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llya wishes their rookies would just learn to whisper, or, optionally, to not have these conversations in his immediate vicinity.
Okay, maybe this is a bit of a lie because it is entertaining and he is a nosy bitch. However, the problem is that it makes him feel responsible for things he should definitely not be responsible for.
Bolduc, LaPointe and Smith are standing with their heads together, talking quietly.
“-her to the pharmacy,” Bolduc says, voice hectic.
“That night or in the morning?” Smith asks, and Ilya can feel his eye start to twitch.
“In the morning, dude, it’s called morning after pill-” The other two idiots hum and nod like this is anything.
“Bozhe,” Ilya mutters under his breath, turning his eyes towards the heavens and silently praying to the Lord to drop some brain matter on these idiots. Over his shoulder, he says, “Do you have child support money?”
Bolduc blanches, stuttering, while Smith tries to hide his snort in a cough and LaPointe starts cackling.
“What?” Bolduc asks, his face going white.
“I ask, do you have child support money?”
“I mean… I don’t know? Hopefully I won’t need it?” Bolduc looks genuinely scared.
“Then why do you fuck women with no protection?” Ilya crosses his arms over his chest.
Bolduc goes from white to deeply red within a second. “The condom broke,” he admits.
“Okay, so you use condom, good.” Ilya can’t believe he is having this conversation with an adult. “Now you just need to learn how to use it correctly so it doesn’t break.”
“Like that’s never happened to you!” Bolduc juts out his chin in defiance.
Ilya gestures with wide arms. “No, because I buy correct size!” Three pairs of eyes flicker to his crotch. “And put it on correctly. Did they not cover this in high school?”
LaPointe gives him a wide-eyed look. “You never had a condom break?!”
“Not with a girl, no!” Ilya retorts; he remembers the days when he made sure he was being safe with women, come hell or high water, no matter how drunk he was.
“But with a guy, is what I’m hearing?” LaPointe smirks. These rookies are getting too cocky.
“Anal does not lead to having to pay child support to a hook-up,” Ilya tells him mildly. “No ass-babies.”
LaPointe, for a second, looks like he’s actually, seriously considering this thought for the first time and Ilya wants to bash his head against his stall.
“You got her plan B?” he asks Bolduc, who nods so hard his head might fall off. “Paid for it?”
“Of course!”
“Checked if it can work?”
Bolduc’s eyes widen in genuine fear. “What do you mean?”
“Dude,” Smith says quietly, “I think it’s like… if the girl is above a certain weight.”
Ilya should really keep M&Ms in his stall.
“If she is above certain weight, if she already ovulated, if she takes certain medications…” He counts on his fingers.
Bolduc looks so scared that Ilya almost feels sorry for a moment. He turns around and grabs his phone from the shelf in his stall. “I’m gonna call her right now.”
They watch him flee the locker room, already tapping on his phone screen.
“So what I’m getting from this,” LaPointe says, “is: only do anal.”
“I don’t think…,” Smith says quietly, trailing off as he gives Ilya a shy glance.
“Just let her peg you, is safest,” Ilya tells him in exasperation, and turns back to his own stall.
-
Shane has been watching Luca with hawk-eyes for the entire practice, taking mental notes.
Finally, when they’re on the bench together, he corners him.
“You’re playing hurt.”
Luca blushes immediately and shifts. “No, I’m okay.” It’s clearly a lie.
“No, I can see it,” Shane tells him a little smugly. “You’re holding your body weird. What is it, your ribs? Did you pull something?”
Luca’s blush deepens. “No, Shane, I promise I’m okay-”
“Being a martyr helps no-one.” Shane makes sure to put on an appropriately serious face. “You should see the physical therapist if you need it, I’m sure he can help you.”
Luca snorts and immediately covers his mouth. “Sorry.”
“This isn’t funny, Luca, you need to take care of your body. We need you at full strength for the game-”
Luca holds up a hand, ducking his head. “Please, Shane, just leave it, I’m fine-”
Shane inhales to keep admonishing him, and Luca hisses, “It’s… I’m just sore.”
Whatever Shane meant to say gets stuck in his throat. “What?!” he croaks.
Luca’s entire face, including his ears, is red now and he’s fidgeting with his stick. “Yannick and I got a little… too eager the other day, and we were…” He squirms, “-not home, and a little drunk, so we… we, uh, thought spit would be enough.”
Shane can’t help the gasp leaving him; Luca shushes him.
“Please, it’s embarrassing, we regret it, he felt really bad about it later-”
Shane swallows, then lowers his voice. “You can’t do that!”
