Chapter Text
Luca can’t stop staring at the video, and he hates himself for it. When he was a kid - and yeah, he knows most of the team still think of him as such - he gobbled up every bit of information he could find about the players he admired, wanting to know everything, but sometime in his teens it started feeling gross. Scott Hunter kissing his boyfriend on the ice after winning the cup? Public, even if Luca still felt weird about rewatching it over and over, his bedroom door locked. Scott Hunter and his boyfriend being papped outside his apartment, takeout bags in hand? Not cool.
Now he looks at his captain - a man he can’t quite believe he gets to play with, and talk to, and sometimes even hang out with - making out with another man in the background of a video, clearly not meant to be seen by anyone, clearly a private moment, and Luca should really delete it and forget about it. It’s such an invasion of privacy.
But fuck. It’s so - hot.
There’s always been something about Ilya Rozanov that’s made him feel a little strange, a little fizzy inside. Hero worship, he told himself for a long time. And then he met Harris with his rainbow badges everywhere and sensed some element of what he feels around Ilya - some sense of camaraderie. Luca knows Ilya has a reputation for fast cars and beautiful women - there was a time in his life when he could recite the make and model of every car Ilya had shown off in a documentary - but it’s at odds with the man he’s come to know.
Maybe that reputation was outdated, a relic from a couple of wild years in his early twenties, Luca thought. And then he felt like maybe - maybe something else. Like maybe Ilya understands what it is like to not be bragging about girls, but instead to be more circumspect about who he sleeps with. Who he might want to sleep with, really, in Luca’s case.
He’s thought, sometimes, about coming out to Ilya; sometimes he feels like he already has, like Ilya knows. There have been a couple of conversations that have felt like a careful code, where Luca is sure Ilya - so observant on and off the ice - has read him perfectly, but at the same time he doesn’t want to say anything aloud. Just in case. Just - well. It might be his wishful thinking, his stupid crush at work.
And now there is a video of Ilya kissing another man with such love that it pulls something in Luca’s chest every time he looks at it. So much so that it took him a moment to realize who the man is. No wonder his phone has gone crazy. Ilya alone would be enough of a drama within the hockey world, but Ilya Rozanov and Shane Hollander?
Luca hasn’t been able to keep up with every message in the Centaurs group chat but he’s seen enough to understand that it is real. Barrett weighing in with a “not cool to out anyone, really sorry this is happening to you Roz” message early on, which Luca just about worked up the courage to thumbs-up, was enough to persuade him it’s not just someone messing around with editing software. Anyway, it looks real. Feels real.
Later, when he attends their wedding, he confirms that, yeah, that’s what it looks like when Ilya kisses Shane Hollander.
He needs to stop thinking about it.
*
And then Hollander’s on their team and in their locker room and while he and Ilya are careful to avoid PDAs, Luca gets even quieter than normal. It’s too much. Two iconic players. Married. On his team. And. And. He’s just trying desperately not to embarrass himself. He lives in terror of saying something idiotic, or of letting his eyes linger a fraction too long on one of them, or of his own body responding to the thought of them - kissing. Fucking. Jesus.
He’s started keeping his sketchbook close to hand on nights out, not necessarily so he can draw but so he has something to reach for if needed. Like he’s a teenager. It’s humiliating. He’s regressing. He got used to Ilya being a normal guy rather than a poster on a wall, a blur on a screen, and now it’s all been undone. Shane Hollander. Couldn’t Ilya have found some nice normal guy like the rest of the queer hockey players out there?
*
The apps are - challenging. He doesn’t show his face in any of the pics, but even so, he’s worried that there’ll be something in the background someone will notice, something identifiable.
He knows it’s ridiculous. He’s part of the gayest hockey team in the league - an epithet that several of the team, including the straight guys like Hayes, are more than happy to run with, especially if it pisses off Crowell. If people find out he’s gay, it will not end his career. If his teammates find out, they will not be horrified. He’s witnessed the Centaurs be supportive towards Troy, and Ilya, and Shane. But.
But. It’s not quite the same, to be a single gay man in that locker room. Troy only has eyes for Harris, and Ilya and Shane do not kiss like they do in that video - that fucking video - when they’re in hockey mode, and they all have someone.
If Luca had a boyfriend then it would be different, he thinks. Right now it feels hypothetical and faintly pathetic.
But pretty much everyone his own age knows that the only way you’re ever going to meet someone that might become - someone - is through the apps.
