearing Parse say "one of you guys" to him like that. He thought they were friends.

But then Parse exhales slowly and leans back, bracing his hands on the wood and stretching out his legs. "I forgot the Blues drafted 'im. Guess they called him up for tomorrow. Thanks for cluein' me in," he tells Scrappy, with a tired half-smile. "That dream was really stringin' me out."

Parse is leaning his weight casually onto his right arm again. Whatever damage it had at the start of the dream, it's gone now.

But it was there before. It was a bad injury. Any time an arm just hangs like that, something's really wrong.

Scrappy's pretty pissed that somebody actively went into Parse's dream to mess with his head: to try and make him lose confidence in his ability to score, to make him think he'd hurt himself. That's a dick move. If that guy's playing tomorrow, Scrappy's gonna put some extra weight into his hits on him for this crap.

But that's not the same as abandoning him to whatever's coming up the stairs. Even if the guy's a dick, they can't just leave him to that thing.

"How much time have we got?" he asks. The room below felt mostly safe, at least. The thing moves slow. As long as there's enough time for Scrappy to get the door open, get the guy inside, and then get it shut and locked again, he should have enough time after that to get both of them back up through the trapdoor.

And then maybe he'll give the guy a literal kick in the ass for being such a bastard. You don't go into somebody's dream and sabotage it to mess them up.

Parse doesn't have to help. He's the one who knows how bad he was hurt earlier, not Scrappy. Scrappy can take care of it.

"He had to learn," Parse replies.

The pounding's stopped.

"Shit!" Scrappy says, shoving to his feet and staring down at the trapdoor. When did the noise stop? Why didn't he realize sooner?

Parse doesn't move.

Scrappy scrubs a hand over his face agitatedly. "Parser, you can't just--what'd it do to him?"

"I can't keep you fuckers out," Parse says harshly. "He fuckin' chose to come in and fuck with me. 'M I supposed to just let him?"

"No, but--" Scrappy drags a hand over his hair.

Of course Parse isn't supposed to just let somebody mess with him.

But still. "...I don't know. It just--isn't...." Right.

He drops his hand and looks back at Parse, who's still glaring past him. ". . . Is your arm okay?"

"...Yeah," Parse says.

A little bit later, he stops hunching his shoulders in so much. "...I meant it. Thanks," Parse adds. "For lettin' me know it was a dream. Pretty sure I tore somethin'."

Scrappy nods.

He's not sure what else to say, or do. The silence below feels like a weight pressing on him. He shoves his hands into his pockets.

"...He's fine," Parse adds after a while. "He'll wake up, maybe have a hard time gettin' back to sleep, whatever. It's nothin' permanent. Just a bad dream."

Parse adds, "Now he knows if he keeps tryin' this shit, I'm gonna fuckin' do worse next time."

Scrappy exhales through his teeth.

"I can't keep those guys out," Parse says evenly. "If they choose to come into my head and fuck with me, I got a right to defend myself."

Scrappy doesn't disagree with that. He just thinks Parse went too far.

But Parse is the one who knows how bad his arm was hurt. Parse knows how long he was shooting pucks at that goal and never getting one in. Making a finesse forward think they've been snake-bit is a really nasty way to mess with their confidence. So....

Naw, but still.

"...Yeah," Scrappy finally says. He sits down again. "You do. It just felt...even if he woke up, that thing still got him."

Parse makes a vague noise in the back of his throat that Scrappy doesn't understand. But it doesn't sound like he regrets whatever happened to the guy. "Maybe. Unless he woke up before it got there."

"What is it?"

Parse just shrugs again. "I dunno. It's never gotten close enough that I see it. I can run pretty fast."

Scrappy exhales slowly.

But after thinking about everything for a while longer, he decides to drop the subject. He might feel okay now, but he remembers how creepy and nerve-wracking that thing felt while they were running. He doesn't feel okay with Parse just letting it take the other guy.

But that guy came into Parse's dream and then tried to use it to hurt him. Scrappy's not okay with that, either.

But Scrappy also knows that Parse pulls people into his dreams, even if he's not doing it on purpose. But that still doesn't excuse that guy trying to hurt him. And maybe he would've tried to actively go into Parse's dream even if Parse didn't pull people in. Some people are just jerks.

Scrappy doesn't know what the answer is.

So he drops it. He looks around the empty, wood-paneled room again. "What is this?"

"Room at the top of the building," Parse says. "It can't get in here."

"Because the wood keeps it out?"

"Yeah." Parse lifts a shoulder. "Dunno why. It doesn't like it, I guess."

That seems logical enough for a dream. "Okay," Scrappy says. "How long until it goes away?"

"I dunno if it does," Parse says. "I always stay in here until I wake up."

Scrappy looks at him.

Parse lifts the corner of his mouth. "Yeah, it's pretty boring."

No kidding. The room's completely empty. "You don't even have...I don't know, cards in here or something?"

"Can't let anything in," Parse replies. "That's how it'd get through."

Scrappy's not a smart guy, but he spent a lot of time as a kid and teenager making himself read about sleep and dreams to try and understand what he can do. A lot of the books on dream symbolism always struck him as new age-y nonsense, but he understands that dreams are someone's subconscious trying to work things out.

So if Parse has a repeating nightmare about being chased by something that tries to make him feel exhausted and hopeless, and the only way he can be safe from it is by staying in a place where he's completely shut out everything else in the world, that probably means something.

"Are you okay?" Scrappy asks.

Parse raises an eyebrow.

Scrappy puts a hand on the slats of the floor. "I mean...do you have this dream a lot?"

"Not much," Parse says. "Once in a while, I guess."

"But you're doing okay?"

Parse raises the eyebrow higher. "Yeah? I dunno what you're askin', Scrappy."

"I don't either," he says, because he can't figure out how to put what he's feeling into words, not even with the dream automatically translating for him. "This place feels . . . really stressful. If you've dreamed about it before, then.... I just wanted to make sure you're okay."

Parse exhales slowly.

But after a long moment, he slumps back a little, bracing more of his weight on his arms.

"Yeah, I'm alright," he says. His tone is less guarded now. "I just thought of this one 'cause I had it when we lost to Colorado and I had t' fly to the All-Stars right after."

Parse shrugs. "I fell asleep readin' the media day stuff schedule. Guess that's why I had this dream again."

"Oh," Scrappy says.

That makes a lot of sense.

Scrappy was a sixth-round draft pick. He stayed in Juniors after being drafted until he aged out, and then played in the AHL in Cleveland until Columbus traded him to Las Vegas. Then he played for the Aces' farm team in Witchita for another year, before finally cracking the Aces' roster last season. His media responsibilities scaled up gradually: a couple radio and newspaper interviews once a month, a couple team promo spots for the Jumbotron, the rare television interview if all the popular scoring forwards are already selected or out that night.

His NHL story's been a normal one. He's a mucker and a grinder, a guy who gets the puck in the zone by going through guys who try to stop him. He's been playing top-six minutes more often this season, but that's because he's got a lot of chemistry with Parse and Swoops, and those two need a tough guy on their line to make sure that if somebody on the other team tries to pull anything dirty on them, then the guy'll pay for it. Scrappy works hard and fulfills his role, but he knows what he is.

Parse's NHL story has been elite from day one.

Taken first place in the draft. The Aces immediately signed him to a NHL contract, and called him over to Las Vegas early to get him situated in his new city before the season started. Parse set a franchise record by being the first Aces player to get selected for the All-Stars in his rookie year, and he was selected this year, too. The television and newspaper reporters almost always want to talk to him after games. The radio announcers do too, but the more popular media outlets get first pick. Parse is already a face of the franchise, and he's going to become the main one as the other guys age or get traded out and Parse moves into his prime.

Scrappy has no idea what that kind of pressure feels like. He's a moderately popular player with a Twitter account that he rarely posts to in a non-traditional hockey market. Parse is a league-wide known player who not only managed to live up to the hype he had to deal with after being drafted, but who wound up beating all those expectations.

Parse's talked to Scrappy about how to use social media to build his brand before, but it sounds like so much work for a questionable reward. If he's got free time, he'd rather play with his dog or watch TV or play video games with some of the guys.

It makes sense for Parse to do it, though. He's already got endorsements, and the way he uses social media apparently makes him more profitable to those companies. Like the deal he's got with the watch company that likes to have its product "organically discovered," which according to Parse meant Parse just wore the watch around and waited for other people to notice it in pictures.

Parse's always been really smart about the business side of being a hockey player. Scrappy likes his agent, and he trusts him, but it was Parse who hounded Scrappy to put a chunk of his money into a long-term CD so that he'd get the highest interest return on it.

"When your career's over, you stop existing," Parse said when Scrappy was staring at a bunch of bank gobbledegook about APYs and early-withdrawal penalties and thinking that this all sounded like a huge pain in the neck. Not to mention he wasn't really interested in trusting his money to some American bank when they'd all screwed up so bad and created the recession just a year ago. "Nobody cares about former players. You gotta be prepared to take care of yourself."

Scrappy looked up. "Jeez, Parser."

"Fans don't care about you once you aren't playing," Parse told him. "Companies don't care about you once you aren't current. Other players might still hang out with you, but they're gonna be dealing with the same problems." He poked a finger at the computer screen. "You gotta take care of yourself, Scraps."

Scrappy exhaled, but he couldn't really argue.

He didn't like to think about a future after hockey. He had no idea what he was going to do then. But Parse had a point.

So Scrappy finally settled on a Nevada credit union that hadn't been caught up in all the mortgage scandals, and put way more of his paycheck than he was a hundred percent sure about into a 5-year CD.

He refused to buy stocks. Not even in sports equipment companies. Even when Parse promised that Bauer was a relatively safe stock: "We all gotta keep buying sticks, Scraps."

Parse's always been smart about being a hockey player, on the ice and in the business side of it. He's so good at it that Scrappy eventually just kind of assumed that Parse glided through all the pressure without letting it get to him.

But maybe instead, it was just that Parse was really good at not showing when that pressure was getting to him. Parse isn't really a guy to talk about himself, or how he's feeling.

If that's the case, then having a repeating dream like this, or one like the sci-fi city with the gorge, makes a lot more sense.

"Okay," Scrappy says. "...There anything I can do?"

Parse smiles a little. "Help us win the Cup."

Scrappy chuckles. The team's been on a hot streak lately. If they can keep it up until April, maybe they can make the playoffs this year. That'd be great.

"We're gonna," he says, because he wants it too.

Parse grins at him for a moment. And then he tilts his head back and blows out a long breath.

"Alright, I'm gonna try waking up," he says. "See ya tomorrow."

"Yeah."

Scrappy can't leave the dream. The room's too small and localized within the dreamspace; there's no fuzzy edges inside it that he get out through. So he just waits.

Parse stares at the ceiling for a while without saying anything.

Eventually, he drops down onto his back with a growling noise. "Ugh."

One of them will cycle out of their current sleep state eventually. If there's nothing to do but wait, then all right. Scrappy asks, "Where's this place from?"

"Dunno," Parse answers without moving. "It's been here for a while."

Scrappy frowns in confusion. "It's not somewhere you've been?"

"Nah," Parse says, waving a hand absently at the room. "These places just show up."

Scrappy's gotten used to a lot of things about Parse's dreams, but that one's weird.

Usually in dreams, places change to match what the dreamer is thinking or doing. But the places Parse dreams about always feel distinct and solid. Their architecture doesn't change, unless Parse intentionally warps it like tonight.

Scrappy assumed they were all memory dreams. Or at least memory-influenced ones.

If they're built from memories, then the way that buildings and places always stay the same in Parse's dreams would be normal. Or, pretty normal. Normal enough for someone who's such a strong lucid dreamer.

If Parse's dreams were memory-influenced, then it'd make sense why the underground rooms in the movie theater always look the same. And why the ticket and snack area outside never shifts, and the doorway from the snack area is always in the same place and always leads directly to the same hallway that the movie theater's two rooms are off of.

It'd make sense that the stairwells in the red brick building always look the same, if they're not in a nightmare. Or the way that the hotel layout never changes to accommodate dream logic; it stays the same interlocking maze of access points. Normally, dreams are more fluid than that--the dreamer's subconscious changes places and paths depending on what's going on in their life.

Parse is a pretty strong dreamer, though. So it's probably still normal.

...Although, now that Scrappy's thinking about it, if all these dreams were based off memories, Parse would've been to some really weird places in his life.

Like that one building that's past the highway underpass. If they want to go inside it, they always have to go around to the back door and work it open the same way, and then squeeze past the refrigerator that blocks two-thirds of the door. Every time.

There's a house by the ocean that Parse dreams about sometimes; Scrappy's been in it twice. It always has the same backyard furniture, and the same stream with the same big white jagged rocks that they have to carefully walk over to get to the beach.

And there's that giant open area, with the lake and the bare dirt hills and the small mountain with an incredibly steep road that goes straight up instead of winding gradually along the sides.

In hindsight, yeah, it doesn't feel like a real place. But it's always the same. Even the town at the top of the mountain always looks like its houses are in the same place.

Scrappy's never been up there to check that, though. He and Parse started up the mountain road one time so Parse could show him the town, but it freaked Scrappy out enough that instead they went back down to the lake. That road was almost vertical. It was impossible to walk up--you had to climb. Or crawl.

. . . Parse has a lot of dreams about stressful paths and places, now that Scrappy's thinking about it.

"I dunno know why it happens," Parse says.

Scrappy looks back at him. Parse folds his arms under his head, and stares up at the ceiling. "I always figgered people that come in my dreams were leavin' them behind or something."

"They can do that?" Scrappy asks.

He doesn't think he can. He's never tried. He's not even sure how he would leave behind the dream of an entire place in someone else's head.

"Beats me."

"Did anybody say they could?" That's a creepy thought.

Parse lifts his head enough to give Scrappy a 'c'mon man, get with it' half-smile. "I don't talk about this stuff, Scraps."

Parse drops his head back onto his arms. "Bad enough guys find out they can just come in. I'm not gonna go around tellin' people about it."

"Uh," Scrappy says. "Parser, you know I can go into anybody's dreams?"

Parse lifts his head again and looks at him.

"I think that's normal," Scrappy says. "For people who can do this." He points at himself. "I mean, they can push me out or wake up if they don't want me there. But I've always been able to do it."

"Huh," Parse says.

Scrappy doesn't understand his tone any more than he can figure out Parse's expression. But it doesn't feel good.

"...I meant it, you know. When I said I wasn't tryin' to go into your dream that first time," Scrappy tells him. "I just...I was just there. It was really weird. That's never happened to me before."

". . . Huh," Parse says, quieter.

He drops his head back onto his arms. ". . . I thought . . . ."

When Parse never ends that sentence, Scrappy asks, "Yeah?"

"Another guy told me that, too. That it 'just happened,'" Parse says, eventually. "...I thought he was lyin'."

"I'm not," Scrappy promises. "I wasn't trying to. --Okay, this time I came in on purpose. But not the others. I just...get pulled in."

"Yeah, I know," Parse agrees. He's still staring up at the ceiling. "You're a good guy."

Scrappy shifts on the wooden slats.

He told himself to drop it, but.... "Maybe other people aren't trying to, either. Like that guy tonight."

"Maybe," Parse says; but he's not agreeing. His voice is detached again. "Doesn't matter. Everything he did after showin' up does. You've never been an asshole when you come in."

...Scrappy can't really argue there, either. That guy chose to mess with Parse's head. Scrappy's still pissed at him for that, even if he's pushing it aside until the game tomorrow. "What's his name?"

"Irrelevant," Parse says. "Maybe he'll get called up a couple times, but he's never gonna be an NHL player and he knows it."

Scrappy exhales through his teeth.

It's one thing when Parse is mean like this on the ice, in the middle of game-adrenaline. But Scrappy feels weird about it when he gets like this in normal life. "Parser...."

"Anybody who could make it here doesn't have to pull that shit," Parse replies.

Okay, maybe that's true. Scrappy scrubs his face with a hand again. "...I guess. Yeah."

"You're a good guy," Parse says again. "Makes you think other people must be, too."

Scrappy drags his hand back over his hair and drops it. "Most people are."

Parse just pulls back the corner of his mouth and doesn't reply.

*

Scrappy starts a fight with the Blues' call-up at the game tomorrow, and breaks the guy's nose because Parse had to kick that asshole out of his afternoon nap's dream too.

The coach cusses him out for taking a stupid penalty. Scrappy tells him he's sorry because he knows that it was a stupid one, at least from the game's perspective. He's lucky the Blues didn't score while they were on the power play.

Parse taps him on the shin with his stick afterward, as they're heading down the hall during second intermission. Scrappy thumps him on the shoulder and doesn't feel bad about the penalty.

*

They make the playoffs, and fall out in the first round. It's farther than they went last season, and the deepest Las Vegas has ever gone toward the Cup. It's still not enough for Parse.

It's not enough for any of them. They all want to win it. That's the whole point of working to get into the NHL: to compete for the Stanley Cup.

*

The Aces make Parse the new team captain over the summer.

It's not a surprise. Parse didn't have the most goals on the team, but that's because he's a playmaker. He had the most points of everyone. Swoops was the highest scorer and had the second-highest points on the team, and even then Parse had a seventeen-point lead over him since Parse was on the power play more often than Swoops until mid-season.

A bunch of them go out after the announcement presser to celebrate. Swoops makes a big deal out of saying that he'll pay for Parse's drinks now that he's twenty-one and no longer the only baby on the team who can't drink, and then regrets it when Parse orders bottle service of the most expensive scotch on the menu.

Scrappy just laughs at Swoops' grudgingly impressed face as he says, "You conniving motherfucker, I walked into that," while Parse gives him a shit-eating grin.

Scrappy happily drinks a little more scotch than he should have to help polish off the bottle as Swoops gripes at all of them to knock it off, he wants to able to take something home, and says he hopes they all have hangovers tomorrow. It was a good time.

*

After they win the Stanley Cup, the team doctor hovers around the dressing room to make sure the guys who're on serious painkillers or cortisone injections don't have any alcohol.

Scrappy's had to get a couple shots for his screwed-up arm before every game during the finals, so he gets herded into the corner with the rest of the no-alcohol guys. They get to drink first, at least.

Parse fills the Stanley Cup with the sparkling cider the doctor okayed while everybody's still yelling. Scrappy's so high on adrenaline it feels like he's never going to sleep again. They haven't let in the media or the NHL cameramen filming for the eventual 2012 Cup finals DVD yet, so all the guys are really cutting loose.

Parse holds the Cup up to his mouth with a holler. Most of the cider spills onto Scrappy's face and beard and his base layers, but he just swallows what he can and laughs as he peels out of his undershirt. They won the Cup!


Scrappy sees his parents back to their hotel room and spends some time with them, talking and celebrating the win with his family. And then he goes out to a club with some of the guys.

He ends up taking a taxi back to his apartment a couple hours before sunrise, when his arm starts aching worse. He broke it blocking a shot last month; he barely managed to get back into the lineup before the Aces started their playoff run.

It wasn't too bad for a while. He just had to get a cortisone shot every few games. But then he separated his shoulder on that same arm when they were playing Los Angeles in the conference finals. That's what really screwed him up.

Scrappy's not sure how he managed to keep playing for as long as he did. He just knew he had to. They were so close to winning the Cup, he had to.

And then they won.

They won in Las Vegas. At home.

It felt like the whole city was cutting loose all night too. Like everybody they met was in love with them. It was amazing.

Scrappy doesn't want to sleep. He wants to be out there, soaking it up--they all fought so hard to get this, and then they got to celebrate it here, at home. But his arm hurts so bad.

He manages to fall asleep eventually, despite the adrenaline and pain, much to his dog's relief. He filled Belka's bowl halfway up when he got home as a treat, because she deserves to celebrate too. But he still didn't get back until almost dawn. She was kind of freaked out.

For a while he just dozes, drifting in and out until a spasm runs up his arm or he has to get up to pee because these cortisone shots make him so thirsty for some reason. But eventually he falls far enough into sleep that he can feel a dream almost physically dragging him toward it.

Scrappy goes. It's better than lying awake with his eyes shut, trying not to move and to ignore his dog's snoring and kicking as she dreams her weird scattered-image dreams.

He's back in the Aces' dressing room. The post-game one, where the equipment guys have duct-taped plastic sheeting over all the stalls and the floor in a desperate attempt to keep alcohol from getting splashed over all of the stuff they're in charge of.

Swoops is singing along loudly with the team's victory song like he's drunk already, and Scrappy remembers that. He already chirped Swoops for it, but he can do it again.

Somebody scrubs his hair. "He oughta thank god all the phones're behind the plastic," Parse grins. Then he really looks at Scrappy. "--What the fuck?"

Scrappy looks down at himself. He's in an Aces t-shirt and a pair of workout shorts, which is better than the boxers he wore to bed. It wouldn't look weird, except that everybody else is in bits and pieces of their uniforms if they're still wearing anything at all. Scrappy looks really weird in normal clothes compared to that.

"Oh shit, am I dreaming?" Parse asks.

"Yeah."

"Fuck yeah!" Parse says, as the dream shifts into lucidity. "I didn't think it'd work--hang on, Scraps--"

He takes off over to where the Cup is sitting on the gatorade cart. Parse grabs a bottle of champagne from the bottom of the cart, and then looks around for a second before working off one of his skates and using it to chop the cork.

It goes flying off with a pop and sends champagne bubbling out and onto the floor tarp. Scrappy's pretty sure that shouldn't have worked for a lot of reasons, but Parse is forcing this dream to do what he wants with an intensity Scrappy's never felt before.

Parse dumps the champagne into the Cup before it spills all over the floor, and hauls it over to him. "Here, it's not for real for real, but it's better than that other shit."

Scrappy feels his face heat. Parse made this whole dream just so he could drink champagne from the Cup with the rest of the guys. "Aw, Parser, man...."

He's gonna choke up and start crying again. Swoops already chirped him a little for tearing up when the Keeper brought the Cup out onto the ice, but Scrappy couldn't help it. He was actually going to lift the Stanley Cup. They actually won it. They'd worked so hard, and puck luck went their way, and they actually won it.

"C'mon, Scraps," Swoops said, as Scrappy scrubbed his eyes harder while the Keeper presented the Cup to Parse and then Parse took off around the ice, holding it over his head and hollering at the crowd like he didn't have two broken ribs and a still-ugly bruise on his chest from a spear by that one rat on New Jersey's team. Swoops thumped Scrappy on his good shoulder several times. "I know, man. Fuckin'--yes, eh?"

"Yeah," Scrappy agreed, nodding, because that was all he could manage in English right then.

"It's gonna taste like crap," Parse warns him, still grinning.

Scrappy reflexively reaches up to help him brace the Cup. It's heavy, and Parse still has to hold it for all the guys to drink from since he's the captain. --No, wait, that was the awake world. His arm spasms.

Scrappy grimaces and brings it back down to his side slowly. Crap, he hopes he doesn't wake up, Parse went to all this trouble--

"Fuck, it hurts here?" Parse says. "Hang on."

He shrugs the Cup into a one-armed cradle, spilling more champagne onto the floor tarp. Parse cups his now-free hand around Scrappy's separated shoulder. Scrappy flinches automatically.

Except his arm doesn't hurt any more.

Not even the little bit that it did: the minor pain that followed him into his sleep. It's all just gone.

"There ya go," Parse says, shifting the Cup back into both arms.

Scrappy helps him hold it and drains what's left of the champagne in the Cup.

It tastes like champagne and beer and whiskey mixed together, because North American hockey players are animals. The guys were throwing everything into the Cup as the champagne started to run out, because everybody wanted to spray the bottles they opened before pouring whatever was left inside. It's lukewarm, too, and Scrappy realizes that this taste is the recreation of what Parse had when he finally got to drink after holding the Cup for everybody else. He did so much with this dream for Scrappy.

