(Third Person)
Max stood in the emptying hallway, still staring after the space where Lucian had disappeared, when a hand landed on his shoulder from the other direction and made him jump.
"Whoa — easy." Knox held both hands up, grinning, backpack slung over one shoulder, taking a half-step back like he was ready to dodge a swing. "Didn’t mean to startle you. You look like you got run over."
"I feel like I got run over."
"Hangover?"
"Hangover." Max pressed the heel of his hand against one eye. "And several other things."
Knox’s grin didn’t fade, but something in his eyes sharpened slightly, tracking the direction Lucian had gone before flicking back to Max’s face. "Come on. I know a cure."
"I don’t think caffeine fixes what’s wrong with me right now."
"Not caffeine. Trust me." He was already steering Max down the hall with a hand between his shoulder blades, easy and certain. "Cafeteria. Sit. I’ll be right back."
Max dropped into a chair by the windows and put his head down on folded arms while Knox disappeared toward the counter.
He came back a few minutes later with a tray, setting down something thick and orange-looking in a plastic cup, along with actual food — eggs, toast, a banana still in its peel.
"What is this."
"Family recipe. Don’t ask what’s in it, just drink it." Knox dropped into the seat across from him, already peeling his own banana with a satisfied sort of expertise. "My oldest brother swears by it. He’d know, he’s been hungover more consistently than he’s been sober since he turned eighteen."
Max eyed the cup with real suspicion, then drank it anyway, mostly out of desperation.
It was strange — tangy, slightly spicy, not entirely unpleasant — and something in his stomach settled almost immediately.
"Okay. That actually helped."
"Told you." Knox took a bite of toast, watching him over it with an expression that was trying too hard to look casual. "Rough night?"
"You could say that."
"You look like it’s more than the hangover talking."
Max didn’t answer that directly, just picked at the eggs, pushing a piece of toast in a slow circle around the plate.
Knox watched him do it for a second, then set his own fork down. "You don’t have to tell me. Just — for what it’s worth, whatever happened, you don’t look like someone who did something wrong. You look like someone who got yelled at for it anyway."
Max glanced up, surprised by how close that landed. "That obvious?"
"You’ve got the face again."
"I really need to work on that face."
"Don’t. It’s how I know when to bring snacks." Knox grinned, easy as ever, and let it drop there, filling the silence instead with a story about his brother’s own legendary hangover from some wedding two years back — something involving a rented suit, a fountain, and a groomsman speech nobody had asked for.
Max laughed despite himself, the tight, sour feeling in his chest loosening slightly by the time they’d finished eating.
"C’mon," Knox said eventually, checking his phone. "Practice in twenty. You up for it or should I tell Coach you died?"
"I’m up for it."
The locker room was mostly empty when they got there, a few early arrivals scattered around pulling on gear.
Max scanned it once out of habit and didn’t find who he was looking for.
"He’s probably already out there," Knox said, catching the look. "Cap likes to warm up alone before everyone shows. Doesn’t like an audience for it."
Max changed quickly, laced his skates with hands that still felt slightly unsteady, and followed Knox out through the tunnel toward the ice.
Lucian was already there. Alone, exactly as Knox had said, running full-speed drills against no one — collecting a puck at the blue line, driving hard toward the net, snapping off shot after shot with a violence that made the boards rattle every time one went wide.
He scored. Again. Again. The net barely had time to settle before another puck was already rattling into it, his form perfect, brutal, nothing playful about any of it.
Sweat had already soaked through the collar of his jersey, and he didn’t stop to wipe his face, didn’t stop at all, just reset and drove at the net again like the last shot hadn’t counted.
Max stood at the boards, watching, something uneasy settling low in his stomach that had nothing to do with the hangover.
The rest of the team filtered in over the next few minutes, laughing, loose, gear bags dropping against the boards — until Lucian’s voice cut across the ice, flat and sharp enough that the laughter died instantly.
"Lines. Now."
Nobody moved fast enough for him. "Now."
They scrambled into position. Max caught Knox’s eye across the ice — a small, wary glance, the kind that said this is not normal, even for him.
