Chapter Text
The Stanley Cup was missing.
That realization arrived at approximately three forty-seven in the morning, right in the middle of Bood’s kitchen, while half the team was varying degrees of drunk, emotional, shirtless, or unconscious. Ryan noticed first. Mostly because Ryan, despite being just as intoxicated as everyone else, was still operating under the deeply unfortunate instinct to be responsible. He had been looking for water, then aspirin, then Fabian, who had disappeared twenty minutes earlier wearing someone else’s championship hat and declaring he was “about to improve the aesthetic integrity of this household.”
Instead, Ryan found an empty stretch of marble counter where the Stanley Cup had very definitely been sitting an hour ago. He stared at the space. Blinking once, and then he straightened so abruptly he nearly knocked over an open bottle of champagne. “Why,” he said slowly, with the strained patience of a man standing one inconvenience away from spiritual collapse, “is the Stanley Cup not where we left it.” Nobody reacted with the urgency he deserved.
Across the kitchen island, Hayden was face-down on the counter with one arm dangling toward the floor, nursing what he had dramatically declared twenty minutes earlier to be “a career-ending tequila injury.” Without lifting his head, he muttered, “Maybe it got tired of being around us.”
“That feels fair,” JJ said.
Ryan turned sharply. JJ was sitting on one of the barstools with a posture that suggested he had somehow forgotten he was drunk. His legs were crossed elegantly, his expression unnervingly serene considering the circumstances, and his face was currently being contoured by Fabian. Fabian who was, in fact, sitting directly on the Stanley Cup like it was a vanity chair.
Ryan stared at him in silence. Fabian glanced up briefly, entirely unbothered.
“What.”
Ryan looked at the Cup, then at Fabian, then at the expensive makeup brush currently sweeping across JJ’s cheekbone. “You told me you were going to find water.”
Fabian scoffed. “I found purpose instead.”
JJ tilted his chin slightly as Fabian blended highlighter onto the highest point of his cheek. “Please do not distract him,” JJ said seriously. “We’re doing editorial.”
Hayden finally lifted his head just enough to squint at JJ. “Why do you actually look incredible.”
JJ looked smug. “My face has range.”
“Your face has glitter,” Hayden quipped back, unamused.
Ryan dragged both hands down his face. Somewhere behind him, Bood started crying again, not subtle crying but actual full-body emotional crying. Ryan turned to find their captain clutching Troy by both shoulders like he was delivering battlefield news. “I just love you guys so much,” Bood said thickly, tears streaming freely down his face. “Do you understand what we did tonight?”
“Yes,” Troy replied patiently.
Troy was shirtless for reasons no one had been able to identify. He was also wearing the championship hat sideways and holding Harris’s phone flashlight while Harris aggressively documented everyone’s public humiliation. “We won the Stanley Cup,” Troy continued.
Bood cried harder. “That’s exactly right.”
“This footage is extraordinary,” Harris murmured, panning his phone slowly across the kitchen like he was filming a nature documentary about emotionally unstable millionaires.
“You're deleting every clip of me crying over that Cappel Roan song,” Troy warned. Harris smiled without looking up. “That footage is being preserved for historical purposes.”
“You are a terrible boyfriend.” Troy answered, fondly.
“And yet you remain obsessed with me.”
Across the living room, Luka had somehow ended up on the floor. He was lying flat on his back, staring at the ceiling with tears in his eyes while Shane sat beside him holding an empty champagne bottle like it was a microphone. “You are all my brothers,” Luka announced emotionally. “That was beautiful,” Shane told him. Then Luka rolled onto his side and threw up into one of Bood’s decorative plants.
The room went silent for half a second. Bood looked horrified.
“That plant was imported.”
“I’m so sorry,” Luka whispered miserably.
“I forgive you because we’re champions.”
“That’s real leadership right there,” Hayden muttered.
Ilya was sitting on the floor near the couch, one leg stretched out, the other bent, laughing so hard his ribs hurt. Actual laughing, the kind he couldn’t stop even when he tried.