"Aw, shit," Scrappy says, because he really is going to start crying again. He pulls Parse into a hug, making Parse stumble because he's still only wearing one skate. The Cup clangs against the stall behind Scrappy. "I love you, Parser. I love us, I love this team."

Parse pats him on the back. "Me too, Scraps."


The dream doesn't last much longer. It disappears with the kind of abruptness that means Parse woke up, probably hung over and needing to pee. Or maybe still drunk, like half the team probably is. Scrappy wakes up when the pain in his arm abruptly returns.

*

During the Cup party the next day at one of the owners' houses, Scrappy sits by the pool and drinks a nonalcoholic beer, because the team doctor gave him new painkillers to replace the cortisone shots until his arm fully heals. They help a lot, if he doesn't move his arm much in his sling.

It's a lot easier to think without the pain that's been nagging him constantly since he broke his arm in March. Scrappy finally realizes that his arm quit hurting so fast in the dream because Parse wanted it to quit hurting. Because Parse is a strong enough lucid dreamer that he can control anything in his dreams if he tries.

Even another active dreamer inside them.


It takes Scrappy a couple more days to connect the way that Parse is able to control his dreams so strongly to how, last year, Scrappy didn't hear it when that Blues' call-up stopped pounding on the door in the nightmare Parse made when that guy invaded his dream.

Scrappy didn't hear it when the guy got caught by the thing that was chasing them, because Parse didn't want him to hear it.

And Scrappy didn't notice that Parse was twisting the dream to prevent him from hearing it, because Parse didn't want him to notice.

The first part isn't too weird. Scrappy knew Parse was a really lucid dreamer from the start. In the very first dream of Parse's that Scrappy went into, Parse did something to keep Scrappy from recognizing whoever that French-Canadian teenager was who came up to the two of them near the end.

But Scrappy knew Parse was doing that. He's always been able to tell when a lucid dreamer changes things in their dream, or if they try to alter him while he's inside it.

As far as he knows, that's normal for everybody that can go into other dreams. You can just sort of...tell. Like when you feel someone staring at you for a long time, or feel somebody touch you lightly through a heavy coat. Maybe it's faint if they're a really strong dreamer, but you still feel it.

Scrappy has never been inside a dream where the dreamer was strong enough to stop him from realizing that they were changing things in it. Or altering him.

He's kind of glad they're in offseason, because he can't figure out how he feels about that.

Parse is his best friend on the team, and he's a really good friend in Scrappy's life in general. But still. That's . . . it's a creepy thought.

*

Offseason turns into the lockout.

*

After the Aces' owners lock the clubhouse, Scrappy flies from Las Vegas to New York City. And then he gets a hotel room, because the two-hour layover between his flights back home has turned into a twelve-hour one.

Scrappy dumps his bags in the hotel room, and then texts the teammate who's staying in Las Vegas and who agreed to watch his dog. Carly says that she's behaving. Mostly she keeps lying down by the front door, like she's waiting for him to come back.

Carly sends him a picture of her doing it, which makes Scrappy feel sad. But the hotel he's going to be living in while he plays for the Donbass Donetsk doesn't allow pets, and Scrappy's going to be too far from home to ask any of his family or friends to keep Belka. Especially when he doesn't know how long he's going to be there. He didn't know what else to do.

He falls asleep still feeling bad. When he wakes up in a dream, it doesn't feel like his own.

He's in an unfamiliar area, with a big parking lot and a lot of trees. Scrappy wanders toward the buildings in the distance and then walks across the manicured lawns connecting them, until he feels the active dreamer.

It's definitely not his dream. Did he wind up in someone else's? Without trying? That's weird. He thought that only happened with Parse.

But Parse's hometown is in upstate New York, near the Canadian border. Not near New York City. And anyway, Parse was supposed to be heading to Switzerland soon to play for one of their top leagues. It can't be his dream.

Except when Scrappy tracks down the active dreamer, there's Parse, glaring down at a map with one hand clenched in a fist inside his pocket. It looks like he's been crying.

"Parser?" Scrappy says. He hasn't been in one of Parse's dreams since the night they won the Cup. He's never seen Parse look so furious before.

Parse looks up at him and then narrows his eyes hard. "Why the fuck--"

He glares at Scrappy silently as the dream turns lucid around them. Scrappy tries to figure out what to say.

"...Are you in New York? City?" he finally asks.

"No," Parse says shortly.

Scrappy frowns. "...Are you still in Vegas?" That would be really weird. Can he get pulled into Parse's dreams from the other side of the country? He's never been able to do that. He's never heard of anybody being able to do that.

"No." Parse clenches his fist around the map. "I'm in--Boston. Around there. Why are--you're in New York?"

"Yeah," Scrappy says. "My flight got delayed."

"Fucking Christ, people c'n show up from different states now?" Parse growls out, and Scrappy hunches his shoulders.

"...I just fell asleep," he says. "I wasn't trying--I didn't know you were here."

"Yeah, yeah," Parse mutters.

And then he closes his eyes and takes a long breath before crumpling up the map in his fist. ". . . Look. Sorry, Scrappy. It's not a good time tonight."

"Are you okay?" Scrappy asks.

"It's not a good time," Parse repeats flatly. "Can you leave? Or--fuck it, I'm gonna wake up. Fuck all'a this, I was fuckin' stupid an' I knew it, god." He smashes the map into a tighter ball and hurls it at the lawn.

"Parser--" Scrappy starts to reach out to him; but the dream's falling apart.

He wakes up in his hotel room.

Scrappy sits up in bed and looks around for his phone. He finds it, gets some water from the bathroom tap, and then sends Parse a text. Are you ok?

Parse doesn't answer.

Scrappy eventually goes back to sleep. He doesn't sleep deeply enough to dream again.


When his alarm goes off, he finds one text from Parse. Yeah. Sorry. bad night last night. Good luck in Ukraine, see ya when the owners quit being jackasses

Scrappy sits on his hotel bed for a while, trying to wake up enough to figure out how to say what he wants to. Eventually, he just writes, Thanks. Good luck to you too. See you then.

It feels stiff and too formal, but he doesn't know what else to say. Parse only replies with a thumbs up emoji.

*

They don't really talk about anything but hockey until the lockout ends next January. Everybody gets called back to Las Vegas.

Scrappy picks up his dog from Carly's place and turns down four different offers to hang out because he doesn't want to leave her again just yet. Swoops and Parse eventually show up at his apartment with takeout on the second day of training camp.

"You're such a friggin' sap," Swoops tells him. It might be believable if he weren't saying it while rubbing Belka's tummy. "Both of you."

"Piss off," Parse drawls without looking over from the TV. "Purrs is the best and you're just jealous 'cause you can't even keep a houseplant alive."

"I have so many houseplants, Parse, you've seen them--"

"I've seen so many houseplants 'cause you gotta keep replacing them," Parse says with a half-grin. "How's this helping your case?"

Swoops mutters something Scrappy can't make out and focuses his attention back on petting Belka. Parse just keeps smirking.

"What's 'Purrs'?" Scrappy asks.

"Parse got a cat," Swoops says, looking up at him. "And then named it after himself like a self-centered tosser."

"The best cat should have the best name," Parse says cheerfully. Swoops rolls his eyes at the ceiling.

"You got a cat?" Scrappy asks. "When? You have pictures?"

Parse nods. "Yeah, last week."

"He already made Purrs his own Instagram," Swoops adds, as Parse pulls his phone out. "Why did I expect any backup from you, Scraps."

"Dumb of you for sure," Parse agrees. Swoops flips him off.

Parse unlocks his phone and pulls up Instagram. "Here. He's the best, yeah?"

"Crying out loud," Swoops mutters, trying to hide a smile. "Thank God I don't have allergies or I'd never be friends with you saps."

"Yeah, that'd be a real loss for us," Parse drawls as Scrappy takes his phone. Swoops shifts away from Belka long enough to elbow him in the thigh.

*

He gets pulled into Parse's dream that night. He's out of practice resisting them.

It takes Scrappy a while to figure out it's Parse's dream: he hasn't seen the place before. He's standing on a fancy stairwell leading down to a ballroom floor, where men and women in old-fashioned clothing are dancing. It looks kind of like a weird, fake version of the pictures Scrappy's seen of the tsar's palaces.

The ballroom floor is transparent. Underneath the glass is water, a blue-gray stretch that gets darker and darker the deeper it goes. Something is moving in the water underneath the glass as the people dance. It's monstrously huge, with lots of long, lacy tendrils and teeth.

Scrappy leans on the railing and watches the monster as it dips into the darkness of the deeper waters before slowly drifting back up, its tendrils floating underneath the feet of the dancers. He can't tell if there's a pattern or a meaning to it.

The dream congeals into lucidity around him. A few moments later, Scrappy feels the dreamer coming down the steps behind him. When he looks over, it's Parse.

"Hey," Parse says.

"Hey, Parser," Scrappy nods.

Parse stops on the step next to him and looks out at the ballroom floor. "...What the fuck even."

"It's your dream, you know," Scrappy can't resist pointing out. He chuckles as Parse makes an annoyed noise.

"Yeah, yeah," Parse says, bracing an elbow on the railing. He exhales. "I babysat my little cousin during my layover. I think we watched Anastasia like, three times in twelve hours."

"I guess that explains it," Scrappy says. He looks back down. "...Not the monster."

"Yeah, I dunno what's up with that," Parse agrees.

Scrappy shakes his head, but lets it go. "Is three a lot? Kids get obsessed about stuff they like, yeah?"

"It's way too many when we're watchin' it 'cause she's got a crush on Dimitri," Parse says with a scowl. "Like Chrissy, don't you even think about wantin' to date a guy who yells about pulling the greatest con in history from a rooftop. You're a Parson, we raised you better'n that."

Scrappy rests his arms on the railing and laughs.

"Better she dates a hockey player," Parse grumbles. "And that's sayin' a lot."

Scrappy thumps him on the back, still chuckling. Parse just shakes his head and props his cheek in his hand, staring past the ballroom floor at the water and the monster underneath.

*

They don't do well that year. Scrappy doesn't know if it's the short season, or the cramped schedule, or the limited time to get to know the new guys, or the coach mixing up the lines to try and make the team do better, or if those are all just excuses for the fact that they didn't play well enough. The Aces don't make the playoffs.

Scrappy doesn't regret the results of the new collective bargaining agreement between the owners and the players' union. He likes having his own room on road trips now. The payment system is better, and the punishments for breaking safety rules is a lot less arbitrary, which is the biggest deal for him. He just wishes it hadn't dragged out so long.

He goes to Los Angeles and does some photoshoots for his new endorsement, and then goes back to Las Vegas to watch the finals with a bunch of the guys.

Parse organizes the watch parties. He complained to Scrappy and Swoops multiple times about the team's lack of cohesion and chemistry during the short season, so Scrappy figures he's trying to get a head start on next year.

*

Next year is better, except for all the people killed in Kyiv during the protests, and the Ukrainian revolution, and Russia annexing a chunk of Scrappy's homeland. The Aces get up pretty high in the standings. They make the playoffs again.

And then they get outplayed by a team they shouldn't have allowed to beat them, and get swept out of the first round.

*

Scrappy goes to Los Angeles for his promo work before he flies back home. A lot of hockey players are in town for the same thing, like usual, and some of them hang out. At one party, Swoops introduces Scrappy to a friend of his girlfriend.

He and Mandy Skype a lot over the next couple months, and Scrappy comes back a couple weeks early to spend time with her. Even though California in early August is horribly hot.

It's still less uncomfortable than being back home. There, Scrappy has to be incredibly careful in every interview he does. He has to make sure he can't be interpreted as being for one political side or the other.

He refused to sell his house in Kyiv after the riots, even though his parents keep urging him to move back to Fastiv. That already gives him enough trouble, because it keeps getting viewed as political.

But really, it just meant a lot to Scrappy that he succeeded enough in the NHL that he could afford a home in the capital. Even if he only gets to be there a couple months out of the year. He refuses to give that up just because Moscow is being its usual self.

His dog loves Mandy. Scrappy introduces her to Parse.

Things are good for a while. But then the new season kicks off in October, and things start getting more strained. Scrappy knew a long-distance relationship was going to be hard, and he knew his constant travel wasn't going to help. But Mandy also has her own career, and they live in different cities. It gets really hard real fast.

*

Parse is kind of weird this year.

Scrappy doesn't know how to describe it; and Parse always says he's fine if Scrappy asks. But by late November and early December, Parse starts getting really distracted and fidgety.

In mid-December, they fly into Providence to start their northeast roadie. They win that game in overtime, and then fly to Boston that same night and head to the hotel.

The next morning, Scrappy wakes up early because people are yelling at each other in the next room.

He bangs on the wall above his bed while he's still half asleep. Damn rookies, it's like they don't understand noise carries.

Then he wakes up more and remembers that Parse has the room on that side.

Scrappy frowns and rubs his face, and then pulls on a pair of sweatpants and goes to see what's going on. This is really weird for Parse. It didn't sound like his TV.

He knocks on the door. A couple seconds later, Parse wrenches it open. He looks exhausted.

"Fucking what," Parse snarls, and Scrappy takes a step back reflexively. "You too?"

"What?" Scrappy asks.

"Quit being an asshole," Swoops says, coming up behind Parse with a scowl. "You gonna drive everyone off, eh? Think that's gonna go great?"

"Get the fuck out, Troy," Parse says icily.

"Grow up already, Kent!" Swoops yells, making an exasperated gesture with his hands. "He's not worth this shit! He just makes you an asshole every fucking time!"

"Get out!"

Swoops squeezes past Scrappy and strides down the hall, giving Parse a middle finger over his shoulder. Parse slams the door shut.

Scrappy's left standing outside, trying to understand what just happened.

A few moments later, a door on the opposite side of the hall opens. Their goalie glares out blearily and says, "What the fuck, it's seven, assholes."

"Sorry," Scrappy tells him. "Uh, something happened."

Boxy just stares at Scrappy for a little while, before dropping his head and muttering in exasperated French.

"Yeah, I know," he says. "Twitter lost its fucking mind over that idiot last night. Bon courage, Scrappy, you're fucked in this one."

Their goalie shuts his door again.

Scrappy goes back to his room and rinses his face, trying to wake up more. Neither Swoops or Parse answer when he texts them.

Scrappy goes onto Twitter, and finds that #KentParson is still trending.


Parse is scratched from the Boston game as part of the Aces' automatic punishment for breaking dress code rules and curfew by going to that college party. It ends his point streak at 31 games.

It's still a new record for American-born players. But it's a shitty way for such an epic streak to get broken.

The Aces win the game. Swoops gets a hat trick, and then keeps on crashing the Bruins' net like scoring on them is the only way he can stop being pissed at Parse. Scrappy ends up having to fight Boston's rat player twice when the guy starts getting dirty about trying to shut Swoops down.

Parse tells him thanks for looking out for Swoops after the game, but he still refuses to talk about that morning.

*

He and Mandy keep trying for a while, but in January they finally break up.

Scrappy holes up in his apartment during the long weekend and spends most of it laying on the couch, watching the All-Stars events blankly and petting his dog.

He isn't mad about how it ended, just tired and sad. He tried pretty hard. Mandy did too. But in the end, they both decided their careers mattered more.

She couldn't damage her photography career by leaving Los Angeles for the significantly more niche market of Las Vegas. He couldn't stop being a hockey player, and he wasn't willing to ask for a trade to Los Angeles to be closer to her. He likes the Aces.

He likes playing hockey, with the Las Vegas Aces, more than he liked her. It just is what it is.


Swoops finds out about the breakup pretty soon. He brings over a pizza with the pepperoni and grilled chicken toppings that Scrappy likes, and a bottle of good vodka instead of the craft beer that Swoops himself prefers, which is how Scrappy knows he feels really bad about it.

Swoops seems relieved when Scrappy confirms that the break up was amicable, which makes Scrappy kind of glad that at least he and Mandy ended it while things were still okay between them. He doesn't want to be one of those guys who goes around bad-mouthing his ex. Especially if that means somebody in their shared friends circles would have to figure out how to navigate that ugly mess.

They eat the pizza and drink some of the vodka even though it's breaking their diet plans, and watch the All-Stars game. Parse's team wins, by a lot. Scrappy's not surprised--he's got guys like Segs and Johnnys T. and G. catching his passes and feeding him pucks.

It helps that the goalies pretty much refuse to actually tend goal during the All-Star games. Scrappy can't blame them. Who'd want to risk getting injured in a game that's not gonna give your team any points?

"Whoa," Scrappy says, when Parse flips a puck up on his stick and then smacks it into the goal from the air. Flower looks behind him into the goal and then back at Parse. It looks like he's cussing Parse out, while Parse snickers and his line comes over for yet another celly. "He did it."

"Did what?" Swoops asks.

"Hit the puck in like that," Scrappy says, pointing at the replay on his TV. "I keep telling him he oughta do that. It looks cool."

Swoops snickers. "It looks bratty," he says, but it's not mean.

He and Parse got over their fight a while back. Scrappy feels kind of bad about not really doing anything about it at the time: he was so focused on his failing relationship with Mandy that he wasn't around for some of his friendships.

Scrappy nods. "Yeah, that's why he said he wouldn't do it."

Swoops shakes his head. "Of course."

*

Parse invites him over to dinner at his condo once he's back from the All-Stars. Scrappy makes himself get out of his funk and goes.

He sits at Parse's kitchen counter and pets Purrs while Parse bakes salmon and makes a veggie stir-fry for them. Parse eventually asks, "You doin' okay?"

"Yeah," Scrappy says, because he will be eventually. He takes another drink of water. "...Swoops tell you about me and Mandy?"

"Yeah," Parse nods. ". . . Sorry. A text seemed kinda shitty, so I figured--you know. I'd talk to you once I was back. "

"Thanks," Scrappy says. "It'll be all right."

". . . Okay."

Parse falls quiet after that. Scrappy doesn't really have much left to say, either, so he just keeps petting Purrs while the cat sits on the kitchen island and purrs.

Scrappy's really bad about allowing his dog to jump up on the furniture, but Parse lets Purrs do whatever he wants in the apartment. He only scolds the cat if Purrs knocks stuff off onto the floor.

Swoops kind of has a point when he calls them both sappy pet owners. Not that Scrappy's going to let him know that.

Parse squeezes his shoulder as he puts their plates down on the kitchen island. He doesn't say anything else, but Scrappy figures he just doesn't know what to say. Swoops has had a couple serious girlfriends over the last few years, but Parse has never been with anyone for longer than a couple dates. He's never had a serious or even semi-serious girlfriend for as long as Scrappy's known him.

But he's still trying to make him feel better. Scrappy appreciates it.

He pats Parse's forearm. "Thanks. It'll be okay. I mean it."

"Okay," Parse says, shooing Purrs off the island. He sits down on the opposite side, still looking at Scrappy seriously. "Lemme know if you wanna talk, Scraps. Or hang out, or whatever. It's always cool."

Scrappy looks down at his plate, a little embarrassed by the intense sincerity in Parse's voice. Parse usually doesn't get like this.

He can't help smiling at the same time, though. "Thanks, Parser. I mean it."

Parse punches him lightly in the arm before picking up his fork.

*

The Aces trade away a couple players and pick up a good defenseman at the trade deadline, to help them push for the playoffs again.

The guy comes in and says all the right things. Scrappy thinks he's gonna be a big help, but he's pretty sure Ellsy's a rental. The Aces don't have enough cap space to sign a player like Ellsy to the kind of deal he wants.

He seems like a nice guy, though. Scrappy'll be glad to go into the playoffs with him.


That night, Scrappy's falling asleep when he feels someone else moving around in the weird fuzzy space that connects his subconscious and other people's dreams.

He's felt it before, every once in a while. It means there's someone else around who can go into dreams. Somebody who's close enough that Scrappy can feel them doing it.

Scrappy tracks them down. Usually when he feels this, it's a tourist or some other person who's only in Las Vegas for a while before leaving again. Scrappy usually tries to steer them away from Parse if they're getting pulled into his dreams.

He at least tries to get a good look at them, so he can describe them for Parse. Then hopefully Parse will recognize the stranger if they end up in his dreams.

Scrappy catches up with the guy and finds out it's Ellsy. He doesn't manage to reach the man before he gets pulled into Parse's dream, so Scrappy goes in after him.

Parse is dreaming about the dark town tonight. Scrappy's only ever seen part of it: the gravel streets that go through a sparsely-housed neighborhood. The center of the dream is a house with a streetlight in front of it. It has an Italian restaurant and a gift shop inside.

The only other person Scrappy's seen in this dream is the older woman who works behind the counter in the gift shop, selling trinkets. There's a big box store at the edge of the neighborhood, with a huge, well-lit empty parking lot; and there's a group of buildings that kind of feels like a hospital across the paved road from that store. But the dream almost always ends before Scrappy can walk to either of those places. There's no cars in this town. It's always night.

He likes the town, though. Compared to a lot of Parse's dreams, this one's never stressful. Just empty, and dark.

Ellsy's standing in front of the house with the streetlight, looking around. Scrappy walks up to him. "Hey."

"Hey, uh, Scrappy," Ellsy says, nodding.

Scrappy doesn't blame him for taking a second to remember his nickname. It's not like most guys', where it comes from part of his real name. After his first couple fights back when he was on the Aces' farm team, the captain there called him "Scrappy Doo." The first half of the name stuck.

Ellsy gives him a considering look. "...This isn't your dream."

"Naw, it's Parse's," Scrappy says. "His dreams pull people in."

"What?" Ellsy asks.

Scrappy remembers that Parse doesn't like to talk about that. But Ellsy's already in here, and Scrappy has to tell him something. "Yeah."

"The hell's that work?" Ellsy asks, looking like he wouldn't believe Scrappy if they weren't both standing inside a third person's dream and Ellsy obviously hadn't intended to come in here.

"I dunno," Scrappy answers. "He doesn't either. It just happens."

". . . Weird," Ellsy says, looking around again. Scrappy just shrugs.

It's been a while since he's been around another person who can go into dreams that he also knows in the awake world. Scrappy's trying to think of something to say when they sense the world becoming more solid to the left of the house. They both look over: Parse is coming.

Parse comes around the fence at the corner of the street. He pauses when he sees them.

The dark town is always empty, except for the one woman who works in the store behind them. Parse always realizes he's dreaming faster here when he sees Scrappy than he does in other places, where there's more people around.

". . . Huh," Parse says evenly, staring at the two of them as the dream turns lucid.

Ellsy jerks and looks around. "Fuck me."

"Oh," Scrappy says. "Yeah. He can do that."

Ellsy swears quietly and looks back at Parse.

"Do what," Parse asks.

"The...." Scrappy frowns. It's really hard to put the feeling into words, even with the dream's translation making it easier. "The making-it-more-lucid thing. What you just did. Taking control of it so fast."

". . . Huh," Parse says, which doesn't give Scrappy a lot to go on. Parse hasn't really looked at him yet. He's focused on Ellsy. "Hey, Ellis."

"Hey," Ellsy says.

"You a dreamwalker too?"

"Yeah," Ellsy says. He half-smiles. "Haven't heard that name in a while."

"Guess so," Parse says. "Guess it's kinda local. You just 'showed up' here, too?"

"...Yeah."

"Alright," Parse says.

He nods at the house. "You wanna play hockey? We can talk about Coach's system."

Ellsy glances at Scrappy for a half-second, and then looks back at Parse. "Sounds good."

"Cool."

Parse heads to the house's front door, and Scrappy and Ellsy follow. When Parse opens it, the dream shifts hard to open onto the Aces' practice rink instead of into the gift shop.

Ellsy whistles low through his teeth as he shivers.

"Yeah," Scrappy agrees. He's gotten used to Parse being a lucid dreamer, but Parse doing things like this still isn't a feeling you can ever really get used to.

Parse tilts his head back toward them a little as he heads into the rink, but he doesn't say anything.

*

The Aces get to the conference finals in the playoffs, but they don't win. Chicago beats them after seven games and goes on to face Tampa Bay.

