Logan had assumed that the reason he and Sebastian weren't taking about their very bizarre evening was that they both had to rush off to work and school that morning. But as the weeks progressed and Sebastian remained extremely talkative about darts and school and computers and virtually any topic under the sun that wasn't sex or biology related, Logan had to resign himself to the fact that they probably weren't going to discuss it at all. Which shouldn't have been a problem, because Logan had no idea what he was going to say if Sebastian asked him any kind of question about it and yet kind of itched at Logan, especially in the wee hours of the night.

Their friendship seemed completely undamaged and even unchanged, which was what Logan had wanted all along, but still kept surprising him. Sebastian even slept on his couch another couple of times after they'd stayed up too late watching movies – and, Logan suspected, avoiding Sebastian's mom.

It wasn't as if Logan didn't have things to do other than worry about a friendship that seemed absolutely as stable as ever. Business at work was slowing down, and his boss kept making noises about downsizing. This happened every winter in the post Christmas slump, but it was never comfortable to feel his boss breathing down his neck, and Logan focused on keeping his head down and himself out of the line of fire. He needed to move on from this dead-end workplace, but it wasn't like there were a lot of jobs going around in a town this small, and not much room for him to strike out on his own anytime soon.

Plus, the other disadvantage of a small town was that he couldn't even complain about it too much without it getting back to his boss, which seemed very unfair.

Not that the job was the real problem. When Logan sat down to take stock of himself – not a common activity for him, but sometimes there was just nothing else to think about during the intermissions of a hockey game – he had to admit that his life was a little boring. He worked, he came home, he watched a lot of movies and the occasional hockey game, and he didn't do much else. Some of that was the winter, he told himself, trying not to be defensive in his own mind. He couldn't go running on icy sidewalks, and going down to the lake wasn't much fun if it was covered over by a foot of ice and blasted by winds like a fistful of knives pointed right at your face.

There was ice-fishing, he guessed, but Logan was waiting until he was at least out of his twenties to turn completely into his late grandfather, so that was a no-go for a while yet.

For a solid week he was considering getting a dog, but then his landlord dropped off this year's copy of the rental agreement, so that was right out. Besides, it just didn't seem right to sit on Petfinder and look at pictures of puppies without getting someone else's opinion on them. It was too easy on his own to decide that they were all perfect, and stall out right there.

That was, in fact, probably Logan's real problem: no one to hang out with and get him out of this funk. He couldn't even blame Sebastian for getting caught up in school stuff and skipping out on one or two movie nights when everyone else also seemed to have huge projects, or to be working long hours to get caught up after taking Christmas holidays, or whatever other reasons they'd given him for not wanting to come down to the bar and watch hockey on the big screen.

It wasn't even a great game, so he couldn't look forward to telling everyone afterwards that they'd missed out, but he didn't have anything else to do at home, so he stuck around for a while, drinking a slow beer and rolling his eyes over four stick penalties in a row.

If Sebastian was here, he'd be making an unbelievable number of snarky comments about it, Logan thought. Unreasonably, despite how annoyed he always got when Sebastian was doing it in person, the comments he was imagining in his head were kind of cracking him up. He hid his grin behind his pint glass and lifted his eyes back up to the screen above the bar.

Another fucking stick penalty. It was enough to make a guy quit watching hockey entirely.

He texted Sebastian: guess what everyone's favorite player is doing right now?

Tripping someone? Sebastian replied, followed by a long string of emojis laugh-crying. For a guy who pretended to be relatively indifferent to hockey, Sebastian certainly seemed to know exactly what he was talking about without ever having to ask.

Ding ding ding! Logan sent back. You win a prize! The prize is: we're definitely not going to make it to the playoffs this year.

This time, Sebastian's reply didn't even bother with words: the emojis said it all.

You want to come down to Dixon's, Logan texted after a moment. There's still another period of this shitshow to get through. He'd thought Sebastian was working on his big project tonight, but maybe not if he was replying to texts this fast. No harm in asking anyway.

As exciting as that sounds, Sebastian replied, I'm still here listening to Brandon explain his minor change to the sorting function. He's going to notice that I've stopped listening any minute now... There was a pause; Logan drank some more beer and watched a car commercial. Or maybe not.

Some other day then, Logan sent back. Good luck with your project.

Sebastian's follow-up message was barely comprehensible, but Logan laughed anyway and turned back to the TV with renewed appreciation for his team's assorted fuck-ups. It could be worse. They could be the Leafs.