Every time he looked up, something worse was happening. Fabian was now adding rhinestones near JJ’s eyes. Ryan looked seconds away from filing legal paperwork against everyone in the room. Bood was trying to comfort both Luka and the plant. Harris was narrating like this would someday air on television.
And Shane—Shane was very drunk. That alone felt historic. Shane rarely let himself get like this, but tonight he had apparently decided restraint was for people without championship rings. He stumbled toward Ilya with complete determination, dropped dramatically onto the floor beside him, and immediately grabbed his face with both hands. “Did you know,” Shane said with deep sincerity, “that you’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen.” Ilya laughed harder. “Yes.” Shane frowned. “I don’t think you understand how serious I am.”
“I think you are barely conscious.” Ilya laughed, planting a wet kiss on his boyfriend's cheek.
“That has nothing to do with my point.” Then, as if to further emphasize his argument, Shane kissed Ilya's cheek back, then his jaw. Then missed entirely and kissed somewhere near his ear. “I love you so much it feels like I am floating,” Shane informed him. From the kitchen, Hayden yelled, “Get a room.” “We have one,” Shane yelled back. “Then go be disgusting there.”
“No,” Fabian interrupted. “Stay. This is excellent for the atmosphere.”
Ryan looked physically exhausted.
“I need all of you to stop talking.”
Nobody listened.
And somewhere beneath all of it—the shouting, the crying, the glitter, the ruined plant, the missing dignity—Ilya sat in the middle of the chaos and realized he had never been this happy in his entire life.
The situation somehow got worse.
Ryan had just finished helping Luka apologize tearfully to Bood’s half-destroyed plant, an apology Bood accepted with the solemn gravity of a priest hearing confession—when he turned back toward the kitchen and went completely still. The Stanley Cup was gone again. Ryan stared at the empty space on the floor where Fabian had abandoned it less than ten minutes earlier.
Very slowly, dangerously calmly, he set his water bottle down. “No one move,” he said.
That alone made everyone move. Fabian immediately gasped like he had just been accused of war crimes. “Not to deflect responsibility,” he said, pressing a dramatic hand to his chest, “but I do think we should acknowledge that your captain’s haunted plant has been behaving strangely all evening.”
“That plant has suffered enough,” Bood snapped emotionally from across the room, where he was now sitting on the floor beside the decorative pot and gently patting the dirt back into place.
Hayden was lying upside down on the couch with JJ’s legs thrown over his stomach, squinting at Ryan like basic language had become difficult.
“What exactly are we looking for?”
“The Stanley Cup.”
Hayden blinked slowly. “We won another one?”
JJ, whose glitter eyeliner remained offensively flawless despite his blood alcohol level being deeply concerning, leaned over the back of the couch and narrowed his eyes. “Shane stole it.”
The room went silent, then every head turned. Shane was actually gone. Ilya immediately started laughing again, not because it was funny, okay it was extremely funny.
Ryan looked seconds away from developing permanent forehead lines. “How do you know Shane stole it?”
JJ looked offended by the question. “Because he whispered ‘I have an idea’ twenty minutes ago and vanished.”
“That should have concerned all of you more than it apparently did,” Ryan said.
Fabian looked thoughtful. “In fairness, I also whispered that earlier and all I did was give JJ the face of a divorced billionaire.”
JJ touched his cheekbone reverently. “You changed me.”
“I know.”
The search began with all the coordination of a natural disaster. Luka cried because he thought losing the Cup meant they would be stripped of the title. Bood immediately pulled him into a crushing hug. “No one is stripping anything from you,” Bood said fiercely, swaying slightly where he stood. “You are a champion forever.”
Luka burst into fresh tears. “I love you so much.”
“I love you more.”
“That is not even possible.”
Meanwhile, Troy had decided this was the perfect moment to become a problem. Still shirtless, still wearing his championship hat at an angle that made him look deeply unserious, he climbed onto Bood’s coffee table and pointed dramatically at Harris. “You,” he announced. Harris didn’t look up from filming.
