Work Text:
Dallas Kent gets arrested on February 23.
It’s a Tuesday, three days before Troy will come out – all the way out out – to the whole world, and so it doesn’t quite sink in. Not right then.
Still, his first, incredibly selfish, reaction is relief. Relief that Kent is behind bars– at least for now; relief that finally, some justice seems to be done (though whether it sticks still remains to be seen, but it’s easy enough to squash that thought with so much more important things to worry about); relief that he won’t have to face Kent the day he’s planning to come out.
That’s about all the brain space he has left to dedicate to Dallas fucking Kent, because the next few days are a whirlwind of regular season shenanigans – practice and team socialising and another game, though at least it’s at home – and prep for Pride night, which on Troy’s part is mostly letting Harris film him with the statement Troy absolutely wrote on his own (the help was greatly appreciated and came with some other benefits, like a pretty hot reward for having the guts to do all of this).
So things are – good. Troy hangs out with his mom and Charlie and Harris, with the Drovers, and, once, even with both families combined. That bit is terrifying. Nerve-wrecking.
It’s also amazing. His mother and Harris’s parents get along immediately, and Troy can barely believe his good fortune. If he’d known half a year ago that his life would turn into this, he would not have believed it. Still can barely believe it.
And then the first letter arrives.
It’s a simple thing, in a white, unmarked envelope that’s taped shut with clear tape. No sender, but also no recipient. For a moment, Troy wonders if it was even meant for him, which is the main reason he opens it.
A single sheet of paper slips out.
traitor., cold, impersonal letters tell him.
One word, anonymous in the monospaced printed font. Were it not for the fact it had been in Troy’s mailbox at his private residence, it would be kind of ridiculous.
It is kind of ridiculous, though. Troy shakes his head, balls up the letter, and throws both it and the envelope in the trash. He’s a top athlete in the public eye; there’s always someone unhappy with what he’s doing. Usually, they leave these kinds of comments on his Instagram rather than his mailbox, but it’s not like this is anything unusual.
The second letter arrives three days later. Again in an unblemished envelope that’s taped shut. It contains another single page. This time, it reads,
Traitors will get what they’re due. It should be u behind bars, you backstapping faggot.
A little bit less ridiculous than the first one, Troy has to give the writer that, but still not anything he hasn’t seen online.
It’s a little uncomfortable that the person seems to know where he’s living, but it’s probably not that hard to find out, and he doesn’t actally spend that much time in his flat these days.
And then the next letter shows up at Harris’s.
Harris doesn’t have security cameras on the property he’s living on – not that Troy has made use of the ones at his flat, and by the time the third letter comes, it’s past the time the footage is kept – and he’s probbaly considerably less private about his location than Harris, considering he’s not actually a public figure himself, and so Troy stares at the envelope and wills the bad feeling in his gut down.
“Everything alright?” Harris asks, grabbing the letter like nothing is wrong.
Troy doesn’t know what to say. Because it might be nothing, really. The last two letters were uninspired statements, and if it weren’t for the fact that they’d shown up where he lived, it would have been nothing. But this one has been thrown into Harris’s mailbox.
“Have you gotten something like this before?” Troy asks stupidly.
Harris pauses in ripping it open. “A letter?”
Yeah, stupid in fact.
“Uh –”
In the time it takes Troy to come up with an answer, Harris has opened the envelope and slipped the letter inside it out.
It’s the same monospaced font as on the two letters Troy received, the content not more sophisticated:
Fags like you have no place in the league. Go take your jealousy elsewhere or we’ll make you.
“What the fuck,” Harris whispers. His face is white when Troy looks at him. “What the – what did you mean by have I gotten something like this before?”
“Uh,” Troy says again, intelligently, before the whole thing pours out of him.
“What the fuck, Troy.”
“I didn’t choose this!”
“That’s not what I was trying to say!” Harris stops short, takes a pointed breath, and then looks at Troy again. “So you got two so far?”
Troy nods, and then shrugs. “They didn’t seem so serious, you know?”
“Not serious?” Harris lets the letter sink. “These – this at least is a threat, and they know where you live, and where I live and – have you talked to your mother if she got anything?”
Fuck. His mother. “I don’t think it’s that bad,” Troy argues weakly. Yes, it’s a rabid fan, probably someone who was a Guardians die-hard, probably had a Kent jersey and maybe a Barrett one – that’s not conceit, it was just fact that Kent’s jersey had been the most-sold Toronto merch for the past several years, followed by Troy’s own number – and now has too much time and anger on their hands.
“They could – this could have been a letter bomb!”
Oh.
“Christ. We need – we probably shouldn’t be staying here. I’ll reach out to the team, get us booked into a hotel for the night. Get this escalated. Do you still have the letters?”
Troy shakes his head. It still feels overblown to him, but maybe Harris is right. He certainly should have kept the letters.
“Well. This will have to do. Shit, Troy – I’m so sorry.”
“I’ll, uh, go pack?”
“Not alone,” Harris shoots back immediately, even though Troy’s building has a doorman and security cameras and is thus probably safer than most places.
But, well. Better safe than sorry, right?"
The letters keep coming, even though an investigation is launched. Addressed to the team. In Troy’s mailbox whenever the detective that the team hired checks it. Slipped under Harris’s door. Once, in Troy’s locker. During an away-game, it shows up in his duffel, and ice cold panic grips Troy’s chest until he realises what this implies: it has to be someone who has access to his gear.
Maybe, that should increase the panic. But in the moment, it is strangely soothing: it’s not a random person who’s been stalking him. Not a rabid fan who’s hunting him.
It’s someone he knows – which isn’t great, but explains how they got access to Troy’s information, to Harris’s location, to Troy’s gear. So overall, it’s pretty good, Troy would say.
“Have you lost your mind?” Harris asks when Troy calls him after speaking with the police contact about how to proceed.
“I don’t think so,” Troy replies, “but we’ll see.” There have been a few leads, is the thing, but in slipping something into his bag during a time only a very select number of people have access to it, the perpetrator has probably given the game away.
And true enough: not even a week later, one of their equipment managers – a new guy, whose wife is from Toronto, as it turns out – is taken in for questioning, and ends up confessing to having sent the letters.
It still takes Troy and Harris quite a while to be comfortable returning to their flats. Which is probably not the best reason to end up looking at houses together, but, yeah – nothing like near-death experiences to help you figure out what you really want, yes?