Lourdes scoffs. “Like a hockey play is the same thing as spouting homophobic bullshit.”

“No,” David says. “Only one hurts. I don’t give a shit what anyone says.”

“Bullshit,” Lourdes says. “You want to pretend I wasn’t in the same room as you when the Lapointe news broke?”

“Oh fuck off,” David says, “Don’t act like you know me.”

Lourdes snorts, derisive. “I don’t know you?” he asks. “Seriously, David?”

David bites down on his lip, hard. “Go away,” he says, sounding petulant to his own ears. Hates it. “You think you’re any better than Brzezinski? You’re just here for the same thing. Not the first time a Panther’s called me pretty boy.”

Lourdes’s jaw works. “Fuck you, Chapman,” he says finally, hoarse, but he doesn’t move.

“You’re dumb as a fucking brick,” David shouts, watches Lourdes flinch. “We buddies, Lourdes? You want to act like buddies, you go jerk off Benson, because we’re not fucking friends. We’re not anything.”

Lourdes isn’t looking at him when David finally looks at him head-on instead of out the corner of his eye. David gets his profile more than anything, his jaw tight, his hair curling in front of his eye, the exact strands David always wants to tuck behind his ear. He should cut his fucking hair.

“Everyone’s right about you,” Lourdes says, so quiet the words barely penetrate, and then walks away, back toward the arena, before David can even think to ask who everyone is, and what they’re saying.

Whatever it is, he knows it’s nothing good.

When Lourdes is a spot in the distance, far enough that David knows he isn’t coming back, David heads to the bus doors, finding Benson and his shadows standing a few feet away. Benson’s mouth is curled up at the corner, and David wonders how much they heard. Wonders if Lourdes has jerked Benson off before. Probably has. Benson probably returned the favour, girlfriend and all. David hears things.

He lowers his eyes so he doesn’t have to see Benson’s sneer, goes into the bus, where the air conditioning blows dry and artificial. The players already inside aren’t looking at him, and David doesn’t know if they heard him, if they were there all along or they walked by while David tore into Lourdes. He tries not to care.

*

He sleeps terribly. His phone’s set to silent, because he half-expects Jake to text him to come over, always awful at taking a hint. It seems like he got the message this time though, and maybe David should be glad, but in the morning, he’s just tired.

Kurmazov takes him aside after team breakfast, before the trip to Tampa, looking as serious as usual.

“You know I have a brother,” Kurmazov says.

“Yeah,” David says slowly. Kurmazov the lesser. He’s an acceptable enough third-liner on the Canucks, but nothing like his brother.

“You think we play Canucks, we lose, I refuse to see him?” Kurmazov asks. “We always lose against Canucks.”

“Okay?” David says.