Chapter Text
Have no fear of falling
It won't help you in the end
-- Skylar Grey, Hero
\\
“You’re gonna not want to talk to Nick,” Tiffany declares, sliding into her seat with absolute seriousness.
John Holden arches one brow at his youngest, then skims his eyes over to Nick, trying to sneak into the car with minimal fuss. Nick freezes, eyes flashing white around the pupil like caught.
“Is that right?” He doesn’t want to reward gossiping, but he’s intrigued anyway. This isn’t like Nick, who’s usually childlike and eager in a way that he hopes age will never erode.
“She says she’s done playing hockey,” Tiffany offers. Which makes John wonder how important they think hockey is to him, that this warrants such straight-faced seriousness, that Nick is so silent and mortified with that revelation.
“I said after this year,” Nick hisses, because her parents taught her better than to quit in the middle of the season. “But. Yeah.” She slumps into her seat, trying to look as small as possible.
“You wanna tell me why?” It’s an abrupt turnaround, not enough to be out of character but enough to be alarming.
Nick shrugs again, eyes out the window. “I dunno. It’s just not fun, is all.”
“Some of the boys were making fun of her.”
There’s a yelp from the back seat. When John flicks his eyes back there Tiffany is rubbing her arm and Nick is staring out the window like the trees are personally offending her.
“‘s not a big deal,” Nick mumbles, shrugging again. “Just don’t feel like playing anymore.”
It’s still a pretty abrupt turnaround for her. John makes a mental note to look into this, but he lets Nick maintain her privacy until she’s ready to talk or he has reason to worry. And the important thing about Nick is that she’s a good kid, it only takes her half a day before she finally spills to her mom, who looks less worried and more angry when she greets John at the door the next evening.
“They’re saying Nick’s never gonna make the NHL, so they don’t have to pass to her or play with her.” Lynda looks incensed, the look of a mother about to go to war with the universe if that’s what it takes to protect her child. “Because she’s a girl.”
It’s nothing they weren’t prepared for; Nick’s the only girl in her league and has been for most of her life. When she was young the other kids took no notice of the differences but unfortunately kids repeat what they hear, and John and Lynda have heard plenty themselves. They’ve heard it in the stands, from competitive parents convinced their little Orr was destined for greatness if only the coach didn’t waste so much time with that girl player, who didn’t realize that little girl player had parents who listened to everything.
He takes his time hanging up his coat to hide the clench in his fist. “Does her coach know?”
“Parts of it. The parts he’d have to be blind to miss. We’re going in early to speak with him on Wednesday.”
John takes a moment to appreciate being included in that ‘we’, even if he suspects it was reflexive. “What’d you tell Nick?”
“That we’re going to help make her comfortable. It's all we can do.” Lynda shrugs, ushering him to the stairs. “You get to do the hard part.”
Nick is in her room, headphones on and bopping along to pop radio while she does her homework. She doesn’t have it too loud – when he taps on her doorframe she takes them off, face falling even as she waves him in.
“This is about practice, isn’t it?” Nick spins her chair a few times while her dad settles on her bed. “It’s not a big deal. I just don’t . . . wanna play hockey anymore.”
“Your mom told me what the other kids were saying.”
“She said she would.” Nick’s fiddling with her headphones, picking at the soft foam ear pieces. She trails off, distracted by some other thoughts like she sometimes is.
“But. You love hockey.” She does, he’s seen it in her face when she’s racing down the ice, the light in her eyes that she can’t fake. He can’t believe that she would fake it, even if it made her parents happy.
“I like the game parts.” Nick makes a face, the one he privately refers to as her Lynda Face because she looks so much like her mother when she does it. “I don’t like the parts where they’re so . . .” She struggles for a word for a few seconds before she settles on one that she’s heard other people use. “So intense about everything. They’re right, though. I’m never gonna play hockey for real.”
He touches her shoulder, prompting Nick to finally meet his gaze, eyes wide. “Who told you that?”
Nick bites her lip – she’s a team player, always has been, fiercely loyal even when she gets the short end of the deal. “There aren’t any girls in the NHL, so it’s not like I have anything I could really do with it.”
And really, it’s their job to show her what options there are for her, and if Nick believes that the NHL is the only real hockey out there, if she thinks it’s the only reason to play, then they’ve failed her somewhere.
“There’s college,” he tells her, making it seem simple. “Lots of women do really good in college. And lots of women play just because they like hockey. You don’t have to be headed for the NHL to deserve a chance to enjoy playing.”
“I guess.” Nick’s very quiet, very unsure.
John has always known that he can’t protect his daughters from the world, but it never dawned on him how heart-breaking that would be until it happens. It makes him want to howl. “You know those kids are wrong, right? You can play hockey as long as you want, as long as you like it, because the only person you need to make happy is you.”
