Chapter Text
“I’m fucking exhausted,” Cale groans in the middle of training camp, squirting water over his face. Nate frowns. It’s too early to be exhausted - the season hasn’t even started yet. “Just, like, thinking about playing 82 games - all the travel, the hotels, the late nights - fuck.”
“Well, half of them are home games,” Nate reminds him.
Cale shrugs. “Still tired thinking about it all.”
“Some of the travel is fun,” Nate says. He grabs a bottle of water off the bench and drinks half of it.
“Fun?” Cale says skeptically. “We’re shuttled from city to city. We stay in hotels that look identical everywhere and only leave to get on the bus to go to the arenas. What’s fun about that?”
“Well, it could be fun. If we tried.”
“Yeah, sure,” Cale says. “I bet Columbus and Winnipeg are at the top of everyone’s vacation lists.”
“We go to cool places, too,” Nate argues. “Southern California. Vancouver. Seattle. New York. Vegas.”
“And all we see are our hotel rooms and the rinks,” Cale reminds him.
Nate grins at him. “So let’s make it fun this year.”
“What do you mean?” Cale asks, confused.
“We’ll come up with something fun in every city we go to - all 32 of them.”
“31,” Cale corrects him, “unless you’re including Denver.”
Nate considers it. “We’ll still do Denver, but that can be the last city. I mean, we do fun things here all the time, but we’ll be deliberate about it after we check off all 31 others.”
“Alright,” Cale grins at him. “If you wanna come up with something to do in 31 different cities, I’ll tag along.”
Nate looks at Cale for a moment. “You don’t believe me,” he finally says. “You don’t think it’s possible.”
“Prove me wrong, then,” Cale says competitively.
“You’re on.”