He's screwed.
*
Sometimes Luca draws entirely from his imagination, other times from life. It's not quite that simple - there are always elements of both, and drawing what's in front of you doesn't mean you're not choosing what goes on the page, doesn't mean you're not still creating rather than replicating - but mostly he likes hunching over the page and creating something and then looking up at the world in surprise, like he's forgotten where he is.
This is what happens one night after a game against the Admirals, when the Centaurs have traveled to New York and are paying one of their now-regular visits to the Kingfisher, the bar co-owned by two recently-retired hockey players.
Two recently-retired queer hockey players. Scott Hunter is one of them. Luca still doesn't know how to be normal around him. Coming here these days is as much a declaration of allyship as it is one's own queerness, and there is safety in sitting at a table that includes teammates who are comfortably married to women and just here for the beer (or the occasional cocktail; Luca wonders how secure in your masculinity and heterosexuality you need to be to order one of those).
Hunter isn't sitting with them tonight, fortunately; he came over briefly to say hello, though. Bennett isn't around, but his boyfriend is working tonight, as Luca discovers when someone - Bood - elbows him.
“Haasy! What are you drinking?”
Luca blinks. He's been sketching one of tonight's plays, a clash between Hollander and one of the Admirals, one of those players called up from the minor leagues to cover a temporary absence, he gathers. He's been trying to capture the energy of it, the speed, but it's difficult to convey that on the page.
“Sorry. What was that?” he says.
“Drink order, darling,” the bartender responds with a grin. “Your teammates have a couple of pitchers of beer on the way, but you might want to try something more sophisticated.”
Luca's face heats up. Sophisticated. Code.
“Just because he is brilliant artist doesn't make him a beer snob, Kyle,” Ilya says, almost lazily, but Luca recognizes - and is grateful for - the intervention.
Kyle seems to sense it too. “I live in hope, guys. Someday one of you will appreciate the new cocktail menu.”
“Mmm. Perhaps when you start serving the Rozanov cocktail,” Ilya replies.
“Work in progress,” Kyle bats back.
This is an ongoing bit, Luca knows; the cocktail menu recently added a Hollander, which includes maple syrup, and Ilya’s been grumbling ever since, pointing out that Shane only ever drinks one beer, if that, before switching over to ginger ale.
“Just beer for me,” Luca says, almost apologetically, when Kyle and Ilya let him get a word in.
He likes beer. And it is familiar; he feels himself getting comfortable and sloppy but not dangerously so, with beer. Hard liquor is different.
But he also knows there's a part of him that doesn't want to stand out from the crowd. To seem gay.
*
“Water,” Ilya declares an hour or so later, looking around for a server.
“I'll go to the bar,” Luca volunteers, mainly because he was about to get up to go piss anyway. After a quick visit to the bathroom he joins the crowd at the bar. There are eyes on him, and he's not sure if it's because he is a Centaur or because - well, because people, men, might look at him that way, in here.
Probably the former. He knows he's not hideous, but being in good physical shape doesn't mean looking the way that is hot on the gay scene. It's a world of stupidly hot men, some of whom must spend as much time training as he does, only with a different objective.
Maybe someone might think he's cute, though. Might want him.
He looks up and there's someone he doesn't recognize eyeing him up, a guy who quickly looks away. At the same time, someone is trying to push through with their newly-acquired drinks, and stumbles; the guy immediately darts out and catches them, quick as lightning.
“Oh!” Luca says, louder than he means to, and then is grateful for the noise around them. It's that Admirals player from earlier. That movement. He's been trying to commit it to the page all night.
The guy makes eye contact again, and Luca smiles. And then he looks away, and Luca feels foolish.
*
Scott Hunter comes by to say goodbye and says, “Great to have you guys here” and it is only then - something about a little pinch of sadness or wistfulness somehow - that it occurs to Luca that there isn’t a crowd of Admirals players here, the way there is for the Centaurs. He’d assumed, because of Hunter - but then again, Hunter’s retired now, and there’s a new captain at the helm, and aside from that guy, who maybe even isn’t a player after all, maybe Luca’s imagining things, there isn’t anyone else from the team here.
Just because the Kingfisher is owned by retired Admirals doesn’t mean the current ones are hanging out here.
Or maybe, Luca thinks, trying to be charitable, they knew that the gayest team in professional hockey would be celebrating their win here, and didn’t want to be mourning their losses in the same place. Maybe.
