Chapter Text
BREAKING: SATORU GOJO’S MOTHER, OLYMPIC STAR DEAD AT 45
NHL Star’s mother dead in collision
Satoru Gojo’s mother killed in head on collision in Toronto
Olympic Gold Medallist Himari Gojo dead in car accident
—
Satoru would never admit it to the press, but there’s a moment in every losing game where you just know.
They’re supposed to fight until the end, past it, every time. For the love of the game, for the fans, for the organisation. And they do. Satoru does. He’ll draw penalties and try every trick in the book, he’ll chirp and defend the net himself when they send their goalie off.
But there’s still a point where he knows it’s a loss. Where no amount of magic with him and Suguru on the powerplay can bring them back. Sometimes it’s when they head down the tunnel after the second, five goals down. Sometimes it's midseason when the bench begins to thin with injuries. Sometimes it’s in overtime, watching the puck fly down the ice the wrong way. Whenever it is, the thought is the same. There’s no miracle coming. This is over, and they’re going to have to move past it, move on, get it next time.
Satoru adjusts his suit, his cufflinks. He can’t look at the casket, he can’t confront the loss. He’s gotten better at losing, since he started playing hockey. When he was younger, he hated it, sulked in the car the whole way home, didn’t talk to his teammates if he thought they could’ve played better. His mom used to scold him for it, in juniors, told him if he couldn’t rally his team, they wouldn’t trust him, no matter how good he was. He didn’t listen to her. Being twelve or thirteen, bumped up into teams of boys much older than him and told to play was hard.
His mom had good advice. All the time. He never really told her properly how much it helped him. Especially when Suguru came into the picture and he saw it first-hand: what his mom meant when she said that having a team behind you would pull a win out where he couldn’t see one before. Because he clicked with everyone, in this easy kind of laid back way, then bared his teeth and punched someone for going for their goalie. And behind all that was the late night dinners, sitting in Satoru’s kitchen, with his mom laughing at something he said. Watching the two of them be friends. Suguru leant on her too.
When the news broke, Satoru was playing a game. He knew that it wouldn’t have taken long for the reporters to get a hold of it, but still. They’d known for two days, him and Suguru, and Satoru couldn’t tell the rest of the team. He thinks that things like this are important to say out loud, but he forgets how to. He almost lets Suguru say it, taps him in, but selfishly he thinks this is his news to tell.
He thought he maybe had a few weeks. At least until the funeral, when there was no hiding it anymore. And then they lost a game against Texas, of all teams, and ground in the playoff fight, and the news was out there.
The thing about hockey players is that they’re all awful at dealing with grief. Even worse when it's second-hand. They lost a second game on the road and the media started asking very thinly veiled questions to Suguru about whether Satoru’s shit play was because of his mental state - it wasn’t - and he declined another call from his dad before Suguru stood above him in the shitty away locker rooms and said when are you going home.
Satoru knows how to take a hint. He was playing worse than he usually does: regular hockey instead of miracles. He’s barely any use to the team at all, playing regular hockey. Any of them can do it in his place, after all. So he books a flight. Goes home.
He hadn’t asked Suguru to come with him. He wishes more than anything that he could have got the words out. He knows if he had asked, Suguru would have come, easy as anything, let him lean on him on the plane, cracking jokes about relatives who he knows he hates. Making it lighter.
But they’re so close to a playoff spot. A real one, not just a wildcard taped together with thoughts and prayers. Three more games: a real one. And Suguru’s game was still good. Is still good, in the wake of it.
He still took him to the airport without being asked, and standing at the gates to Security in JFK, hand loose around his suitcase handle, Satoru thought about it. Just asking. Covering the flight. He needs him.
The team needs him more, though. So Satoru’s sitting in the pews alone. He’s had everyone talking at him all day, offering condolences, stories, whatever. He’s not trying to feel better right now. He lost his mom. He can’t just- he can’t bounce back from this one. There’s no recovering, scoring back the points, finding ground. This is it.
He thought this would be–
He thought it would be so much later. He thought he had time. He wears her number on his back, every game, the 23, a piece of her. Because without her and her natural talent and her quiet encouragement and wiping his tears away in juniors when all he wanted to do was quit. His natural talent is hers. His commitment is hers. His stickhandling, his contract, his life, his–
He takes a breath.
He thought he’d be able to give her the Stanley. He thought he’d get his day and be able to pass it to her, see her hold it in her hands and know it’s just as much her trophy as it is his. She’s the single biggest influence on everything. On his game, on the way he talks to the media, on the way he handles the team. And it’s bullshit that she couldn’t win it herself, relegated to women’s hockey, excluded from the NHL.
He won’t get to do that now.
His dad sits down next to him. They don’t touch, sat next to each other. They’ve never been close. This is probably the most they’ve shared.
He knows his dad loves him, he knows his dad is proud of him. But he doesn’t understand what the show is like. What hockey is. He always winced when they’d talk about the sensation of being boarded, or high-sticked, or slashed. And Satoru does those things daily, even with his own teammates. But he hasn’t lost any teeth, and he hasn’t injured himself badly enough to miss a season. The important things.
