Slapshot! {KAI!}

[troy nathaniel johnston.]

A lot of things had changed for Troy, lately. He went from a senior on his way to an animation career to back up to if his plans as a professional athlete didn't plan out in Ireland with a huge family, tonnes of friends, and a great community, to the new kid senior at a little known town in the middle of nowhere with one family member, no friends, no community to know of, and basically no future. All of his plans had been dashed by a simple phonecall, watching the phone slip out of his mother's grasp, she collapsing to the chair behind her as he knelt down to pick up the white insturment and hear the monotonous voice on the other end of the line inform him that his father had been critically injured in a terrible car accident. From then everything was a blur. The hospital visits. The distasteful lunches in a packed cafeteria that smelled like the medicine hospital patients were given each day. The sleepless, worrying nights. The death. The realization that his father would never be around again. The funeral. The lack of money. The job offer. The plane ride. The meeting with education to find out he was being sent back to high school. Every day since. Nothing but a blur, a struggle to get by each day. He needed an escape. Badly.

So, as he always did when life got him down, Troy turned to the one consistent thing that was always there for him. He may have lost his teams and teammates, but sports was always there. Anything he wanted. He could shoot slapshots against his garage door. He could slam dunk the ten foot high basketball hoop in his back yard. He could shuffle a soccer ball between his feet or bump a volleyball in the air a hundred times in a row. When he practiced there was no death, change of scenery, or bad news in general. There was just Troy and his equipment, how he liked it.

Usually he'd just stick to the around-the-house way of doing sports. He'd been at the high school, in the senior class though he should be in university by now, for nearly a month, and yet hadn't really socialized with anyone. He was too quiet, and even the blushing girls who ran after him kept their distance after they realized that the handsome Irish rarity wasn't a big one for talking. He figured that once volleyball season came around he'd join the team and get to know some people then, but in the mean time he wanted to adjust at his own pace. It was the weekend, and he figured that it was about time he went to check out St. Michael's big sports centre, see what was there for him to do. He paid the ten dollars admission and went into the locker room, dumping his bad with a change of clothes for after his practice in a locker before he went onto the indoor soccer field, which was empty at nine o'clock in the morning.

Troy grabbed a soccer ball from the basket of them in the equipment room, and then after a second's debate pulled the entire basket out onto the field with him. He lined all of the balls up on the field, a good distance away from the net, took a moment to aim, and started kicking, running down the field to kick each ball without any hesitation. Ball after ball flew into the net, 23 out of the 25 he'd set up. The blonde haired senior stopped after the last ball and glanced at the two that had escaped the net, muttering in his frustration. Of course, two had to get out. "Let's try this again, shall we?" he muttered to himself in his thick Irish accent. As he walked down the field he pulled off his white T-shirt, figuring that he'd be here a while and since there was no one around there wasn't any harm in going topless. He tossed his T-shirt to the side of the field as he got to the net and lazily began kicking the balls back towards center field for another round.

[grayson wyatt thatcher.]

Boredom had struck the boy once again, though it rarely ever left him. This town wasn't what Wyatt needed, he needed adventure and excitement, not the same damn thing every single day. He couldn't handle it. He made a pact with himself that once he could he would move away from this town and never look back. Wyatt wanted to move to a big city, where everything was different each day. New people, new sights, new sounds...new everything.

The boy decided, for some reason, today he would go where he never really went. The Sport's Centre wasn't really his idea of fun, being that he was horrible at most sports, but he hadn't been there in a while and maybe today something fun would happen. Wyatt knew you had to pay an admission fee and that wasn't too much up his alley. The boy snuck inside, and past the admission counter. "Ha, too easy." He said as he strolled along into the centre.

"Why did I even come here?" He asked himself as he looked around. "Everything is so...athletic." He said with a tinge of disgust on the end of the word. "Let's make a point to never come back here. Ok?" He said to himself as he kept walking along the hallways. "What's all that noise?" The boy asked himself as he rounded a corner and found himself in the indoor soccer field. "What do we have here?" He mumbled to himself as he watched the blonde kick the balls into the net. "Not too bad." he said with a grin. Though he doesn't play it Wyatt has found himself watching a few soccer games in his life, and from what he saw from this boy...he was pretty good.

Wyatt kept watching him, not making much noise. Whats the fun in stalking if the other person knows you are there? It wasn't until the other male took his shirt off that he actually made some noise. A small cough, letting the guy know he was here. "You, uh, come here often?" He said with a sly smile. Cheesy, but it always got them talking.

[troy nathaniel johnston.]

Troy spun around as he heard the cough of another human being, caught completely off guard. He wouldn't exactly say that he was a shy guy. He'd been the life of many parties in his days back in Ireland. He was just... uncomfortable with meeting new people, or when he was around people he'd never met before. It took him quite a while to warm up to others, which was why he hadn't really made any new buddies at St. Michael's yet. So he was naturally very surprised and, yes, shy when he realized that he had not been alone after all.