Ellsy doesn't sign with the Aces during the offseason. He goes back to the east coast instead.

*

Parse was kind of weird last year, but this year it's like something's constantly chasing him. Scrappy actively stays away from his dreams, because they're all stress ones.

He tried going into them at first, to help Parse go lucid and take control so they won't be so bad.

But then he got stuck in the sci-fi city with the gorge five times, and in the stairwell with the hopelessness-creating thing chasing him twice. And then a serial killer showed up in the underground movie theater, and Scrappy spent the dream searching for quarters on the floor to give to the killer while Parse smooth-talked him into staying in the back row, away from them.

After that, Scrappy gave up. Parse refuses to talk about whatever's making him feel so bad, and his dreams have gotten so stressful that if Scrappy goes into them, they wind up screwing up his own sleep.

He tries talking to Swoops about it once. Not about the dreams, but about how Parse seems really strung out this year.

Swoops makes a tired face and says, "Yeah. He'll get over it. ...I think."

That doesn't give Scrappy much to go on, but Swoops won't say anything else.

So finally Scrappy gives up and just focuses on hockey. Parse is really driving the team this year; falling out of the playoffs last year really got to him. Scrappy's pretty sure that's part of why he's been so stressed lately, but it still doesn't feel like the whole reason.

But Parse wants their line to be the best this year. And Swoops has a two-year top-goal-scorer streak to build on. And Scrappy never wants to be accused of being the one who's dragging Parse and Swoops's line down. So he focuses on hockey.

*

Scrappy stays away from Parse's dreams until the night before they play Providence. That night, when he's falling asleep, something feels seriously wrong.

After several years on the Aces, Scrappy's used to how the edges of his teammates' dreams feel. Especially on roadies, when they're all a lot closer because they're all crammed into the same hotel. But tonight, for the first time, he doesn't feel Parse's dream pulling at him.

He doesn't feel anything from Parse.

Scrappy eventually goes looking for Parse's dream, because this is starting to freak him out. He weeds out the rest of his teammates' familiar-feeling dreams, and the random unfamiliar feel of strangers' dreams, and finally reaches what he guesses must be Parse.

He can't tell if it really is Parse. Scrappy's next to a non-dream: the impenetrable bubble of somebody who's taken sleeping pills to knock themselves out hard, and messed up their normal sleep cycle in the process.

Parse's never done that before. But this is the dream two doors down from Scrappy's room, and that's Parse's room.

Scrappy could get in, if he really wanted to. He'd have to pry at the dream's slippery surface, dig in and make a scratch that he could turn into a crack that he could turn into a gap that he could get in through, but he could do it. He's done it once before, when his half-sister came home late one night after her boyfriend dumped her and Svyeta took one of their mom's sleeping pills so she wouldn't think about the guy.

Scrappy wasn't used to feeling an absence of a dream near him. He freaked out and forced his way into Svyeta's dream. It was a blurry, incoherent mess when he got in there, because the pill kept her from sinking into a full dream state. Her dream was like standing on one of the sand dunes at Odesa: it kept constantly shifting under his feet. Scrappy left as soon as he was sure she was okay.

He could get into whatever low-level dream state Parse is cycling through, if he tried. Instead, Scrappy pulls back and leaves Parse alone.


Parse looks off at breakfast the morning before the game, like he's not used to sleeping without dreams. Scrappy sits at a table with him and Swoops like usual, but Parse keeps scrolling distractedly through his phone and doesn't really talk to either of them.

Scrappy eats his eggs and tries to figure out how to ask Parse why he took sleeping pills last night. He can't come up with anything that won't sound weird to Swoops.


Parse takes a sleeping pill during his afternoon nap, too. This is really, really weird.


But then they beat Providence in regulation, and get on the plane and fly to New York.

Parse sleeps like normal in New York City for the next three days, as they play the Islanders and the Rangers. He sleeps like normal on the plane back to Las Vegas, and like normal during their homestand.

Scrappy isn't sure what was going on, but he lets it go. Parse was really weird this season until they won in Providence. Maybe the team doctor gave him the sleeping pills to help him get some rest and get back to normal. Scrappy knows that pills can't replace natural sleep, but sometimes if a guy thinks something will help, it's enough.

*

Parse stays his normal self after that Metro roadie. Swoops gets more normal, too.

Eventually, Scrappy decides things must actually be normal again. Whatever was weird before, it's finally been worked out.

*

He gets knocked off the roster with a concussion.

It's a bad one, from a hit that messed up his shoulder again too. Scrappy doesn't end up in the hospital, but he spends all of the second and third period in the quiet room with his eyes shut. Swoops rejects all his media requests for postgame interviews and drives Scrappy back to his own apartment and puts him up in his spare guest room.

Parse comes by later, and tells Scrappy he's gonna take his keys so he can check on his dog. Scrappy can't push down his headache long enough figure out where he put them.

Swoops eventually finds them by Scrappy's wallet. They were both in one of the bathroom drawers for some reason.

Parse squeezes his good shoulder gently and tells him to try and rest. Scrappy gives him a thumbs up because he's afraid that lifting his head from the pillow to nod might make him puke again. He already threw up into a plastic bag during the car ride to Swoops's place, even though Swoops was driving as carefully as possible. Swoops didn't give him any crap for it, but Scrappy still feels bad about it.


The next morning Scrappy throws up again when Swoops tries to drive him to the Aces' clubhouse to check in with the team doctor. Swoops takes him back to his apartment, and calls Dr. Futerman. The man comes over to the apartment instead.

Scrappy spends the rest of the day lying still in Swoops' dark guest room on doctor's orders.

Swoops's girlfriend Hannah pinned a blanket over the window to cut down on the brutal desert sunlight while Dr. Futerman was checking on Scrappy's vitals. It helps.


The first couple days were the worst. Scrappy goes back to his own apartment the next afternoon, once he can handle the car ride. The team's leaving for a one-game roadie in Phoenix tomorrow, and it'd be weird to stay in Swoops's apartment when he's not there. Scrappy's made an effort to be friends with Hannah because Swoops has been serious about her for the past year, but still. It'd be weird.

Especially since Mandy and Hannah were college roommates. Swoops introduced Mandy to Scrappy because he knew her through Hannah.

It's just...weird.

Hannah didn't sign up to take care of Swoops's injured teammate when she started dating him. If all Scrappy has at his apartment right now is himself and his dog, it's because he's the one who put hockey ahead of a relationship. He'll manage.

Parse comes over to Swoops's place and drives Scrappy back home during his break between the morning team meeting and his afternoon workout, since he still has Scrappy's house keys. He tells Scrappy that he already asked his cat-sitter to watch both Purrs and Scrappy's dog tomorrow, since he didn't know how Scrappy would be feeling.

"I can bring Belka over after we get back," Parse says. "She'll have more fun playing with Susan than sleeping with you 'til you're better."

Parse makes a face almost as soon as he says it. "Not like--you know. Pets don't understand when you can't do stuff with them when you don't feel well. She'll get to play, and you can rest. Win-win."

All Scrappy's done for the last few days is rest. He's bored and starting to feel out of shape, and his head still hurts.

But trying to put any of that into English feels exhausting. So Scrappy just gives Parse a tiny nod and says, "Okay. Thanks, Parser."

"Sure thing, man," Parse tells him, bopping him lightly on the thigh before grabbing the steering wheel again.

*

A couple nights later, Scrappy's dreaming about sitting at his kitchen table and looking out the windows. Another active dreamer steps into the room behind him.

The headache from his concussion follows him into his sleep. Scrappy's still realizing that this is weird when Parse says "--What the fuck?!"

He sounds genuinely freaked out. Scrappy twists around gingerly in his chair and says, "Hey, Parser."

"What the--how the fuck, where is this?!?"

"You're in my dream," Scrappy says. He frowns. "...Why are you here?"

Parse is gripping the edge of the kitchen doorway. His knuckles are white. "I don't--what the hell!"

"Are you okay?" Scrappy asks.

Parse stares at him for a long time with an expression Scrappy can't read.

Then he slowly lets out a breath, and pulls his hand away from the doorway. Parse flexes his fingers for a little bit, and then steps into the kitchen.

"This is weird," Scrappy says.

"No shit," Parse drawls casually. He still sounds a little freaked out underneath. "--Why's your coffee pot bleeding?"

"I can't have caffeine," Scrappy answers. His subconscious isn't subtle. "Not until I'm better."

Parse comes over to him, frowning. "How's your head fee--Jesus Christ."

Parse is staring past him, out the windows. "What the fuck, Scraps. It looks like the apocalypse out there."

"Yeah," he says.

Maybe his head will keep getting better, and the concussion will end and he can go back to playing. Or maybe his career is already over, while he's still in his late twenties and supposed to be mostly in his prime.

Maybe his head will hurt for the rest of his life. Maybe his whole world is over, because of one bad hit.

His subconscious isn't subtle.

"Okay," Parse says. He wraps a hand around Scrappy's arm and pulls him out of the chair. "Alright. C'mon Scraps, we're gettin' outta here, this place is messed up."

"It's just a--" dream, Scrappy starts to say; but then Parse reaches into his dream and warps it so that the empty doorway into the kitchen now has a shut door inside the frame.

Scrappy winces hard. He's still trying to get his stability back when Parse opens the door, and then pulls him through it and out onto a porch Scrappy's never seen before.

"Fuck!" Scrappy gasps, as his dream is completely ripped away and reshaped by Parse.

He stumbles across the porch and almost falls down the steps before Parse catches him. "Whoa, Scraps--"

Scrappy stumble-slides down the steps and collapses to his knees in the snow and throws up.

"Shit!" Parse sounds freaked out again.

He presses a hand to Scrappy's forehead and another to his bad shoulder. A second later, his dream warps even more. The lingering pain he's feeling disappears.

Scrappy shudders hard. "Stop."

Parse goes still. He pulls his hands away.

Scrappy wipes his mouth and spits into the snow as Parse steps back. "Guh."

He shoves some snow on top of the barf to hide it. "Parser, this is my dream. You can't--man, you can't just take it over like that. It feels horrible."

He pushes more snow over the vomit and looks up. Parse has backed away more, and shoved his hands into his pockets. He's staring at Scrappy like Scrappy punched him out of nowhere.

Scrappy tries to push to his feet, but all he can manage to do is to sit on the bottom step of the porch. This is his dream, but everything around him was forcefully shaped by Parse. It's disorienting.

". . . Sorry," Parse says quietly.

Scrappy rubs his mouth and spits again. His legs and butt are freezing.

Parse takes a couple more steps back. And then he turns and walks away, heading for one of the pine trees nearby.

Scrappy stays on the step and looks around slowly. They're behind a small house with a detached garage and a huge backyard. There's a small ice rink built aboveground, way on the other side of the yard. The snow's been cleared off it recently.

Parse scoops some snow off one of the pine trees' branches and brings it back. "Here."

Scrappy takes it and eats it.

It tastes distinct: like the memory of snow from a specific place. He's pretty sure Parse changed his dream into a recreated memory. No wonder the transition was so rough.

Parse doesn't say anything else. But he isn't changing anything else in the dream any more, so Scrappy can adjust.

He hauls himself up with the porch steps's rail, because his butt is seriously freezing. He was just wearing sweats and a t-shirt in his kitchen.

Scrappy focuses on his dream, pulling it back into his control. He changes his and Parse's clothes so they're both in dry pants and snow boots and warm coats. Parse startles, and then tightens his jaw before exhaling slowly.

"Sorry," Scrappy tells him, in case Parse feels disoriented by that. "I was cold."

"It's cool," Parse says. He pulls his hands out of his pants pockets and then hesitates for a second before pushing them into his coat pockets. ". . . Is it . . . did it feel that bad?"

"Yeah," Scrappy agrees. He kicks more snow over the patch of vomit by the steps. "You took over my dream and remade it into a place I don't know."

Parse hunches his shoulders.

Scrappy shifts his voice to the tone he uses when he's working with kids at the Aces' youth events. He's not trying to be a jerk about this; he's just trying to answer Parse's question. "It feels really weird. Like, it's always kind of weird, moving between places you've changed in your dreams. But when you do it in mine, it's...it feels...."

It felt like he had all control of his own dream torn away from him. Like he had all control of himself taken away.

For a couple seconds while Scrappy was floundering to find his footing as the dream shifted completely around and under him, he was at Parse's mercy. Scrappy was powerless inside his own dream.

Parse is one of his best friends, and Scrappy trusts him. But that's still a horrible feeling.

It's hard to figure out how to say all that, though. And Parse is still pulled away and hunched in. Scrappy's not sure he could say any of that without making Parse look even more hurt.

"It feels real bad," he finally says. "Until I can adjust. It's really weird."

"...Okay," Parse says. He swallows. "Sorry."

Scrappy shrugs. At least his head and his shoulder don't hurt anymore. That's nice. "It's okay. Just don't do that again. Or, warn me first."

"Okay."

Parse shifts on his feet, making the snow crunch under his boots. He pushes his hands deeper into his pockets. ". . . I always thought guys were faking it. When they freaked out. Like, they were just tryin' to psych me out. Or lying. Or something."

"Naw." Scrappy shakes his head. "It's weird."

Parse pulls on the hem of the coat Scrappy made for him. "It's not that weird."

"You're a really strong dreamer, Parser," Scrappy tells him.

This is a problem with the really elite guys sometimes. They think on such a high level that it's hard to get them to understand things from other guys' perspectives. It's why Parse is the best player on the Aces and also lousy at mentoring younger guys whose hockey IQs aren't as high as his.

Parse doesn't try to be bad at thinking to other guys' level. He usually tries to do the opposite, when he recognizes that he needs to.

He just doesn't always get that he needs to. It is what it is.

Scrappy shrugs his shoulders. "It probably doesn't feel the same way to you." He gestures to Parse's coat. "If you didn't like those, you could just change them. Even though it's my dream."

Scrappy pauses, because that thought is still a little bit weird.

Not the part about being able to change things in someone else's dream. It's not surprising that Parse can do that. Most people who can go into dreams can change things in them, more or less. Scrappy usually doesn't try to change other people's dreams, but it's always felt like it would be pretty easy to do if he did try.

Almost always. In most people's dreams. Not in Parse's.

It's always possible in Parse's dreams. Scrappy's made little changes inside them occasionally: making himself the right kind of skates if they're practicing drills, stuff like that. He can do it, but it's harder in Parse's dreams than it is in most people's. If Parse ever fought the changes Scrappy tried to make, he's not sure who would win.

Well, Parse would win, because Scrappy shouldn't be trying to change someone's dream if they don't like it. But that's not how he meant.

Scrappy eventually stopped thinking about it. A lot of things about Parse's dreams are different than most people's. He's gotten used to it.

The part that's weird is that Parse has never acted like he could go into other people's dreams before tonight.

And he was freaked out when he showed up earlier, like he wasn't expecting it to happen. Usually if you can go into other people's dreams, you've been doing it since you were a kid. You don't start doing it in your mid-twenties.

"How'd you get in my dream?" Scrappy asks.

Parse shrugs jerkily. "I dunno, man. I was napping on the plane and then I was here."

. . . That's still weird. If Parse is on the Aces' flight back from Phoenix, then....

"I thought guys could only get into your dreams in the same city," Scrappy says. "How'd you get in mine?"

"You fuck--friggin' got in mine once when you were in New York and I was in Boston, Scrappy, you tell me," Parse says shortly. The snow crunches under his feet again as he shifts agitatedly.

"I don't know," Scrappy says, because this doesn't make sense. "I know this is my dream. I dunno how you're here."

Parse glares down at the snow. Then he closes his eyes, and takes a long breath before exhaling.

"...Alright," Parse mutters. "...Yeah, alright. Okay. Fine."

"It's not," Scrappy says, because Parse's tone makes it clear this isn't 'fine' to him. "I don't know why this is happening."

"I never let anybody else in my dreams as long as I've let you," Parse says shortly. "If it had consequences again, then--fine. Whatever."

"...Parser," Scrappy says slowly. It's hard to figure out Parse when he gets like this sometimes. "Are you mad at me?"

Parse shuts his eyes tightly.

"No," he mutters. "I'm mad at myself."

"Why?" Scrappy asks.

"I knew better than t' do this again," Parse grits out.

And then his eyes widen. "--Are you--? Motherfucker."

Scrappy wanted to know the truth, but he wasn't intentionally manipulating the dream to make Parse be honest to him. But that must be what was happening, because Parse clenches his jaw tight before turning around and stalking off into the trees.

Scrappy follows after him, pushing through snow-covered branches. But then the treeline ends at a road, and Scrappy can't sense another active dreamer in here any more. Parse either left the dream or woke himself up.

It's only a one hour flight from Phoenix. He probably woke up.

Scrappy follows his own trail through the snow back to the house. When he opens the porch door, it leads into an unfamiliar kitchen.

He feels kind of weird about going into someone else's house when they aren't there. And he feels really weird about the fact that Parse built this entire place, and it's still standing even after he's left the dream. That's kind of freaky.

But he's cold. So Scrappy steps through the porch door and into the house's kitchen. He pulls off his boots and hangs his coat over the back of one of the table's chairs, before turning on the oven and pulling its door open to heat the place up. He takes some milk out of the fridge and goes through the cabinets until he finds a pan and a jar of honey.

Scrappy makes himself some warm milk with honey and then pulls one of the chairs over the oven. He looks out the kitchen window at the backyard as he drinks it, and waits to wake up.

*

Parse brings his dog home the next afternoon.

"What is that place?" Scrappy asks, rubbing Belka's ears while she keeps trying to jump up on him even though she knows better.

Parse is hanging up her leash on the coat pegs. He hasn't met Scrappy's eyes since he knocked on the door. "...My parents' old house."

Scrappy thinks about that rink in the backyard. "You grow up there?"

"Yeah."

"Cool," Scrappy says. Parse snorts, but it's under his breath.

". . . Sorry," Parse says, still facing the coat rack. He shoves his hands in his jeans' pockets. "For messing with your head."

"You didn't know," Scrappy says. "You don't do that on purpose."

Parse scratches the back of his neck and lifts his shoulders in a shrug. "...Yeah. Not to you."

A couple awkward moments later, Parse pulls out his phone and shows him a video he took when he brought Scrappy's dog back to his condo the night Scrappy got concussed. Somehow, Parse's cat poofed himself up even more than normal at the sight of Belka, before running off to Parse's bedroom.

"He never left," Parse says, shaking his head. "I finally just stuck his food and water under the bed so he wouldn't starve. Stubborn little shit."

"Like owner, like cat," Scrappy grins, hitting replay on the video again.

Parse makes a face. "--Wait, are you still on 'no screens' restrictions? Gimme that."

Scrappy reflexively holds the phone up as high as he can over his head, which is about five inches taller than Parse can reach without jumping.

Parse just stares at him in disappointed weariness. "Scrappy."

He snickers and then drops his arm and hands the phone back. Parse calls him a dick, but not until it's safely shoved into his pocket.

*

That night, he's drifting in the half-dozy state that's been his main replacement for sleep the last several days. The low-dose painkillers he's allowed to take for his shoulder help a little, but falling asleep is still hard. Distantly, he feels Parse start dreaming.

He can't manage to fall asleep before Parse cycles out of the dream. Scrappy rubs his eyes tiredly and gets some water from the bathroom tap, and then goes back to bed.

At some point, he's on the edge of falling asleep when he feels the familiar pull of Parse's dreams again. Scrappy lets it drag him under into sleep and goes into Parse's dream.

He's in the buffet place. Scrappy goes through the line and gets a plate of vareniki and a mug of proper tea, because Parse started adding those things to the buffet for him a few years back. Then he goes to find Parse.

Parse is sitting at his usual table by the floor-to-ceiling windows, staring out and eating a bowl of potato wedges. During his rookie year with the Aces, the view outside was of the city where Parse played his Juniors years; but eventually it shifted into the Las Vegas Strip.

Parse looks over when Scrappy pulls out a chair at the table and smiles. "Hey, Scraps."

"Hey Parser," he replies.

Parse goes back to people-watching on the Strip and eating his potato wedges. Scrappy digs into the vareniki.

A little while later, Scrappy feels the dream shift into lucidity as Parse realizes he's dreaming. The sky outside goes cloudy, softening the light.

Scrappy shifts his chair so his back isn't to the windows anymore. "Thanks."

"Sure," Parse says. "What's up?"

He feels embarrassed and kind of pathetic to be asking for this, but he also hasn't gotten any decent sleep in almost a week. "Can you make my head stop hurting again? Like last night."

Parse's expression shifts from guarded to concerned. "You okay?"

Scrappy shakes his head and looks down at his plate. "It hurts. I'm lying down all the time, but I can't sleep. Dr. Futerman said it'll get better, but how can that happen if I can't sleep?"

He pushes the last varenik around on his plate, still unable to look Parse in the eyes. He's supposed to be tougher than this. He's supposed to be the guy his teammates can count on to have their back.

But he's gotta get better before he can do that again.

Scrappy shrugs uncomfortably. "I thought...if you did that, maybe I'd sleep better. At least for a while. I know it's weird to ask, but--"

"No, for sure. I can do it," Parse says.

He pushes back from the table, and then hesitates. "...You sure? You got kinda.... Freaked out. Last time."

Scrappy shakes his head again and looks at him. "Naw, that was just because I was trying to adjust."

"No, I mean...." Parse still looks kind of unsure, which is a weird expression on him. Scrappy's used to him either being confident or faking it to make the people around him believe he's confident. "Before that. When we won the Cup. Remember? You kinda...stayed away, for a while. After I did it then."

"Oh," Scrappy says. "--Oh. Yeah."

He scratches his wrist. "I knew you were a strong dreamer, but I didn't really get how strong, until then," Scrappy tells him. "...I wasn't trying to be weird about it. I just...wanted to think about it."

"Think about what?" Parse says. "You always say I'm a 'strong dreamer,' but it's just lucid dreamin'. Anybody can do it."

Scrappy shakes his head. "Parse, you left that house behind in my dream. When you left, it was still there. I didn't know people could even do that."

Parse exhales and looks away.

"Remember when the Blues called that guy up? Years ago?" Scrappy asks. "And he went and messed with your dream, but you changed it? When we were in the room with all the wood."

"Yeah," Parse says, looking a little guarded again.

"I didn't realize when he quit banging on the door because you didn't want me to notice," Scrappy says. "Right?"

". . . Yeah."

"That's what I mean," Scrappy tells him. "If I go in someone's dream, I know when they're changing things. Or doing something to me, like keeping me from hearing something. You're the only person who can do something to me in a dream and keep me from realizing it."

"The only one," Parse says, disbelieving.

"Yeah," Scrappy says sincerely. "I've never been in anybody else's dream where they could do that. Just you."

Parse looks down at the table.

Scrappy rubs his wrist again. "I was kind of...."

He doesn't want to say 'freaked out,' even if that's the most honest. He's pretty sure that would hurt Parse.

"When I realized it, I didn't know what I thought about it," Scrappy explains. "So I wanted to think about it, so I wouldn't be weird when the next season started. That was it."

Parse messes with the straw in his soda for a little while, and doesn't look at him. ". . . So what d'you think?"

"It still feels kind of weird." He shrugs. "But it's not like I've gone in a lot of people's dreams. There's probably other really strong dreamers who can do it, too. You're just the first I've met."

Scrappy dips his last varenik into the sour cream. "I know you're not gonna do anything bad to me. So it's just like...'okay.' It is what it is."

Parse fidgets with his straw more.

Then he nods once and pushes away from the table again.

"Want me to do your shoulder too?" he asks, as he comes around and stands next to Scrappy. Parse sets a hand on the top of his head.

"Yeah," Scrappy says, sinking into the chair and closing his eyes as his lingering headache disappears. "Thanks, Parser. I mean it."

"Yeah, man," Parse says, pulling his hand away and putting it on Scrappy's bad shoulder. That stops aching too. "Glad it helps."