He looks across at his dad. He doesn’t know what it’s felt like, to be stopped in the street on his way home, asked to sign something when he’s here for a funeral. His mom did.
He looks away again.
—
The night after the service, everyone gets drunk. Satoru, with a bitter taste in his mouth, goes back to his parents’ house. He could drink in her favourite bar. He could forget. But it’s not going to make her come back, or make her proud, if she’s watching.
The house is quiet. All there is in the kitchen is cans of soup, because his dad has been ordering takeout since his mom died. It's funny: he was the better chef out of the two of them. Satoru's mom spent so much of her life being cooked for, in teams. Following weird meal plans that didn't allow for seasoning in the calorie requirements.
He looks at the menus to a couple of places nearby. He could call, but the likelihood of the driver recognising him isn't nonzero, and he doesn't want to deal with that. Not right now. So he opens a can of soup, thinks about heating it up on the stove, then thinks about washing up the pan and dumps it into a bowl to put it into the microwave instead.
His phone rings when he's pulling the soup from the microwave.
"Hey,"
Suguru's voice on the other end is crackly. Static. It's nothing like the real thing, all the warmth removed.
"Hey," Satoru replies, "why are you calling?"
"Worried 'bout you," there's a rustling on the other end. Satoru realises he has no idea where Suguru is, right now. He'd be shit on the leadership team. He promised, before he left, that he'd watch the games, that he'd give advice and help the rookies and--
He hasn't. He's barely even touched his phone since he touched back down in Canada.
"Sorry," he blurts, before he can stop himself, "are you- was there a game today?"
Suguru laughs on the other end, instead of calling him a shit friend, which he should. Satoru's been-- he's here, instead of on the bench, like he should be. "No." Suguru says, soft. "Vegas tomorrow. Hotel tonight. Your memory is the worst,"
"Okay, it's not the worst," Satoru gripes, "that's Oaks. He remembers fuck all. You have to say something three times before it sinks in."
On the other end of the line, Suguru laughs again, "sure, but he's a decade older than us and he's had way more concussions,"
"Still. Not the worst memory ever." He's sticking to his guns. He's got to stick to something. The world is moving under his feet right now.
He hums and doesn't reply. Silence with Suguru is usually fine: they just exist alongside each other. But over the phone, it's different.
He doesn't know what to say. Wish you were here? Too much. Also, this isn't a vacation. This is a funeral. Suguru's probably kind of happy he managed to dodge it. It's hard to know how to act, when everyone's expecting a reaction from you. When it's all they can see.
He thinks about asking about the points. About the playoff positions. That's familiar, but-
He doesn't want to think about hockey, because he'll think about his mom, and he can't think about his mom without crying.
“Is your dad okay?” Suguru says. His voice is quiet.
“I mean, he’s out drinking right now.” It’s bitter and final, and God, Satoru is killing this conversation, right now, isn’t he? “How’s the hotel? You gonna hit the town? Pick up?”
There’s a beat, “is that-” then another, “hotel’s good. The food is kind of shit though. I think Oaks and Pez wanna take us out, after. We’re not flying home ‘til– the day after.”
“Who’s first on the home stand?”
“Curse, I think,” Suguru breathes out, “why?”
“I think I’m gonna come home. Like, tomorrow.” It’s a spur of the moment thing: he’s planned to be here a week but now he’s staring at the bowl of soup and he thinks he’s going insane. He needs to be back with his team. With Oaks and Pez and Suguru, and on the grind. He needs to bring the cup home, to make it worth it. A loss is supposed to teach you something, make the next one easier.
This can’t be for nothing.
“You-” Suguru winces. Satoru can hear it in his voice. “You should stay, if you need to.”
“I can afford to– I dunno, I’ll send money to cover everything, I don’t care. My mom would want me to go back to you guys. To play,”
“She’d want you to be happy,”
“I’m happy playing,” Satoru hisses back. The soup is cold.
“Okay.” Suguru says, calm. “Okay, I can’t pick you up for three days, though, so you should wait.”
“I can get a taxi,”
“Satoru.” Still, Suguru is the only person who gets his first name right, apart from- well. “I’ll be pissed off if you do that. Let me pick you up, like a normal person.”
Three days. Satoru can last three days. “You don’t have to.”
“I will, though.”
Satoru knows he will. That’s half the problem.
“I have to eat,”
“I’ll call you later. Watch us when we shut out Vegas, will you?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Satoru grins. “Tell Oaks if he doesn’t let any in I’ll cover the bills when you go out on the strip.”
“I’ll hold you to it,”
—
His dad and him don’t speak. Satoru, as promised, curls up on the couch to watch the Vegas game, seeing all his boys on the screen, instead of in person. It’s jarring. He’s not missed a game in years. Even when he was injured the season before Suguru signed, he’d still been in the box.
