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The playoffs roll on, and while Bryce is being a stud on the ice and playing like his life depends on it, Jared continues to spite plan their wedding.
They’re fundamentally just doing a fancy-clothes party, so it’s easier than the average wedding would be, Jared expects. Like, yeah, there’s still the tuxes and the wedding cake and they have to pick out rings together, but other than that it’s just some catering — already taken care of — and the venue — already taken care of. They’ve got the run of this cottage — well, absolutely massive lake house with an additional ‘bunkhouse’ that’s the size of Jared’s childhood home, more accurately — not far outside of the city, and there’s enough beds for everyone, so they don’t even have to figure out hotels for the out of towners or anything.
Jared and Elaine go and visit some cake places while Bryce is back in LA for game five, clutching at a stranglehold 3-1 series lead. Bryce has officially designated Elaine’s tastebuds as like, his tastebud surrogates or something, and they try a bunch of weird flavours because Elaine wants to, but settle on the alternating chocolate and vanilla Bryce and Jared had compromised on at the start. Three tiers, because Jared still wants a giant fuck you cake. Two of them are vanilla because Jared’s selfish and Bryce isn’t there, and anyway, no one dislikes vanilla, so it’s a good flavour to have. The cake feeds way more than they need it to, and is going to cost way more than Jared thinks any cake ought to, but Elaine is also Bryce’s payment surrogate, and she hands her credit card over without batting an eyelash.
The Kings stave off elimination, but not for long. The Flames take it at home, and celebration after is apparently an obligation. Well, according to Bryce, who sounds apologetic when he calls from a crazy loud locker room, like Jared’s going to be mad he’s partying with his team after winning a series, what the hell.
Obviously Jared can’t be there — even if they were out, like, Riley and Lapointe level out, it’s probably bad fucking manners to go to your rival team’s celebration — and like, he’s not upset about it, probably wouldn’t even enjoy it. He’s not exactly the partying type. If it was his team who won it, he’d be there for sure, of course, would enjoy it, but it isn’t.
He drives Elaine back to her hotel, drives himself home — the streets are ten times crazier than they were last game, which makes sense. Settles in and watches the highlights of the game in his boxers, half expecting Bryce to do a one drink and run, half expecting him not to come in until past three. Honestly he’d prefer the latter, just because it would mean Bryce was like, doing the team thing, hopefully having fun.
He hears Bryce’s key in the lock before midnight, and kind of internally sighs. One drink and run, then.
“I brought guests!” Bryce tells him, Chaz and Ashley walking in the door before Jared can do more than throw the nearest blanket over himself, give himself a little dignity. Not that Chaz hasn’t seen him in less hundreds of times, but context. Plus Ashley hasn’t, and does not deserve to be unexpectedly subjected to it. He twists it so it covers his chest too. He’s sure Ashley isn’t going to be scandalised by his nipples or whatever, but still.
“Beautiful blanket toga,” Chaz says.
“Bite me, I wasn’t expecting guests,” Jared says, and Bryce looks sort of shame-faced but also too pleased by the win to land it properly.
“I brought Chaz and Ashley,” Bryce repeats cheerfully, like he’s a dog bringing Jared a stick he’s proud of.
“We’ve got beer in the fridge, I’m putting pants on,” Jared says, and marches into their room in his makeshift toga.
They’ve all got beers when he gets back, Chaz and Bryce with Molsons, Ashley with some craft beer she must have brought herself, or has been languishing in the back of their fridge since last summer. Jared’s got a glass of wine waiting for him, no spritz — Elaine finished the last of their soda water.
“Leaving the party before midnight?” Jared says to Chaz, who actually likes parties. “That’s not you.”
“Eh, it was boring,” Chaz says, which Jared’s sure is not true. “Plus we haven’t seen you in forever, so.”
That is true — they text all the time, and not just when Jared was using him to spy on Bryce from afar — but it’s been awhile since he’s seen Chaz, longer since he’s seen Ashley. They’re probably going to train together again this summer, spend most of their time together — Chaz refuses to confirm until the playoffs are through because he’s apparently superstitious — but it’s still surprisingly good to see them.
“I’m in the middle of finals right now, so it’s not exactly the best time for crazy partying,” Ashley says. “Next round.”
She laughs at the horrified noises she gets from Chaz. Like Jared said, superstitious.
“Tell me about the wedding,” Ash says. “Every time I ask Chaz for details he just shrugs at me.”
