Chapter Text
Roman starts it, in what Devon is pretty fucking sure is abuse of his rookie mentoring powers. Devon decides he should blame Roman, because it seems like a dick move to blame Fitzy for it, considering he’s the victim of a bunch of rookie stalking. Though he seems to be amused by it, at least, which is probably good, otherwise Devon bets there’d be some workplace harassment seminar in everyone’s future. Though who fucking knows if the kids are keeping it at the workplace. Devon doesn’t know. Devon does not want to know. Devon wants plausible deniability.
So Devon’s not blaming Fitzy, he wants to be clear, but Fitzy being secretive for once in his life is what gets Roman on it like a dog on a bone. It’s weird, because Fitzy isn’t really the kind of guy that won’t talk about shit. It’d be one thing if he was hiding having a boyfriend at all, Devon would get that. The North Stars are all fine with it, at least to Fitzy’s face, in Devon’s presence. If it bugs someone, no one’s saying anything, but it’s not like Fitzy had that guarantee. Fitzy isn’t hiding that at all, but no one knows who that boyfriend is or pretty much anything about him, which is downright weird, in Devon’s opinion, because Fitzy is shit at keeping a secret, you can read pretty much anything on his face. You still can, technically. If you ask, he gets this look like he’s smug as shit that he’s managing to keep a secret for once.
Devon thinks it’s funny, but it drives some of the guys mental, he guesses, because suddenly they’re poking rookies into dumb ass surveillance like a stupid frat prank or something. Devon guesses it isn’t any worse than when he had to dress up as one of the Sailor Moon chicks for Halloween — he was the green one, which was his sister’s favourite when she was a kid, and to this day he has no idea where the Lightning vets found costumes big enough — but when he was a rookie, sure as shit no one would be making the rookies try to find out a player’s secret boyfriend. Though Devon guesses every boyfriend was secret back then, because no one had come out yet.
Michaela rolls her eyes when he tells her about it. “You’re all overgrown children,” she says. “Let the guy have his privacy.”
“Hey, I’m not doing shit,” Devon protests. “I saw Connelly wearing a trench coat to practice, though, I think that kid’s getting too into the role.”
“Morons,” she says fondly.
*
It technically starts when Fitzy comes out halfway through his first season with the North Stars. Devon doesn’t know if Fitzy’s decided he can trust the guys by then, or if it’s just that no one’s ever asked anything that Fitzy can answer with ‘Nah, I have a boyfriend.’, which he does when Samberg asks him if he hasn’t picked up because he’s got a girlfriend, since at least three girls were up for it with him in Winnipeg, and might have actually all been up for it, if you know what he means.
If Devon had thought of the kind of person Fitzy would date — which he hadn’t, because he doesn’t exactly think about his teammates’ love lives in his spare time, he has better things to do — he would have figured some tiny girl, as bubbly and talkative as he was. Devon doesn’t think he’s ever met a dude as bubbly as Fitzy, the kind of bubbliness that can grate, especially at six in the fucking morning, but he’s met plenty of girls like that. Hell, it seems like half of his sister’s friends were like the female version of Liam, and Michaela’s little sister reminds him more of Fitzy than anyone he’s ever met. So he would have figured that, he guesses.
“How the hell does your boyfriend stand you?” Emmanuel groans when Fitzy won’t shut up on a red eye. Devon thinks it’s a good question. “He got cocaine in his veins like you or something?”
“It’s sugar, thank you,” Fitzy says, then, “Nah, he’s a grump.”
“You’d make anyone grumpy,” Findlay mutters, and any chance of sleep is completely demolished when Fitzy lets out an offended squawk and starts pelting Findlay — and Devon, who unfortunately is sitting beside him — with everything he can grab.
That’s about all Fitzy will say about the dude, though. Devon’s not asking — Devon honestly doesn’t give two shits, and it’s not the gay thing, he’s not going around asking Findlay where his wife went to school or where Serrano met his girlfriend or anything. But Roman’s always in everyone’s business, he likes that shit. It’s why they made him the rookie handler, because he’s more likely than anyone to know if one of the kids let the pressure get to them, aren’t adjusting so well. So of course Roman starts badgering Fitzy, and apparently gets the lone piece of info that the dude lives in town before Fitzy clams up.
“That’s weird,” Roman says. “I don’t think Fitzy’s ever been secretive about anything in his life.”
“Who cares, Roman,” Devon says. “Seriously.”
“What if it’s something sketch,” Roman says. “Like. What if he’s a dick or something. What if Fitzy’s in distress.”
“You’re being ridiculous,” Findlay says, which was apparently an understatement, because that road trip, the rookie detectives — or, excuse Devon, The Rookie Detectives, because Roman made fucking badges, he needs a girlfriend, fuck — are born.