Work Text:
(1 & 2)
When it’s over - the final horn has sounded, the clock's on double-zeroes - his eyes find Phil.
Immediate. Magnetic.
Before he can cross the distance between them, he hears a voice call his name, a voice that’s become so familiar to him, especially on the ice.
He whirls around, doesn’t see Bonino at first, executes another full 360-degree spin. Another call of his name, and Carl finally spots him. He skates over, crashing into Bonino with arms open, pulling him in for a crushing hug.
“Bones!” he shouts. “Fuckin’ - Bones . Bones, fuck, man. We did it. You did it, you were so good, Nick. So good.”
Bonino laughs. "We did it. I told…I just told Coach he was pretty good,” he says.
Carl laughs. “What?”
“He told me I played unbelievable - ”
“ - which you did - ”
“ - which we did - ” Bonino says, earnest and smug all at the same time. “And I told him he did a pretty good job at coaching, too.”
Carl laughs. “You’re a son of a bitch.”
“A son of a bitch who just won the Stanley Cup,” Bonino says, and Carl, reflexively, whoops. “And that makes two of us. Fuckin’...twenty-three of us.”
Jesus. In that moment, still, it feels completely unbelievable but also he's, like, grounded, like this is the most real thing that’s ever happened. It's the most present he's ever been.
It's – fuck.
Carl pulls back, kisses Bones on his cheek, a mouthful of beard. “You’re a beauty,” he says when he pulls away, and Bones laughs again, loud and unhindered.
Phil skates by, and Bonino grabs him before Carl can reach out.
Carl watches them yell in each other’s faces for a little bit before Bones puts Phil in a headlock to pull him close and say something to him quietly - so quietly, Carl can’t hear it.
Patric’s suddenly next to him, and he throws his arms around Carl immediately, pulling him into a hard hug.Carl clutches at the back of Patric’s sweater.
The two of them. The two of them, together on this team. The two of them, winning. Winners.
Patric pulls back to “Whoo!” about two inches from Carl’s face.
“Whoo!” Carl echoes.
It goes back and forth between them for longer than it probably should - but what is social decorum when you’ve just won the Stanley Cup? - and Patric is practically vibrating with excitement.
Carl smushes Patric’s cheeks between his hands and presses three smacking kisses to Patric’s forehead.
“Whoo!” Patric shouts again before he skates off.
--
(3 & 4)
The players and coaches are joined by their families on the ice, moms and dads, siblings, wives and kids, significant others, lifelong best friends...all slipping and sliding in boots and sneakers, grabbing onto sweater sleeves or holding their arms out to keep balance. All of them are smiling. Some of them are crying, silent streams of tears or loud hiccuping sobs. But even the ones who are crying are smiling.
One of those is his mother.
“Calle,” his mother says, holding on to both of his hands, very very tightly. Her eyes are glittering with tears, and when she blinks a few of them fall.
His own eyes are suddenly burning, his throat suddenly clogged.
His mother holds her hands on either side of Carl’s face, fingers cold against Carl’s neck. She kisses Carl on the apples of each cheek.
“I’m so proud of you,” she says.
He can’t speak for a few seconds.
“You deserve this,” she continues, her hands still on his cheeks, her eyes locked with his. “You deserve this and every good thing that happens to you. You were always such a good boy -- you are a good man now. And you have worked so hard. So hard, Calle. And you deserve this.”
He finally finds his voice to say the woefully inadequate, “Thank you, mamma.”
She hugs him tightly and then pulls away, pats his face gently with her right hand. She turns away, wiping her eyes, leaving room for his father to step up to him.
His dad has an expression on his face that Carl has never seen before. Carl starts to reach out his arms but something stops him.
“Pappa,” Carl says into the space between them.
His father closes the distance.
“My son,” he says. “My son.”
He doesn't say anything else, but he doesn't need to. Carl kisses his father’s temple, and he doesn’t have any words, either.
--
(5)
In the locker room, Carl can barely hear himself think over the Hall & Oates on repeat.
He presses his hands, wet and sticky with champagne and beer and sweat, against Sidney’s cheeks, scratchy with his scraggly beard attempt.
“Sid!” he yells, right in Sid’s face. It’s crazy how much Carl hated this face last year and now...how much he loves it.
Sid giggles, and Carl loves that laugh right now so much, too.
He loves this laugh, he loves this face. He loves this face so much he could just kiss it. He will, in fact. He will.
He slides his hands behind Sid’s neck and pulls him in, not-so-gently.
He presses a kiss on Sid’s mouth - closed-mouth but it lingers a moment, beyond a quick peck, because Carl is so happy and loves Sid just, like, so fucking much. He loves his laugh and his face and his hockey and him.
But not like that.
Sid presses his face into Carl’s neck and Carl can feel the giggles vibrating against his skin and everything is so fucking awesome right now.
“I fucking love your fucking face so fucking much,” he says, and he feels Sidney laughing harder.
--
(+1)
Phil and Carl have found themselves in a quiet part of Mario’s yard, which is big enough that the music coming from the pool area is faint. They’d headed toward the house at first, before Carl had said, “oh, hey,” and veered toward what he thinks is a garden, hidden from the rest of the yard by a trellis, from the street by hedges, and Phil had followed him.
