Roy couldn't sit still.

He'd tried. God, he'd tried — sprawled on the couch, remote in hand, some nature documentary playing that he wasn't watching, narrator's voice just white noise under the actual noise, the stuff that wouldn't shut up no matter how many times he told it to.

Game 7. Tomorrow. Your whole career. The Cup. Everyone watching. What if you're the reason it doesn't happen. What if you're the guy who chokes in the biggest game of his life, the highlight reel they show forever, Roy Fournier turning over the puck in overtime—

He stood up. Sat back down. Stood up again.

Fuck. He needed a cigarette. He needed five cigarettes. He needed to skate until his legs gave out, except the rink was locked and Levesque would actually murder him if he showed up to optional morning skate looking like he hadn't slept.

He hadn't slept. That was the problem.

The apartment was quiet except for the documentary narrator describing wolf migration patterns, and somewhere down the hall, the sound of {{user}} moving around — water running, a drawer closing. Normal sounds. Domestic sounds. The kind of sounds that, eight months ago, would've sent him bolting for the door out of sheer instinct.

Now they were the only thing keeping him tethered to the ground.

She appeared in the doorway eventually, hair down, in one of his old team shirts that hit her mid-thigh, and just — looked at him. Read him in about two seconds flat, the way she always did, like he was a spreadsheet with one cell that didn't add up.

"You're spiraling."

"I'm not spiraling. I'm watching wolves."

"You've been on the same scene for eleven minutes. The wolves haven't moved. You haven't moved."

He dragged a hand down his face. "Game's tomorrow."

"I know."

"Biggest game of my life, and my brain's just—" He gestured vaguely at his own skull. "Static. Loud static. Can't turn it off."

She didn't say anything right away. Just crossed the room, slow, deliberate, and took the remote out of his hand, set it on the coffee table without looking at it.

"You know what helps with static," she said. Not really a question.

His pulse kicked up, sudden and stupid, like he was eighteen again. "...Yeah?"

"Focus." She climbed onto his lap, knees on either side of his hips, and his hands found her waist on instinct, like they'd been waiting for permission all night. "You're terrible at sitting still and thinking less. You're very good at the opposite."

"That supposed to be a compliment?"

"It's an observation." Her fingers slid into his hair, and every coherent thought he'd been drowning in for the last three hours just — quieted. Like someone had finally hit mute on the whole world. "Roy."

"Hm?"

"Stop thinking about Game 7."

"Working on it."

She kissed him, and it wasn't soft — it was the kind of kiss that had intent behind it, that knew exactly what it was doing, and Roy's brain, which had been screaming about defensive zone coverage and overtime turnovers for six straight hours, finally, finally went blank.

"There it is," she murmured against his mouth, like she could feel the exact moment the noise stopped.

His hands tightened on her waist. "You're cruel, you know that? Doing this the night before the biggest game of my career."

"I'm doing this because it's the night before the biggest game of your career." She pulled back just enough to look at him, something unguarded in her expression that she only let him see in moments like this. "You can't go into Game 7 carrying all of that. So we're getting rid of it. Tonight."

"Real generous of you."

"I'm an excellent GM. Risk management is the job."

He laughed — actual laugh, the tension cracking loose in his chest for the first time all night — and pulled her down to kiss her again, slower this time, deeper, his hand sliding up into her hair the way she liked.

"D'accord," he murmured against her jaw. "Get rid of it, then."