The person who'd interrupted his quiet practicing looked younger than him, though not by too many years. He was definitely in high school, maybe a junior? Sophomore? Hell, he might have even been a senior, it wasn't as though Troy was good at recognizing his own 'classmates' yet. He'd never really been good with names, and with all of the changes that had occurred in his life lately he could hardly be counted on to have a focused, dependable memory.

"Uh... no, not really," he shrugged, forgetting to be self conscious about his accent that set him so far apart from the rest of the town and it's thousands of residents. "But I may in the future... if I can't find a different way to practice. It's a pretty decent facility. Better than I'd been expecting when I moved here." The other guy didn't really seem like he was the type to regularly come to this place either, though Troy tried not to judge others on appearances. He had experience in speaking to jocks and people who liked sports, and based on first impressions this kid just didn't give off that sort of a vibe. It was best to ask to make sure, though. "What about you? Do ya know your way around?"

[grayson wyatt thatcher.]

'Sexy accent.' Wyatt thought to himself as he leaned against the wall. "This is about as good as it gets." The boy said to the other male. "Like really, I think this is one of the newest things in town." He said with a little laugh. "You're obviously not from here-" Wyatt said stating the obvious. "-when did you move to this oh so ordinary town?"

Wyatt took a second to survey the guy. He seemed a bit older than himself, probably a senior. He was most definitely a sports player. 'Muscles galore.' He thought with an inward chuckle. 'Not my type, but very pretty to look at.' "Oh no. Not at all, this is only my third time or so to come here. I try to stay away from sports. I'm not that coordinated." He said trying to remember the last time he did something overly active.

"I tend to stay in the more...how to say...normal parts of town. Not that sports of strange or anything, but it doesn't seem like many people come down here." The boy said with a grin. "I'm Wyatt by the way. I've lived here all my life...so if you need a tour guide I'm your guy." He said with a cheesy smile. "You might want to put your shirt back on while you walk through town though, don't want to attract too much attention now do you?" Wyatt said with a playful wink.

[troy nathaniel johnston.]

"Uh...no." Troy shook his head politely, trying to convince himself that socializing would not kill him no matter how uncomfortable it made him to do so. "I'm from Ireland. Definitely not around... well, here." For the life of him he couldn't remember where exactly 'here' was, other than the town name, of course. "I just moved here a few weeks ago, with my mum." He preferred not to linger on the details of what exactly it was that had made him move here. It wasn't exactly fond memories, needless to say.

He merely shrugged at the comment that not many people must come by here. More likely it was that not many people came by here at nine am on a chilly Saturday morning. Students their own age were likely curled up in their beds under their sheets, blissfully asleep. He didn't exactly mind that things were quiet here anyway. He didn't like being oogled at as he practiced, anyway, though he did seem to be getting a certain vibe off of this guy... no, he wouldn't jump into assumptions. That was wrong, and in any case, what was the difference here? It didn't matter to Troy whether the vibes he thought he was getting off of this kid were true or not. He was just another guy come to the sports centre. Realizing that he'd been silent and probably staring at this kid for a while, he finally spoke. "It doesn't make much of a difference to me," he shrugged. "I prefer an atmosphere like this than a crowded one any day. Easier to focus."

He smiled pleasantly as the other kid introduced himself, relaxing considerably once he knew his name. There was something a lot more personal and comforting about knowing a person's name rather than just thinking of them as 'that person'. So it was only fair that he offered his own name in return: "I'm Troy, Troy Johnston. It's nice ta meet you."

He chuckled a bit, glancing at his shirt lying on the ground a few metres away where he'd thrown it. "Yes, well... I'm not vain. I only took my shirt off because I thought I was alone."

[grayson wyatt thatcher.]

"I figured, judging from the accent." Wyatt said laughing a bit. "Not that it's bad, we just don't hear many accents around her it seems...especially an Irish one. It's a nice change." Wyatt said cocking one eyebrow. "What? you don't like the crowd cheering your name? Pushing you to do your best, then when you slip up ,turning on you like you just killed the President?" Wyatt said with a chuckle. There it was, Wyatt's sense of humor that got him in a lot of trouble. It wasn't his fault people didn't think it was funny...because he thought it was hilarious.

"Nice to meet you Irish Troy." He said extending his hand to the other. Wyatt gave a little shrug. "It's not like the view wasn't nice but the townies wouldn't think so." He said with a wink. "So, you up for it? Wanna see the town and all it's treasures? Not there are any, but it makes it sound much more exciting."

[troy nathaniel johnston.]