Scrappy nods.

He stretches his arms as Parse goes back to the buffet line to get more potato wedges and soda. He brings back another mug of hot tea and more vareniki as well.

They talk about how the team did during the last two games, and about the one coming up, and about the guys in general. Parse is telling him about the prank Carly pulled on some of the guys before practice yesterday--when he replaced the nondairy creamer with crushed up alka-seltzers, and made Swoops cuss up a blue streak as his coffee started foaming over--when things start disappearing at the edges of the room as Parse cycles out of this dream state. Scrappy drains his tea before he falls out of the dream completely.

*

Scrappy isn't cleared to fly out with the guys to Winnipeg the next day. The Aces start their roadie without him.

It takes Scrappy too long to remember that there's a guy playing for the Jets who can go into dreams, and who has a bad habit of going into Parse's to mess with his head. He doesn't remember until the morning of the game.

He texts Parse while he's making breakfast. Did he do it again?

Parse doesn't have to ask what he means. Several minutes later, he writes back: Yeah. It's fine, I'll get one of the guys to give me a sleeping pill or something so he won't mess up my nap

Scrappy scowls at his phone, because he's pretty sure that's a lie. Parse never takes sleeping pills, except for that one time in Providence. Parse adds: Get off the phone, Scraps.

Scrappy sends him a poop emoji because after a week-plus of no coffee, he doesn't feel like being mature. Parse returns an eye-rolling one.

Scrappy texts Swoops. Punch Michaelides tonight.

Swoops soon replies Will do but only if you tell me what the hell your beef is already

He knows what he did. Scrappy replies.

Swoops sends him that nope emoji. A real answer Scraps

Scrappy rubs a thumb against the bridge of his nose. Then he goes back into his messages with Parse and screencaps the ones from this morning, and sends it to Swoops. Its to hard to explain. He knows what he did.

After a couple minutes, Swoops writes: That literally just gave me MORE questions, Scrappy

But now Parse is mad at me and said to tell you to get off your damn phone already, so okay I'll do it because if he's being this much of a cagey fucker it must be a legit problem

Sup Parson I know you're reading this over my shoulder and then the message ends in a lot of rude emojis.

Scrappy laughs for the first time in a while. Thanks.

But you really should get off your phone and rest

Scrappy eyes the screen, and then writes Give Swoops back his phone Parser.

He gets a scowling emoji in response. And then half of a garbled message as Swoops probably wrestles the phone back from Parse.

*

It takes him a few hours to connect Parse saying that he'd take a sleeping pill to get through his nap with how Parse took sleeping pills during their first game against Providence this season.

Scrappy hunts down his phone and texts Parse again: Is a guy in Providence who can go in your dreams?

Parse doesn't answer for over half an hour. Yeah

Get off the phone Scraps, I'm not gonna help you keep breaking restrictions

Scrappy calls him.

Parse doesn't answer for the first three rings. When he finally does, his voice is quiet and unimpressed. "Dude."

"Is it Tater?" Scrappy asks. They still have another game against Providence this season. Scrappy's life is going to flash before his eyes if the answer is yes.

Parse barks out a laugh and then immediately stifles it. Scrappy can hear the noise of guys talking to each other fading in the background as Parse moves somewhere quieter. "No, man. How many years has he been there? You'd know, yeah?"

Not if he and Parse fell asleep at different times, or if they had different sleep cycles while they were in Providence. If Tater went into Parse's dreams when Scrappy was still awake or already inside one of his own dreams, he wouldn't feel it. "It's not him?"

"That'd be somethin'," Parse murmurs.

. . . Scrappy is really, really glad he doesn't live in a world where Tater and Parse can access each other's dreams. That would be an actual living nightmare. They'd kill each other.

"Okay," he says, relieved. Parse makes another quiet, amused noise. "Who is it?"

"Just one of their new guys," Parse answers, after a moment. "It's fine, Scraps. It was just a precaution."

Scrappy frowns at his phone.

Parse has never taken that precaution against any other guy who's gone into his dreams before. No matter what they do. Not even in the last couple years, when Parse has gotten a lot harsher about reacting to people who've come in. "Who is it?"

"I gotta go," Parse says. "Gotta cut my sticks. Stay off your phone already, Scraps. Or I'll rat you out to the doctor."

"You won't," Scrappy says.

"Sounds like a challenge," Parse replies. Scrappy can hear the smartass smirk in his voice.

"You suck," he mutters. Parse just tells him he'll talk to him when he's better and hangs up.

*

His concussion and his shoulder heal. Parse tells him to get cleared by his own personal doctor as well as by the Aces' doctor, which Scrappy puts aside as Parse's usual level of distrust of the business side of hockey.

But then Swoops suggests the same thing. So Scrappy does it. His own doctor clears him too, but gives him a longer list of follow-up restrictions and guidelines than the Aces' doctor did.

Parse makes that 'I told you so' face he does when he's trying to pretend he's not making an 'I told you so' face. Swoops claps Scrappy on his good shoulder and tells him they missed him.

*

They go on another west coast roadie after Christmas break. They lose in Anaheim and win in Los Angeles and San Jose before flying into Seattle.

Scrappy went shopping with Parse and Swoops during their free afternoon in Los Angeles, even though Swoops always gives them the gears for going to the fancy pet boutique. But Scrappy's dog loves the treats they sell there, and he's not going to stop getting them for her just because Swoops chirps him about it.

Parse has already built Purrs one of those cat tunnel things that runs all along the walls of his condo, so he's past giving a damn what anybody says about him as a pet owner. Swoops just seems to take it as a challenge.


That night in Seattle, Scrappy's dozing off while listening to a Ukrainian podcast when he feels someone actively push into Parse's dream.

It startles him into waking up, which is the opposite of what he needs. It takes Scrappy over ten minutes to finally fall asleep so he can chase the person down.

Parse is dreaming about the fancy hotel, which is bad enough: that place is huge. But Scrappy enters the dream in the side-entrance alley, where the loading docks are. So he has to cut through those and then go up the back elevator before he can even really get inside the building to start looking.

The back elevator goes directly from the loading dock to an office on the top floor. The only way to get from that room into the hotel proper is to walk down two flights of fire stairs. Scrappy's not sure what kind of subconscious symbolism that is, but the route never changes.

The good part of the fancy hotel is that even though it's huge, there's only a few places in it that are dream-real. The fire stairs let Scrappy out across from the supermarket that's inside the hotel. That space doesn't have the solidity that means an active dreamer is inside, so Scrappy ignores it and starts across the long, narrow walkway.

The walkway leads to the café area on the opposite side, where people in suits and pretty dresses are all eating silently. They're all dream figments; Scrappy recognizes most of them at this point. It's always the same faces, although over the years one or two have disappeared from their tables and been replaced by new people. Scrappy's never met any of them in the awake world.

He takes the long way around the café, avoiding the table with four people whose faces Scrappy can never make out.

It's an older man and woman, sitting with two teenagers. Scrappy can see that much about them, but any time he tries to look at their faces, they're never quite right. It's like trying to make out the face of somebody in a movie's background when the camera's focused on people in the front and everyone behind them is blurry.

Scrappy figures they're a family, maybe. Parse obviously doesn't want them to be recognizable, so Scrappy hasn't asked him who they are. He mostly just stays away from that table.

He takes the escalators down to the ground floor, but the lobby's empty too. There's dream people sitting at the tables and on the couches, talking to each other or reading newspapers, but he doesn't feel Parse or the other person among them.

So Scrappy sits down in one of the always-empty tables by the picture windows, and really concentrates on the dream.

. . . He's the only active dreamer in the lobby. The other two are several floors up, where the hotel rooms are.

One of the other dreamers has to be Parse. He has no idea who the third person is, but they're in the same place as Parse.

Scrappy pushes up from the table and heads over to the elevator bank with an uneasy feeling.

The only dream-real place up in the hotel rooms is one giant suite. Scrappy's only been in it once, when Parse was showing him around the dream the first time. It's the only private space in the hotel.

Everywhere else has people in it. The elevator bank; the lobby; the café; the supermarket. There's one woman who always enters the fire escape stairs several flights down as soon as they step into them. There's always an older man in the back elevator, who pushes the buttons; and the elevator's glass, looking out onto the back alley. There's always the same three teenagers smoking around a garbage bin in the shade on the opposite side of the alley from the loading dock. The giant suite is the only place that no dream-people go into.

Parse has a habit of killing people who come into his dreams to mess with him.

There hasn't been many over the years. That guy in St. Louis was never called up again to play against the Aces. There was a guy in Houston who showed up one time while Parse was dreaming about the sci-fi city: he kept doing something with TV screens that Scrappy never figured out, because Parse deliberately twisted the dream to keep Scrappy from understanding what the screens were showing. But after Parse shoved that guy into the gorge, he never tried messing with Parse's dreams again.

The worst is the guy in Winnipeg, who keeps on coming into Parse's dreams no matter what Parse does to him or how many times Scrappy punches him on the ice in the awake world.

It's becoming a real problem. The refs have started calling penalties on Scrappy if he so much as looks at Michaelides funny when they're both on the ice; and the Aces' beat reporters keep trying to get him to talk about the reason for his grudge with the guy. They don't like it when all Scrappy says is, "He knows what he keeps doing."

Once, in a dream about that large open area with the town at the top of that small mountain, Scrappy watched Parse push the guy out of a boat and into the middle of the lake while Michaelides's hands and feet were chained up. Parse folded his arms on the edge of the boat and just watched as he sunk under the water. And the next time they played Winnipeg, Michaelides showed up again.

That dream really freaked Scrappy out. He was stuck watching on the shore--he didn't manage to get to the boat before Parse already had the guy on it and was rowing it out into the middle of the lake--and it really, really freaked him out to watch Parse do that. It was so . . . slow. Deliberate. The guy had to know what was coming.

Michaelides chose to come into Parse's dream, and then he stayed there and made one of the dirt hills collapse so that Parse fell to the bottom and broke his leg. But still.

Scrappy knows that Parse has a right to defend himself if people come into his dreams and try to hurt him or mess with his head. But Parse's idea of 'defense' takes no prisoners. Scrappy doesn't know why Parse is so much meaner in his dreams, but it freaks him out.

Parse wouldn't bring the boat back until Scrappy quit yelling and instead pulled off his shoes and started swimming out to it. Then Parse finally quit staring into the water where Michaelides had sunk and started rowing back to the shore.

He wouldn't talk to Scrappy, or let Scrappy try to fix his broken leg. Not that Scrappy could've done anything. The edges of the bone had ripped through his flesh, and Parse's jeans were soaked with blood and mud. If it had been a real wound, Parse would've been in the hospital with shock and blood loss and infections and sepsis. The break was bad enough that he would've lost a year or more of his career on healing and rehabilitation. And that didn't get into how much pain Parse must've been in as he crawled out of the dirtslide, before he saw Scrappy running up the road and realized that he was dreaming and he didn't have to hurt. It was a fucked up thing that the Winnipeg guy did.

But still. It was a fucked up thing that Parse did, too.

Parse made himself wake up from the dream to avoid talking to Scrappy. He wouldn't answer Scrappy's texts that night, or talk to him at breakfast the next morning until after Swoops sat down at their table, since Swoops doesn't know about the whole dreams thing.

Parse never did anything that bad again. At least, not in front of him. But Scrappy still tries to get to anybody who goes into Parse's dreams before Parse can, just in case.

It's better for everybody that way. Scrappy doesn't like to think about what it might be doing to Parse's head to keep killing people who try to hurt him. It's all just dreams, but it's still not a good way to think.

Scrappy bounces agitatedly on his feet as he waits for one of the elevators to crawl down to the lobby. He can't take the escalator up--the escalators only connect to the floor where the café and the supermarket are. The only way to get to the hotel rooms is the front elevators. Even if Scrappy went back to the fire stairs, those only connect to the office on the top level. The woman who stands in the stairwell keeps anybody from going further down, which is the direction of the hotel rooms if you're inside the fire stairs, even though they're obviously up if you're standing in the hotel atrium and looking up at them.

The architecture in the hotel is consistent, but it functions on dream logic. The place is a multi-tier maze: you can only get from one dream-real section to another if you know how it connects to the other pieces. Scrappy can only do it because Parse walked him through all the connections.

Scrappy tries not to analyze other people's dreams. They know their own lives better than him; he's just showing up while their subconscious uses their dreams to sort out their feelings and problems. A lot of the time, the things he sees people do in dreams don't mean what they look like on the surface.

But Parse's dreams have gotten a lot more stressful over the last year. It's gotten to the point that Scrappy's started asking Parse to check in with the team psychologist beyond their mandated annual visit.

It's not healthy for Parse to do the kind of high-adrenaline, high-stress work they do every season, and then to deal with even more stress every time he falls asleep. Parse's subconscious is obviously struggling with something that's been messing him up since last year. Scrappy's kind of worried that if Parse doesn't deal with it, the stress is going to screw up his heart by the time he's thirty.

Sometimes Parse says he'll talk to Dr. Brierley soon, or that he already did recently. Scrappy's not a hundred percent sure if Parse is telling him the truth, but he hopes he is.

The elevator finally arrives. Scrappy goes inside and hits all the floors' buttons.

He doesn't know what floor the giant suite is on. The elevator buttons don't have numbers. Parse's dreams don't have coherent writing in them, or moving images. Still pictures show up half the time, so Scrappy can usually open a menu and guess what the blurry smears of text say based on the pictures around them. But actually looking at the screen in the underground movie theater is pointless. It's just blurs of black and white and color.

Scrappy's never asked Parse about it. He's seen similar things in other dreams. Some dreamers just can't create detail at the level of books or movies.

Parse is a strong enough dreamer that Scrappy was kind of surprised he didn't dream with that level of detail. But Parse seems to use up all of his focus on architecture, so it makes sense.

The elevator's as slow as Scrappy remembers, especially when it's stopping at each floor. The second active dreamer is still here in the dream, which might be good. But he still just wants to find them already. Just in case.

About half the buttons are dark when the elevator opens onto a floor that feels solid in a way the rest didn't. Scrappy leaves and heads in the direction that the solidity increases.

He finds the alcove that opens out in a way that doesn't fit the rectangular shape of the hotel. There's only two doors in it, on opposite sides, but they both lead into the giant suite. It stretches across this whole space.

Scrappy goes through the closest door into the big living area. All the other rooms--the kitchen, the two bedrooms, the bathroom--connect to this one, and all the doors are open. Somebody's talking softly over to the left.

Scrappy heads toward the sound, feeling kind of weird about being in this part of the hotel for the first time in years. Maybe he's being paranoid, and this is just somebody who lives in Seattle or who's visiting, who accidentally got pulled into Parse's dream.

That happens once a month or so. It's kind of inevitable: Parse spends over half the year traveling to major cities to play hockey. When he's around so many people, it raises his chances of ending up in the vicinity of somebody who's able to go into dreams. And if the person's good at it, they usually end up getting pulled into Parse's.

Most of them usually figure out they're in someone else's dream pretty fast, and leave. Most people are good people.

Parse usually just avoids people who've been pulled into his dreams but are trying to get out. Sometimes people are rude and stay and wander around, but as long as they don't go looking for Parse, he leaves them alone.

Sometimes kids end up in one of his dreams, and sometimes they get scared since it's such a weird, abnormal feeling. Parse usually tries to wake up if he feels them starting to freak out.

Maybe he wasn't able to this time. Parse usually avoids harmless people who come into his dreams, but maybe this was a kid who got really upset or who's too little to know how to find a dream's exit. Maybe that's why Parse is talking to the other active dreamer.

Maybe Scrappy's worried for nothing. They've got their last regular season game against Winnipeg coming up next week. It's making him paranoid about--

Uh.

That's, uh. Parse. Scrappy can see him through the open door to the far bedroom. He's sitting on the side of the bed with somebody kneeling on the floor between his legs.

With a naked guy kneeling between his legs.

Parse is still talking quietly to the guy. He's half-smiling, and he's got a hand cupped around the back of the guy's neck, and the guy's got a hand between his own legs.

Scrappy's watched porn and had blowjobs before. He knows what he's seeing. Parse is letting a guy suck his dick, and the guy's into it enough that he's jerking off as he does it.

That guy looks like....

Scrappy can only see the back of his head, but he's pretty sure he knows him. He plays for Seattle. Scrappy always ends up fighting him a couple times every year for hitting his teammates too rough.

It's uh, it's definitely probably him. Who's sucking Parse off.

He should. Leave?

It can't be him. Doesn't he have a girlfriend? But it sure looks like--

"Hey," Parse says. Scrappy jerks his head up.

Parse's smile is gone and his expression is flat as he stares at Scrappy. "How 'bout you get out."

The Schooners' guy jolts, and pulls off Parse's dick and starts to turn around. Parse gets a fistful of his hair and pushes his face against his thigh.

Yeah, it's definitely Ronny. Even with Parse hiding his face, Scrappy recognizes him.

"Now," Parse says, harder.

Scrappy goes.

As he's striding toward the door, he hears Ronny say, "What the fuck! Who--"

"Doesn't matter," Parse says. "I'm just dreamin'. You're not here."

There is very obviously a second active dreamer in the same room as Parse. But even if Scrappy's not smart-smart, he's smart enough to take a hint.

He spends a couple incredibly awkward minutes waiting at the elevator bank.

When one finally arrives, Scrappy goes down to the lobby and makes a beeline for the front doors. He dodges a guy unloading bags from an SUV onto a cart, and heads for the edge of the dream and gets out.

Scrappy wakes up and stares at the dark ceiling of his hotel room, feeling really confused.


Nothing's any clearer by the time he gives up on trying to get any more sleep. Scrappy gets up and makes a cup of bad coffee in the in-room pot, and turns the TV on low. He scrolls through the TV guide screen without really paying attention to it.

Is Ronny gay? Scrappy knows he has a girlfriend--they go to the same conditioning camp in the summer. Melissa was in a bunch of the fishing pictures Ronny showed Scrappy the day they got lunch together.

...Is Parse gay? He always ends up with women around him at parties or clubs. ...But he never dates any of them seriously.

Maybe it's only gay to suck another guy off, but not to let a guy do it to you? Maybe it's another North American double standard. Except Scrappy's been living on this continent for over a third of his life now, and he's gotten used to the cultural differences. He's pretty sure being on either side of a blowjob with another guy in North America is still kind of gay.

He can't really picture either Ronny or Parse being gay, though. Scrappy knows there's gay guys out there, but they're the kind of guys who work in movies or musical theater or stuff like that. They don't play hockey.

. . . No, wait. There's those two women on the Canadian and U.S. women's teams who have kids together. But they're women, so that's different. Is that different? They're still hockey players.

And isn't one of the NWHL players one of those women who's actually a man? But he still plays on the women's team because of something about...doping rules? Scrappy wasn't really listening to Carly and Swoops when they talked about it while some of the guys watched the NWHL All-Stars game on Parse's laptop during a flight.

But that's not the same as being gay, right? Carly said something about Browne being extra-gay for acting like a man, and Swoops told Carly he was acting as dumb as Peter from Family Guy and to quit calling Browne 'her.'

Shit. This is confusing.

Scrappy drains his coffee and makes another cup. And then he turns off the TV and gets his tablet out of his suitcase, and re-watches Seattle's last couple games until it's time for breakfast.

Parse and Ronny and what's gay and who might be is confusing, but hockey makes sense.


Parse aggressively watches tape of the Schooners on his laptop at breakfast and barely talks to Scrappy or Swoops.


They lose to the Schooners, and Scrappy knows a lot of it is his fault. He runs out of gas early: he's exhausted from a lack of sleep, and he was already sore from playing back-to-back games against San Jose and Seattle. Almost all the passes between him and Parse get screwed up, and Swoops keeps getting stuck falling back with the defensemen to try and recover the puck after each mistake.

The Aces' coach finally sticks him at the end of the bench, which is humiliating even if it's what his level of play tonight deserves. Another winger goes out with Parse and Swoops' line while Scrappy sits for the rest of the game.

It's not enough to salvage things. They're lucky they only lost by one goal. It would've been a lot worse if their goalie hadn't stood on his head to keep the Schooners' pucks out of their net.

The goalie won't even talk to anybody after the game, which is worse than if Boxy cussed them out. He just rejects all his interview requests and stalks off for the showers.

Scrappy gets trapped with an interview and has to talk about his poor game and what went wrong out there.

At least it's only to Las Vegas's newspaper reporters. Swoops has to do the same thing, but with the television reporters. Parse skips out on the postgame and follows after their goalie to deal with him.


Parse sits with the goalie on the bus. Swoops takes the seat across the aisle from Scrappy like usual, but he just slumps into it and doesn't talk as they ride to the airport. It always sucks to end a roadie on a loss.

It always sucks to lose, period. Especially when so much of the loss is his fault.


The flight back to Las Vegas only takes a couple hours, but Scrappy falls asleep on the plane anyway.

He's not surprised when he drifts out of a dream of fishing on the lake near his grandparents' house and feels Parse's dream almost physically wrench him toward it.

Scrappy doesn't fight it. He ends up in the Aces' arena, standing in the hall leading out to the ice.

He goes out and finds Parse sitting at the Aces' bench, taping his sticks. Parse looks over when Scrappy pulls open the gate to step inside.

"You're dreaming," Scrappy tells him, because the dream feels half-lucid: like Parse knows he wants something to happen, but he isn't fully aware yet that he's in a dream.

Parse frowns faintly and starts to ask him something, but then the dream shifts to full lucidity. Parse shuts his mouth and tightens his jaw, and looks back down at his stick.

"Say whatcha wanna say," Parse orders flatly. "I don't need more games gettin' fucked up over this shit."

Scrappy sits down slowly on the bench, a good distance away.

"...I wasn't trying to be a creep," he finally says, when Parse doesn't say anything else and keeps not looking at him.

Parse has been avoiding him as much as he possibly can since last night. Or at least as much as he can without messing up other guys' superstitions, or being so obvious that Swoops notices. It's sucked.

"I felt him go in," Scrappy explains. "I thought it might be somebody trying to mess with you, so. I was trying to find him."

Scrappy's pretty sure he'll do that again in the future, because he doesn't want to let other people with bad intentions go into Parse's dreams. He really doesn't want Parse to keep dreaming about killing people who attack him. It's not good for him.

But Parse is clearly angry at him, and Scrappy can't blame him. It was rude. He should have left. "Sorry."

"'Sorry'?" Parse repeats. He gives Scrappy a long, disbelieving look. ". . . Scrappy. I'm gay."

...That answers one question Scrappy had this morning. Okay. Weird. "Okay."

"Dude," Parse says. But then he just pinches the bridge of his nose and mutters, "...Jesus."

Scrappy rubs his arm. Eventually, he says, "...You know Ronny's got a girlfriend?"

"He's had three since we've been fucking," Parse replies. "Ain't stopped him yet."

Scrappy shifts uncomfortably on the bench. "Parser. . . ."

He didn't want to let Ronny get away with making Parse think they were...dating? Or, exclusive?

But, if Parse knows Ronny is dating someone else and he's still sleeping with him, that's.... He thought Parse was better than that.

Parse exhales through his teeth and finishes taping his stick. "...If he gets married, I'll start kickin' him out," he mutters. "I don't need that drama."

Scrappy rubs his arm again. Then he makes himself a tracksuit jacket to go over his t-shirt. Parse pauses briefly, but then he just cuts the tape and puts his stick aside before reaching for another one.

". . . Seriously. That's all you got t' say?" Parse demands after a couple minutes.

He hates it when Parse gets like this. Scrappy always feels like there's a right answer Parse expects from him; but he's too slow to pick it up, and then Parse just gets angrier. Scrappy doesn't know what he's supposed to be saying.

So he goes with the truth, like usual.

"It's weird," he says. "I mean, I know there's gay guys. But they, like...wear glitter and talk funny and march in parades and stuff, right?"

Parse snorts under his breath.