“That look usually precedes terrible decisions.”
Troy ignored him and began what could generously be described as a lap dance.
It had ambition, it also lacked coordination. He nearly slipped twice, recovered through sheer arrogance, then dramatically rolled his hips in Harris’s direction with the confidence of someone who had never once been told no.
The room erupted. Hayden fell off the couch laughing, JJ wheezed so hard he lost a fake eyelash, Ryan physically covered his face.
“Troy,” Harris said through visible amusement, “you are aggressively off beat.”
“That sounds like jealousy.”
“That sounds like gravity trying to kill you.”
Fabian clutched Ilya’s arm.
“Oh my god, he thinks he’s sexy.”
“He is sexy,” Ilya said through helpless laughter.
Fabian gasped like he’d been waiting his entire life for this moment. “Exactly.”
Then, before Ilya could question anything, Fabian grabbed both of his hands and dragged him into the center of the living room. “We are dancing.”
“I do not dance.”
“That is tragic. We fix tragedy tonight.” Fabian spun him so aggressively Ilya nearly crashed into the couch, but somehow Fabian remained upright in six-inch boots that seemed deeply impractical for survival. Ilya laughed so hard he could barely breathe while Fabian attempted to teach him choreography that neither of them remembered halfway through. By the end of it they were mostly jumping, shouting lyrics to songs neither of them knew correctly, and nearly knocking over a lamp. Shane found them there. Or rather they found Shane.
He was sitting cross-legged on Bood’s back patio in complete silence, wrapped in one of Bood’s blankets like a victorious little gremlin. The Stanley Cup sat in his lap filled entirely with chicken wings. He looked up as the patio door slammed open.
His expression brightened immediately. “Oh good,” he said. “I found dinner.”
Ryan stared at him in total disbelief. “You put buffalo wings in the Stanley Cup.”
Shane frowned down at it. “They’re barbecue.”
“That is somehow worse.”
Ilya nearly collapsed laughing as he dropped onto the chair beside him. Shane immediately offered him a wing which Ilya accepted because apparently this was his life now.
Inside, Bood had somehow climbed onto a chair. That should have concerned everyone more than it did. He raised a champagne bottle like he was addressing a kingdom.
The entire room slowly quieted.
Even Fabian.
Even Troy.
Even Shane, who still had barbecue sauce on his face.
Bood looked at all of them with tears already gathering again.
“When I said this team would be family…” his voice cracked immediately. “I meant it.”
That was enough to make Hayden groan loudly.
“Oh no, he’s inspirational again.”
“Shut up,” Bood snapped, crying harder. “I’m having a moment.”
Nobody interrupted him after that. Because beneath the drunken chaos and absolute disaster of the evening, the glitter, the screaming, the chicken wings, the ruined plant, the shirtless lap dances, there was something painfully sincere sitting underneath all of it and every single one of them felt it.
“We did something people said we couldn’t do,” Bood said quietly. “And we did it by being exactly who we are. Loud. Weird. Different. Sometimes deeply embarrassing.”
Then his voice softened.
“And no matter where life takes us after this… no matter how hockey changes… I need you idiots to know that I will always be proud that I got to be captain of this team.”
Nobody laughed this time. Luka cried harder. Ryan looked suspiciously emotional. Troy quietly climbed off the table and tucked himself into Harris’s side. Shane reached for Ilya’s hand and Ilya stood in the middle of all of it, watching his ridiculous, beautiful disaster of a family, and felt something dangerously close to gratitude crack open inside his chest so suddenly it almost hurt.
The speech should have ended the night. Logically, that would have been the point where everyone went home. They had already consumed enough alcohol to sedate large animals, one decorative plant had been sacrificed for the cause, the Stanley Cup smelled faintly like barbecue sauce, and Troy had attempted something that Harris would absolutely weaponize against him later. Reasonably, the night should have ended there.