His dad doesn’t watch with him, but Satoru can hear him walking around upstairs, right above his head. On screen, Oaks bats away another puck. Snorting, Satoru pulls out his phone to text him, even though he won’t see it until after the game, until after media: I can tell Suguru told you I’d cover the bill.
They rush the puck up the ice, passing between Suguru and Pez, and then Suguru delivers a filthy shot right past the goalie’s glove, and Satoru finds himself jumping up and shouting like he’s on the bench, not in his living room miles and miles away, being useless.
His dad’s footsteps above him stop for a moment, and he feels guilty, but it was a fucking good goal. He’ll have to call him. When the game’s over. Not like he could answer now, between periods.
What would he say to him, now, if he was there? Congratulate him on the goal, probably. Celly. Something stupid. Hug him? Smack his ass, definitely.
His dad coughs in the doorway. Satoru’s standing in the middle of the living room watching the TV like a crazy person.
“How long’s left?”
“They’re still only ten minutes into the third,” Satoru replies, turning to look. “What?”
He forgets about the game when he sees what his dad’s holding.
—
The airport is cold. It always is. The metal of the rings are colder, sitting against his chest, on an old chain that he dug out from his mom’s jewellery box. They fit on his little finger, but they’re just slightly loose, enough that Satoru was scared of losing them putting them on. But he couldn’t just put them in a bag or somewhere safe. He needed to feel them.
He has to take them off, with his watch and his belt, to go through security. He breathes shallow the entire time, trying to see it in the tray going underneath the belt. Obviously they’re not going to steal it, but he still breathes a sigh of relief when it’s back against his chest, and he’s curled up in his plane seat.
His dad had said for when he got married. And stupidly Satoru’s first thought had been Suguru, across the continent in Vegas, and how he could have a shotgun wedding there. Then he thought of all the abandoned contacts in his phone, girls he’s half-abandoned because he got bored, and wrinkled his nose at. He’s not told his parents that, obviously. He plays hockey. Hockey can take up all your time if you let it, and Satoru’s more than happy to let it. So his parents don’t know he’s just fucking about with whatever girl he can pick up in a bar, and he’s happy with it that way.
Well, he was. Now he’s twirling the ring between his fingers, and just- thinking.
He tucks himself up in the airplane seat, forehead pressed between his knees as his phone buzzes with a text from Suguru. Let me know when you land.
Sure, Satoru texts back.
—
This time, Satoru knows the deal.
When he gets back, they’ll have seven more games in the regular season. Five of them away. The last one is at home.
They need to win every single one if they want a clear shot at a playoff spot. They can only lose two if they want a wildcard, and even then, it's not a guarantee. The Atlantic is ridiculously strong this year. Both spots could go to them.
He gets to the rink early, earlier than he usually does. He’s not–
The locker room banter is fine, but lately it feels like he’s not really there, looking through a lens at it. It’ll come back to him, he’ll be able to deal with it, but-
He’s allowed to ease himself back into it. Into hockey. He doesn’t need to see all the faces of his teammates looking at him, wide-eyed and sorry for something that isn’t their fault. He doesn’t need to deal with the thinly veiled expressions of care that are actually more targeted at whether he’ll be back up to working miracles soon.
Nothing is a miracle here. He’s alone in the cold of the rink, stepping from side to side. He gets a net, some pucks, dumps them out. He should probably warm up properly, first, but there’s still an ache in his bones, slow to unfurl, slow to retract itself. He spends a while at the side, takes his glove off and runs his palm, methodical, under both blades. Sharp enough to break his skin, when he presses down, not sharp enough to draw blood. He redoes his stick tape, leant against the edge of the boards where the benches are.
He’s focused enough on it that he doesn’t notice Suguru on the ice until he’s in front of him, tapping his stick at Satoru’s knees. “You’re on early,”
“You were asleep,”
Suguru shrugs, “you slamming the door woke me up. Why’d you not come in, we could’ve driven together,”
Satoru didn’t feel like dragging him up. Not today. It was enough of a struggle to get out the door by himself. “Wanted to be here early,”
“Early? You?” Suguru scoffs, “have you warmed up?”
Satoru tears off the end of the stick tape with a snap. He thinks about lying, but that never really turns out the best when it’s Suguru. “Nah.”
He shakes his head. His ponytail is loose on top of his head, his helmet threaded through his elbow. He bumps Satoru’s shoulder, his hip, as he dumps it over the side of the bench with his water bottle. “Come on, then,”
It’s sort of insane, how Suguru’s entire routine has pretty much stayed the same since juniors. When Satoru had begged for him to get a chance here, he expected a different player to rock up at training camp to the one he knew. He played centre in college, after all, even on the powerplay. Maybe he’d forgotten how to be a winger.
And then he’d shown up early, with the same warmup routines, and they’d played a match and ran powerplay drills and Yaga had looked at him and kept him on the roster. Then he kept him on Satoru’s line, which was even better.
