Chapter Text
Wyatt Hayes considered himself a good human being. It was his personal philosophy that the most you can do is try and hope for the best. Yes, sometimes, he’d still fail and sometimes he’d be an ass to. But generally he made a pretty decent effort to be a kind person, forgiving of other people’s mistakes, hoping they’d be equally forgiving of his.
However, right now, that felt pretty difficult.
Wyatt really liked playing for Ottawa. Sure, the team wasn’t winning the Stanley cup any time soon, but at least here he was getting decent playing time and more importantly, they were such a genuinely nice group of people. No one made fun of others in a mean or demeaning way and they were always willing to help.
Literally, always.
When Hayes first came to the city he was on his own, Lisa still had to wrap up some things and they decided it was logical she stay behind and deal with the house.
So he was alone, in a new city, in a new house with most of their possessions packed up in boxes and no idea where anything was.
But his isolation didn’t persist long. The morning after he arrived a knock sounded at his door and he carefully navigated through the maze of boxes and non-assembled furniture to open it, only to see a smiling face of Zane Boodram.
He brought food, several different types, because he wanted to make sure there’d be something Wyatt liked. Then he stayed and helped put together some of the furniture, while walking him through the team and staff always making sure Wyatt knew who he was talking about.
This team had the kind of warmth no other could match.
It was so much different than Toronto.
But now Toronto was looming above the horizon, threatening him again, invading his team and coming into his wonderful safe home, they had built together.
It was November and things were just properly gearing up. The team was showing some improvement with the new rookies and things were generally looking up, not massively, but enough to put the team into a good mood.
Their coach came into the dressing room where Dykstra’s awful music was playing while they were chatting and slowly getting changed.
He clapped his hands together to get their attention and the noise quickly dwindled.
“Boys, I know the season is already well on its way, but we are adding a fresh face in to the mix. Troy Barrett is joining us tomorrow from Toronto.”
The team erupted with annoyed voices and Wyatt too was taken aback. He was the only one in Ottawa who had played with Barrett and the best he could say for him was, that at least he wasn’t Kent. But he could usually be found near him.
This couldn’t possibly be happening. Not only was Barrett a dick, and a massive one at that, would Toronto really trade him? And for so cheap?
Sure he’d heard something about Barrett getting into a fight with the asshole that is his best friend, but he didn’t really bother to keep up with rumours surrounding his ex team. He knew where they were in the division and sometimes the team would watch the tapes of their games, but that was it.
The only source he had on the inner happenings in the team was Pricey, but he had thankfully decided to finally retire and seemed much happier these days.
So what could have possibly happened for Toronto to dump their star winger to Ottawa?
The thought didn’t leave his mind as he drove home.
Lisa finished later than him today, so it was his turn to cook. The thoughts of Barrett joining the Centaurs accompanied him through chopping the veggies and preheating the oven. He almost cut himself a few times filleting the fish and there were most definitely some bones still stuck in the meat.
He pushed the tray into the oven and set the timer. He had about half an hour before his lovely wife returned home and regretfully decided to use the time to figure out what the hell was going on.
He sat down on the gray couch in the living room and opened his lap top, because everybody knows research is best done on big screens and not the small ones where you lose count of the open tabs.
He started with the least offensive search ‘Toronto’ and pressed enter.
Wyatt groaned, it didn’t provide the information he was searching for, but he wasn’t really expecting it. They were about to get some sunny days apparently though.
He decided to partially bite the bullet and pressed enter on the next query ‘Troy Barrett’.
The top hits were his NHL profile and Wikipedia page, which was likely still bare bones, just like the last time Wyatt looked at it, when Barrett was just drafted to Toronto and he wanted to see who he’d be playing with.
There wasn’t much more though.
Apparently the news hadn’t broken yet.
Strange.
Coach Wiebe said he’d be joining them tomorrow already, so keeping the trade under the covers didn’t make much sense.
He clicked over to the recent tab, just to check and the third result caught his attention.