Instead, Fabian clapped his hands once and announced, with the authority of someone who had contributed absolutely nothing useful all evening, “Nobody is allowed to leave. This is now a sleepover.”
Ryan stared at him. “We are grown adults.”
Fabian looked around the room.
Luka was crying into Bood’s shoulder, Hayden had somehow put JJ’s glitter setting spray in his mouth because he thought it was breath freshener, Shane was eating cold fries out of the Stanley Cup, Troy had lost his shirt entirely this time, Harris was filming Bood trying to sing.
Fabian looked back at Ryan.
“Are we?”
Ryan opened his mouth. Closed it again.
“Fair.”
That was apparently all the agreement needed.
Within twenty minutes, everyone had collectively realized none of them were sober enough to operate vehicles, basic appliances, or in Hayden’s case apparently his own legs.
Bood offered every guest room in his house. Nobody took them.
“We are not separating after a championship,” Luka declared emotionally, wiping his face. “That feels spiritually wrong.”
“That sentence made no sense,” Hayden muttered.
“It made perfect sense,” Shane argued, already half asleep against Ilya’s shoulder.
Fabian dramatically threw himself onto Bood’s massive bed. “Everyone fit.”
Ryan stared at the bed, then at the number of people in the room, then back at the bed. “That is just simply impossible.”
Fabian spread his arms wider. “Not with that attitude.”
And somehow against all known laws of physics, logic, and personal boundaries they made it work.
It began with couples naturally gravitating toward each other. Troy practically collapsed onto one side of the bed and immediately dragged Harris down with him, wrapping an arm around his waist with the single-minded determination of a drunk man who had spent the entire evening pretending he wasn’t exhausted. “You are not allowed to move,” Troy mumbled into Harris’s neck. Harris adjusted his shirt. “I was planning to breathe at some point.”
On the other side, Ryan had barely gotten comfortable before Fabian climbed directly into his lap like a cat that paid no rent and respected no social norms. “There is an entire bed,” Ryan informed him. Fabian yawned against his shoulder. “And yet your lap feels emotionally safest option.” Ryan lasted exactly four seconds before wrapping an arm around his waist.
Across the bed, Hayden and JJ were still arguing while actively falling asleep. “I still think your eyeliner makes you look approachable,” Hayden muttered. JJ smiled despite being visibly unconscious.
Bood, still wearing one shoe for reasons no one understood, had Luka practically draped over him like an oversized emotional support blanket. Luka had one arm across Bood’s chest and was murmuring increasingly incoherent declarations of love for the entire team.
“You are all so beautiful,” Luka whispered tearfully.
“Yes,” Hayden muttered from somewhere in the blankets. “We know.”
Shane and Ilya ended up near the middle mostly because Shane refused to be anywhere else. The second Ilya laid down, Shane attached himself to him like gravity had become personal, one leg tangled with both of Ilya’s, one arm wrapped tightly around his waist, his face pressed into Ilya’s neck.
“This is my spot,” Shane mumbled sleepily.
“You are currently taking up several spots.”
“I earned them.”
“You did?”
“I won you a fucking Stanley Cup.”
Ilya laughed quietly into his hair.
Within minutes the bed became less of a sleeping arrangement and more of a structural disaster. Someone’s elbow was under Ilya’s ribs, Hayden’s foot was dangerously close to Ryan’s face, Fabian had somehow rotated entirely sideways in his sleep and was now partially on top of both Ryan and JJ. Bood was snoring like heavy machinery, Luka talked in his sleep in three different languages. The Stanley Cup sat abandoned near the dresser with barbecue sauce still drying along one side. And somehow despite the heat, the noise, the limbs everywhere, the complete lack of dignity it felt safe, warm, ridiculous and just like home.
Ilya lay awake for a while, staring up at the ceiling while Shane slept heavily against his chest and the rest of their teammates existed in various states of unconscious chaos around them. Troy tightened his arm around Harris in his sleep, Ryan absentmindedly adjusted a blanket over Fabian without waking up, Bood muttered something incomprehensible and Luka answered him despite being asleep himself.
