Equilibrium

Chapter 4

The flight home to Vancouver was, for the most part, uneventful. I spent most of the time working away on my laptop and the guys kept themselves entertained with PSPs, books, laptops, in flight movies, while others just slept through the flight. Not a mention of the whole Pyatt flushing Kesler’s MP3 player and then spending the night with me what so ever. Yeah, I was getting suspicious. Unless I missed some miraculous male bonding between the three hours before the practice, I sensed a tense truce in the air. Even after the easy shutout victory over the Black Hawks, there was something off about the atmosphere. It reeked of Mo’s doing.

Half way through the four-hour flight, I got up to stretch out my legs a bit – and to play detective. I passed Trev and Kes who had a makeshift table set up and were playing cards with a couple of other guys a couple rows down from my seat.

“A straight!”

“Two pairs.”

“Damn it. There goes another twenty.”

“Wanna join us, Sam? I’ll go easy on you,” Kes looked up, smirk in place.

“Poker and skating. Two things you know I just can’t complete in, Mr. Smartass. Have fun though,” I turned to move on, but paused and bent over his shoulder, “Oh, by the way, nice flush you’ve got going on.”

The guys groaned and immediately folded as Kesler cried out incredulously. I laughed as he threw a bunched up napkin at me.

I found him near the back of the plane flipping through movies on the TV in the seat in front of him.

“Could you be any more bored?” I said, flopping on to the empty seat beside him.

“I could. You’ll know when I’ve reached that state if you see me pulling out my hair or running up and down the aisle,” he said without looking at me.

I started channel surfing myself, stopping on movie.

“Ooohh. Turn to channel twelve.”

“Why? What’s on?” He looked at my screen. “A western?”

I laughed mischievously. “Yes… it’s a western.”

Mo turned to me with his nose wrinkled in distaste, “I don’t like westerns.” But he turned to it nonetheless - just in time to catch Heath Ledger and Jake Gynllenhaal embrace passionately. “Whoa!”

I laughed harder. “You look so cute when you’re all pink,” I pinched his cheek.

He slapped my hand away.

“Don’t you have work to do?”

“On my break, boss. Someone’s gotta entertain Mo. He’s like a ticking time bomb when he’s bored. Can’t have the pilot thinking we’ve got a some passenger freaking out, running up and down the aisles, after all.”

“Hmmph.”

I started to channel surf again. There really wasn’t interesting on, so I settled on “The Devil Wears Prada”, a movie I’d already seen when it was in theatres.

“So… you aren’t going to bring up this morning?” I asked him, several minutes later after he gave up and was content on watching “Pirates of the Caribbean”.

“What’s to bring up?” he said casually. “You’re free to make friends with whomever you want, right?” He said that lightly too, but put more emphasis on the last word and turned to look at me. I realized he was waiting for a conformation so I nodded.

“Right. Friends,” I said, forcing the words out. I watched Andy meet the golden curly-haired god, Christian, for the first time – his looks having minimal effect on me at the moment as I tried to swallow the lie. “What’d you say to them, anyways?” I changed the subject somewhat, gesturing to the guys. “They’re so… quiet. It’s kind of unnerving.”

“Lets just say… I defended your honour.”

“‘Defended my honour’? Oh really? My hero,” I said dramatically.

“A simple ‘thank you’ will suffice. Sarcasm not necessary.”

“Oh, but I think it is.”

“You’re annoying, you know that?” he tried to say with a straight face, but his green eyes danced.

“You wouldn’t have it any other way,” I grinned.

************************************************************************

I spent the next half hour with him before he fell asleep. So much for keeping Mo entertained. I reached over him to grab a spare blanket and laid it over him as best as possible. I decided to head back to my seat. At least I’d have my laptop to play with. My sixth sense kicked in as soon as I stood up. I looked around and found Pyatt’s blue eyes staring at me from two rows behind. I smiled at him, taking in his striking features and headed over. Cooke was engrossed in a book beside him, so I gestured him to follow me to my seat. We passed by one of the washrooms and a few moments later I realized I was alone. I turned around and retraced my steps.

“Py?” I poked my head into the open doorway. He grabbed me and pulled me inside, somehow managing to close the door behind me.

“What’s with you and close quarters?” I laughed. Taylor Pyatt was not a small man by any means of the word and airplane washrooms weren’t the most proportionally accurate either – chartered flight or otherwise.

“Shhh… they’ll hear us,” he scolded in a deep playful voice. Pyatt bent down and kissed me, his lips firm and demanding. I responded instantly, standing on my tippy toes as the small of my back pressed into the sink. His hand cupped the back of my head for a moment before pulling my hair out of its ponytail sending messy dark curls everywhere.

“’Friends’, eh?” he grunted when we broke for air.

“He doesn’t need to know everything.” I reached around Py to lock the door, changing the sign to ‘Occupied’.