The magic was still there. Maybe even more than it was before. Suguru was better at defense, since he’d played NCAA. His stick handling had improved. He was more serious, more coachable. It really shouldn’t have been a surprise, him getting the A so quick. And he's already proven ten times over that he deserves it. He’s so good in the room. The guys love him.
His warmups are still weird, is the point. He does a lot more one leg stuff than most of the others, power pulls and lunges, stuff that shouldn’t really matter. But Satoru, here, finds himself copying him, edge to edge, knees bent then straight.
“What’d you wanna do?” Suguru says, as he switches to skating backwards to face Satoru, face plain and wide open. He’s not asked.
“Simple,” Satoru replies, swallowing. “Something- just, like. Passing, maybe?”
“Sure,” Suguru is easy as anything, mouth starting to curve up into a smile, “it is a pretty important part of the game, huh?”
He still has the audacity to yelp when Satoru thwacks him around the back of his neck.
They start with a couple of passing drills at the empty net, alternating who shoots. Suguru starts aiming at the crossbar for fun after a couple of times, and on the third, it bounces straight off and into the meat of his own thigh, sending him sprawling halfway across the ice with a grunt, and Satoru can’t help it: he laughs out loud, the sound bouncing around in the empty rink as Suguru sits up with a scowl on his face.
“You look so stupid-!”
“You’re an asshole-”
“Why did you starfish!”
Before Satoru really notices what’s going on, he’s being bombarded by Suguru, who’s scrabbling up and tackling him to the ice. Swearing, Satoru tries to correct their balance, but it’s too late- he goes sprawling out underneath Suguru’s weight, who grabs him by the jersey, shaking him from side to side.
Satoru finds himself laughing, chest hurting, pressing his hands up into the ridges of Suguru’s collarbones, into the padding, scrabbling underneath him. “Stop!”
“You’re a shit fighter!”
“You jumped me!”
Suguru is grinning, eyes crinkled at the corners, “yeah, sure,”
Satoru shoves him upward, so that they both go sprawling side-by-side in a heap. If this were a real fight, the refs would have separated them by now. The whistle would have blown. But it’s fun like this: with Suguru tipping his head back and laughing, his hair coming loose and trailing over the ice.
There’s a loud cough from behind them, and Satoru looks up to see Pez, leaning on his stick with his elbow, half a smile twitching at the corners of his mouth. They separate, and Suguru scrambles to his feet, murmuring out a sorry between his red cheeks and a tight jaw.
To avoid feeling like he’s missed something, Satoru turns back to Perry and sits up. “Sorry,”
Pez sighs, and resigns to the smile on his face. “It’s fine. I guess you’re lucky it was me and not Jack. He’d never let you hear the end of it.”
That’s true, Satoru thinks, he wouldn’t. And then he’d tell Oaks and everyone would have a field day. He puts one knee on the ice, then the other, and stands, wobbly on his own feet. “Are you gonna let me hear the end of it,”
“Ah, only ‘cause I feel sorry for you,” Pez grins, shoving him forwards with a heavy pat to his back, and things are normal.
—
Training is good. Skating is good. He lets it come to him, lets the ache bury itself deep in his muscles and live there, like he’s used to. He might have been slacking recently, struggling to train like he usually does, but that stops now.
He gets back in the wake of a loss, so naturally at the end of skate, Yaga makes them do suicides. He’s standing, panting, about to throw up at the end of the rink, because he’s not been keeping up with his cardio like he should have been, next to Suguru, who’s flushed bright red, down on one knee, but he knows this is where he needs to be. This is what he is, what he’s good at. He can claw them back into this fight, even after they dropped three games in his absence.
“We are not blowing another third period lead,” Yaga barks out, somewhere across the ice, “are we clear?”
There’s a chorus of yes, coach , before Yaga sighs, “dismissed, then,”
Most of the players get off the ice. Pez stands, a few people down the line, and pulls his helmet off, pushing a hand through his hair. His jaw is set, and his eyes are tired, but he softens when he locks eyes with Satoru, skating over.
“Are you staying on?”
Satoru nods. He wants to run netfront drills, he wants to practice his handling, he wants-
He needs to keep skating.
Pez claps down a gloved hand on his shoulder. “I– look–” Satoru braces himself for impact, “ – a couple of the guys wanted to run puck protection drills, quickly. And Jack’s been asking for you, specifically, so-”
That’s easy. That, he can do. “Sure, I’m probably rusty, though,”
Pez barks out a laugh, shocked and happy. “Don’t be stupid,” he frowns, looking just over his shoulder, “Getou, you can go, man, you’ve been working ov-”
“I’ll run the drills,” Suguru says, cutting him off, “I’ve gotta– I can’t go home without him anyway, he was my ride,”
Pez blinks, but shrugs, “if you’re not tired,”
“We’re all tired,” Suguru says back. There’s something tense there, but Satoru isn’t going to push it. He’ll figure it out. The team- the team isn’t the thing he’s going to struggle with.