He taps her gently on the chest, right above her heart, and she gives him a sad little smile he’d give anything to never see again. “You don’t have to make the NHL. You just have to love what you’re doing enough to not let them stop you.”
Nick, by nature, is not a crier. Nick in the grips of emotion gets quietly contemplative, and she’s looking at her homework but she’s listening, which is everything he can hope for with her.
“It’s always gonna be your choice, Nick. But your mom and I would like it if you kept playing. You’re really good.” It’s true – Nick stands out, even as the only girl playing in her league it’s clear that she’s got something going on. That’s why they placed her with that competitive league in the first place. Nick’s got something, something impressive that can take her places, if she’s allowed to see where those places are.
“You’re saying that because you’re my dad.” She blushes a little, ducking her head.
“I’m saying it because it’s true.” He palms at her hair, and he loves her so much his heart burns. “Just don’t make the decision until the end of the year, please?”
“Okay.” Nick goes back to her work, hunching over the math paper, the universal pre-teen gesture for ‘dismissed’.
John thinks he’s not supposed to hear the part where she mumbles “I’m not gonna change my mind,” as he ducks out of the room.
\\
Nick’s coach has always seemed like a decent guy, but when they meet him before practice he’s also spectacularly unhelpful. He spends a lot of time talking about earning playing time and doing what’s best for the team, and looking at them like they’re demanding favoritism.
To be fair, he probably deals with those sorts of demands on a regular basis.
“We don’t want anyone to play favorites, we just want them to realize there’s not a damn thing wrong with Nick being a girl, and liking to play hockey. That she’s not less.”
There’s a serious meeting before practice the next day about teamwork, about bonding and doing right by the team. Then the team goes right back to pretending Nick is one huge black hole in the middle of the ice, a void that the puck has to be deflected around.
Nick throws herself at it, but there’s only so much she can do when the team’s playing keep-away from her and the opposing squad. They’ve gotten too old for equal play rules to be in effect, so she spends most of her time on the bench or chasing her d-partner down. Nick goes from hurt to puzzled as the season progresses; she’s honestly confused by the competitive barbs directed at her from her own teammates, and more and more she comes in from practice with clean gear and a thoughtful expression on her face.
By January Nick’s quietly transferred into Tiffany’s league. It’s less competitive, less growth opportunity, but at least she’s back to smiling when she gets back from practice, Nick makes some pretty blocks and makes some dirty blocks and it’s not ideal but it’s what they have for the moment. She’s the best skater on the team by far, and she gets the ice time to reflect that, settles in with a partner who has her back. She ends up standing out even more than she did on her old team but the positive vibe of it brings her out of her shell a little more.
At least she’s on the ice. Nick doesn’t have to play competitively but they expect her to finish up her commitment to the year.
It’s late February, only a few weeks into what the NHL can salvage of 1994/95 season, when a ticker pops up across the bottom of the evening’s programs.
Nick’s already getting ready for bed, but they call her and Tiffany down so they can sit in front of the TV and watch a Nordiques game (the Nordiques, John would roll over in his grave if he had one) as a whippet-thin girl takes her place between the pipes, playing relief for an injured Jocelyn Thibault.
Not girl. Woman. It’s no knock on Patrice Roy, John has two daughters and is trying very hard to not screw this up, but there’s something very young-looking and vulnerable about how her slight frame fills out her pads, like she’s playing dress up. Then the camera pans in on Roy’s face and the eyes behind the newfangled Kevlar mask are nothing but professional determination, a white-blue stare that borders on creepy when she somehow senses the camera and focuses directly into the lens, scrutinizes the scrutinizers with a glare.
Any thought about her not being prepared for this flies out of John’s head in that second.
Tiffany squeals, clapping her hands, but Nick just goes stock still. John has to watch her shoulders closely to see if she’s even breathing, totally absorbed as Roy accepts a pat on the shin from one of her defensemen and then stretches into a strange, low crouch that looks almost like Glenn Hall, but not.
Roy doesn’t record the win even though she makes a save on all 9 shots she faces. Since Thibault was on ice for the go-ahead goal the win is his. It doesn’t look like that matters at all to the team, who line up to congratulate Roy at the end, slapping her back and bumping helmets.
After that there’s no avoiding Nords games. Nick starts stalking their schedule when she hears at practice that Roy is scheduled to start one of their next home games, she watches the pregame and then flicks the TV off when Roy isn’t first on the ice. And their family has been – and always will be, dammit – Oilers fans, but they stay up late to watch the East Coast feed when it finally happens because Nick just lights up when she talks about it. She’s off the couch and cheering when the final seconds tick off the board, when Roy comes out of it with 65 minutes under her belt and the first woman to record a full game in the NHL.
Roy doesn’t celebrate with the rest of the team, just shakes her head at the score and skates into the dressing room. It’s clear in that second that she’s gonna be a force to be reckoned with in a few years.