"Laps," Lucian said. "Full ice. Go."
They went. Twenty laps in, most of the team was breathing hard, sweat soaking through practice jerseys, and Lucian showed no sign of stopping them.
"Again."
"Cap, we’ve done—"
"I said again."
They went again. Max’s legs had gone past burning into something numb, lungs dragging cold air that didn’t seem to help anymore, and every time he thought Lucian might finally call it, another lap got added instead.
"Cross, come on," one of the defensemen finally said, chest heaving, hands braced against his knees. "What did we even do?"
"Yeah, seriously," another one called, voice cracking with exhaustion. "We won the last three scrimmages. What is this?"
Lucian didn’t answer that. His eyes cut once, briefly, toward Max — there and gone so fast most of the team wouldn’t have caught it — before he barked the next set without a shred of explanation.
"Again."
"This is insane," Marcus muttered, low, falling into stride beside Max on the next lap, breath ragged. "He gets like this maybe twice a season. You know what set him off?"
"No idea," Max said, which wasn’t entirely a lie.
Marcus gave him a sideways look that suggested he didn’t quite believe it, but didn’t push, saving his breath for the next lap instead.
Max’s vision swam slightly on the next lap, legs shaking, and he pushed through it anyway, refusing to be the one who stopped first, refusing to give Lucian any more reason to be furious than he clearly already had.
By the time Coach Reyes finally strode in, clipboard tucked under one arm, a visible wave of relief moved through the whole team.
"What’s going on here?" Coach Reyes’s eyes swept the group, sweat-soaked and gasping. "I leave you alone for ten minutes and you’ve run yourselves into the ground?"
Nobody answered. Lucian’s jaw was tight enough to ache.
"All right. Whatever this was, it’s over. Scrimmage — Cross, take the far end. Max, you’re opposite him. Let’s see where you actually stand."
Max’s stomach dropped.
They lined up at center ice, and something in Lucian’s expression hadn’t softened at all, hadn’t eased even slightly since the laps ended — if anything, it had sharpened, focused down into something Max didn’t recognize from any practice before this one.
The whistle blew.
Lucian took the puck off the drop clean, blew past Max like he wasn’t even there, and buried a shot top corner before Max had finished turning around.
"Again," Coach Reyes called.
Same result. And the next. And the one after that, Lucian’s stick finding the passing lane before Max had even committed to the play, stripping the puck with an ease that had nothing generous in it at all.
"Is that all you’ve got?" Lucian’s voice cut low across the ice after the fourth clean goal, not loud enough for the whole rink, just for Max. "I thought Ashford taught you something."
"He did."
"Could’ve fooled me." Another rush, another goal, clean and merciless. "Move your feet. React. Or is standing still the only thing you actually learned?"
Max’s jaw clenched, humiliation and hurt tangling together low in his chest, and he skated back to the faceoff dot without answering, legs already screaming from the laps, pride screaming louder.
"Again," Lucian said, before Coach Reyes even had the chance to.
This time, something in Max snapped past exhaustion into something sharper.
The puck dropped, and instead of hanging back, waiting to react, he drove straight at Lucian, stick low, refusing to give him the easy lane he’d had all afternoon, legs burning, every ounce of pride he had left thrown into the next three strides.
Lucian’s eyes flickered — surprise, quick and real, gone almost before it registered — and for one full second, they were actually fighting for the puck instead of Lucian simply taking it.
Then Lucian’s shoulder caught his, hard, harder than anything in a friendly scrimmage should have been, and Max went down onto the ice with a crack that rang up through his whole arm where it hit first, the puck skittering away forgotten.
The whistle didn’t blow.
"Get up," Lucian said, standing over him, breathing hard, something raw and unguarded flickering across his face for just a moment before it slammed shut again. "Get up, Max. Now."
Max lay there a second longer than he needed to, staring up at him, something in Lucian’s expression looking almost as stunned by the hit as Max felt lying beneath it.
Nobody on the team said a word.Even Coach Reyes had gone quiet, clipboard lowered, watching the two of them with a look that suggested he was recalculating something too.