Jack knocks into him on his left, shoulder to shoulder, hair all sticky under his helmet. “How was home,”
He doesn’t have to look at Getou to know he’s gone tense, because he can feel it. Side effect of playing on the same line for almost half a decade.
“It was alright. Funeral was shit, but it is what it is,”
Pez even sticks a little bit. Maybe it’s a little mean, to make the guys feel shitty for ignoring it when he’s ignoring it too, when he wants things to be normal, but– oh well. He likes to be a little mean. He can be a little mean. His mom is dead.
Jack carries on, though, oblivious, “oh, I’m glad, man, when my grandma died it was fucking– it was awful. My mom got so mad at me, ‘cause I couldn’t stay that long, ‘cause of hockey, y’know? So. We’re glad to have you back,”
Jack skates over to Alek at the same time, who’s sipping water through the bars of his mask. Pez winces. “Sorry,”
“About what?” Satoru chirps back, bumping his hip with Pez’s. At least he isn’t walking on eggshells about it. He doesn’t want to be uncomfortable for the rest of the season: he doesn’t want to have to do all the media bullshit about how sad he is. This is his. His alone. He can carry it, if no one takes it and makes it bigger than what he can hold.
Pez blanches. “I’m- we’re here for you, man,”
It’s so different from the easy dismissal of it earlier. Satoru laughs as they set up for the drill. He can feel Suguru looming behind him, stepping from side to side to avoid being too close. “You’re good,”
Pez finally skates away towards a couple of the rookies squabbling, breaking them up from each other, and Suguru bumps into him, sending him slightly off balance. They look at each other for a moment. He opens his mouth, then tucks two fingers under the strap of his helmet, pulling it away from his skin.
“At the end, you wanna run with me?”
“You’re a forward,”
“I wanna work on my defense,” Suguru says, blunt. He’s already a better two-way player than Satoru is, less pure speed and skill and a little more– Satoru doesn’t know. His mom usd to say he was more calculated, deliberate than Satoru was. Like he thought everything through.
Suguru’s still standing there. And God, what the hell-
“Sure,”
The drill is simple, really. It’s quick, to give Alek and the younger guys a little practice at being up against the boards, using their bodies to keep the puck. Push all the way down the length of the boards until the whistle gets blown, then take the shot. It’s not something that Satoru thinks requires much skill, but it’s fast and furious and makes everything go quiet. There’s a singular focus.
Satoru doesn’t like being boarded. It’s one of his least favourite things about hockey. When he was seven, he got knocked out, against the boards by a much older boy who was supposed to be teaching him something. There was enough roughhousing and shoving in locker rooms in juniors to put him on edge, developing the singular experience of sitting in an emergency room with his mom soothing her fingers through his hair and whispering platitudes about how things would get better.
Suguru bumps his hip to his, just before his turn with Jack. “You sure you’re okay for this?”
“I’ll be fine,” Satoru blurts out, because he doesn’t like having this conversation. He doesn’t like admitting that he can’t stand one of the main parts of the game. He doesn’t like admitting it to most teammates, in case they get traded and it spreads through the league. Prodigal talent hates being against the boards. God, he’d never breathe again. Suguru still looks worried, though, so: “it’s fine. When it’s you, it’s fine, and I’m ending with you, right?”
It’s not fine, exactly. It’s like– his body still seizes up. But he knows Suguru will never hurt him. And he basically said to Gakuganji that if they traded Suguru he’d walk from the organisation, so it’s not like he’ll ever get the opportunity to use it against him.
Jack is definitely getting better, but Satoru still gets a clean shot and he’s still not going all out. At the end, when Suguru does it, he has to work much, much harder.
And he wouldn’t really have it any other way.
—
Game one, win in regulation. Two points. They keep their heads down. Suguru stands in the middle of the room, tells them they can’t afford to get distracted, that the chance at the cup hangs in the balance.
Game two. Two points. Someone asks him if it’s different after his mom died, not having anyone in the box. Satoru doesn’t know what to say: hockey’s hockey.
Game three, win in overtime, mainly because Suguru twinges his ankle and has to stay off.
Game four, regulation win. Oaks pulls out all the stops in net, plays the full sixty, and it’s only one-nil in the end, courtesy of a powerplay goal off Satoru’s stick. Suguru’s still off, but its fine, he’ll be back next game.
In game six, the streak continues. Suguru manages a goal that is just filthy, off a long-shot pass in front of the net, a buzzer-beater in regulation that makes the final score a neat and tidy four goals to three. He doesn’t really remember much after that, just leaping towards him where Pez was already grabbing at him, shaking him from side-to-side.
“Playoffs, baby!” Someone shouts, and Oaks finally gets over to their side, almost bowling them both over as Suguru laughs, eyes crinkling and dimples on display.
“Whatta assist,” Oaks says, pulling his mask up, “what a fucking goal, that was disgusting,”
There’s still one more game. They still have to win it. Suguru reminds them all, in the middle of the locker room, shoulders set, face serious. But when he looks back at Satoru, there’s the trace of a smile on his face as he mouths, quiet between the spaces of their stalls, “we go home, now.”
