Sasquatch to the Moon

17: Trip

YETI

...which was... a huge motherfucking mistake, because in an hour and a half when my alarm starts going off, one of my arms is slung around his chest, and he's pressed against me, warm and soft and gentle. 

Rocket rolls over under my arm, facing away from the alarm clock but not moving away from me. It takes me a minute to realize that the very solid, definitely warm, absolutely disheveled cedar-smelling body right here with me isn't a product of a dream. I'm not good enough at dreaming to make something like him. 

"Jävlar," I swear under my breath and roll off him, mattress creaking under my sudden shift of weight.

"Promiňte," Rocket's awake too, his voice comes out as a drowsy growl. I slap my alarm off and sit up. I'm in jeans. I slept in jeans. And lord I'm stiff. 

I groan and rub my eyes, standing up and fumbling around to shut off the alarm instead of snooze.

Rocket is trying to get up, but then he's pressing his head into the pillow. He's mumbling indecipherably in Czech. Then he lifts his head to look at me, he's messy and the shirt that I gave him is hanging off him in quite possibly one of the most staggering ways possible. "You know the hangover is bad when you can't think in English." He's trying to laugh it off, but his eyes are fuzzy in the migraine way.

"I'll get you something to drink and a little breakfast." I say, tearing my eyes off him, ripping them, really.

"Fuck," he breathes out. "Oh no, no."

"What?" I watch his body tense and his eyes get wild.

"Yeti?" He leaps up out of bed and he's panicking. At first I think he remembered that he came out to me. "Yeti, I fucked up with Steph, oh my god-"

"That's okay, we've got time until practice starts." I point at the clock, trying to use a calm demeanor to get him to chill a little. His hands are all the way up in his wreck of bedhead, rustling it back and forth aggressively. I watch, throat gone dry, staring at his hair, his thick and endless hair. 

"What?"

"Practice. It's hell day." 

"No, no no, this, this is worse than that, no, Yeti you don't get it," One of his hands drops to his side, leaving one half of his head of hair sticking up straight. "No, no, Steph relapses if something bad happens to him when he's drunk, he's, no, fuck, Yeti he went to August, what if he told her? What if he fucked that up? I'll have to get him back to the hospital, oh no," His voice is breaking. "Yeti, I messed him up again, god, no."

"Rocket, shh, hey," I grab his shoulders and hold him still. "We'll go to August's on the way to the rink, I'll leave time for it, just breathe."

"No, Yeti," He's freaking the hell out. "I can't just do that to someone I just, I totally-" I shake him, knocking his hair back, getting his attention. 

"Rocket." I smooth his shirt over his shoulders, trying to find something to do with my hands that isn't holding his deltoids and shriveling inside at the way he feels under my palms. "It's fine."

"How do you know?"

"I don't know. Now, let's go downstairs and get you something to drink, you look like your head hurts." 

He nods and I stand up off the edge of my bed, pointing him toward the hall then down the stairs into my kitchen. 

He slumps down on one of the barstools at my counter, setting his head on the cold granite. 

I slide a glass of water over to him, "that'll take the edge off, here's some Advil, you're going to need that too." I throw him the little bottle and he manages to swat it out of the air.