It’s nice talking about it to someone who’s genuinely interested and isn’t Bryce or like, related to him or Bryce. Chaz and Raf and Julius are useless for it, and Jared gets that — if it was Chaz and Ashley getting married, Jared would probably be shit at offering any advice or interest in how it went. They’d have to go to Bryce for that.
“We just got the cake decided,” Jared says. “Chocolate and vanilla, which isn’t like, totally traditional—” he pretends he doesn’t see Bryce rolling his eyes at him. “But it’s not like, a cupcake cake or whatever, so.”
“Aw, I like those little cupcake towers,” Ashley says. “They’re super cute.”
Jared cannot keep Julius from meeting Ashley, not when they’ve got barely more than a dozen people coming to the wedding. He will do his best to make sure the subject of cupcakes never comes up, though, so Julius cannot feel vindicated.
Chaz and Ashley stick around for a couple beers, head out after that, true to the early night, Jared guesses, and that’s fine, because Jared can shuck the dignity pants and have some great celebratory sex with Bryce, though like, carefully, because Bryce is already pretty battered up from one series. The Kings hit hard. Jared’s been rattled by them in regular season games, and they were not pulling anything in the series.
Jared pokes inquisitively at a bruise on Bryce’s arm after, leans down to kiss it when Bryce winces.
“Didn’t stay out long,” Jared says.
“Eh, we waited until after Coach left,” Bryce says. “And before he did he told us not to stay out too late, three more series, you know?”
Jared’s pretty sure the coach leaving is a sign the party can officially begin, not a signal to listen to him and leave. It’s a little upsetting that Bryce even managed to escape after basically being the MVP all series — Jared can’t see the Oilers letting, say, Julius wiggle out this early if it happened for them. The more Jared hears about the Flames, the more he thinks there’s something rotten in that room, and he doesn’t think he’s just biased from hearing things from Bryce.
Comparing them to the Oilers makes it even more obvious — the Oilers let Jared and Julius mostly be like, their own little anti-social unit, but the vets like Rogers would often check in with them, see if they needed anything, offer an invite for dinner and stuff like that. They weren’t isolated, except by introverted choice. And it sounds like Chaz got some of that with the Flames, but like — not in the same way. Bryce definitely didn’t.
Jared never thought he’d be favourably comparing the Oilers to the Flames, but here he is. Obviously the Flames are the better team, but they seem like a dysfunctional one. It’s kind of sad, knowing that. Well, really sad, especially since Bryce is stuck on it. Unless the Flames follow through on their threat, at least.
Jared doesn’t want to think about it.
“Got to keep my head in it, you know?” Bryce says.
“Yeah,” Jared says. “Three more.”
“Three more,” Bryce agrees.
*
They don’t even manage one game, let alone three series.
The Flames burn out. Get extinguished. Their hopes and dreams go up in smoke. Jared guesses he deals with the disappointment in the stupid fire jokes he grew up seeing from the media.
Bryce sulks for a few days, and Jared lets him, projecting an aura of ‘if you want to vent I’m here’ that Bryce takes him up a lot. So many ugly things are said about so many teammates in the safety of their apartment, and they’re all pretty fair: it was an awful series, and there wasn’t anyone who wasn’t at least a little at fault when they were getting swept off the ice. They were kind of a garbage fire, a whole different team than they’d been in the first round. It was actively painful to watch.
Bryce wasn’t blameless — he was one of the few guys who kept up his offence, but he made a few really bad defensive plays, and he took some stupid penalties, visibly frustrated; it wasn’t helping that he was getting jeered in his hometown. Bryce is just as hard on himself as everyone else on the team, though, owns every single one of his fuck ups, probably in a harsher way than Jared would put it. Not that Jared would put it out there at all — he’s being supportive listener, not Bryce’s coach or something. He needs an ear right now, not criticism, constructive or not.
The second round kind of sucks in general — Raf’s on his way home a week after the Flames are eliminated, and Jared’s glad to see him, but also not glad at the same time. And yeah, Bryce and Chaz and Raf all made it to the second round, which is two more rounds than Jared got, but he knows none of them are happy right now. Jared knows from bitter experience that anything less than winning it all feels like losing everything.