They’re both barefoot. Carl’s only in swimming trunks, but Phil hasn’t been in the pool yet, so he still has on a T-shirt. Carl wants to push his hands up under it, run his palms over Phil’s stomach and waist and the planes of his back.
He keeps his arms down at his sides. “I just…I wanted to tell you…playing with you…” he says, his voice trailing off for a moment, before he finds his mental bearings. “Playing with you was like...a fuckin’...dream, okay? Like a dream."
"You and me and Bonino," Phil says, nodding, agreeing.
And like, yeah, their whole line was amazing. They got a nickname and a wrestler and a sandwich and a Dairy Queen Blizzard. Every day, Carl had waited to wake up, because there was no way it was all actually happening.
But he means more than the HBK Line. More than the three of them. It was the two of them.
It was Phil.
"It was the best," he says simply.
“Yeah,” Phil says, and there’s a lot of emotion packed into one word. He clears his throat and looks away, back toward the direction of the pool and the celebration.
Carl loves playing with Phil, for sure, loves his insane skill level and how hard he works regardless of that talent. How Phil is hockey smart and hockey tough, a natural goal-scorer and so fucking fast.
Carl is so glad he’s had the chance to play with Phil.
He’s felt that way about a lot of teammates, though.
But there’s something different there, too. There's a connection. There's everything he feels about Phil off the ice, too.
He hasn’t felt about any of his other teammates the way he feels about Phil. Ever.
“Phil.” Carl’s voice is soft.
Phil turns to him, and the night is hazy, humid and hot, settling around them almost tangibly on their shoulders.
“Hey,” Carl says, and then he steps forward, eyes Phil with intent, reaches out. He gives Phil every opportunity to step back, turn around, walk away. Phil doesn't. Carl kisses Phil like he’s wanted to for longer than he’d admit to anyone, for longer than he himself has even known he’s wanted to, probably; it took him a long time to recognize his feelings for what they were. What they are.
After a moment - a terribly agonizing moment - Phil kisses back.
It’s good. Right away, when Phil kisses back, it’s good.
And Carl does exactly what he’d been thinking of before: his hands under Phil’s shirt; his hands on Phil’s solid waist, no extra flesh after such a long season and an additional two months of conditioning but still a bit of give; his hands slipping up the planes of Phil’s back and shoulder blades. Phil is built differently than the stereotypical professional athlete, but he’s fit, he’s strong, and Carl is really into his body.
“Fuck,” Phil says quietly, when they break apart, and Carl huffs a laugh.
“Not usually the first reaction I get.”
“It’s a good fuck,” Phil says, and his cheeks tinge pink almost immediately.
Carl laughs again. Phil makes him laugh a lot. It's one of his favorite things.
“It will be,” Carl says, because Phil’s a sure thing, he thinks.
Carl certainly is.
Phil’s face flushes further. He looks…not nervous, but hesitant, maybe. “Are you…I mean, you look…like.” Phil hesitates. “You look…like you look.”
Carl laughs.
“Shut up,” Phil says, his face a brilliant red. “I just. In the locker room, I look at you and – ”
“You look at me?”
“Shut up,” Phil says again.
“If you’re looking, how come I’ve never noticed when I’ve been looking, too.”
That’s not entirely true. Carl has seen the quick glances, the quicker looks away.
"You haven't been…"
"Phil." Carl levels him with his gaze. "I have."
Phil’s body sways toward him, and Carl leans in, too, before he takes a step back, needing physical distance between them to clear his head. Not here, not now -- they’re in Mario Lemieux’s backyard, for God’s sake, their entire team and their coaching staff are no more than twenty yards away, and someone will surely notice one of them is missing if they’re gone too long.
Carl takes a step back, needing physical distance between them to clear his head.
“You know I - I’ll remember this forever. This - ” He waves his hand, all-encompassing of the team, the Cup. “ - but this, too.” He reaches out, tangles his hand in Phil’s shirt but doesn’t step any closer. “You.”
He doesn’t like the way he’s phrased that, that way it sounds like this - a stolen moment, short-lived - will be all they have.
If Carl has anything to say about it, this will not be the case.
So he clarifies, into the space between them, “And whatever happens next, too. With you.”
“Me?”
“Us,” Carl says.
-
Two days later, they’re in the flatbed of a giant pickup truck together, waiting to start rolling down Grant Street for the parade. Carl reaches out, grabs Phil’s hand and squeezes briefly.
Pittsburgh isn't his city, won’t ever be, not like it’s Sid’s, not like it’s Geno’s, even, or Duper’s. Duper won’t ever play hockey again professionally, and he hasn’t left the city, hasn’t left this team, and that’s...Carl can’t ever imagine loving a place that much, loving a group of people - a city of people - that much.
But he looks out ahead at the parade route, the crowd that’s seven-people deep on the sidewalks on either side of the street.
And the city might not be his, but he’s theirs, right now, today and for a long time.
And Pittsburgh brought him Phil, so a piece of him will always be grateful.
"Hey," Phil says, and Carl turns away from the crowd, locks eyes with Phil as they start moving. “You kissing a lot of people?” Phil asks, quiet and gruff, trying to act nonchalant like he doesn’t care what the answer is, but Carl sees right through him.
“No,” he says. “Just you. From here on out, only you.” Carl pauses for a second, then amends, “Only you and Lord Stanley.”
---