"But you and Ronny aren't like that," Scrappy says. "So it's kind of weird."

He rubs the back of his neck. "But I was thinking about it. Those ladies from Team USA and Team Canada have a couple kids. Right? But they're still hockey players. They're just gay too."

Parse is staring at his stick with a lot more intensity than taping requires.

Scrappy shrugs. "So I figured...okay. You're just gay differently. Because you're a hockey player. I guess?" He folds his hands between his thighs. "I don't know what you want me to say, Parser."

"I don't. . . ." Parse rests his half-taped stick against the bench railing. "Fuck. I dunno. I didn't have time to think with Swoops, I dunno what I was expectin'. I guess...just....

". . . Thanks," Parse says, staring down at his roll of tape as he turns it over in his hands. "I guess. For being cool."

"...Swoops knows?"

Parse nods shortly. "Yeah."

Scrappy looks down at the floor of the bench.

"Long story," Parse says eventually, into the silence.

Scrappy grips his elbows and makes himself ask, even though saying it kind of hurts. ". . . What'd I do wrong?"

Parse blinks and looks over at him. "Huh?"

Scrappy shrugs his shoulders jerkily. "I...what'd I do wrong? To make you not trust me."

"What? I don't...." Parse keeps looking at him. Scrappy can't make himself look up from the floor.

He thought they were friends. But....

"Dude," Parse says eventually. His voice is softer.

He puts a hand on Scrappy's shoulder. Scrappy manages not to flinch. "Scraps. Dude. I trust you. For sure, man. I trust you."

"But you didn't--" He swallows. "You told Swoops."

Swoops usually gets after the guys if they start making too many gay jokes when the coaches aren't around. Scrappy just tries to tune that stuff out--he doesn't want to make enemies in the locker room, because then those guys will give him endless crap any time he says an English word wrong or doesn't get a joke.

He's not an alternate captain, like Swoops. Nobody's really going to listen to him. Staying out of those things always worked for him in the past.

He took the easy way out, probably. He doesn't get to be upset that Parse trusts Swoops more.

"I didn't exactly 'tell' him," Parse says. "It wasn't--I didn't mean anythin' personal, Scraps. I just...I don't wanna talk about this. I don't wanna 'come out' or whatever."

Parse pulls his hand back and drags it over his cowlick, smashing it down. "I don't wanna be 'that gay player,' y'know? I wanna fuckin' be Kent Parson, Aces' captain. Not the NHL's token fag."

"Hey," Scrappy says reflexively, because even when the coaches aren't around everybody knows better than to talk like that. "Don't talk like that."

"It's better than what everybody else'll say when they find out," Parse replies.

"I don't give a fuck what assholes are gonna say. You're better than that," Scrappy scowls.

Parse huffs out a breath, but then thumps him on the shoulder. "Alright, yeah."

Scrappy lets out a slow breath. "Just.... Don't talk about yourself like that, Parser. That's crap."

Parse thumps him on the shoulder again before dropping his hand. A few seconds later, he starts fidgeting with the roll of tape again.

"...Okay," Parse says at last. "Sorry for being weird today."

"Yeah," Scrappy says. "Me too."

Parse nods.

They sit for a while.

Scrappy's trying to figure out if there's something else he should say when Parse lifts the corner of his mouth, and then starts laughing silently. Scrappy looks over.

"Nah, just--" Parse shakes his head. "Fuck, alright. Y'know how Swoops just--friggin' walks into everywhere all the time like it's his? Especially our hotel rooms?"

"Yeah," Scrappy agrees. He's tried to make his peace with it.

"Okay. So we were in...shit. Toronto? New York? One'a them," Parse says. "On a free afternoon. I met this guy, an' we hit it off, and--so I brought him back to my room.

"Which was fuckin' stupid, I know," Parse says, even though Scrappy wasn't going to say anything. "But he was hot, and he didn't know anything 'bout hockey or me, and he was travelin' there so he wouldn't be around, and I hadn't gotten laid since summer, so. Anyway.

"We were, you know, gettin' into it. And then Jeff Jackass Troy walks through the fuckin' connecting door because I forgot to lock it because who fucking does that, and then he turns around and walks back out and starts crackin' up like a goddamn hyena in the other room," Parse says, exasperated.

"So the guy runs off, I'm sittin' here with blue balls, Swoops sounds like he's about to choke to death laughin' and it'd fuckin' serve him right," Parse continues, still scowling theatrically. "So, cool. Cool afternoon I'm havin'!

He huffs. "So it's like, alright. I'm gonna go jerk off, and then maybe I'm gonna go murder him. I dunno. I'll see how I feel after."

Scrappy's trying really hard not to laugh, but it's pretty hard at this point.

"Yeah," Parse agrees. "So so far I'm two for two on comin' out when my goddamn lineys walk in on me havin' sex. Fuckin' hope to god that doesn't carry over to the power play unit, y'know?"

Scrappy braces an arm on the railing and rests his head on it, laughing.

Parse shakes his head with a sigh.

"So, yeah," he says. "You were less awkward about it, I guess. Swoops set the bar pretty damn low. All I got outta him for half an hour was 'Your face!'"

"Jeez," Scrappy manages.

"Yep," Parse agrees.

*

They go home to Las Vegas and play two games there before flying out to Winnipeg.

Scrappy spends the flight agitated and trying to hide it. He hates flying into Winnipeg the day before--it gives Michaelides both that night and tomorrow's nap to mess with Parse. Parse spends the flight watching that house renovation show he always turns to when he wants something distracting that he doesn't have to think about.

Swoops barrels his way into Scrappy's hotel room when they land in the early evening, and decides that they're both going to get room service and stay in instead of going out to the team dinner.

Scrappy's not sure how he ends up agreeing, because room service food is the worst and Winnipeg has a good steak place a few blocks from the hotel. But that happens sometimes with Swoops.

Scrappy puts in their order out of a long habit of forcing himself to speak English to strangers so he'll keep getting better at it. Swoops stretches out on his belly on the other bed and flips through channels on the TV.

Once Scrappy's hung up, Swoops puts the remote down and looks over at him.

"What's the deal with Mikey, eh?" he asks. "I know it's something, because Parse pretended that text you sent me was you 'misinterpreting,' and that didn't even make sense. He couldn't even lie decent to me."

Scrappy exhales through his teeth. ...He probably should have seen this coming.

Swoops just keeps looking at him, obviously waiting for an answer.

"It's not...." Scrappy rearranges the pillows and leans back, staring at the TV. Swoops left it on an infomercial channel. "It's just a thing he does."

"Excellent non-answer, would be ten out of ten if this were a media interview," Swoops says dryly. "What's the deal? Why did Parse say he'd take a sleeping pill? Is Mikey breaking into his hotel room? That's not a 'punch in a game' thing, that's a 'call the police' deal."

Scrappy shakes his head. "Not that. Not...."

Swoops props his chin on his fist and raises an eyebrow, waiting.

Scrappy sighs. "You won't believe me."

"Pretty much anything's going to sound more realistic than Mikey breaking into Parse's room during his nap, Scrappy," Swoops says. "Try me."

"Not the room," Scrappy says. "The dreams. He goes into Parse's dreams, and messes him up." He breathes out through his teeth. "He's done it years, now. I can't make him stop.

"Uh, I can go into dreams too," Scrappy adds. "I'm sick of him messing with Parse. I can't make him stop."

Swoops stares at him silently for a long time.

"...Ooookay," he says at last. "You doubled down on my absurd idea pretty hard. Touché."

"I said you won't believe me," Scrappy tells him.

He's not surprised. He's used to how this goes, whenever he talks about what he can do to somebody who can't go into dreams.

"Yeah, 'cause you just said so much whack shit there, Scrappy," Swoops says, half-smiling. "What the hell, man. What's Mikey doing that's so bad both of you won't talk about it?"

Swoops is half-smiling, but it doesn't look real.

Scrappy thinks about how bad he felt several days ago, when he thought that Parse didn't tell him about being gay because Parse didn't trust him.

"I'm not lying, Jeff," Scrappy says. He sits up on the bed and holds out his hand, because the handshake code will show he's serious. "I promise. That's why I don't like him. That's what he does to Parse."

Swoops keeps eying him.

". . . You get why this sounds like bullshit to me though, right?" he asks, even as he slowly rolls onto his side to sit up.

"No," Scrappy answers honestly. "I can go into dreams since I'm a kid. But, I know most people can't. But it's still weird."

Swoops eyes him for another long moment. And then he exhales slowly, and shakes Scrappy's hand.

Swoops shakes his head too as he does. "This sounds fucking ridiculous, Scraps. Like--I'm not calling you a liar, but this is a weird prank for sure."

Scrappy just shrugs.

"--Tell you what," Swoops says. "Prove it, yeah? Tell me a dream I've had."

"Okay," Scrappy agrees. That's usually what people say next, whether they believe him or don't. "I don't know past ones. But I can go into one you will have." He adds, "It can take a couple days for me to get in."

Swoops raises a suspicious eyebrow. Scrappy's spared from trying to explain sleep cycles and dream pattern length in English when room service knocks on the door.


When Scrappy falls asleep that night, he works to stay in the hazy space where other people's dreams are accessible.

It's hard. He has to actively drift inside the transitory space, not stepping into other people's dreams and not letting himself sink too deep and get locked into one of his own, either. It's not a space people are supposed to stay in very long. Or at least it doesn't feel like it. It's a space you're just supposed to move through.

Most people never even notice it, because they only move into their own dreams. Some people like Scrappy feel it for some reason, so they can use it to move in multiple directions toward other dreams, instead of just in a straight line toward their own. Like...like most people are on a train that takes them into their dreams, and he's walking on the tracks and he can switch which rail he follows to go to different places.

Something like that. Metaphors never really work. That's why Scrappy stopped trying to explain this to people who didn't already understand a long time ago. It's easier that way.

Eventually, he feels Parse start dreaming. Scrappy carefully moves closer even as he fights the pull of Parse's dream, and keeps waiting.

Soon enough, he feels someone else moving toward Parse's dream. Scrappy quits resisting and steps inside it himself.

He gets there a little bit before Michaelides. Scrappy has enough time to get his bearings before the other man slips into Parse's dream.

Parse is dreaming about the dark town again. Scrappy's standing by the pale wooden fence that blocks off the backyard of the small white house. Parse is a pretty good distance away--it feels like he's somewhere up the white gravel road that leads into the trees. Michaelides arrives in the dream, just around the corner of the same fence Scrappy's standing next to.

He barrels around the corner and grabs the front of Michaelides's shirt before the other man can get his bearings, and slams him up against the fence. "Get the fuck out, cockstain!!"

Scrappy tries to leave his role on the ice. The stuff he does to protect his teammates and make space for his lineys is okay there, but there's no place for it in his life after he leaves the rink.

He puts himself in the right headspace for it before games. And when a game is over, he gets out of his gear, and showers, and puts on his suit, and he's gotten out of that mindset by the time he leaves the dressing room.

Sometimes it's harder after a loss. But Scrappy always makes himself do it before he leaves the building at the very least. Even if sometimes that means he ends up hanging behind in the exercise room until all the other guys are finished cooling down, and the only people left are the equipment guys packing up their stuff. He'll do what he has to to protect his lineys and his teammates; but if he takes that attitude out of the arena, then he's just another guy who likes being cruel.

Scrappy tries to leave his role on the ice.

But this motherfucker.

Michaelides won't fucking leave Parse alone. He's been pulling this shit for years, almost every time they play Winnipeg. The last time he fucked with Parse's head, Scrappy was stuck back home injured. He has no idea what this motherfucker did, but he's sure it was bad, and Scrappy can't make him stop.

He's fucking sick of it.

Scrappy's supposed to be the guy who looks out for his teammates, who has their back. Who they can count on.

Every time Michaelides comes into Parse's dreams and fucks him up, it makes Scrappy a failure because he didn't do his job. He's fucking done with this shit.

Michaelides cusses him out. Scrappy slams him against the fence again, making the wood creak. "Fucking get out!!"

There's no gate in the fence, so Scrappy makes one.

He kicks it open and shoves Michaelides through it, and then grabs the back of his shirt before the other man can get away. Michaelides socks him, but they're not on the ice and Scrappy's got way better footing here and also there's no officials to stop him.

Scrappy hits him a couple times in the face and once in the throat. Michaelides sinks to a knee, gagging.

Scrappy's never been inside this yard before. There's not much here: some plastic chairs and a small grill sitting on the square concrete patio, a clothesline, a big storage freezer, an empty inflated kiddie pool. The ground is more dirt than grass.

Scrappy hesitates for a second. He's never been inside any of the yards or houses in this town, except the house with the streetlight. It feels weird, like he's intruding.

Michaelides slugs him in the side, going for his kidney. Scrappy punches him again in the face, deliberately breaking Michaelides' nose to slow him down. Then he reshapes the fridge to make it unplugged, empty, and not cold.

He was distantly aware that the dream was getting lucid when he put a gate in the fence, but now it sharpens violently into full lucidity.

Scrappy stumbles hard, nearly tripping face-first onto the concrete patio. Michaelides swears more, sounding panicked, and scrabbles at the ground. Scrappy wrenches him forward.

And then Parse reacts to someone else manipulating his dream.

The already-dark town goes pitch black. It turns into the absence of color, as Parse rips everything away from the two of them and seizes full control over his dream again. The ground disappears.

Scrappy chokes out a curse as he tries to find a handhold in the void.

There is none. There's nothing in here but rage, so ugly and hot that Scrappy feels like he's choking on it. Parse is sick of people invading his dreams, he hates his inability to protect himself from them, he refuses to let them think they have any kind of power over him, so he destroys every threat immediately.

Scrappy's never reshaped anything in Parse's dreams when Parse couldn't see him doing it. Parse doesn't know who's here--he probably assumes it's Michaelides. So he's just going to scorch the earth again to get rid of them.

Scrappy hangs on tight to his fistful of Michaelides's shirt while Michaelides grips his arm hard. He flails again at the nothingness and yells, "Parser!"

For two heartbeats, nothing changes.

Scrappy keeps falling into nothing. He hangs on to a guy he hates inside the void, because that's all that's left.

And then there's ground under his feet again.

Scrappy collapses to his hands and knees on the concrete patio. Michaelides is sprawled on his back next to him, gasping for air.

Scrappy swipes a hand over his face, and then shoves up onto his feet. He grabs Michaelides's shirt and starts hauling him toward the freezer.

Michaelides fights back. But he's slowed down from his broken nose, and from Parse ripping the dream-world away from them. Scrappy's not sure if Parse intentionally made it feel worse for Michaelides because he recognized him, or if he's making the gut-curdling memory of it less bad for Scrappy now that he recognizes him. But Michaelides can't recover before Scrappy does.

Scrappy shoves him into the storage freezer and sits on the lid.

Michaelides kicks it hard. But between the seal and Scrappy's weight, it stays shut.

Scrappy bangs hard on the lid with the side of his fist. And then he braces his hands on his thighs and tries to slow down his breathing. He forgot how terrifying it feels for Parse to turn a dream into nothing around him. Fuck.

Michaelides kicks the freezer lid again. Scrappy clenches his hands around his thighs and snarls "Fuck you!" at it.

"Jesus Christ," Parse says, coming warily through the new gate in the fence. "Scraps, what the fuck."

"I'm sick of this fucker pulling this shit!" Scrappy tells him. He bangs a fist on the freezer lid again. "Fuck him!"

"Scrappy," Parse says. He's using his captain voice now, the one he does on the ice when the refs haven't assigned a penalty yet and he's trying to talk Scrappy down before he yells at one of them and they change their minds. "He ain't worth this shit. Stop lettin' him under your skin."

Scrappy clenches his jaw.

Parse comes over to the freezer, and rests a hand on the lid for a second before pushing himself up to sit on it next to him. "What's the matter, man?"

"I'm sick of this," Scrappy bites out. "He keeps fucking with you and won't stop. I'm sick of it!"

"It's just a guy tryin' to get an edge," Parse says. "Quit lettin' him under your skin."

"No it's not," Scrappy says, looking over. "Everybody keeps calling you a rat more and more, Parser. Him, the shit you won't deal with, all of it, it's making you meaner.

"It's fucking up your legacy, Parser," Scrappy tells him. "I don't like it. I fucking hate watching it. But I can't even keep him from this shit. I can't make him stop. I can't make you stop."

Parse is watching him with that guarded expression again.

"That," Scrappy says, waving at Parse's face. "Why do you look at me like that now? Aren't we friends?"

He bangs his fist on the freezer lid again, even though Michaelides has gone quiet inside. "If I can at least make him stop, won't that help some?"

Parse wraps a hand around his fist. "Knock it off."

He's using his dead serious voice now. The 'I'm the captain and don't fucking backtalk me again' one.

Scrappy pulls his hand away. But he clenches his jaw and grips his hands together, shoving them between his knees.

"Scraps," Parse says. "Nobody's making me 'meaner.' It's just...."

He trails off. There's no believable end to that sentence.

Scrappy says, "You're lying to me and I hate it."

Parse clenches his hand into a fist.

Then he forces it open again. He rubs his face, exhaling through his teeth.

Parse pushes his hair back, smashing down his cowlick. "Scraps. Quit lettin' him get t' you. You're better'n this."

"So are you," Scrappy tells him. "I gotta do something."

"Jesus," Parse growls.

But then he snarls out another breath. Parse shoves off the freezer and turns around. "Get off so I c'n open it."

Scrappy slides off. Parse pulls the lid up, and for less than a second the inside is black. Pitch black.

Void.

Scrappy shudders and stumbles back, even as the inside of the fridge becomes normal. They were sitting on that. And right underneath them, that emptiness was just an inch--

Michaelides is hyperventilating as he scrabbles out of the freezer.

Scrappy grabs the back of his shirt and yanks him all the way out. Michaelides slumps forward, catching himself with his hands on his thighs. Scrappy keeps a grip on his shirt as the other man struggles to slow his breathing.

"Get out," Parse tells Michaelides. "You come in here one more fuckin' time, I'm not gonna hold back ever again. Not even if he's here," he says, jerking his head at Scrappy even as he keeps staring at Michaelides. "You really wanna do that again?"

Michaelides bares his teeth and glares up at Parse. "Fuck you."

"Get out while I still letcha," Parse says emotionlessly.

Scrappy pushes Michaelides at the gate. The other man wrenches loose. "Fuck you both."

Scrappy shoves him hard in the back, through the gate. He slams it shut behind the man.

Michaelides leaves, still snarling out curses. When Scrappy turns back to Parse, he's looking past him, along the fence. He turns his head as Michaelides stomps around the corner, gaze focused like he's tracking Michaelides's path through his dream.

Scrappy doesn't say anything to distract him. He slides his hands into his pockets and stares at the freezer.

They stay like that for a while: Parse making sure that Michaelides actually leaves, Scrappy silent and thinking.

After a while, the third active dreamer in here disappears. Parse snorts through his nose and focuses back on Scrappy. "You alri--"

"What'd you do to him last time?" Scrappy asks. "When I wasn't here."

"Doesn't matter," Parse says after a pause. "It didn't take."

"Parser--"

"He fuckin' keeps choosin' to come into my head, he can live with the consequences."

"If you become an asshole to fight the other assholes, they still win," Scrappy tells him. "If you keep...." What's the word the people reporting on the war with the pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine keep using?

"--If you keep escalating, it just...it's everybody wanting to have the last shot, and it just gets worse and worse. More people just die," he says. "Nothing ever gets better doing that, Parser."

"It's just dreams, Scraps," Parse says. "Nobody's dyin'."

"It's killing part of you," Scrappy replies. "You get meaner so people can't take advantage of you, that's killing part of you. He's still winning."

Parse's fists are clenched in his pockets. He says evenly, "So what d'you want me t' do? Just roll over an' take it, let him and all the other assholes keep fuckin' with me? I'm not you, Scrappy, I can't just walk out."

"I don't know how to make them stop," Scrappy says. "I wish I did, Parser. I hate this.

"You've been getting meaner for the last couple years," Scrappy tells him. He waves a hand in the direction where Michaelides left the dream. "All of this, the killing. Even if it's just dreams, it's not good for you. I'm worried about you, Parser. You've been unhappy for a long time."

Parse tightens his jaw and swallows hard, looking away.

Scrappy wants to say more, but he doesn't know what to say that can help. He doesn't know how to make the people who actively hurt Parse in his dreams stop.

He doesn't want Parse to be hurt, or to just let people hurt him. But he doesn't want Parse to hurt other people either.

He doesn't know how to help Parse stop being so hardened and miserable. He doesn't know what the solution to any of this is.

Parse pulls one of his hands from his pocket and rubs his eyes. He's still not looking at Scrappy.

". . . Look," he finally says. "If he leaves me alone, I'm not gonna do anything to him. Okay?"

"Yeah," Scrappy says. "But still--"

"I can't do whatcha want from me," Parse interrupts sharply. "I can't just--turn off, fuckin'--I'm so goddamn tired'a this, I just want it t' stop."

Scrappy tries to put a hand on his shoulder, but Parse pulls back, hunching his shoulders in. "Nothin's ever good enough, I'm always the one that went too far, it's always me that's wrong, I just want--fuckin'. Not this."

"What?" Scrappy asks, confused. The dream is translating everything Parse is saying to him, but Scrappy still doesn't understand enough of it. "Parser, I'm not saying any of that. I'm just worried about you."

"Can you go?" Parse says. He's glaring at the ground, fists in his pockets again. He's almost shaking with trying to sound normal. "I want one decent night's sleep in this goddamn city."

". . . Okay," Scrappy says.

He doesn't want to be one of the people who come into Parse's dreams and hurt him, either. So he goes.

*

The first time Scrappy's line faces off against Michaelides's, Michaelides settles next to him as they wait for the puck to drop and mutters, "You dumbass, that's why I don't do shit until he sees me. So he doesn't flip out and wipe everything."

Scrappy doesn't reply. He shoves Michaelides's stick behind his own and keeps his eyes on Swoops at the dot.

Michaelides jostles his stick back in front, trying to put himself back into the better position to get the puck if his own center wins the face-off. Scrappy shoves him back again, harder. The linesman with the puck turns around and tells them to knock it off.

*

In Edmonton, Scrappy spends the night playing hockey with Parse in all his dreams, because Parse really hates to lose to Connor.

Scrappy's not sure if it's a first-pick-of-the-draft rivalry, or a U.S. vs. Canada thing, or if it's because they have too much similarity in their speed-based styles. Or all of those. Parse has never gone as hard against a rookie as he keeps going against Connor. He wasn't even this bad against Nate a couple years back.

Scrappy kind of hates playing Edmonton ever since they drafted the kid last summer. He always ends up having to fight an Oiler this season when they go at Parse, because Parse gets really psychologically vicious when he's chirping Connor.

Parse eased up a little halfway through their second game against the Oilers this season, after Swoops told him he was being Freudian as fuck every time he opened his mouth around McJesus.

But still. Whenever they're up against Edmonton, Scrappy knows he's going to be sitting out five minutes minimum for fighting. And he's going to have busted knuckles by the end of the night. It is what it is.

*

After Edmonton they fly to Calgary. Scrappy dozes off in his hotel room while trying to keep his hand flat on the mattress so he won't smear the antiseptic on his knuckles all over the sheets. He wanders around the edges of the dreams of the people asleep in the hotel.

Swoops is dreaming solidly at the moment. Scrappy steps inside.

He's in an almost-full subway car. Swoops is sprawled out near the middle, taking up two seats. Scrappy goes over and shoulders him. "Move your big butt."

Swoops snorts but scoots over enough for Scrappy to sit down next to him. The people around them keep reading their books or playing with their phones or staring out the dark windows with their earbuds in.

"You're dreaming," Scrappy tells him. "I told you I could do this."

Swoops snorts again. "Still calling bullshit on that, Scrappy. Prove it."

...Huh. Maybe Swoops isn't much of a lucid dreamer?