Still, that means the offseason’s truly underway for the first time, at least in Jared’s brain, and that means it’s officially like, super wedding time. With Bryce out and everything starting to get settled in the wedding planning, it’s time to send out invites — like, ‘hey be in Calgary on this date’ via phone or text, not like ‘You Are Cordially Invited’ on fancy paper because gross, that’s not them, and also it’s probably the sort of thing their agents and front offices would veto, considering the chance of leaks — but first Jared kind of has to tell his grandma who he’s getting married to.
Bryce offers to come, and while the idea of his Flames fan grandma watching Bryce Marcus walk in the door and then announce he’s going to be marrying her grandson is kind of a hilarious one, Jared doesn’t really want to give her a heart attack, so he tells her over tea at her place while his mom like, crackles with suppressed amusement at her own mother’s face.
His grandma gapes at him for a solid minute before recovering admirably. “You aren’t pranking me, are you?”
Jared shakes his head.
“This is the boy you’ve been seeing for — how long have you been together?”
“Almost three years now,” Jared says. “Our third anniversary’s right before the wedding.”
They’re kind of cramming things in — anniversary, wedding anniversary to be, Bryce’s birthday, all tight up against one another, but since the offseason’s really the only time they’re guaranteed to be together, Jared figures that works out well enough.
“Well, that’s alright then,” she says, then, “Stop smirking, Susan, it isn’t a good look.”
His mom continues to smirk.
“Well,” she says. “You got yourself quite a looker, didn’t you, Jared?”
Jared grins. “Yeah,” he says. “Definitely did.”
Apparently his mom gets like, flayed with mom anger for not telling his grandma earlier, but Jared doesn’t get any of it — she comes to a Matheson family dinner, one that Jared brings Bryce to, now that it won’t be potentially heart attack inducing, spends the whole time loving Bryce up to the obvious annoyance of his dad.
Bryce eats it up, and Jared can’t blame him, considering that’s like, his first enthusiastic Matheson reception, barring Erin the irritating shadow and devoted future sister-in-law. Plus her glaring crush when he first came onto the scene. Maybe Jared will amend that to adult Mathesons — though like, his grandma’s a Murray, not a Matheson, so maybe that’s the difference. No hobgoblin gene.
Bryce insists on getting fitted for their tuxes early, even though Jared protests that they haven’t put on summer weight yet. Apparently tailors can do something called ‘letting out’, per a dismissive Bryce. It’s going to cost an absurd amount for something Jared will probably never wear again, except maybe to Oilers charity stuff — and even then hopefully he’ll have put on enough weight it won’t fit — and Jared almost protests and puts his foot down on getting one off the rack, despite Bryce’s obvious horror at the idea, but then he gathers all his reserves of spite and lets it happen.
They pick their rings at a shop in a private session after hours, and the ones they pick are very wedding ring-y. Like, Jared doesn’t know how else to describe them. Plain, and understated, but you take one look and think ‘yeah that’s a wedding ring’. They’re the opposite of flashy, the opposite of Bryce’s style.
“Yeah, but I want them to match more than anything,” Bryce says. “And you don’t want flashy. Plus I’ve still got the engagement ring, that’s got some swag to it.”
Swag. Jared rolls his eyes.
Bryce is going to have to get his re-sized, but the one available fits Jared perfectly, and he looks at it, shiny gold on his ring finger quietly saying ‘I’m married’ to anyone who looks at it.
“These ones?” Bryce confirms.
“These ones,” Jared agrees, still looking down at his finger as Bryce asks the jeweler about getting their initials engraved on the inside of the bands.
*
They can’t just like, drop everything for the wedding, though, not if they’re going to be in game shape come September. Bryce is back with his regular trainer, and Arvan’s agreed to take Jared and Raf and Chaz on again, and it’s nice, them all assembled at Jared and Bryce’s apartment after a long day, playing video games or shooting the shit, like the last year has just vanished, except now him and Bryce don’t have to pretend they’re not together and Grace and Ashley don’t have to pretend they don’t totally know that Jared and Bryce are together.
Training with the enemy, Julius send when Jared tells him about the training plus hangouts. There is definite disapproval in that text, and Jared thinks he might be jealous. It’s hilarious.
Pretty sure this is small potatoes compared to what else I’m doing with the enemy., Jared texts back.
Small potatoes is a stupid term, Julius texts back ten minutes later, ten minutes Jared imagines he spent looking up whatever the hell that meant and then trying to figure out why that was a thing, and then throwing his hands up at the English language. It’s easy to imagine because Jared’s seen him do it multiple times before.