Of course. The accent. The dead giveaway that Troy was a freak of nature in this part of the world. In a town as small as St. Michael's it was extremely unusual to find another person with an accent, let alone and accent from Ireland. He'd like it if he were able to find just one other person like him, an Irish accent that didn't belong to his silent old mother would be a welcome bit of home and comfort in these weird new surroundings. "A nice change? That's a weird thing to say. I'd prefer to fit in than to be a 'change'."

He laughed, shaking his head. "I like my sports, but I do it for fun, not for the attention. ...And, well, money in the future would be a pretty good thing to fit in to the deal, too." He had never been one of those jocks who lived off of the attention. Sure, he liked it when it came back in Ireland, but here he already felt like enough of a freak. He didn't want even more attention drawn to him because of his ability in sports until he at least had a few friends around the school.

"Nice to meet you too, Wyatt." He extended his hand out to firmly shake the other boy's hand. Yeah, the vibes he was getting of fof him were definitely correct, though Troy wouldn't be so brash as to say 'You're gay' out loud. He didn't mind, per say, it was just... unusual. He was used to the girls paying attention to his looks most often, not many guys, or at least guys who were so open about it.

"Um..." He glanced at the balls strewn about after only one round of kicking. He couldn't just abandon his training schedule at a whim. He'd never done it before. The only break he'd ever taken from his routine of practicing was when his father was in critical condition, and the rush of moving around distracted him from normal life. "I- I'm not sure. I mean, I really should focus on this and..." Aw screw it. He could always come back later. "Yeah, sure. Sounds good."

[grayson wyatt thatcher.]

"Oh, so you're not the super jock. That's good." Wyatt said with a cocky smile. "Though I had already assumed you weren't like the jocks here...because you talked to me." Wyatt said as he looked down at the ground. "Most jocks here, they like to pick on guys smaller than them and they don't really like my jokes. Probably because they're cavemen and can't understand them...and you know if you don't understand it you should automatically beat it up." He said with a small smile as he looked back up to Troy.

The boy was ready for Troy to turn him down and go back to practicing. He was used to being put off, not having many friends. "Oh you want to?" Wyatt asked surprised. "Come on then." He said with a grin. Was Wyatt finally breaking out of his shell? Trying to make friends? Though Troy wasn't the friend that Wyatt had imagined it could always be helpful to have an older, stronger friend. "Have anything in mind? Hrmm? Like anything you saw that you thought would have been interesting?" Wyatt asked as he started to turn around and walk out the Centre. 'Maybe coming here wasn't such a bad idea.' The boy thought as a small smile went across his lips. "Or we could just wing it. Up to you."

[troy nathaniel johnston.]

By 'super jock' Troy assumed Wyatt meant the bullies; the idiots who thought they talent and position on sports teams set them up to rule the world and crush everyone else under their feet. There'd been a few of them back in Ireland, too, but not on any of Troy's sports teams. Most of his teams had been coached by the same guy, Coach Higgins, and Coach Higgins made it clear at the start of every season that such guys weren't allowed on his team. He always said that that sort of behaviour reflected poorly on the coach, captain, team, and teammates of the bully. They all paid for an idiot's mistake. At the first sign of such a guy existing, Coach Higgins benched them until they got their act together and learned a bit of respect. But he definitely knew the type of jocks Wyatt was talking about, and voted to never become like one of them.

"Those jocks don't really get sports. They're in it for the popularity, not the game," Troy shrugged in reply, thinking about his low average from his senior year in Ireland and how he'd struggled to stay on the teams he loved so much. He could be classified as a 'caveman'. He tried in school, he just didn't have the brains to excel. Still, he didn't allow himself to be stung by Wyatt's comment. The guy hadn't meant any harm, after all.

He shrugged, following along Wyatt out of the centre. He grabbed his duffle bag out of the locker as they went past and slung it over his shoulder, also pulling along his shirt as they went down the halls. "I don't really know anywhere around town... so I guess winging it is as good as anything else."[/justify]

[grayson wyatt thatcher.]

Wyatt shrugged as Troy spoke. "I guess, I just get tired of dealing with them. I mean, I'm already a bull's eye for them to come mess with and when people see them doing it then other people do it. It's a damn domino effect." He said shaking his head. "I'm sure you've never had to deal with anything like that though, being the big sports guy you are." He said with a small chuckle. "Not that it's your fault. I'm actually happy sometimes that I got quick wits rather than muscle. It's saved me a few times, especially from the police." Wyatt said as a mischievous smirk formed on his lips.

"Anyway, yeah. Winging it sounds good to me." The boy said as he walked in front of the other. "So Troy, what brought you to our lovely uneventful town? Was it the friendly people, the breathtaking views, or the wonderful school?" He said, dripping with sarcasm. "There wasn't any other place you could have gone? I mean, I'm sure it wasn't up to you but I would have put up a damn good fight to go somewhere else." Wyatt said with a sigh. "Whenever I graduate I'm out of here for good and never turning back."