And yeah, Satoru can’t wait to be back. Game seven, their clinch, it’s going to be a breeze.
—
Satoru doesn’t really hold any grudges. His mom always told him: the game is what it is, injuries happen. Fights happen. You get up, you move on, you sit down with the guys in restaurants and training camps and everything inbetween. In Satoru’s case, sometimes play with them at the All-Star.
There’s one exception in the entire league, and that’s Toji Fushiguro.
Satoru honestly, hand-over-heart, does not know why the guy hates him so much. He really, really doesn’t. When Satoru got drafted, he’d been put into the top six pretty much straight away, and maybe Toji felt threatened by that, before the trade happened.
Satoru liked his kid, even! He played with him a bit, when his dad fucked off to do god-knows-what after sessions, when the rink was empty, his mom watching from the sidelines. Then Toji got traded because Gakuganji wanted more prospects and Toji wasn’t as young as he used to be.
It was partly because they wanted Getou, but Toji went, and he apparently took it personally. Pez said after that most of the leadership had wanted him gone, so it didn’t make a difference, but–
Toji’s a captain now. He still plays at centre, and he still plays physical, and they’ve already clinched and they’re on the opposite conference, but Satoru has a feeling that tonight is going to be hard. He looked up the roster on his way over, hoping that they’d put in a B-team, to save their better players. And it is, but Toji’s still on the ice tonight.
Satoru doesn’t get scared. He’s the best offensive player in the league. His team has his back. He played with a target on his back the whole first two seasons, and everyone that tried got their shit rocked.
But he has a bad feeling, as he tapes his socks up. As he rolls his shoulders back into his jersey, feeling the fabric against his skin. Watching Suguru lean forward, knees on his elbows, still in his base layers as Pez gives the speech: do-or-almost-certainly-die.
They win tonight or their season ends here.
Suguru taps him on the ankle with his stick. “You good?”
“Yeah,”
—
Satoru’s right. He wishes he wasn’t right and that this game could just be hockey, but it isn’t.
It’s not normal hockey as soon as Toji skates up to the faceoff circle, grinning around his mouthguard, “sorry for your loss,”
Satoru squints at him. “Right.” Everyone’s sorry about it. It won’t change anything. “You don’t care,”
“Nah, I don’t,” Toji lowers his stick to the ice, sucking his mouthguard into place. “You’re still wearing her number though. You think she’d be proud if you missed the playoffs by one game?”
“How’s your divorce going.” Satoru chirps in response, and wins the faceoff. So that’s that argument settled. He wasn’t going to bring it up, on the ice, especially given there’s a kid involved, but if he brings up his mom, it’s fair game, isn’t it?
Suguru’s not on the ice with him when he gets slammed up against the boards behind LA’s net, battling with some fucking– defenseman he doesn’t know, or want to know, digging the puck out before he has to get off the ice anyway, swapping with Suguru at centre.
The chirping doesn’t fucking stop, either. There’s another comment from Toji after Suguru scores off his assist in the last minute of the first. He spends the entire intermission stewing on it, chewing on the inside of his cheek. Suguru senses it, places his hand on the inside of Satoru’s thigh, gentle. They won’t be able to have this when they’re in the playoffs, cameras around every corner, but they can have it now, where it’s quiet, where they watch Pez tell them to get it the fuck together, because they’re winning but it’s close and violent.
The chirping gets worse in the second. Satoru can handle being called princess all day and all night if it gets them a playoff spot, if it gets them a win. He can handle being called sloppy bcause he knows he isn’t. He knows he’s good. He can handle some has-been who got sent to the league’s worst team goading at him. He’s gonna win a cup, so it’s good.
Some enforcer slams him against the netfront with five minutes left in the second, and Satoru feels it all the way up his spine, into his neck if he tries hard enough. He doesn’t.
“Why are you always up my ass,” Satoru huffs out, when the guy takes a step back, “fucking hell, buy me dinner first,”
The idiot shoves him again, and Satoru has the good sense to reach out a mitt to push him away. “Not fighting, nice try, though,”
The guy– seventy, huh – shoves him again, “you can tell you learned hockey from your mom, you’re a pussy,”
Satoru rolls his eyes, “she fought more than I do, asshole, get a new angle,”
Seventy looks at him like he can’t believe women’s hockey exists at all, which checks. He can’t resist spitting out his mouthguard, holding it between his molars, and grinning, “I can give some tips to your mom, if you’re jealous,”
Grabbing him, Seventy drops his gloves, and swings for his jaw, catching him there, and the whistle blows because Satoru doesn’t even try to fight back, Pez dragging him out by his scruff and shouting something at the guy– or maybe the refs, Satoru doesn’t know. He’s already pulling his glove off and trying to find blood, going for the double.
They’re on the power play, now, though, which is what’s important, Suguru bumping up against him, hissing, “what the fuck did you say to him?”