That's kind of surprising. He's so smart, Scrappy expected him to be better at this.

But okay. There's lots of people like that out there, too. "All right," Scrappy says. "I'll tell you at breakfast."

Swoops just shakes his head. Behind them, at the end of the car, somebody starts coughing.

"I'll grant you and Parse really worked on this one," Swoops says. "I told Parse about this and he didn't even blink, just went 'Yeah, he can. You'll know when he does it, he's a lot more comfortable talking.' Excellent 'yes, and' work there."

Swoops is still smiling in the way that says he thinks Scrappy and Parse are joking and he's waiting for it to fall apart. He's definitely not much of a lucid dreamer--most of the time, if people talk about dreams a lot inside a dream, they start getting the feeling that this isn't the awake world.

Well, Scrappy tried. He shrugs and says, "You better remember this dream tomorrow, Swoops."

"Uh-huh," Swoops agrees, blatantly not believing him. Scrappy rolls his eyes and settles more comfortably in the seat, trying to ignore the person who's still coughing.

"So you and Parse are 'dreamwalkers,'" Swoops says. "How's that work?"

Huh. He really must have talked to Parse--that's Parse's word. "Naw, just me. But he's a really lucid dreamer, so he knows when I go into his dreams."

"So he can't dreamwalk?"

"Naw," Scrappy says. There was that one time Parse did it back when Scrappy had his concussion, but it's never happened again. And Parse was freaked out enough then that it clearly wasn't normal for him. "Just me."

"The thing that gets me is I cannot figure out what's the endgame of this prank," Swoops tells him. "You guys synced this up so well. What's the goal here?"

Scrappy pats him on the shoulder. "You'll get it at breakfast."

Swoops rolls his eyes. "Is Mikey in on this too? What was that sleeping pill line about? Parse wouldn't answer."

"Michaelides isn't 'in on it,'" Scrappy says. "He keeps going into Parse's dreams to mess with him. I told you."

Swoops makes a 'yeah, yeah' gesture.

"It's a lot harder to get into someone's dreams if they're drugged," Scrappy tells him. "It's really hard. That's probably why he claimed he'd do it, to make me drop it."

"Okaaaay..." Swoops says. "'Claimed'? So wait, he didn't do it?"

"I dunno," Scrappy answers, shrugging. "I don't think so. I don't think he likes them? The only time I remember him taking a sleeping pill was when we played the Falcs a couple months ago. Remember how he was kind of groggy at breakfast and after the nap?"

Swoops pauses, like he's actually thinking about it. Maybe they've finally talked about this for long enough--although the dream still doesn't feel lucid.

The person in the back hacks out a really bad cough and goes quiet again. Swoops asks, "Somebody on the Falcs can go into his dreams?"

"Yeah," Scrappy agrees. "He said it's not Tater, though."

"--Wait, so. The only time he did that was this year? Before we played the Falcs?" Swoops is frowning hard. "This season, not before?"

"Yeah. I'm pretty sure," Scrappy says. "It's really obvious if somebody's taking a sleeping pill."

"Oh god." Swoops slumps in his seat and rubs his face. The coughing starts again, muffled; Scrappy makes a face. "If it's Zimmermann, kill me fucking now. They're coming next week, just fucking end me."

Scrappy tries to remember which one of the Falcs Zimmermann was. The old rookie forward? The guy with the laser wrist shot the coaches warned them about: Jack. "They know each other?"

Swoops drops his hands and gives him a disbelieving look. "Scraps, didn't you hear any of his interviews the week-plus before our game against the Falcs?"

Scrappy shakes his head.

He doesn't pay attention to other guys' interviews in the dressing room. Before games, he's working himself into his on-ice mindset; and after games he's moving himself out of it. That takes up his focus.

Especially in games against teams like Providence. Tater is all right for a Russian, but he and Parse always get into some semi-physical argument that Scrappy has to respond to every game.

But Swoops knows all that. He sighs out a breath and tips his head against the seat.

"Parse and Zimmermann used to be . . . friends," Swoops says, making a face like he doesn't think that's the right word. "They were top prospects their year. It was a big deal, the first game against between them."

"It was?" Scrappy asks. Weird. Why didn't Parse say anything about that? He's always making grudgingly admiring comments about Connor when he watches Oilers' tape before a game. And they're definitely not friends.

Wait, the top prospects? If Jack was drafted the same year as Parse, how could this be his rookie year? Scrappy must've misunderstood.

--No, how could that have been their first game against each other if Jack isn't a rookie?

"Yeah," Swoops says, staring wearily up at the subway car's ceiling. "That's why his streak got wrecked, he just had to go see that asshole yet aga--"

The person in the back starts coughing even harder than before. Scrappy finally slings around in his seat to glare at them, because jeez. Don't go out if you're that sick.

The woman is spasming, every cough wracking through her body in a way that looks weird and puppet-like. After another cough, she stands up and starts walking toward the exit.

Toward the far one, at the opposite end of the subway car. She has to walk past everyone else to reach it.

Scrappy drags a hand over his face. "Uuugh, Swoops. This is a nightmare?"

"What?" Swoops asks, sounding kind of freaked out as he stares at the woman. Scrappy sighs and makes his peace with this dream going bad.

The woman jerks her way forward through the subway car, coughing wetly with every step. Scrappy can't help flinching away when she passes by their seats. She turns her head just enough to stare at him as she passes, before coughing directly on him and Swoops. Then she keeps going forward.

They watch her walk out of the subway car.

"Christ," Swoops mutters. "That was intention--"

Behind them, someone starts coughing.


When Scrappy heads to breakfast the next morning, Swoops is already sitting at a table with Parse, slurping down coffee. Scrappy goes to the buffet and piles up scrambled eggs and sausage and cantaloupe on his plate, and heads over.

"Bad dreams?" he asks as he sits down.

Swoops raises a challenging eyebrow. "You tell me, Scrappy. When you gonna go into my dreams, eh?"

"I did last night," Scrappy says. "I told you..." he pauses to count on his fingers, "eight times you're dreaming. We were in a subway. A woman was coughing. Because the...virus made her make us sick?"

Swoops is staring at him, coffee cup half-returned to the table.

"I told you he could do it," Parse says, eating another bite of sausage. "Stop watchin' horror movies, Swoops."

"What the fuck," Swoops says.

"I told you," Scrappy and Parse say patiently in unison.

Swoops puts down his coffee and puts his head on the table with an unintelligible noise.

Scrappy stirs an ice cube into his coffee and looks at Parse. "Is Jack the Falc who can go into your dreams?"

Parse goes still.

"Oh shit," Swoops says, jerking his head up. Parse narrows his eyes at him. "Fuck. Parse, I thought it was a dream."

"Uh," Scrappy says.

Parse pushes back from the table. "Whatever," he says, standing up. "Yeah, it's him. I'm gonna get more eggs."

Parse's plate is still half-full, but he walks back to the buffet without taking it. Scrappy looks over at Swoops. "Did I say something bad?"

Swoops grinds the heels of his palms into his eyes. "Fucking just kill me now."

That doesn't really help Scrappy understand anything. "You said they were friends."

"Were," Swoops mutters, still rubbing his face. "Just...don't ask him about it, yeah? Zimmermann's a sore spot."

. . . If Zimmermann is the only person Parse has ever taken sleeping pills against, in order to keep the guy out of his dreams, that's probably an understatement.

Scrappy nods. "Okay."

When Parse comes back, he changes the topic to how Calgary will probably play Johnny's line against their own. Scrappy and Swoops go along with it.

*

Scrappy asks Carly about Zimmermann that afternoon, while he's waiting for Carly to finish cutting his sticks so he can use the saw.

He eventually tells Carly that's enough, because it feels bad listening to how somebody screwed up their life that much. Even if Zimmermann's managed to come back from it.

Carly shakes his head as he finishes taping a stick. "Must be nice, being a legend's son," he says. "Don't have to work your way up eating pucks in the minors. Just take a little break at some liberal arts college to let the shitty PR die down, and cruise right into the league. Sweet deal."

"Yeah," Scrappy agrees, lining up his stick carefully on the saw. It's always irritating when elite guys get free passes like that.

Parse and Swoops are good guys who aren't jerks about being the best on the team. But Scrappy's played with other top-six forwards who made it clear they think he's just a sixth-round-draftee mucker: a dime-a-dozen player who was left in Juniors until he aged out and then spent years in the AHL struggling to break into the league, and that he wouldn't be stealing top-six minutes from better players if his elite-caliber lineys weren't carrying Scrappy's weight.

Vitka's kind of an asshole, even for a Russian. Scrappy doesn't know why Carly's friends with him.

He knows Vitka's a good player. And Scrappy understands and appreciates how the man contributes to the Aces' standings. But he and Vitka don't talk politics, and they don't sit near each other in the dressing room or on the plane or in the bus.

Carly and Vitka like the same movies and TV shows; maybe that's enough reason to be friends. Scrappy and Carly originally started hanging out because they both had dogs but also had apartments without much grass, so they'd take Belka and Rowdy out to a dog park once a week and let them run around.

That stopped after Carly's place got a new apartment manager, who let his dog loose while the team was on a roadie and then tried to put it on Carly for having a bigger dog than the rules allowed when Carly confronted him about it. Carly moved out and then trash-talked the manager and the complex in a television interview later, which made PR pretty mad. The corporation that owned the complex eventually reimbursed Carly all the money he was charged for breaking his lease, and made him sign some agreement not to slander them again. But none of it brought Rowdy back: he was hit by a car a few blocks away from the apartment.

Scrappy still misses him sometimes. He was a sweet dog.

Carly snorts as he eyes his taped blade. "Put up enough points, guess you get whatever you want."

"Yeah," Scrappy says again, because it's true. It's irritating when elite guys get free passes; but they get them because they're elite.

It is what it is. Scrappy works hard to be the best he can, but he'll never have Swoops's silky hands or Parse's off-the-charts hockey IQ. They were born more gifted than he was, and then they worked hard to make sure that those gifts became talent. All Scrappy's got is chemistry with them, a really good left upper-cut, and tenacity.

But those things have gotten him a lot farther than he thought they would back on draft day, when he almost thought he was going to go unpicked. It'd be nice to be an elite guy, but he's not complaining about what grinding's gotten him.

He's earned his place on the Aces' first line. If Vitka wants to take Scrappy's lineys away from him, instead of just playing with Parse on the penalty kill, then he needs to work harder.

*

For the next couple days, Swoops goes through the usual phase of people who learn that Scrappy can go into dreams: constantly asking questions.

Scrappy answers most of them pretty routinely, because they're the same things people always want to know. The only time it's weird is when Swoops is grilling him during breakfast the night after they've flown into Vancouver.

Swoops wakes up early that morning instead of arriving at team breakfast a 'fashionable' fifteen minutes late, so Scrappy already knew he was going to be answering questions. Parse was already at a table before either of them, reading the local beat reporters' breakdown of the flaws in the Canucks' last couple games, because Parse is Parse.

Swoops gets really, really pissed about Michaelides once he finds out what that guy is doing to Parse--or at least as much as Scrappy can tell him before Parse starts kicking him under the table. He's even more pissed that there isn't a good way to stop him, which Scrappy can relate to.

"Yes there is," Parse says exasperatedly. "I can just take a sleeping pill when we play Winnipeg. End of story."

"How do you know that's gonna work?" Swoops demands. "He can still get in, right?"

Parse shakes his head. "Nobody can get into your dreams if you're on sleeping pills."

Swoops makes a 'get your stories straight' face and looks at Scrappy. "I thought you said it was just hard."

"It's impossible," Parse replies before Scrappy can speak. His voice is a little flatter.

Swoops raises an eyebrow and looks back at him.

"...Uh," Scrappy says, when Parse keeps eating his eggs. "I can do it, Parser. It's really hard, but--Swoops is right, it isn't perfect. Maybe he can get in, too."

"No," Parse says, looking back at a news article on his tablet. "That's just you. Normal dreamwalkers aren't that strong."

The silence at their table is really, really awkward.

A couple more guys come in for breakfast. Parse scrolls further down the article he's reading.

"Uh," Scrappy finally says. "I'm normal?"

"Nobody else I have ever met was able to rip me into their dream from way further away than I shoulda been able to be reached," Parse says, still looking at his phone. "You keep tellin' me I'm a really strong dreamer, well. Same goes for you, Scrappy. You're terrifying."

Swoops opens his mouth, but then he doesn't say anything. He shuts his jaw a couple seconds later, and then drains the rest of his coffee.

". . . Parser," Scrappy says. "I wasn't...I said, I wasn't try to--"

"I know you weren't trying to do it," Parse says, still not looking at him. "That's the worst part."

Scrappy stares down at his plate and swallows hard.

"Don't be an asshole to him, Parse," Swoops orders.

He sets down his mug as Parse clenches his jaw. "Okay," Swoops says. "All right. I have even more questions now, quelle surprise, but I guess this isn't really the place for it," he adds, looking over at the buffet where Carly and Vitka are mock shoulder-shoving each other in front of the tray of sausages.

"Nope," Parse agrees, fake-lighthearted. He scrolls back up on his phone.

Swoops gives him an annoyed look, and then shakes his head. "All right. It can wait until we're back home tomorrow." He prods Scrappy's foot. "Okay?"

"Yeah," Scrappy agrees after a little bit. He nods. "Okay."

*

Parse comes up to him later that afternoon, while Scrappy's cutting a new stick. "Hey. Scraps. I'm sorry about this morning. I shouldn't've said that to you."

Parse and Swoops got into a visible but inaudible argument during morning skate. Scrappy's pretty sure it was about him, even if it feels kind of self-centered to think that, and that's why Parse is doing this now.

It's not like Parse is the kind of guy who never apologizes if he does something mean. But he has lots of things he doesn't like to talk about. If he's talking about that dream now, even only in reference, Scrappy's pretty sure it's because Swoops gave him a kick in the butt.

Scrappy puts down his stick and turns off the saw, and shifts to face Parse. "It was true."

Parse flinches. "Nah, man, it wasn't okay--"

"No," Scrappy says; and then he pauses to sort out the rest of what he wants to say. Parse waits, his hands pushed into his hoodie pocket.

"I thought about it," Scrappy says. "That dream. You were really scared."

Parse makes a face; but he doesn't reflexively disagree.

He squeezes Parse's shoulder. "I didn't think about it, for you. On your side. I just think: 'Huh, weird,' and how I feel when it changed," Scrappy says. "But, you got pulled into someone else's dream. Without you wanting to."

". . . Yeah," Parse says quietly. He's staring down at the floor, hands shoved deep into his hoodie.

"That's scary." Scrappy squeezes his shoulder again, more gently. "I thought about it. It scares me, too. I don't know how I did it. Can someone else do it to you?" Even saying that out loud feels like he's putting a curse on Parse. "How do I know if they do? How do I stop them?"

Parse shakes his head. "Nah, Scraps. Don't worry about that. I'm pretty sure...."

He doesn't finish. Scrappy pulls his hand away and rubs the heel of it against the bridge of his nose. "I didn't think about it then. Now, it's scary."

Parse shakes his head again. "Don't worry about it, Scraps. It's not gonna happen."

"But it can."

Parse exhales through his teeth. "Nobody's ever been able to do it to me before. I'm pretty sure you're it. And, it was probably...extenuating circumstances, or something. I told you--"

He cuts off, and then drags a hand out of his hoodie and tries to shove his cowlick underneath his hat. ". . . I told you, back then. I never let anybody into my dreams as long as you."

He remembers that. It was before Parse walked out of the dream because it was making him tell Scrappy the truth. Right before he said....

"You said it had consequences," Scrappy says. "Again."

Parse shrugs jerkily.

"Yeah. Probably," he mumbles. "So. That's how you got into my dream from New York that time, how you pulled me into yours. Probably. Maybe the concussion made your dreams stronger, or--that doesn't make sense. I dunno, Scrappy," Parse tells him, pulling off his hat and dragging a hand over his hair.

Parse huffs out another breath, and then finally shrugs again.

"When I got there, and you were surprised too, I figured...maybe your head was hurtin' there, too. Like your arm, after we got the Cup," he says. "And you wanted me to make it quit again. Subconsciously. So you pulled me in somehow." He shifts on his feet. "Because we . . . because I let you stay in my dreams so much, maybe we...have a stronger connection or--Jesus Christ, this sounds like one of Swoops's shitty rom-coms."

Scrappy snorts quietly, mostly because he wants Parse to stop looking so cagey.

It does kind of sound like one of those movies, though. Scrappy's never understood Swoops's fake-ironic-but-actually-for-real love of Hallmark Christmas romance movies. He binges them on the plane all December, while Parse sits next to him and makes increasingly exasperated commentaries on the plots until Scrappy's laughing so much that other guys start telling them all to please shut up already, there's so many goddamn days left 'til Christmas, I can't take this any longer. That's usually the point when Scrappy tries to stifle his laughter, and Swoops puts in earbuds, and Parse starts talking louder.

Parse makes an exasperated noise and pulls his hat back on. He finally looks Scrappy in the eyes again. "So. Anyway. I dunno why, or how, or any 'a that, Scraps. But I'm pretty sure it's just you. So." He jerks his shoulders in a shrug again. "Don't worry about other people. All right?"

"...All right," Scrappy agrees.

He kind of wants to point out that that doesn't explain why Parse said it was happening 'again.'

But then one of the guys comes in to cut his sticks, so Scrappy has to hurry up and finish his own before he starts delaying other guys' routines. Parse leaves.

*

Once they're back in Las Vegas, Swoops bullies them into his car after practice and then drives to Parse's place, and makes him make them lunch. Parse smarts off to him during the whole drive and while he's fishing some of his pre-prepared meals out of his freezer, but he does it.

Scrappy goes along with it, half because that's easier than arguing with Swoops when he gets like this, and half because Parse's catering company is better than Scrappy's own.

Parse gave him the company's contact information. But Parse also has the highest-paying contract on the Aces, and last year Scrappy sunk a lot of his pay--plus the money he got when that CD Parse convinced him to get years ago matured and paid out--into another five-year CD. The Aces had extended his contract for another four years, so it felt like a safe risk.

So he happily eats one of Parse's rainbow trout with vegetables and quinoa meals as Swoops reads a barrage of questions off his phone at the two of them. They really gave him too much time to think about this.

"So can anybody rearrange things in your dreams? In anyone's dreams?" Swoops demands, starting to look a little freaked out again. There's a lot of reasons why Scrappy usually doesn't talk about what he can do.

"Nah," Parse replies. "You gotta be a pretty strong dreamwalker to pull that off. 'Specially if a dreamer goes lucid. Then it's almost impossible."

Scrappy shakes his head and swallows his fish. "Naw," he says, because he doesn't want to freak Swoops out but he also wants to tell him the truth. "It's pretty easy. In most people's dreams. Yours is harder to change, Parser."

"You two are killing me," Swoops says wearily. "Just tell me how paranoid I should spend the rest of my life being, eh?"

"Zero," Scrappy says with a half-grin. "Your dreams are too boring to visit. Nobody will go in, ever."

Swoops gives him a middle finger across the table. Scrappy snickers.

"I'm pretty sure it's hard for most dreamwalkers," Parse says. "You can't trust Scrappy's take. He's way stronger than most of them."

Scrappy makes a face and pushes some of the quinoa that's scattered around his plate back into a pile. "...I'm normal."

"You know you once made something in my dream when I deliberately set it so you couldn't change anything?" Parse asks.

Scrappy puts his fork down and stares at him.

Parse raises an eyebrow. "Didn't stop you at all. I think you, like, paused for half a second. That's all the effect it had." Parse drops the eyebrow and shakes his head slightly. "You're hands down the strongest dreamwalker I've ever met, Scraps. And I've met a fuckton."

"I didn't...." Scrappy swallows, because his mouth is dry. He did that? "When?"

"First time you came in after your concussion healed," Parse says. "I wanted to see if I could stop you."

Parse looks down at his plate and spears some of his asparagus, and doesn't say anything for a little bit.

Then he closes his eyes and huffs, and shrugs his shoulders. "I figured it'd be 'no.' But I had to test it."

"I didn't try to," Scrappy says. "Parser, I promise--"

"It's okay," he says. "We were fishing on the boat. You made a pair of sunglasses when the sun rose. I wasn't, like, gonna actively fight that. Why would I?"

At least he doesn't look pissed that Scrappy overrode one of his dreams. But Scrappy still feels lousy about it. He wasn't trying to. He didn't even feel anything stopping him.

Parse shrugs again. "When I set it so nobody else can change things in my dreams, it works on most people. It just didn't on you."

". . . Okay," Scrappy says. "Sorry."

"It's okay, Scraps." Parse pokes Scrappy's foot under the table. "Relax."

Scrappy looks down at his plate again, and realizes that he's crumpled up the paper towel he was using for a napkin in his fist. He lets go and smooths it out.

"--Wait," Swoops says. "So, can't you just do that to Mikey? Make him stop being able to mess around with your dreams?"

Parse shakes his head. "It works on most people. Mikey's fuckin' strong." Parse exhales with an irritated face. "And he always gets me before I go lucid. I gotta be lucid dreaming to set that rule."

Swoops grumbles out a curse, which Scrappy agrees with. It would have been nice if Michaelides could be dealt with that easily. "All right."

Parse lifts a shoulder as he drains his water. "'S a good idea. I still do it every time. It slows him down. Gives me time to track him down."

Swoops rubs a thumb against his temple. "All right. ...What's 'setting a rule' in a dream mean, anyway? How do you do that?"

Parse stares at him for a long time, looking like Swoops just asked him to explain what colors are, or how to breathe air. "...You just do it."

Swoops looks at Scrappy.

"Uh," Scrappy says. "You . . . don't want someone to do something. Like, don't want them to. And then they can't." He looks at Parse. "Right?"

"Yeah, basically," he agrees. "Most of the time."

"So goddamn unhelpful, both of you," Swoops replies. He puts his face in his hands and groans, "This is so weird."

"Not it's not," Parse replies, at the same time Scrappy says, "It's normal."

Swoops jabs a finger at them even as he keeps his other hand over his face. "You two have lost perspective."

Parse snorts at him. Scrappy shrugs and finishes off his trout.

*

When Providence comes to Las Vegas next week, Parse takes sleeping pills again, both the night before and during his game-day nap.

During the game, Scrappy keeps an eye on Zimmermann whenever their lines get played against each other. But he and Parse never talk to each other.

Parse really goes hard against Tater, though. Way worse than the last game. Scrappy has to haul Tater away from eight separate shoving matches with him.

The worst one is the last one, behind the Aces' net again, and their goalie gets involved this time instead of skating away. Scrappy ends up shoving Tater into the glass as he wrenches him away from Parse, yelling, "Fuckin' knock it off, asswipe!"

Thirdy comes up a second later and separates the two of them. Scrappy lets him, because Thirdy always tries to talk his guys down instead of escalating things. "C'mon, Tater Tot. Don't let him goad you into another penalty."

"Little rat starts it!" Tater growls out as they skate away, jerking a hand toward Parse--and that's true but Scrappy still can't let somebody on another team get away with saying it.

"Ебать москалі!" he yells at Tater's back.

Tater whips around and starts to come at him despite Thirdy's hold on his jersey, cussing in Russian. The officials get between them.

Swoops pulls Scrappy away. "Knock it off, Scraps. Don't get distracted."

Scrappy snarls under his breath but skates back with Swoops. "Fucker."

"Yeah, yeah," Swoops agrees, using his alternate captain voice. "Don't let him under your skin. PK's exhausted, eh? Any more penalties, Coach'll kill us."

"Okay," Scrappy grunts.

Swoops thumps him on the back and starts skating with him over to the face-off dot. "And talk shit about Tater when we're back on the bench. Loud enough so Vicky can hear."

Scrappy looks over. "Why?"

"'Cause whatever you yelled at Tater, you were too close to our side," Swoops says. "Vicky looks ready to chew nails."