Some people are leaders and some people are only comfortable going where paths already exist. Nick wouldn’t have gone where she did if Manon Rheaume and Patrice Roy hadn’t been the ones to go there first. But now that the path exists Nick is more than happy to follow, more than happy to know that there’s some sort of future for her in hockey, even if she decides it’s in rec leagues and on weekends. The important thing is that hockey has a place for her; Nick just has to decide where exactly she wants that place to be.
\\
Nick stays in Tiffany’s league the next four years, and when she looks at them seriously and announces that she’s ready to go back to her old league neither of them question her. John fills out the paperwork and Lynda drives her to practice and that’s that.
If anything the kids are even more intense, more laser focused and conscious of the differences between Nick and them. But Nick is different, too. She’s more settled, she’s put on five inches in the intervening years and she’s still thin but it’s a wiry, tough muscle under there. She focuses on the game, on moving up level by level, and some people think it’s short sighted to only be looking one step ahead but it’s what Nick needs to be able to move forward at all.
“No pressure,” John makes sure to tell her before every season, and Nick just keeps her head up and goes into it.
Then Steve Beirnes happens.
Nick is fifteen, she’s been quietly coasting through the league for the past five years. She’s started looking into trade schools and universities like she’s been told she’s supposed to, and she hasn’t even tried out the past couple years, just accepts the team they put her on without a word. She’s still extremely good, and the intervening years have shown the world that women can have permanence in the NHL, but Nick is still getting shuttled off to single letter teams because the spark isn’t there. She has no interest in higher level hockey because higher level hockey has not been kind to her, and then she goes to her first practice with Steve and comes out of it tight jawed and fierce, with a glint in her eyes that they haven’t seen before.
She starts going to practice early, and coming off the ice late, and she’s grinning when she does. Nick is playing like she did when she was a little kid, joyful and eager and better than she had been.
“Steve makes it fun, y’know?” she says after practice one day, her eyes fever bright and a smile all over her face. “Like, hockey is hard work, right? But it’s also a game and it’s supposed to be fun.” Nick starts bringing the cheerful goofiness from her life into the rink and everything integrates; it comes together and it clicks.
“I feel really lucky,” Nick admits one day, tying her laces as tight as she can. “To have this chance.”
“Dude, he’s been scouting you for years,” Nick Bryson says. He’s Nick(2) on the team, partially because Nick is older and also because Nick is bigger, and so she decides who gets top billing.
“So?”
Nick(2) snorts, like everyone has gotten this except her. “So it ain’t luck, Nick. It’s you being good.”
He doesn’t sound disgruntled when he says it, doesn’t make that face like a bitter lemon, and Nick blinks at him for an embarrassing stretch of time before she says “Oh, well. Thanks.”
He rolls his eyes at her, and Nick tries to hide the flush that heats her ears for a second.
Steve Beirnes believes in Nick, knows what she’s capable of and pushes her to that and then beyond it. That gives Nick the confidence it takes to give herself over to hockey again.
\\
It’s not a hockey party, which explains why she’s curled up on the couch with half a cup of lukewarm beer and no one to talk to. This is one of Tiffany’s parties, because “God Nick, you need to meet people who aren’t on the hockey team!” and Nick knows plenty of people at school who aren’t on the hockey team, thank you very much. She just likes hanging out with the hockey team because it helps team bonding and it doesn’t take much effort since she already knows all of them.
She knows she has the emotional maturity of a limpet and she’s completely, 100% okay with that.
Nick finds the couch where the video game playing is happening, because there’s always that couch if you know where to look, and insinuates herself with the other players. She ends up spanking most of them, enough that they start to wander away after a while. When someone drops onto the couch next to her with enough force to send her beer rippling like something out of Jurassic Park Nick’s first instinct is to throw the controller at them blind and ask if they’re done crying and want a rematch.
“Uh, not exactly.” She’s beautiful, clear eyes and a wicked smirk, and she tucks her long legs under herself so she can turn and watch Nick closer. Nick's been fighting sports-related acne since she hit puberty, her hair is all over the place and she's too tall to ever qualify as anything other than gawky, and maybe she’s a little insecure about all of those things. Nick ducks her head, but the newcomer just smiles and rests her hand on Nick's knee, the touch electric. “I kinda wanted to talk.”
Nick’s stupidly at a loss for words, and a little worriedly turned on.
“I’m Angela. Ang.”
“Nick,” she offers after a second, after her silence threatens to start tilting from ‘dazed’ into ‘creepy’. She fumbles the controller, almost spills her drink, and somehow comes out with “I can totally beat you at this game, though.”
“Cool.” Ang smiles, and Nick’s a goner. “So, best of three?”
They end up talking all through the game, and Nick kicks her ass but Ang doesn’t seem to care, because Nick ends up walking Ang out to her car anyway. When Ang gets into her car she kisses Nick and gives Nick her number.
That’s really all it takes for her to fall loopy, head-over-heels in love.