It was absurd and deeply uncomfortable and probably violating several health codes, and Ilya had never wanted to freeze a moment in time more than he did right then. Because life had taught him early that happiness rarely stayed and that safety could disappear overnight and that love often arrived with conditions attached. But this—this loud, half-naked, ridiculous pile of people who had chosen each other over and over again felt terrifyingly permanent.
Sometime just after sunrise, Harris woke first. He blinked at the disaster around him.
Troy was drooling on his shoulder. Fabian was somehow wearing one of Bood’s socks on his hand. JJ’s makeup still looked annoyingly flawless. Hayden was spooning Luka against his will. Shane was practically inside Ilya’s skin. And Bood was still snoring loud enough to shake furniture.
Harris stared at the scene for a long moment, then quietly reached for his phone. The camera flashed.
Half the room groaned in protest.
Troy opened one eye. “If my ass is visible in that picture,” he said hoarsely, “I’ll sue you.”
Harris looked at the photo, then smiled. “It’s perfect.”
And Ilya, still half asleep, looked around at the wreckage of his life and thought, with absolute certainty, that if everything fell apart tomorrow this would still have been worth it.
Morning crept in slowly.
Thin strips of sunlight pushed through the gaps in Bood’s curtains, stretching across tangled sheets, abandoned clothes, glitter covered skin, and enough empty bottles to suggest several deeply questionable life choices had been made and enthusiastically defended. The room smelled like champagne, expensive cologne, sweat, and barbecue sauce. The Stanley Cup still looked vaguely violated.
Harris had just taken the photo, half the room had groaned, Troy had threatened legal action over accidental nudity, and then, gradually, the noise settled again. Not fully awake but not fully asleep either. Just that strange in-between space where nobody had the energy to move but everyone was aware enough to complain.
Hayden shoved JJ’s foot off his stomach. JJ retaliated by blindly throwing a pillow in his general direction without opening his eyes. It hit Ryan instead. Ryan made a deeply offended noise. Fabian, still using Ryan as both mattress and personal heating system, pulled the blanket over both of their heads and muttered something aggressively threatening. Luka was still half draped over Bood, who remained unconscious enough to sleep through what sounded like a small war happening in his own bed. And beside him Shane shifted.
Ilya looked down as Shane made a quiet sound of protest in his sleep, face pressing deeper into his neck like he was trying to burrow closer.
His hair was a disaster, his championship shirt had disappeared sometime around midnight, there was dried barbecue sauce on his wrist. He looked completely ridiculous. Ilya felt something in his chest go painfully soft anyway.
Shane blinked awake slowly, eyes unfocused and heavy with sleep. For a few seconds he looked disoriented, then his gaze found Ilya. Everything in his face softened immediately, even half conscious, it happened like instinct, like breathing. He tightened his arm around Ilya’s waist. “You still here?” he mumbled, voice rough with sleep. The question was so quiet Ilya almost thought he imagined it. Almost.
He looked around the room. At Troy wrapped around Harris, at Ryan unconsciously protecting Fabian from the morning light, at Hayden and JJ still fighting in their sleep, at Luka and Bood collapsed in a heap of limbs and championship exhaustion. At the absolute disaster of a life he somehow ended up building. Then he looked back at Shane. “Yes,” he said quietly. Shane exhaled like that answer alone allowed him to relax. “Good,” he murmured. And then, with absolutely no concern for dignity, he kissed whatever part of Ilya’s face he could reach, which turned out to be somewhere near his jaw, before immediately passing back out.
Ilya stared at him for a moment, then laughed quietly under his breath.
Outside, the city was waking up, inside, their world remained suspended for just a little longer. Messy and loud and ridiculous, temporary in all the ways life tended to be. And yet, with Shane breathing softly against him and their teammates tangled around them like something stitched together through choice rather than blood, Ilya felt something dangerously close to certainty settle deep in his chest.
If everything somehow fell apart tomorrow—this chosen family was his to keep.