Scrappy looks over at Vitka. He does look pretty pissed. He definitely probably heard him.

"Okay," Scrappy says, because he knows Swoops is trying to get out in front of a potential problem. He's a good alternate captain. Scrappy doesn't want to let his opinion of Vitka turn into a problem for the team.

Swoops taps Scrappy's skates with his stick and heads to the face-off dot.

*

The Aces do pretty good that year. They make it to the second round of the playoffs before losing to Seattle.

Technically they did really well: beating out several other teams to get into the playoffs at all, beating Los Angeles in the first round and giving their fans a big boost by taking down their biggest division rival. But they still lost.

Scrappy isn't getting any younger. He's sore for longer and longer after each season, no matter how hard he works at his conditioning. He's going to start sliding into his declining years pretty soon.

Parse and Swoops aren't getting any younger, either. Scrappy wants to win another Cup with them. He wants to win another Cup, period; but more than anything, he wants to win it with Parse and Swoops. They've been together for years now. He wants the three of them to go all the way again.

So making into the playoffs, and beating Los Angeles, still doesn't mean anything in the end. The year was still a failure.

*

Parse seems more beat up by the loss than usual this season. The Aces' alternate captains are the ones who arrange the Cup watching parties this year.

The finals end up going out to seven games. The watch parties get smaller as more guys leave Las Vegas for the offseason. By game six, the last guy who owns a house in Las Vegas is gone, so the remaining guys pool some money and rent out space in a sports bar to watch the last two games.

Game six feels kind of messed up, because it starts with a minute of silence for all the people that got killed when that asshole shot up a gay club in Orlando last night. Parse goes to the restroom after it's over and doesn't come back until after the puck's already dropped.

Scrappy whistles loud when Ronny gets an assist, pushing Seattle another goal up above Providence.

Parse just says "Dude" with a half-smile and shakes his head. Carly chirps him for rooting for the enemy.


Providence pulls it out over Seattle in game seven and wins the Cup.

Parse doesn't seem bothered by that, so Scrappy relaxes a little.

Both Seattle and Providence have guys he knows and players he likes to watch because they're good. But Scrappy doesn't feel much about the finals' end, except for his lingering frustration that it wasn't the Aces out there. He doesn't want to watch some other team lifting the Cup. He wants to see it in Parse and Swoops's hands and lift it again himself.

Several of Scrappy's friends from around the league and out of it are texting him, or discussing the game in the group chat he has. A lot of it's the same sympathy, telling him it's a shame that Seattle didn't win, because of that weird logic that if the Schooners had taken the Cup it would have felt less bad that the Aces lost to them in the second round. They still lost either way.

Then Joey interrupts the chat with a link to a Twitter post. @everyone you fuckin see this????????

Scrappy clicks on it and finds a video of Zimmermann kissing some blond guy on the ice.

He stares at it for a couple seconds, and then looks up at the TVs. They're all still showing replays of the game, or shots of the Falcs going through the MVP awards photoshoots.

Scrappy goes back into the chat and writes Fake? Its not on TV.

no man its everywhere Joey says, before posting more links: some from Twitter, some from Instagram. course its not on TV, you think Milbury's gonna talk about a couple gays kissing on the ice?

Wtf Andy writes. Ballsy, I guess

You think the guys knew he was gay? he adds. That'd be fucking weird in the showers

Don't think anyone's ballsy enough to come out to his team on national TV Davo points out.

i dunno, good time to do it Joey says. you fuckin won a Cup what're they gonna do

You wanna tell us anything, Joe? Andy asks with a suspicious face emoji.

Joey sends back a couple middle fingers. fuck you

Still not saying anything on TV Davo says. Think they cut Milbury's mic?

Ha, maybe Andy says. Cherry's gonna lose his shit

"My real man's sport! Who let a gay in!? His name's gonna be on the CUP???"

Joey sends a string of laughing faces as Scrappy looks over at Parse. He and Swoops are both in this chat, but neither of them are on their phones.

Davo adds Hey @parse, didn't you play with that guy in Juniors? He always been gay?

Scrappy's still trying to figure out what to type or say when Parse's phone buzzes with a notification banner. Scrappy doesn't know if it's from the chat or something else, but....

He doesn't know what to say. But he doesn't want Parse to find out like that.

He shifts back to the post with the video and then holds his phone out to Parse. "Uhhh, hey, Parser. You see this?"

*

A few of the guys in the chat watch the Falcs' presser the next morning. tater tot looks hungover af

He broke his leg, Joey. He's not gonna be drinking on painkillers Davo replies, because he's a little too much of a Tater fan. Scrappy doesn't feel like chirping him for it today. I never seen Marty look that borderline panicked in a presser

Can't blame him Andy says. How'd they fit so many journos in that room?

This is player cruelty Olek says. Make to give interview morning after winning Cup. Let players be drunk

Tak. Scrappy agrees. Why not do it last night?

I think the press might've shredded Zimmermann alive if they did it last night Swoops says. Holy shit these are some thirsty ass reporters

HAW Andy says.

Swoops sends an eye-rolling emoji. Are you 14

Parse hasn't shown up in the chat since yesterday. Unless he's switched his account to invisible. Davo finally quit trying to get any gossip out of him after a few more prods last night.

Damn, I think being able to ride herd on journos like Thirdy is my new life goal Swoops says, after Thirdy takes over the presser and turns it back to hockey. If I can do that I'll never fear Fancy Stats Mark again

Impossible. Scrappy writes, because the only people he knows who can get as deep into fancy stats with that one beat reporter is Parse and one of the defensemen.

If they'd been smart enough to do this last night it would've just been the beats Davo says. This gave all the paps time to show up

tater's more chill about a gay guy than I expected Joey says. i thought russia was all anti-gays and shit

Just because he's Russian doesn't automatically make him a homophobe, you dumbass Davo replies. Stop getting all your politics from Parts Unknown

hey scraps you gonna let davo just keep going with the tater lovefest or what Joey says.

Tater and Zimmermann are friends Swoops says. Like for real off the ice

no shit for real?

I guess so. Scrappy says. Joey was on the Aces for a few years before his trade, so he adds: You know how Parse chirps friends of guys to make them go in the box? He did it real bad to Tater this season.

Joey sends a laughing emoji. oh god that mf would

He adds: @parse paaaaaaarse we're gonna keep gossiping behind you back if you don't fuckin show up already

you posted to purrs' insta like 10 minutes ago i know your not unplugging @parse

You're such an ass Joey, I don't miss you Swoops writes. Why do you follow his cat's IG?

i like cats fuck off Joey replies with a middle finger. you miss me so bad, nobody slaps 'em from the blue line like me

Yeah. Other guys slap and puck goes in. Scrappy types, grinning.

Joey sends a scowling face and a poop emoji. Swoops sends a laughing one.

Normal presser now Olek says.

Yeah I can't believe they got it under control that fast Swoops says.

Falcs better be throwing the staff a hell of a post-season party Davo adds.

Fuck yeah. Andy agrees. Like just hand everyone in PR a shot as soon as they walk in

Give them whole bottle Olek replies. Scrappy snorts a laugh.

man i thought this was gonna be a trainwreck, this is boring Joey complains.

Andy says Yeah, I'm gonna head out. I gotta do stuff. Lemme know if it gets good again

Ok Davo agrees.


After the Falcs' presser is over, the NHL channel switches to an interview with the league commissioner. Scrappy mutes it and DMs Swoops in the chat. In your dream, you said Parse and Zimmermann were friends. Remember?

Yeah Swoops replies after a little bit.

Scrappy asks Did you mean friends or boyfriends?

Swoops doesn't answer at first. Scrappy assumes he went back to chirping Joey, since that channel is active and Scrappy still takes longer writing English than he does speaking it.

But then Swoops starts typing, stops, starts again, and then stops and doesn't write anything for a long time.

...Okay.

Scrappy usually dislikes it when people assume he knows all the Ukrainians or Ukrainian-Canadians or Ukrainian-Americans in the league, so he was trying not to assume that Parse and Zimmermann must have dated just because they're both gay.

But he kept thinking about it during the presser. It would make sense, right? Scrappy's had friends come and go during his life, but he's never had a friendship end so badly that talking about the guy would be a sore spot, like Swoops said Zimmermann is for Parse.

But for a while after he and Mandy broke up, Scrappy didn't really want to talk about her. It doesn't hurt any more, but it did a lot for a while. So if Parse and Zimmermann dated, it would make more sense for it to be a sore memory.

But maybe he assumed wrong. Scrappy's not sure if that's better or worse.

His phone rings. It's Swoops.

"Hey," he answers.

"Okay, Scrappy," Swoops says. "Okay. You have gotta stop just--springing this shit on me outta the blue, holy shit. You know Parse's gay?"

"Yeah," Scrappy agrees. "Since...." Was it before New Years? "After Christmas."

"Oh my fucking god," Swoops mutters. "I can't believe he just told you, he about made me swear a blood oath not to talk. Like, rude, asshole! I'm not that kinda dick!"

"He didn't tell me," Scrappy says. "I walked in on him, too."

He waits a couple minutes for Swoops to stop laughing. Scrappy turns off the TV and pets his dog.

"How the fuck!" Swoops eventually demands. "How could--did he hook up when you were at a party or--no way, I can't even picture that."

"It was in a dream. One of his."

". . . Oh Christ, I can't even," Swoops says. There's a thump on the other end, and then his voice is muffled. "I just don't even know where to start."

Scrappy doesn't know how to answer that, so he asks, "Did you mean 'friends'? Or 'boyfriends'?"

"Fuuuuuuuck," Swoops says wearily. His voice gets less muffled and goes back to normal again. "I dunno, he won't talk about it. Which, quelle fuckin' surprise, right?"

He chuckles. Maybe it's a little mean, but it's true.

"I think they dated, though," Swoops says. "I mean, they must've, eh? I love my friends, but I don't love any of them enough to break a thirty-one game point streak to go see them."

"...Huh," Scrappy says.

That college party that Parse broke curfew to go to last year makes a lot more sense.

His phone vibrates with a text. It's from Parse: Why did Swoops just ask me if I trawl for the man of my dreams literally in my dreams

"Damn it, Troy," Scrappy says.

"What--?" And then Swoops snorts. "Oh, he'll talk to you? Tell him to get off invisible or answer his goddamn phone already, or I'm gonna go over to his place and hold up a boom box outside his door until he quits hiding. He can't hole away forever."

"I'm not writing that," Scrappy says as he types. "You write that."

He tells Parse: Because he's a brat.

Parse replies Yeah, but that doesn't explain why you're gossiping about me like a couple old hens.

Scrappy makes a face at the phone. I'm not a old hen.

If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, Scraps

"What?" Scrappy says. Swoops says, "Huh?"

It's too hard to hold two separate conversations in English, especially when one's written. Scrappy sighs and tells Swoops, "You're a jerk. I gotta go."

"Alright," Swoops agrees. "For real, will you tell him to answer me already? I'm getting worried. At least when he gets in these 'I'm Kent Parson, I'm too cool and detached to have feelings, I am a brick wall don't talk to me' moods during the season, he's still gotta show up in the clubhouse."

"Okay," Scrappy agrees.

After he hangs up with Swoops, he calls Parse. Parse doesn't pick up until the fifth ring. "Hey," he says neutrally.

"Hey," Scrappy replies. "How are you doing?"

"Fine, Scraps."

"No, for real."

He can hear Parse raising an eyebrow, which is impressive. Or maybe Scrappy's just known him long enough to know the faces he makes when he uses this tone. "Fine, Scraps. Why wouldn't I be?"

"Because of Zimmermann," Scrappy says. He's sure Parse knows full well why he's calling and what he's asking, but sometimes you have to slog through a lot of obvious stuff to try and get Parse to talk. Scrappy resigns himself to this being one of those conversations.

"Good on him if he wanted to come out and the Falcs are behind him," Parse says evenly. "But the shit-fest online and in the media pretty much confirmed I made the right choice."

After the first three negative posts Scrappy saw about Zimmermann last night, he quit looking at stuff online. He doesn't have the patience to listen to opinions about what will or won't mess up a team's dynamic from people who don't play hockey professionally; and anybody that has played it professionally should know better than to talk about dressing room stuff in public.

". . . It isn't all bad," he finally says, because it isn't. #HockeyIsForEveryone was one of the top-trending tags on Twitter last night.

Parse makes a doubting noise.

But then he changes the topic. "What'd you say to Swoops?" Parse asks. "If he sends me one more 'man of my dreams' pun, my phone's gonna self-destruct to save my eyes."

Scrappy snorts despite himself.

And then he exhales, and works out his next words. "...I asked him if you dated a guy, and he asked me when I learned you're gay. So I told him about that dream. Not anything in it," Scrappy adds. "Just, that I walked in on you too."

Parse doesn't say anything for a while.

". . . It's not you guys' business if Zimmermann and I 'dated,'" Parse says at last. He sounds kind of angry, but also kind of tired. "It's not anybody's fucking business."

Scrappy slumps deeper into his couch, hunching his shoulders in a little. His dog lifts her head and looks at him curiously.

He can't really argue with Parse. It was rude of him to go asking someone else instead of Parse himself, even if it was Swoops. Even though Parse wasn't talking to anybody.

"...You're right," Scrappy agrees, rubbing one of Belka's ears. She puts her head back down on the couch cushion. "Sorry."

Parse exhales slowly. In the background, Scrappy can hear his cat meow for attention. Purrs is loud: loud enough that Belka perks up her ears. He pats her side.

"...We just..." Parse says. There's the sound of a bell jingling. "We just hooked up a few times. That was it. We didn't date."

Scrappy frowns. "But...you went to his college. If you aren't--weren't--"

"I was wrong," Parse says shortly. "We never dated. It was just some hookups."

Scrappy's quiet for a moment, because he doesn't have to be a smart guy to know revisionist history when he hears it.

Parse doesn't say anything else. Purrs's bell jingles for a little while more, but then that sound stops too.

"I'm sorry, Parser," Scrappy tells him. "That sucks."

Parse exhales hard again.

". . . Yeah," he finally mumbles. His voice is muffled. "Yeah. Fuck.

"I just--I really don't wanna talk about this. Okay, Scraps?" Parse says. "I gotta get my offseason shit together. I don't wanna fuckin' think about this. He can do what he wants. If the Falcs are behind him--" and then his voice cracks.

Scrappy stills uncomfortably on the couch. "...Parser?"

"Fuckin' lucky for him," Parse mutters, before swallowing. "Whatever. Cool for him. Good luck. I don't wanna think about it."

"...Okay," Scrappy says. ". . . You still wanna meet in L.A. next week?"

He and Parse and Swoops were supposed to go to a Sparks basketball game on a day they were all in town at the same time for their endorsement work. But Scrappy isn't sure if Parse still wants to hang out with them.

"...Yeah." Parse huffs. "Yeah. For sure, Scraps, I'll see you then. I just.... Look, I'm gonna call Troy so he'll quit blowin' up my phone, Jesus Christ he needs a life. I'll see ya next week, yeah?"

"Okay," Scrappy says. "See you then."

*

Swoops spends the basketball game chirping Parse under his breath, until Parse shoves a handful of popcorn into Swoops's mouth during halftime and then Swoops starts pretending he's suffocating.

Scrappy tries to look like he doesn't know either of them. It doesn't really work, since they're all sitting together in court-side seats.

*

The last day he and Parse are both in Los Angeles, Scrappy falls asleep in his hotel room watching the weird robot show that Joey keeps swearing is actually really good. He feels Parse's dream tugging at him as soon as he starts to go under.

Scrappy kind of resists, but he's pretty worn out after hours and hours of people taking pictures of him in a bunch of semi-serious poses. He gets pulled into Parse's dream while he's still telling himself to push away from it.

He's in a forest, near sunset. It's a little hard to see. Scrappy concentrates on the other active dreamer and then heads in Parse's direction, picking carefully through the underbrush.

A hissing noise makes him stop. Scrappy peers around in the low light, and finally spots the snake, less than a foot away.

He takes a step back from it slowly. It shifts to face him, but doesn't rear up to strike. Yet.

There's another hiss behind him. Scrappy goes still again, and then slowly tries to looks over his shoulder without letting the first snake out of his sight. There's another hiss above him.

Scrappy looks up very carefully, abruptly and intensely aware of the fact that he's just in a t-shirt and jeans. His arms and throat are bare.

It's hard to see much because it's getting so dark. But he can tell there's snakes in the branches above him. A lot of snakes. For as far as Scrappy can see, which is quickly becoming less and less.

Scrappy's not really afraid of snakes, but there's a difference between calling animal control if he sees one on the side of the road when he's driving near the desert, and being surrounded by snakes from above and probably on all sides. In the dark.

Scrappy starts to clear the area reflexively. And then he remembers how Parse reacted to Scrappy manipulating his dream out of his sight last time, when he was fighting Michaelides.

...This dream isn't lucid yet. Maybe if he's careful....

He swallows, and then makes the few snakes closest to him disappear. A second later, the dream starts to shift toward lucidity.

Scrappy braces himself and calls, "Parser?"

There's no answer, except for more snakes starting to hiss now. The sound's getting louder and closer, but the dream is still only half-lucid.

Scrappy doesn't want to override one of Parse's dreams again, especially now that he knows Parse maybe can't stop him from doing it, unless he wipes the whole dream and turns it into void. But he also really doesn't want to wake up because he dies in this dream from multiple snakebites.

Scrappy calls louder: "I'm gonna clear the snakes." And then he does it.

The dream shifts to full lucidity.

Scrappy tenses.

But nothing happens. Parse doesn't react like last time. The dream doesn't implode around him.

He waits for a little bit, but things stay the same. The only thing that changes is Parse starts moving toward him. So Scrappy resumes walking carefully in his direction.

Eventually it gets too dark to see. Scrappy makes himself a flashlight, and then ups its brightness until he finally stops tripping over underbrush.

Parse is moving a lot faster than he is. He reaches Scrappy pretty soon, and then snorts loudly once Scrappy's close enough to hear.

"Scraps, man, who goes hiking in street clothes?" Parse says with a chirping half-smile, raising his lantern and looking him over. "Are those sneakers?"

"You're in street clothes!" Scrappy replies, because he can't let that one slide. Parse is standing in the middle of a forest wearing his usual jeans and long-sleeve button-down shirt. ...He is in hiking boots, though.

"I'm wearing wind- and waterproof jeans with reflective striping and an insect-repellent shirt," Parse tells him. "Make yourself some boots, man."

Scrappy does. "Where is this?"

"Adirondacks."

That makes sense. Parse's hometown is near there.

Parse tilts his head back at the way he came before turning around. "C'mon, my camp's this way."

The hike there is easier. Scrappy can feel Parse making minor adjustments to the dream as they go, clearing away underbrush and smoothing out the ground before Scrappy walks over it. Even with all that, it's still full night when they arrive.

Parse's camp is set up in a space that Scrappy can't even call a clearing. It's just a wider, flatter spot than normal between all the trees. There's not much stuff in the area, either.

A tent with a tarp over it fills most of the space. The tent is really small--there's a sleeping bag laid out inside, with a big backpack and a large water container at its foot. They take up almost all the space inside.

A fire's burning in a shallow pit nearby, with a canvas chair next to it. On the other side of the fire is a plastic tote bag half full of slightly soapy water, with a metal mug and spork drying nearby. Parse has a cloth bag hanging from a tall tree branch, and there's a plastic bag full of water with a long tube coming out of it hanging from another. It looks kind of like a really large IV.

"Gravity water filter," Parse says, turning off his lantern before unhooking a thermos from his belt. "So I can just get water from the pond, instead of schlepping a ton of it out here."

Scrappy makes a face. "Gross."

Parse just shrugs. "You try hauling a hundred-something gallons of water for ten-plus miles in rising terrain. Pond water sounds doable after that."

"No," Scrappy replies, because no. Parse snickers.

He drains the thermos, and then goes over to the water bag. "I was gonna ask if you're thirsty, buuuuuut...."

Between freaking out a little over the snakes and then the walk here, Scrappy kind of is. But not enough to drink pond water.

Parse snorts. "This is filtered, too," he says, unscrewing the thermos. There's a smaller container inside it, with a filter at the bottom. "Best they make. If I showed up at scrum with norovirus, the front office'd fine the hell outta me," he points out. "Also, it's a dream, Scraps."

Scrappy keeps eying the thermos doubtfully as Parse fills it up from the water bag, and then braces it on the ground and presses the filter part slowly inside. But when Parse holds it out to him, he takes it.

The water tastes okay. Scrappy drinks about half of it before giving the thermos back. Parse puts it inside his tent, and then unhooks the knife on his belt and stores it inside too before zipping the tent back up.

Scrappy presses a hand against a tree trunk next to him. "Is this a memory dream?"

"Yeah," Parse says. He makes a second chair by the fire, and then makes a windbreaker folded over the back of it. "I usually go camping after the season's over. Y'know, those times when you're all givin' me shit in the chat for goin' MIA." He sits down. "Before scrum, too, if I can swing it. But I usually can't."

"Huh," Scrappy says.

He pulls on the windbreaker and sits in the other chair. He has to keep his legs pulled close so they don't end up in the fire. The campsite was already small for one person; with two, both of them hockey players, it's cramped. "You like camping?"

He didn't know that about Parse. Scrappy knows he's from a small town in upstate New York, because sometimes Parse likes to give Swoops shit for being a Toronto-born city boy; but he never seemed like the outdoorsy type. He definitely didn't seem like a hardcore wilderness survival guy.

But Parse didn't seem gay, either. Scrappy guesses even though they've known each other for years, there's still more stuff to learn.

Parse slumps a little deeper in his chair. "Nah."

"Uh," Scrappy says.

Parse shrugs. "This area's far enough from the roads and campgrounds that nobody really comes by," he says. "Maybe another backcountry camper once in a while, but they usually just pass through. I can sleep," he explains. "I don't gotta worry about other people."

". . . Oh," Scrappy says.

He looks around again at the small camp, surrounded by trees stretching off into the darkness on all sides.

It makes him kind of sad to think about Parse hiking out to camp in the middle of nowhere not because it's fun for him, but because he wants to get away from other people that bad.

Scrappy understands feeling burnt out after a long season. Especially if they've lost in the playoffs, or didn't even make it in. And Parse's got it worse: he's the captain, and the highest paid player, so he's the one whose stats get the most ruthlessly scrutinized by the beat reporters and fans during the offseason. He has to put up with that while dealing with all his dream stuff.

Sometimes Scrappy wonders if things would be easier for Parse if he wasn't such a lucid dreamer. Maybe then he'd just shrug off his dreams as his subconscious being weird, and shake off the people who try to mess with him inside them instead of attacking them.

But there's no point in wondering. Parse is who he is. "That makes sense."

Scrappy looks back at him. "...But, uh...isn't--?"

Parse huffs.

"Yeah, I know," he mumbles, scowling at the fire. "Backcountry camping's on the ban list. Don't tell the front office," Parse asks, looking up at him. "I'm really careful. It just.... Traveling in all these cities, Scraps. Living in Vegas. By the end of the season, it feels like I'm gonna lose my shit if I can't get away for a while, and not hafta wonder who's gonna come invadin' my head tonight."

He nods at his tent. "I always take a satellite phone. And--I don't get a permit like I oughta, in case the club found out, but I let my parents know. And I always text 'em twice a day at the same times. And send 'em my GPS location every night. I'm careful."

"Okay," Scrappy says, because Parse is starting to sound desperate to convince him. "I won't say anything, Parser."

The tension in Parse's shoulders eases. "Thanks, Scraps."

Scrappy looks around at the darkness pushing up against the edges of the firelight. "But...that was a lot of snakes." Well, the snakes felt like a dream defense mechanism. But-- "Aren't there bears out here?"