“Told him I’d fuck his mom,” Satoru grits out, not even trying to look guilty as Suguru sighs. “He told me I was a pussy because of my mom , come on, it was fair game,”
Suguru shrugs, “as long as you score,”
“We score,” Satoru mutters under his breath. He’d be pretty satisfied with one of Suguru’s nice little passes. An assist. Or maybe he can give Suguru something, put him one step closer to a hatty.
As long as they’re together on the power play, they can convert.
He has to wait for the second shift, has to wait for the transition, but it’s there: a slim gap through a defender’s legs, an opening on the far side of the net, Suguru slightly behind but he’ll get there.
He sends the puck through right as Toji collides with him, watches Suguru go down onto one knee, flick the puck right over their goalie’s knee, into the back of the net. Two-nothing Angels.
Suguru raises his arms high as he laughs and Satoru goes to him, legs burning as the whole unit collides at centre ice. Satoru will keep drawing penalties as long as it feels like this.
—
Satoru misses two easy goals early in the third, and then Toji’s little lapdog scores and it’s a one-goal game again.
They’re tired, and the play isn’t connecting, not even on the top line, and Pez snaps at Jack on the bench on the transition.
It’s tense, and Satoru finds himself chewing hard on his mouthguard, bending the plastic between his teeth as he watches on from the bench. Yaga’s shouting something, he doesn’t know, he’s clambering over the bench, he has to score, get them back ahead.
Ten minutes on the clock. That’s a long time, for both of them, with one goal in it. He doesn’t want to take this to overtime. He thinks, maybe, they can afford to take it to overtime, maybe even lose and still clinch, but it doesn’t mean he wants to. That’d be a pretty pathetic way to end this run.
He climbs the barrier at the bench, sitting there for a moment before Jack comes back, and then he’s playing again, drowning out the shouts. He has to win this, for the team, for the playoffs, for his mom, to make it all worth it.
He almost has a clean shot from in front of the net before he feels Toji’s weight crashing into him, sending him cleanly to the side, his helmet connecting to plexiglass with a crack.
The whistle gets blown, so Satoru’s just there, hand braced against the boards to keep himself upright. Toji shoves at him again. “You just stand and look pretty, or what? You wanna wake up and play some real hockey?”
Satoru knows better than letting this get to him. “I think you should take your own advice,” he grunts, spitting onto the ice between them, “we’re leading,”
“No thanks to you,” Toji grins, “your little boyfriend’s getting all the glory tonight, you gonna give him a blowjob for the hat trick?”
“Two assists, asshole,” Satoru says, trying to shove him away. He’s still kind of close, and Satoru still has his back against the boards. He manages to get out, skating back toward the bench. “Hockey’s a team sport, which you’d know if you had teammates who actually liked you,”
All at once, he feels a glove connect with the centre of his back, the weakest point, right between his shoulder blades. He goes stumbling forward, rather embarrassingly, as he gets close to the bench. “You gonna go cry to your mommy about it? How you don’t have any teammates who like you either?”
Satoru turns. “What?”
“I said, are you gonna go cry to your mommy.”
The gloves are off Satoru’s hands before he can think about it.
The thing is that Satoru’s still not a fighter when he’s angry. He’s still not a fighter when there’s adrenaline coursing through him. And Toji has more muscle, more power, and Satoru feels his helmet go flying across the ice, and a fist connect with his face, and gets shoved, hard, down.
Then his wrist explodes with pain, bright behind his eyelids, and there’s the dull thump of his skull connecting with the ground, and the refs are pulling them apart, but it’s still– Toji’s still–
He spits blood onto the ice, trying to push himself up and failing, as a linesman comes over, kneels down on the ice beside him. His ears are ringing. “You okay?”
“Not my head-” Satoru gets out, because they have to know he isn’t concussed and he can still play, “I didn’t- it’s just my hand,”
Everyone’s shouting at each other, no bench brawl yet but looking like it might get there. Pez looks furious, dark and stormy, and as Suguru skates over to him, he looks no better. He grabs Satoru, hauls him up. “You’re an idiot,”
“He-”
“I heard.” Suguru grits out. “At least they’re not on the powerplay,”
Satoru blinks. The box. He dropped the gloves. He feels sick, the pain blooming right the way up his arm now. “I think I need to go,”
Suguru turns to face him, voice low, “what?”
“My arm, I– I think I need to go,”
Pez is skating over, now, looping his arms under Satoru’s bad side. Suguru blurts out “careful!” at the same time that Satoru fails to suppress a hiss of pain.
“What the fuck did he do to you?”
“Landed wrong,” Satoru says, “fuck.”
“We need to do this where they can’t see,” Suguru mutters, urgently, and then Satoru’s being carted down the tunnel, hoping they can hold them off for the win.
He does kind of wish he could go cry to his mom, actually.
—
They give him the good stuff and he listens to the home crowd erupt and cheer and he knows they’ve done it, even though he’s told not to look at screens or any bright lights.
