brayden:
Brayden regretted his newfound motivation after the first few practices, fucking exhausted from trying out his new aggressive playing style. He wasn’t sure if he was improving or making a difference, but he could definitely feel the impact it was leaving on his body. He was too used to relying on his speed to get him by, which left him winded but not as sore. Usually, he spent nights watching a few episodes from his favorite shows, but ever since practice started up again, he kept falling asleep as soon as he got in bed. This last practice wasn’t any different than the others, in which it left Brayden feeling like he could just drop dead at any moment. Once practice was over, Brayden was out of the locker room before he could say a word to anyone, not that he would if he wasn’t exhausted. All he wanted was to crawl in to bed and sleep for a week, but he paused at the lounge to grab mug from one of the kitchen cabinets. They only had a few in his suite, and they were all dirty.
He nearly dropped the mug when someone suddenly broke the silence, cursing to himself as he turned around and saw Jay. With how fucking excited and happy he was, Brayden thought that he must be talking to someone else, because no one ever approached him like that. He looked over his shoulder to check and see if anyone was behind him, but no one was there. So caught off guard, he missed the beginning of his story, but caught the important parts, causing him to raise an amused eyebrow. “I always say that marriage ends in disaster,“ He shrugs in response, “I don’t usually get free cake out of it though.” Brayden isn’t really into sweets, but he’s not going to turn down free food. Digging in to one of the drawers, he grabs a knife and hands it to Jay, shaking his head in bemusement. “How do you just stumble upon a whole cake? You’re fucking lucky.”
For a moment, he was almost certain that Brayden would deny his offer, thinking that something like frosted red velvet cake would have been too saccharine for the cold, brooding image Brayden enveloped himself in. If he had been anyone else, it would’ve been enough to deter him from approaching Brayden altogether, but Jay was not one shaken off easily. He had been trained since birth in the art of extending a hand to those with their arms kept to their sides, knew exactly the angle at which to tilt his smile to break warm even the most frigid of personalities, and Brayden’s reluctance towards the other Foxes was a challenge Jay was more than adept at handling - in fact, he would hardly call it a challenge at all. However, Brayden put up much less of a fight than expected, and Jay was spared from having to do any more convincing. Instead, he accepted the knife from where Brayden offered it while setting the bag with the cake inside of it onto a nearby table.
He cracked a grin and nodded along with a quip of, “Amen to that.” The idea of marriage in general, even if it didn’t end with a seething divorce, was a disconcerting thought, to the point that he avoided mentioning the word like a child refusing to utter a profanity. Still, that hardly meant he wasn’t willing to profit from the failure of one in the form of the cake before them. “I’ve got fantastic luck, actually. Practically a rabbit’s foot,” he said as he cut the first piece and slid it into a napkin. “Like, the Foxes making it to the Championships? All me, you’re very welcome.” He smirked, handing Brayden a napkin of cake with a plastic spoon hanging off of it. With that, he dug into his own piece shamelessly, any warnings from Grant about the merits of a healthy diet long forgotten, though he continued to speak between bites. “How was the summer break for you? Eating impromptu free cake, as nice as it may be, wasn’t the highlight of it I hope?”