When he goes to the bathroom again, at that stage of the night when the beer feels like it’s just going straight through him, the guy is there, washing his hands.
“Am I crazy,” Luca says, aware that he would let it go if he were less tipsy, “or did we see you on the ice earlier?”
The guy looks at him, and Luca is ready to apologize for the misunderstanding, explain that he is a hockey player (he doesn’t want to assume this guy knows who he is), when he sees something. Something that’s maybe a little bit embarrassed or scared. Something that Luca understands.
“I mean, this is where the Admirals come, yes? At least some of the time? Because it’s owned by former players?” Luca continues, hearing the question marks as they fall out of his mouth and cringing inwardly.
The guy eases up. “Yeah. Um. Yeah. I don’t know how long I’m gonna get here, in New York I mean, so I wanted to stop by.” He has a shy smile that Luca maybe wants to kiss. Thinks that perhaps he could kiss, theoretically, as a man, if this dark handsome stranger found him attractive. Or was drunk.
“You were good tonight,” Luca says.
The guy shrugs. “I was okay. We still lost.”
“Sorry about that.”
“You guys are incredible. I can’t believe I played against Shane Hollander tonight.” His eyes - a pale blue - light up as he talks, Luca notices.
“I still can’t believe I get to play with him,” Luca confesses.
“And Rozanov! Fuck. And Hayes! And Barrett too? Just - like - so many fucking icons. Dykstra. And -” He reddens. “Sorry. I’m being weird.”
“It’s okay.” Luca grins.
“You’re being very nice to me, Luca Haas.”
There is something about the sound of his name in this guy’s mouth that thrills him, but this quickly gives way to feeling awkward. He should know his name, but the main news Coach Wiebe passed onto them before the game was that a regular player was injured, rather than any particular info about the replacement. Luca blinks.
It is difficult trying to remember things after several beers, he decides.
“Tony,” the guy says. “O’Donnell.” They shake hands, which feels slightly silly at this point of the conversation, but also a ritual drilled into them.
Tony’s hand is a little sweaty and Luca doesn’t care. He wants to hang onto it forever.
Fuck. He’s definitely had too much to drink.
“I better, um -” Luca mumbles, and the guy - Tony - nods and smiles, and Luca doesn’t want to leave but also he feels like he should, so he pushes open the door and then remembers he still needs to piss. Idiot.
He articulates this, just in case Tony thinks he’s going in for something - something Luka’s never actually witnessed in a real-life bathroom, only in porn. Even here, the few times he’s been. (The smoking area, on the other hand -)
When he’s done, he washes his hands. Tony’s still there. Watching him.
Luca doesn’t know what to say. Despite where they are, he’s still very aware that this is another player, that there is a code - the kinds of touching that are acceptable, and the kinds that are not.
What would Ilya Rozanov do? What would Scott Hunter do? But he’s not either of them. He’s just a guy.
They are interrupted by a couple of guys pushing past them toward the urinals, and the space becomes less tensely sexual and far more like, well, a bathroom.
“You want a drink?” Luca says suddenly.
“Yeah.”
Kyle is back behind the bar, and nods at Luca. “Beer?” he mouths as he shakes a cocktail mixer.
Luca holds up two fingers. “That okay?” he asks Tony suddenly.
“Yeah, that’s cool. I’m not really a cocktail guy.” Tony says this almost apologetically. It’s not like the way some other men might. Like most hockey players would, with a sneer, with a slur ready to spill over their lips.
“Me neither. Much to his disappointment.” Luca tilts his head toward Kyle.
He doesn’t expect Kyle to hear him. “Hey,” Kyle chimes in, pushing the beer glasses across the counter, “mixing drinks gets you the gentlemen. How I got my man.”
“Virgin cocktails don’t count,” someone else behind the bar says.
Kyle laughs. “Jealous?”
Luca watches the two of them together. It’s not a sexual kind of intimacy, just friendly, just fond, but it’s somehow different to the way hockey players touch one another. A different way of being friends with other guys. The closest he has to this, maybe, is how Ilya ruffles his hair sometimes.
He taps his card against the reader and then spots a couple departing a small table in a corner. “You wanna grab that table?” he asks Tony.
Tony nods, and before Luca can say anything else, picks up their drinks to carry them over. It’s a small thing, but Luca likes it.