His wrist gets put in a sling, and he shuts his eyes as they tell him to go to hospital to get it x-rayed. They’ll call ahead, apparently. Satoru isn’t listening too hard, on account of his head starting to really hurt now.
“I’ll take him,”
“Are you sure?” He thinks that’s a trainer, but he can’t be sure. It’s really hard to stay awake right now.
“Yeah, I was his lift here. I don’t mind, you know I don’t, it saves an ambulance,”
“Ambulance?” Satoru frowns, looking up to where Suguru is swimming above him, face contorted.
“Yeah,” Suguru’s voice is soft, smooth, “you’re pretty fucked up, dude,”
Satoru shakes his head, “no, I’m not,”
“He’s so stubborn,”
“I know, trust me, I know,” Suguru says, “come on, Satoru. We’re getting in the car, they’re gonna let us out the back.”
Satoru really doesn’t have it in him to argue. If Suguru says they’re going to the car, they’re going to the car. He’ll argue later when his body feels like it’ll respond to what he’s telling it to do.
He finds himself in the passenger seat, wincing at the overhead light, when he finally manages to look at Suguru properly. He’s in an Angels hoodie, his hair is pulled back into a haphazard bun-thing that looks a strong breeze away from coming undone. He’s still in his baselayers, socks and sliders.
“You should be celebrating,” Satoru says. He knows he’s gotta stay awake, but God, it’s hard.
“Fuck off,” Suguru snaps back, with no weight behind his own words.
“Did we not win?”
“Yeah, we won,” Suguru says, “I’m not- Satoru, you’re hurt.”
“One of the trainers could’ve-”
“No.” Suguru says, short, as the car pulls out of the parking lot, “Satoru, they want to go home,”
“Suguru, always so caring,” Satoru sighs, “I don’t need a babysitter, I’m okay,”
There’s a pause. Suguru frowns, and shakes his head, scoffing, “why’d you drop the gloves with him? He weighs like double you, you– you need to be able to play,”
He knows it was a stupid idea. He knew, from the moment he decided he’d do it, that he was going to lose. But it’s principle, isn’t it? “You heard what he said,”
“They’d been chirping you all game,” Suguru points out. He’s not wrong. Most of the teams in the league have enough respect for his mom to not bring her up, but LA had decided to make it their mission to get under his skin. He guesses they accomplished it, in the end. “How was that different,”
“Because if she wasn’t dead, she’d be driving me to the hospital right now,” Satoru whispers, hoarse. “And you’d be out partying celebrating us clinching.”
Suguru jolts in the drivers’ seat. “If she was alive, you’d be celebrating with us, because you wouldn’t have gotten in the fight,” he says, short and sharp.
Satoru doesn’t have a response to that.
—
Despite the team calling ahead, there’s still a long wait for an X-ray and a longer one for the MRI that the team thinks he needs. Upon the realisation of who they were, they got carted off to a private room, but they’re still waiting, still looking at being there pretty much overnight.
Satoru knows Suguru won’t go home, even if he asks, so instead he pats the space next to him on the bed, and Suguru clambers up, still smelling stale and like sweat and ice rink.
“What was the score?” Satoru says. It’s all he has room for in his head right now.
“Four to one,” Suguru murmurs. “I got another one, and Pez did too,”
“Do I need to send Oaks another gift basket,” Satoru winces, trying to open his eyes, but failing, “for keeping pucks out, or what?”
“Nah, that’s his job,” Suguru laughs, and Satoru can feel it in his chest. “Probably one for Perry, though,”
“Why for Pez?” Satoru murmurs. Suguru’s weight is warm, comforting. He has to work to stay awake.
“He headhunted Toji.” Suguru says. “I’d show you the video, it was pretty nasty, but-” he taps his fingers, soft, at the base of Satoru’s skull. He hadn’t noticed it before, but now it’s comforting, his hand in his hair. “Y’know. No screens for you,”
“Tell me,” Satoru says. He needs Suguru to keep talking. He needs something to focus on. “Tell me.”
“He–” Suguru stutters. “He waited for the penalty kill to be over. Toji came out the box, into center ice, he was focussing on clearing the puck, not really looking. And Pez just went straight for him, grabbed him by the back of the jersey.”
“Like some enforcer,” Satoru laughs, even though it hurts all over, “did he lose?”
“No, he– he got a game misconduct, actually,”
Satoru tries to open his eyes. It doesn’t really work. “What?”
“He grabbed him, threw him down properly, just– hit him. I don’t think his gloves were even off, it was dirty, gave him no time to fight back,”
That’s not like Pez. At all. He leads by example, no fighting, always reasonable, opting for following through on checks rather than dropping the gloves. Satoru’s voice is small when he says, “really?”
“I’ve never seen him that angry.”
“Blood?”
“He broke his nose, I’m pretty sure,” Suguru whispers. “I think he knocked out one of his teeth.”
Satoru wants to ask more and he wants to know the play-by-play, hear the commentary back, but the door opens, and a nurse comes in, and he gets swept away in it.
He guesses he’ll ask later.