"Bears aren't that big a problem," Parse says, a lot more casually than Scrappy thinks the subject of bears deserves. "Wolves are the worst thing. The bear canister's not rated for them, 'cause their teeth are a lot sharper." Parse nods at the cloth sack hanging from the tree.

Scrappy stares at him across the fire.

Parse looks back at him, and then starts snickering again. "Why am I friends with city boys.

"I've never seen any wolves, Scraps," he promises, looking up with a grin. "Or bears. It's all just in case. It's fine."

"For now," Scrappy points out.

"Welp, now if I do see any, you jinxed me," Parse replies, grinning wider.

Scrappy exhales through his teeth and sinks into his chair. "Knock on wood."

Parse leans over and raps on a nearby tree. "But yeah, if I ever just disappear, I probably beefed it out here," he adds cheerfully. Scrappy presses a hand over his face. "Get my last GPS location from my parents like, discreetly, so nobody blames 'em. Try and find me before the bears eat me. Don't write any shit 'bout me being a dumbass on the back of my banner if they retire my number."

"Jeez," Scrappy says, shaking his head. He knows better than to show amusement when Parse goes deadpan like this, but it's really hard. "I will."

"You will find me, or you will write shit on the back of my banner?"

"Both," Scrappy tells him. Parse laughs.

Scrappy sighs and decides to change the subject before Parse can wind him up more. "What do you do out here?"

"Nap a lot," Parse says. "Binge whatever stuff guys've been telling me to watch all season, if I can fit it on my phone. Walk around enjoying 'the beauty of the Adirondacks wildlife and plant life' and go stir-crazy real fast."

Scrappy chuckles.

Parse shrugs and tips his head against the back of his chair. "I always plan t' come out for a couple weeks, but I never make it that long. I get bored outta my skull. 'Specially since even the good dehydrated food eventually starts to suck on my setup." He tilts his head at the mug with a charred bottom, and then shifts his chair around so he can stretch out his legs toward the trees. "The fishing here's good, but that means packin' more equipment and goin' where the tourists are. And I already ate so much friggin' fish all season, y'know?"

"Yeah," Scrappy agrees. Neither he or Parse have a superstition about their protein or any allergies, but at this point in his life Scrappy's gotten pretty sick of steak and cod and chicken. He misses carbs.

Swoops has it the worst. He's got a superstition about only eating sirloin on roadies, and only eating red snapper if he's in a slump. So around the end of the season, he's always whining about wanting nothing but vegetables. Scrappy kind of sympathizes, but Swoops does it to himself.

But that aside. "Weeks?" Scrappy asks. "How can you stay out here that long?"

"Ultralight gear," Parse says, waving a hand absently around the camp. "I got good at figurin' out what I really need, what I can double up, what's fluff. Usin' my trekking poles as tent poles, stickin' with dehydrated food." He nods at his tent.

Scrappy looks back at it. He has to squint a little in the firelight, but okay. The poles holding up the tarp over the tent do look kind of weird. Scrappy's pretty sure normal tent poles don't have handhold straps at the bottom.

"I do that, I can make water the heaviest stuff I carry," Parse says. "I load up at a water fillin' station on my way in, and then I just find a spot a couple hours' walk to a creek or pond. I got this down."

"Okay," Scrappy says. He looks at the tent again. "That's real small, though."

"Big enough to hold me and the essentials," Parse says. "Big enough to sit up in if it rains or the bugs are bad. It's lightweight and gets me away, it's good enough."

Scrappy looks around the camp for a little longer, and then looks down at the fire.

Parse doesn't say anything. But when Scrappy looks over, Parse is watching him with a raised eyebrow, like he knows Scrappy wants to say something.

He shifts his seat again to face Parse more. "Have you talked to Dr. Brierley lately?"

"I made a bet with myself what this was gonna be," Parse says, settling deeper in his chair with an overly-weary expression. "You just won me a hundred bucks."

"I mean it, Parser," Scrappy says.

Parse closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. "I know you do," he mutters. "But seriously, Scraps. What're you expectin' me to tell her?"

He doesn't really have an answer for that. Scrappy looks back at the fire, trying to think of one.

"...I could go into one of her dreams," he offers. "Let her know this is real, before you talked to her. Would that help?"

"Sheeze," Parse says. "I tell the front office 'by the way, my dreams suck in every dreamwalker in a hundred-mile radius, couldja vet for that before makin' trades?' then I might as well tell 'em I'm gay too and dump all the crises at once."

Scrappy makes a face. "Being gay isn't a 'crisis.'"

Parse gives him a soft, tired look. "Scraps, I love you man, but you think the world is a better place than it is."

"I know there's jerks out there," Scrappy says. "But they don't get to talk for everybody. They don't get to be 'the world.' Don't let them win like that."

Parse exhales slowly and drops his head back against his chair.

"Would it help?" Scrappy asks. "If I talked to her? Showed that this is real?"

"No," Parse replies, still sounding tired. "I don't wanna tell her. I don't want this to get out to the club. Everybody knows GMs talk to each other, coaches talk to each other. I don't wanna put a target on my back, gettin' public with it."

"There's other players who can go into dreams," Scrappy points out. "Me, Ronny, Ellsy. Those other guys who went in. Michaelides. I knew a guy back home, he's in the KHL now. Andy, he was on my team in Juniors, remember? He can do it a little."

Maybe he shouldn't have said that without first asking Andy if he was okay with Parse knowing, but he hates the defeated look on Parse's face. "There's probably more kids in Juniors, or guys in the minors. There has to be a coach or GM or owner that at least knows about us, even if they can't do it," Scrappy insists. "It can't be a secret everywhere."

"I'm not fucking brave enough to be the first one to talk about it, Scraps," Parse bites off. He swallows hard. "Isn't that fuckin' obvious by now? I'm not that fucking strong. Okay? I'm not Ja--I just. I can't."

Scrappy falls silent. Parse keeps staring up at the branches, and eventually scrubs his arm across his eyes.

". . . Okay," Scrappy says quietly, when Parse drops his arm again. "I'm sorry, Parser. I wasn't trying to...."

Rub it in? Make Parse feel like even more of a coward than he's already making himself feel? Scrappy was trying to push him, but he was trying to help.

Maybe that makes him a hypocrite, since he doesn't talk about being able to go into dreams himself. But still.

"I want to help. Your dreams are so stressful, Parser," Scrappy says. "And this year was so bad. I'm worried about you."

Parse makes a half-hearted half-grin, but he keeps staring up at the tree branches instead of looking at him. "I can do my own armchair shrink analysis, Scraps. This year wasn't that bad."

"Your dreams were awful until we played the Falcs the first time," Scrappy says, because he was there in a lot of them and he knows exactly how stressful they were.

Parse closes his eyes and exhales silently.

"...I was thinking about it once," Scrappy says, leaning forward in his chair and folding his hands between his knees. "A lot of these places you dream about, it's all difficult paths, or stressful places, or enemies coming after you. I know it's not all of them, but Parser, it's a lot."

"I can't stop being gay, Scrappy," Parse says quietly. "I already tried that. All I did was end up fallin' in bed with the first guy who liked dudes too and fuckin' up my life all Juniors."

Parse cuts off at that, and then squeezes his eyes shut tighter before exhaling slowly. ". . . Both our lives."

Parse rubs his face hard with his hands. "Fuck. Whatever. Those dreams aren't gonna quit, I can't be straight. I just wanna play hockey. I don't wanna deal with all this other crap, too."

"But you are," Scrappy tells him. "The stress dreams, I think it's your subconscious trying to deal with it."

Parse laughs once shortly and finally lifts his head to look at him. "Seriously, what's with the shrink session?"

"I read a lot about dreams and sleep," Scrappy says. "My sister's dad, he could go into dreams too. He loaned our mom a lot of books when she told him about me going into her and Svyeta's dreams when I was little."

Scrappy scratches the back of his neck. "A lot of them were hard to read, but Mama explained things to me where she could. And he left them to me, so I read them again when I got older."

Parse frowns slightly. "Those textbook-lookin' ones, yeah?"

"Yeah," Scrappy agrees. Parse asked him about them once, one of the first times he was over at Scrappy's apartment. A bunch of guys have over the years. Scrappy knows it looks weird for him to have half a shelf full of big, smart-looking books: everything else on his bookshelf is thrillers and mysteries that he picks up in multi-language bookstores or that his parents and friends mail to him, and a few English books on hockey.

"I don't know a lot," Scrappy says. "But I think these dreams are your subconscious trying to help you deal with what you're feeling. But if it's not working, maybe talking will help?

"If you don't want to go through the team, okay," he says, because that makes sense for Parse. He's always been careful about getting outside doctors for his injuries, and pushing Scrappy to do the same. "But there has to be a doctor somewhere who knows about people who can go into dreams. Right?"

Parse exhales slowly and slumps deeper into his chair, pulling his legs up to keep them away from the fire. ". . . You'd think."

"I'm worried about you," Scrappy says softly. "But I don't know how to help, Parser. I wish I did. I wish I knew how to make it better. But somebody has to, right? Somewhere."

"...Maybe," Parse says.

He rubs his fingers against his eyelids a little bit later, and then grimaces and shakes his head.

"It just feels so fuckin' stupid," Parse mutters, dropping his hand and glaring at the fire. "I know what's wrong. I don't need somebody else tellin' me, I know. I don't need t' be 'fixed,' I just need to stop...." He makes a sharp, aggravated gesture.

Scrappy's not sure what that's supposed to convey, but maybe Parse doesn't either. He scratches his forearm underneath the windbreaker.

"I know you don't need to be fixed, Parser," he says. "Being gay isn't bad. Being a dreamer like you are isn't bad. But...."

Scrappy tries to figure out what he wants to say. Eventually, he just growls in frustration and slouches deep into his chair.

"...I don't know," he says. "I keep thinking, maybe it's like a slump, yeah? Like when Swoops got snake-bit that month and couldn't score. He didn't need to be fixed. But the more stressed he got about it, the worse it got."

Scrappy shakes his head. "I know it's not like a slump. But still...he talked to you, right? About it. We did extra practices. Once he stopped overthinking, he started scoring again. And then he got back on track." Scrappy shrugs and looks at Parse. "Is it kind of like that?"

Parse rests his cheek on his fist and starts to brace his elbow on the side of the chair; but the chairs don't have arms, so it just slides down the canvas instead. Parse catches himself and leans back, and looks out at darkness past the trees.

". . . Maybe," he says after a long time.

Parse rubs his eyes again. "I guess...maybe when things calm down. All the stuff about Jack'll cycle outta the news eventually. When draft and free agency hit."

He drops his hand and stares out at the trees. " . . . I could try lookin' again. For a--" he makes a face, and then huffs. "A therapist. Or somethin'."

"Okay," Scrappy says.

When Parse keeps making that face, he adds, "You're always telling me to look after myself. To invest for after retirement, to get injuries cleared by my own doctor. I appreciate it, Parser. You're a good friend," Scrappy tells him. "I want you to look after yourself, too."

"Buuuuuuuh," Parse says, sinking so deep into his chair he's half slid out of it. "I always crumble in the face of your sincerity attack, man, you can let up now. Have some fuckin' warrior's mercy or whatever."

Scrappy starts to say that it wasn't supposed to be an attack; but Parse looks over at him with a small, real smile. It's the first one he's had for a while.

So Scrappy nods instead. "Okay."

They fall quiet.

Parse digs the heel of his boot into the ground for a while, and then looks around again.

"...Guess we're here for a while," he says. "You wanna see the lake? You can see the Milky Way pretty good from there."

"Yeah," Scrappy agrees, pushing out of his chair.

Parse's idea of 'pretty good' is obviously shaped by having grown up in the woods and being raised by bears far from civilization, because Scrappy's never seen that many stars so clearly before. He and Parse are still sitting on the lakeshore, chirping each other over their hometowns, when the dream starts to fade.

*

When he checks his phone during breakfast the next morning, Scrappy finds a new subgroup chat on his lists. When he scrolls up, the first line in it was from Parse: @andy are you a dreamwalker too or is that a different guy

Do people really still use that hokey term Andy replied. Also wtf, did Scrappy tell you?

Ok, answers that question Parse wrote, before tagging Scrappy into the subgroup. And whatever, typing out "people who can go into dreams" takes too long

That's English translation. Scrappy says. Real word is and then he switches keyboards and types it out in proper Cyrillic.

If you're being a troll you're still waiting on coffee Parse replies. Scrappy snickers.

BullSHIT you're a dream reader, Parse. Andy says. The entire league isn't safe if that's true

Rude

Parse adds How is "dream reader" any less hokey than "dreamwalker?"

Both are silly words. Scrappy says. Parse stop chirping. Talk your real problem.

Parse posts an eye-rolling .gif, but then says Yeah alright

It appears at almost the same time Andy sends Dream reader makes more sense than dreamwalker, you can't do anything but look at other peoples' dreams

Parse replies with a raised eyebrow emoji. Scrappy sighs.

Andy is not 'small.' 'Little'? No. 'Weak.' Yes, but that's mean. not strong dream reader.

I am a normal fucking dream reader Andy says. You're just real strong, Scrappy. I'm not arguing this again

Parse sends another raised eyebrow emoji.

Stop that. Scrappy tells him.

He expects a chirp, but instead what Parse writes is Andy, are you cool if I pull Swoops into this? He knows about me and Scraps already

What the fuck is going on in Vegas Andy says. Wait for real, are you a dream reader Parse?


By they time they manage to explain how Parse isn't a person who can go into dreams but he is a really unusual lucid dreamer, and then bring Swoops into the subgroup, and then deal with Swoops's I'M IN HELL HOW MANY OF THERE ARE YOU reaction--not helped by Parse immediately renaming the subgroup "Dreamwalkers and the Normie"--Scrappy's had to wolf down breakfast and get a car to the airport.

I thought Andy was chirping me about being strong. Scrappy says, sitting in the boarding area waiting on a delayed plane. Chirping the foreigner.

Andy sends an outraged emoji. Scrappy bud, what kind of asshole do you think I am

Normal Canadian.

Fuckin' burn Parse replies with a high-five emoji. Scrappy snickers.

Shut your mouth, like you're any better American! Andy retorts.

Parse says Excellent retort, totally refutes my point

Don't steal my lines Parse, I know I said that first. To you, a billion times Swoops retorts. Scrappy tries really hard not to laugh out loud.

*

Scrappy doesn't talk to his North American friends much during the offseason. It's not intentional. Things just work out that way.

He has to put his conditioning first. And sometimes he ends up playing for the men's team at Worlds. And then he tries to spend the time he has left with his family and the friends he doesn't get to see most of the year, and to visit Olek's family at least once. And in-between that, his agent is usually setting up interviews and carefully coaching him on his answers so he won't come off as political. It doesn't leave him much free time.

He still tries to keep up with the chat, though. Even if he's answering at weird times of the day from most of the guys. Several of them organized a binge watch of some American 1980s-based horror show in the TV channel today; Scrappy checks in near the end, and watches with amusement as everything turns into capslocking and chaos. Parse DMs him.

I think I found somebody to talk to.

He doesn't know the whole dreamwalker thing, but he does NDAs and he's been pretty chill about me being gay. He thinks the dream stuff is symbolic, but w/e. Good enough

Scrappy automatically punches in a lot of smiley faces, and then he decides those aren't enough and deletes them all. He starts trying to find a .gif that fits instead. After he posts and then deletes seven that aren't really what he's going for, Parse writes Stop

Scrappy snickers and rubs his eyes. He made a mistake, checking his phone before going to sleep. Or maybe it isn't a mistake. He's glad he's here for this. I'm glad, Parser.

Yeah, yeah Parse replies. Scrappy shakes his head and yawns. Maybe it'll go okay. He seems alright

Good. Scrappy adds a smiley face.

But that feels too casual for something he half wasn't sure Parse would actually do, despite what he said in that dream when they were in the woods. So he adds, I hope it helps.

Can't really get worse, huh?

I mean it, Parser.

Parse sends a .gif of a guy laying facedown on the floor. Yeah, I know

Thanks, Scraps he adds.

Yeah. Scrappy says, still smiling too much.

Maybe it won't change anything. It probably definitely won't help Parse figure out how to deal with people literally coming into his dreams with bad intentions. But maybe if Parse's normal dreams are less stressful, then the ones where other people come into them won't be even more stressful than those. Maybe?

Something like that. Scrappy's getting pretty tired. His conditioning camp here is harsh, because he needs it to be to survive the Aces' seasons.

Parse is trying to do something about all the things that have been eating away at him. That's something. That's a lot. Good work, Parser.

Ok that's all the sincerity I can handle today Parse says. I'm gonna go start more shit in the Stranger Things chat, talk to ya later

Scrappy laughs again and sends him a thumbs up. Okay.

*

Some things don't change over the next season. Michaelides keeps going into Parse's dreams, but now as soon as Parse senses him he just drops him into a sinkhole of void and then covers it over again, and waits for Michaelides to panic enough that he wakes up.

Scrappy doesn't really like it. He's had to live through being thrown into that void twice, and he knows how cruel Parse's reaction is.

But Michaelides was warned to stop trying to hurt Parse. By both of them. Multiple times.

...But it's still cruel.

. . . But Michaelides was warned to stop.

Scrappy doesn't know what the right answer is. Maybe there isn't one. Maybe the only answer is that both Michaelides and Parse have to change, but both of them have no reason to trust each other, so neither of them is willing to be the first one to try.

That's a lousy answer, but sometimes it feels like the only one there is.


Parse takes sleeping pills the first time they play Providence, but he doesn't do it the second time.

The second time, he comes down late to breakfast and his eyes are red. When a couple guys chirp him over it, Parse just says "Allergies" and complains about the detergent this hotel uses for its sheets.

Swoops tries to grill him quietly over it at their table, until Parse finally tells him to shut up, he's fine. Everything's okay.

Scrappy lets it go. He went into Parse's dream last night when he felt someone else getting pulled into it.

He tracked down the two active dreamers inside the already-lucid dream of the sci-fi city. And then he hesitated at the edge of one of the squares when he saw Parse leaning against the wall of a building and talking to another guy. Parse's arms were folded tight across his chest and he was slouched hard against the wall, staring down at the ground as they talked.

But when Parse registered him and looked up, he just shook his head and gave Scrappy an 'it's cool' thumbs up.

The guy Parse was talking to looked over. For a second Scrappy almost recognized him; and then he didn't.

And then Parse released that old rule he'd clearly been setting on his dreams ever since Scrappy met him.

All at once, Scrappy recognized the Falcs' Jack Zimmermann, and that French-Canadian teenager from Parse's very first dream that Scrappy got pulled into, and one of the two teenagers who sit at that one table in the fancy hotel--the one with the family whose faces' Scrappy could never make out. Only it wasn't a family, not exactly, because now Scrappy finally realized that the other teenager sitting at the table with the Zimmermanns is Parse.

Oh, Scrappy thought.

...He probably should have realized all that sooner.

But, if Parse was okay and Zimmermann wasn't doing anything to him in this dream, then Scrappy didn't need to stay. Whatever they had to say to each other was their own business.

Whatever they said to each other, maybe it helped. Parse doesn't go after Tater much at all that second game. Scrappy only has to break up one shoving match.


Vitka is still a valuable member of the Las Vegas Aces, and still doesn't like him.

Scrappy still doesn't like him, either. Vitka still wants Scrappy's place on Swoops's and Parse's line, and Scrappy still uses that as motivation to work hard to keep his spot.

Sometimes there are only lousy answers.

*

Some things do change. All the places in Parse's dreams stay the same, but sometimes they don't feel as stressful. At least, as long as the Aces aren't on a skid or Parse hasn't gone a few games without a goal or a couple assists.

Scrappy discovers a couple new places in Parse's dreams. New to him--Parse says they've been around before. One's a small, sunny, grassy square where people are selling t-shirts from old-fashioned carts. Parse warns him not to take a shower in the two-story house across the street. "There's an old guy that hangs around the stalls. He'll follow you in an' talk constantly."

Scrappy shades his eyes and squints at the house. "'Stalls'?"

"Yeah. It's kinda like a dressing room shower. 'Cept there's individual stalls, but they have these weird half-doors instead of curtains," Parse shrugs. "So he looks atcha the whole time. Then he'll follow you back here."

"Gross," Scrappy says.

"Yeah," Parse agrees. He lifts a shoulder. "Maybe he's gone. I don't really remember dreamin' 'bout this place after they fired that Juniors coach who called us fags all the time."

Scrappy thumps Parse on the shoulder. "Show me where he showed up," he says. "I'm gonna punch him."

Parse rolls his eyes and shakes his head. "No. It's not the same guy, Scraps. My subconscious isn't that stale."

Scrappy eyes him, because that sounds like a chirp.

"Which one'a us dreamed about a bleeding coffee pot when you couldn't have caffeine?" Parse asks, grinning. "Oh wait, I answered it."

"Shut up," Scrappy grumbles. He's fine with having a subconscious that isn't subtle. It makes figuring out his dreams easier.

The other new place is a restaurant they never get around to eating in. There's a super complicated miniature train system running along the walls of the building near the ceiling, and Scrappy spends the dream following it through room after room of the restaurant, awkwardly maneuvering his way through all the close-together tables. Parse trails along behind him, hands in his pockets, looking amused.

*

One night when they're flying back to Vegas from Philadelphia after the Aces have clinched a spot in the 2017 playoffs, Scrappy falls asleep on the plane.

He jolts awake when the guys playing cards get too loud, right before Carly boots one of them out for cheating. Somebody flings a bag of Skittles across the plane into the wall above the card table and tells them to shut up.

Scrappy makes yet another groggy mental note to just buy noise-canceling earphones already, and readjusts his pillow.

He falls back asleep and gets pulled into Parse's dream. Tonight they're in the giant area with the lake and the bare dirt hills and the small mountain with the steep road.

Parse laughs when Scrappy tells him about the Skittles as they're prepping the rowboat. "Betcha it was the goalie. He likes to pretend he's too good for junk food, but he ain't."

Scrappy thinks about it. It kind of looked like it came from that corner of the plane. "Maybe."

Later, they're fishing out on the lake when Parse asks, "You ever wanna try goin' up the hill again?"

Scrappy eyes the small mountain. The road up it still looks as vertical as it was the first and only time he tried to climb it with Parse before. "'Hill,'" he repeats.

Parse snorts.

"Yeah, I know it's hard," he says. "'S worth it, though. I remember the view's pretty cool."

"Remember?"

"I only made it up there once." Parse gives him a look over his shoulder before casting his line. "That road's the worst."

"Yeah," Scrappy agrees, looking at it again. Still vertical.

Then he pauses in the middle of tying his lure. Scrappy eyes the city just barely visible at the top of the mountain, and then looks back at Parse. "You've only been up there once?"

"Yeah," Parse agrees, looking back at him again.

"Are you dreaming about winning the Cup again?" Scrappy asks. They just clinched their spot three days ago. The regular season isn't even over yet.

Scrappy can't blame him, though. It feels possible this year, even more than the last couple. Maybe. Maybe they can do it.

Parse stares at him, and then looks back at the mountain.

And then he starts laughing so hard he almost tips his pole into the lake. "Fuck. Probably!"

Scrappy shakes his head, grinning.

He puts his pole down on the floor of the boat. "Okay. Let's try."

"--You sure?" Parse asks, reeling his line in.

"Yeah," Scrappy says. "Yeah."


After Parse has locked the oars in and started rowing, Scrappy says, "Stale subconscious, Parser."

"Oh, fuck off!" Parse cackles. He shoves the handles at Scrappy's chest. "You row."

"Okay, I'll carry this line on my back again," Scrappy says mock-wearily. "I do all the work, pretty boys Parse and Swoops get all the attention."

Parse flips him off, still laughing. Scrappy grins and starts rowing for the shore.

sometime between here

& being straight again, some sweet
boned, glittering boi shows up, starts voguing & shit

his sharp hips pierce our desire, make our mouths water
& water & we call him faggot meaning bravery

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 1 of Dreamwalking