“I know!” Luca whisper-screams back, “Normally we don’t! We were just… overcome.” He immediately pulls a face at the word.
“That’s so bad for you!” Shane scolds, now for a different reason.
“I know, Shane!” Luca repeats, looking like he wishes the ground would swallow him whole. “I am really feeling the consequences!”
“Did you use a condom at least?!” Shane asks; he doesn’t like the pause before Luca’s answer.
“Luca Haas!”
Luca covers his face with his hands. “He didn’t… inside…! And we were interrupted, anyway, so-”
“Wh-” Shane stops himself, screwing his eyes shut. This is for his own sanity.
“I do not need a lecture on safe bottoming, I know it was stupid, please just let me wallow in my regret,” Luca murmurs.
“If it doesn’t get better, you will go to a doctor,” Shane tells him; it’s an order. He is just grateful that Luca is doing this with a monogamous boyfriend and not some guy from Grindr or the club.
“Yes, I promise,” Luca replies, “But it’s fine.”
“I’ll text you a link to an ointment,” Shane adds.
“Oh, so you’ve had the same problem before?!” Luca hisses, narrowing his eyes at Shane.
Shane gives him an eyeroll. “No,” he lies. “It’s normal to get sore sometimes, if your top has a big-” He cuts himself off because Coach Wiebe is skating towards them now, calling something out to Shane.
Shane ignores Luca’s huge gasp in favor of attentively listening to Wiebe.
-
Holmberg has pink eye.
Ilya refuses to ask why.
Unfortunately, Dykstra didn’t get the same memo.
“The fuck happened to you, my guy?”
Holmberg presses his lips together, shaking his head.
“Did someone punch you?”
Another thin-lipped headshake.
“Our boy caught pink eye,” Young supplies with a half-hidden smirk.
“Oh, shit!” Evan holds up his hands, taking a step back, “That’s disgusting. Your poor girlfriend. No kissing for you anytime soon!”
This time, Bergy nods with the same tight expression.
The other kids are snickering, and Ilya has a horrible sense of foreboding.
“She was the one who gave it to him,” Pointy says under his breath, and they all start laughing as Holmberg reaches out to hit LaPointe in the back of his head.
“Shut the fuck up-”
From the side, Shane gives Ilya a confused glance, and Ilya wants to take his beautiful, innocent, sweet husband’s hands and tell him to just leave it be.
“That really sucks if she has to compete with pink eye!” Shane says. Ilya mentally kisses him on the forehead.
“Oh, she doesn’t have it!” Bolduc pipes up; Holmberg doesn’t have enough arms to hit them all at once. “She just gave it to him.”
“Dude, shut up-” Bolduc yelps and runs to hide behind Dykstra when Holmberg, who is significantly larger than him, swats at him like one would at a fly.
“By squirting into his eye-”
The chaos descends, and Shane’s eyes widen, flickering to Ilya who grimaces. “Wow.”
“Every day I learn things against my will,” Ilya says flatly.
-
“We’re doing a hear-me-out cake,” Harris explains.
“Cake?” Ilya perks up.
“You don’t get to eat it, sorry,” Harris tells him apologetically, and Ilya gives an overexaggerated groan that makes Shane laugh.
“You are forcing me to show the people part of my deepest soul-”
“Okay, dramatic-”
“-and then I do not even get the cake?!”
“You can have the cake later if you want,” Harris says placatingly.
“A piece of it,” Shane corrects him, and Ilya sticks his tongue out at him.
Official Ottawa Centaurs Instagram Account
Video title card: Hear Me Out - Cake, Centaurs Version
Shane and Ilya walk by, Ilya stops, his face lights up. “Cake?”
Harris, off-camera: “You don’t get to eat it, sorry.”
Close-up of Ilya’s excited smile turning into a frown.
Cut.
Harris’ voice from off-camera explaining how the game works, cut over a montage of different players listening, ended by a shot of Troy giving a long-suffering sigh.
Cut.
Shot of the players writing on little note cards.
Cut.
Ilya, bent over the table, writing with concentration on his face while Shane looks at Harris, seemingly lost. “So, we write down someone we’re attracted to but it’s weird?”
Fast forward through another, more autism-friendly explanation. Shane makes a little Ah! face, and a little animated exclamation mark pops up next to his head. He begins writing.
Cut.
Harris, off-screen: “Done?”
Intercut shots of Ilya, Holmberg and Wyatt saying “Yes.”
The intercut shot focuses on Wyatt, who carefully sticks the little toothpick with his notecard attached into the cake. “Okay, so, I wrote down Aunt May from the Tom Holland Spiderman movies.”