And to be fair, it is a pretty stupid term. Like, what is it comparing the small potatoes to? Big potatoes? A pumpkin? Training with Chaz is the small potato to the giant ass pumpkin that’s him getting married to Bryce in less than two months.
Julius comes to North America without visiting him at all — apparently Calgary and Vegas ‘aren’t that close’ and Julius ‘has training to get back to’ and Jared ‘is already making him come back next month for the wedding’ — and Jared watches the NHL Awards for the first time in years just to make very sure that the media didn’t fuck up and somehow hand the Calder to anyone else.
They didn’t, and Julius looks like, healthy as he goes up on the stage — no more skeleton Julius, thank fuck — apologising for his English, which gets some titters, before awkwardly mumbling out a bunch of thanks and then wandering off the stage like someone confused as to how he got there. Jared would chirp him for it, but —
“He didn’t mention me!” Jared says.
“He thanked his Oilers teammates,” Bryce says. “You’re an Oilers teammate.”
“He doesn’t even like most of them,” Jared says. “I’m like, his only actual friend on the team.”
“Oh man, are you sulking?” Bryce asks.
“No,” Jared says. “Would you mention me?”
“For sure,” Bryce says, grinning. “Shout out to my secret husband. The Battle of Alberta couldn’t match our love.”
Jared snorts, then texts Julius with a mad face.
“I can’t believe you’re sulking,” Bryce says.
“I’m not,” Jared says, and then sends Julius three more mad faces and a I cooked for you ALL YEAR and I get nothing.
Thank you for your congratulations, Julius sends back twenty minutes later.
Whatever we both knew you were a lock., Jared texts back, then goes back to what he’s doing, which is not sulking.
“Would you mention me if you won?” Bryce asks, in a transparent bid to jolt Jared out of his sulk. Not sulk. Okay, he’s sulking.
“What award am I winning in this incredibly unlikely hypothetical scenario?” Jared asks.
He’s half prepared for Bryce to totally bullshit that Jared is capable of getting a Rocket or Art Ross or something, but Bryce muses, “I think you have a better than average case for the Masterton.”
“Why, for the travails of playing against my fiancé or something?” Jared says. “Because I think you’d be just as likely to get it then. Or like, Lapointe.” Lapointe totally should have won a Masterton. In hindsight it’s bullshit he wasn’t even nominated.
“Nah,” Bryce says.
Jared squints at him, the little uptick of his mouth.
“Was that a terrible pun because my name’s Matheson?” Jared asks.
“No,” Bryce says, but his mouth ticks up more.
“You’re sleeping on the couch,” Jared says, and Bryce is full out grinning now, not looking scared of the prospect at all.
*
With exactly a month to go they get they get a private after hours meeting at City Hall at the end of June to get their marriage licence rather than having to wait in line like everyone else, thanks to Bryce’s agent and some strings pulled by the Flames front office. The Flames aren’t doing it out of the goodness of their hearts, obviously, just trying to avoid anything outing Bryce, but it’s still helpful.
It feels vaguely unethical for them to get preferential treatment when everyone’s supposed to be equal, but Jared doesn’t want some random person at City Hall recognising Bryce, so he’s not actually complaining. Plus they only have a wait a couple minutes for the meeting instead of who knows how long in line. Celebrity’s nice sometimes, he guesses.
“This is valid for the next ninety days,” the registrar when they’ve filled out the paperwork, signed their names.
She’s the first true stranger to know they’re getting married — well, there are people Jared’s never met in the Flames and Oilers organizations who know, and Jared hasn’t actually met Bryce’s agent face to face, but like, it’s different. Jared doesn’t know if she knows who Bryce is, but she clearly knows it’s two dudes who are marrying each other, and she isn’t batting an eye, and it’s just — nice.
“We’re getting married in July,” Jared says, just to like — tell her. She doesn’t care, she’s just telling them how long it’s valid for so they don’t have to get a new one, but it’s just. It’s cool, saying it to someone.
“Congratulations,” she says, both like she says it a billion times a day, and like she means it, means it as much for them as anyone else, no more or less.
“Thank you,” Bryce says, and it’s stupid, but Jared has the sudden urge to take his hand, follows through on it. She knows they’re getting married, it’s not like a little hand holding is going to shock her. Once again, she doesn’t bat an eye.
Jared’s grinning like an absolute maniac when they walk out of City Hall — not holding hands anymore, though fuck, he wants to — and when he glances over, Bryce is grinning just as wide.