“Kent and Barrett hash it out on the ice *including video*”
Wyatt clicked on it and skimmed the first few paragraphs.
The first sensationally announced the fight between two best friends, leaving one with a broken nose. But the second one finally gave Wyatt a crumb of desired information.
Barrett accused Kent of being a rapist? And then attacked him about it?
Wyatt had to admit, it wasn’t hard to imagine Kent doing something so vile.
Barrett for all of his lack of good characteristics did not seem like the type of person to get involved in a crime of such magnitude. And besides, Wyatt had never seen him show any interest in the girls constantly surrounding the team whenever they went out. He either had some insanely high convoluted standards or was interested in a completely different type of girls than your average hockey player.
Still he’d sooner believe Barrett was somehow involved in it rather than calling it out. Maybe not the perpetrator, but perhaps helping to cover the tracks.
To be quite honest none of this really proved he wasn’t helping Kent to get away with it, but then calling it out, would be so beyond stupid, even the Toronto’s supreme jerkface idiots would likely know better.
Everybody knew those two were tight and wherever one was, the other was close. Barrett had to know calling out Kent would implicate him in the eyes of many.
People wouldn’t believe he just simply didn’t notice his friend’s behaviour for six whole years.
Was it possible he didn’t?
Wyatt didn’t know much about him. He mostly ignored Barrett and preferred when he got ignored back.
From an outside but near perspective Barrett seemed like an empty vessel filed with hatred, lacking any kind of proper personality beyond snarkiness.
But Wyatt knew he could be wrong. It was entirely possible Toronto’s second biggest asshole was none the wiser about Toronto’s biggest asshole’s criminal activities.
Still calling it out seemed like the bare minimum.
Minimum no other player on the team seemed to reach.
Wyatt needed more information to pass better judgement.
He closed the article and typed a new search into the bar. He felt disgusting just writing the words.
And his disgust only deepened.
Most articles opened similarly to the first one, a rundown of the fight, and then continued on with the brief summary of accusations made.
They appeared on Reddit, about a week ago.
First it was just one and it quickly got removed. But it inspired others and Wyatt found screenshots of at least four more. It wasn’t just one person’s word against another’s.
He forced himself to at least skim trough them and the more he read the sicker he felt.
He’d played with Kent, he knew him decently well, he’d been to his house a few times.
He believed the accusations from the beginning, but now he knew for sure they were true.
The layout of the mansion was to detailed to be made up and he could clearly imagine Kent saying those words, they fit his speech pattern perfectly.
Suddenly a thought hit him.
What if it happened when he was there?
Four out of five stories he’d read happened at a party, either at Kent’s mansion or a club. Wyatt had been to some of those parties. Was it possible that while he was celebrating a win a woman somewhere near was going through a nightmare while awake?
Should he have been paying better attention? Could he have helped?
If he found out would he have been brave enough to say something?
Yes, he decided, he would. It would get him kicked off the team, even faster than Barrett probably, but there was no way he would keep quiet about it.
But the league was very much trying to keep it quiet.
Toronto players refused to make any comments concerning either the fight or the accusations and the coach, who Wyatt always knew was a massive dick, called them attention seeking attempts.
Both the franchise and the MLH itself were yet to make any official statements on it.
He knew it was unlikely either would do anything unless the police would actually choose to pursue the case, but a little part of him always hoped things were better than he thought.
He closed the tabs and then the laptop.
Instead of wallowing in the ugliness, he could do the little things that made the world better. Starting by setting the table with the fancy cloth napkins that they bought the other week and had just came out of the wash. Maybe add some candles on the table too.
Because his wife worked so hard and she deserved the best in the world, a romantic dinner, followed by a nice evening watching the latest superhero show and bicker about proper characterisation, quite possibly a foot massage, because she spent way too much time on her feet.
Thinking about his wife already made him feel so much better. He was going to make this evening amazing and tomorrow morning had some great potential too.