A sticker of Marisa Tomei as Aunt May pops up over the footage of Wyatt talking.
Harris, off-camera: “Okay, cute.”
Dreamy music is edited over a shot of Wyatt smiling into the near distance and seemingly daydreaming.
Wyatt: “I love MIL-”
Cut.
A shot of LaPointe, Holmberg and Young standing next to each other.
Holmberg: “Okay, I’ll go first.” He places his card on the cake. “Lola Bunny.” A sticker of Lola Bunny is edited over the video.
The other two start laughing, Young whistles. Holmberg just shrugs with a grin.
Cut, to the same shot of the three of them.
LaPointe: “Applejack from My Little Pony.”
A sticker of Applejack pops up over the video of Holmberg and Young screaming.
“Dude, no way-”
“That’s a horse!”
Cut.
Back to the shot of them, obviously trying to keep it together. Holmberg’s face is red and there are tears in his eyes from laughing so hard. His shoulders are shaking because he’s trying to keep it inside so hard.
Young: “My turn?”
He silently puts down his card. The camera zooms in on it.
It says ‘Thing from Wednesday’.
Both LaPointe and Holmberg lean in to read it.
Young: “Y’know, the hand.”
Screaming ensues.
Cut.
A shot of Luca, clearly thinking very hard about what he’s about to write, frowning at the note card.
Cut.
Bolduc and Bood standing next to each other with their cards.
Bolduc: “You first.”
Bood, giving the camera a big grin: “Lola from Shark Tale.”
A sticker of Lola is edited over the video while the sound of water and bubbles plays in the background.
Bolduc frowns at Bood. “I don’t know her.”
Bood: “Seriously?! That movie came out in like, 2004.”
Bolduc: “I was two years old in 2004.”
Bood stares at the camera; the video zooms into his incredulous face. Overlaid are dinosaur sound effects and the Jurassic Park theme.
Cut.
Another shot of Luca, now writing.
Cut.
Bolduc: “Mavis from Hotel Transilvania.”
A sticker of Mavis is overlaid over the video, plus a bunch of little bats fluttering across the screen.
Bolduc: “She can bite me anytime.” He winks at the camera.
Bood: “Don’t wink.”
Cut.
Luca: “Can I do two?”
Harris, off-camera: “Of course.”
Luca looks satisfied and grabs another notecard.
Cut.
A shot of Shane and Ilya standing next to each other; Ilya is writing, Shane is trying to peak. Ilya quickly covers his card with his hand.
Ilya: “Don’t copy my answer!”
Shane, annoyed: “I just want to know if we have the same one!”
Cut.
Troy heaves a big sigh, then turns his card around.
“Gritty.”
Sticker, once again, overlaid; from off-camera, Harris’ indignant scream is audible.
Cut.
Luca: “Okay, I did two because nobody here will get the first one.”
He turns around card number one. It says ‘Tabaluga’.
Luca: “He’s a dragon from a German kids’ show. I had a crush on him when I was little.”
Cut.
Screenrecording of Harris typing ‘tabaluga’ into google, underlaid with typing sounds.
Cut, back to Luca.
A sticker of a cute green and yellow dragon is edited over the video with a ‘yay!’ soundeffect.
Luca: “And then the second one is Flynn from Rapunzel.”
Harris, off-camera: “You have a type.”
Luca laughs cutely, blushing.
The overlaid sticker of Flynn briefly morphs into a photo of Luca’s boyfriend and back. The similarity is striking.
Cut.
Shot of Nick Chouinard walking by, squinting at the cake.
He does a double-take, his eyes growing wider. Then, he shakes his head with an exasperated look at the camera.
Nick: “You all need Jesus.”
Cut.
Shane and Ilya are bickering over something.
Shane: “-go first!”
Ilya: “Okay, we will go at the same [bleep]ing time.”
Shane, narrowing his eyes at him: “But don’t pretend to go and then not go.”
Ilya: “I would never.”
Shane huffs, turning to the camera.
Harris, off-camera: “...are you getting competitive over the Hear Me Out-Cake?”
Shane: “No.”
Ilya, at the same time: “Yes.”
Shane: “Okay. On three.”
Ilya: “No, Harris has to count!”
Harris: “...yeah, okay. One. Two. Three.”
Both of them slam their toothpicks down at the same time; Ilya ‘accidentally’ grabs a handful of cake and frosting as he does.
The camera zooms in.
Both of their cards say “Scott Hunter”.
Cut.