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“What does gen nine twelve sixteen mean?”
“What?”
Troy looks up from where he’s stretching on the ice. From this angle, Haasy looks like a giant—a confused, rainbow-streaked giant. Troy loves more than a little what the front office did for the Centaurs’ pride jerseys this year. “Gayest team in the league,” Harris had laughed when he’d revealed them last week, “might as well lean into it!” And lean into it they did. Explosive rainbow swirls curl up and around the white-backed jerseys, creating a heart-shaped puff of color around each player’s number. Garishly beautiful, Troy thinks, though it makes Haasy’s confused figure look even more ridiculous.
“Over there,” Haasy says, pointing across the ice to where the Metros are also warming up. “On Comeau’s helmet.”
Troy looks up awkwardly from his hands and knees—his hips are always a little tight these days—and cranes his neck. And narrows his eyes. “That’s…that’s a Bible verse.”
“What?”
He pushes himself to his feet, toeing his blade into the ice. “Book of Genesis, chapter nine, verses twelve through sixteen. It’s a Bible verse,” he says again flatly.
Haasy blanches. “Tonight?”
“Par for the fucking course,” Troy grimaces.
They’ve faced Montreal any number of times over the last few years since Hollander joined them—well, since Hollander was outed, ostracized, and exiled from the Metros—and the Centaurs come up on top more often than not. But it’s always a slog, and it’s only gotten worse since Ottawa won the Stanley Cup the same year Montreal finished dead last. You’d think the Metros’ hatred for Hollander’s new team would cool at some point. You’d be wrong. When the front office announced that the Centaurs’ Pride Night would be during a Metros game, well…maybe that’s why Harris pushed so hard for such showy jerseys this year.
“But what’s it mean?” Haas asks.
Troy shakes his head. “No idea. We never really went to church. Probably something homophobic, though.”
“It’s about the fucking rainbow.” Rozy’s face is a mask of cold fury as he skates up to them. “That fucking asshole.”
Haas blinks.
“Noah!” Rozy says angrily, gesturing in a loop over his head. “When the rain came down and flooded everything and then there was a rainbow? Do you not know the story about the two-by-two animals?”
“Ohh,” Haasy says, “yeah, okay.”
Troy raises an eyebrow. “You knew that off the top of your—“
“Yes, yes.” Rozy exasperatedly shakes the chain around his neck. “Is not just pretty decoration, you know.”
“But that’s a nice story—“
“Genocide of humanity aside,” Rozy grumbles under his breath.
“—with cute animals and a happy ending,” Haasy continues, while Troy goggles at Rozanov knowing how to translate genocide, “and a rainbow. Is Comeau really being an asshole?”
“Yes.”
“Of fucking course.”
“It’s an alt-right Christian meme,” Hazy says, languidly skating up to the small group. Figures the goalie’s clocked what they were talking about, Troy thinks. “Like, ‘the gays think they stole the rainbow, but here’s what it really means.’ A way of being homophobic but claiming innocence.”
“Oh.” Haasy shrinks just a little at that, pulling his stick in front of his brightly-colored jersey as if trying to hide it, and Troy’s heart breaks just a little. “Okay.”
“No. Not fucking okay.” Rozy’s about as angry as Troy’s ever heard him. “To write such homophobic bullshit on his helmet, during our Pride Night? Fuck him.”
“It should be a fine,” Hazy muses. “Not supposed to alter your uniform.”
Troy snorts. “Right, because Crowell’s gonna punish someone for writing a Bible verse on his helmet. The Americans do it in football all the time, I’m sure that’ll be his excuse for letting this fly.”
“Haas.” Rozy grips Luca’s shoulder. “Do not let that asshole get in your head. We are gayest team in the league, and we will beat him with power of gay love and sunshine and fucking rainbows.” Troy snorts again.
Rozy’s pep talk isn’t really taking the cloud off of Haasy’s face, though. And, as Troy looks around the rink, he can see Haas isn’t the only one. Bood and Chewie have their heads together, talking angrily while gesturing across the ice. Hollander’s in a heated discussion at the blue line with Pike, who looks even more miserable than Hollander does. And all the while, Comeau’s skating serene circles around the Metros’ side of the warm-ups, placid smile on his face, making sure every camera in the arena catches the verse nearly written in sharp lettering across his helmet.
He’s already in our heads, Troy thinks.
***
He’s right. First period is brutal. The Centaurs are a better team than the Metros by every metric—goals, assists, shutouts, power plays, penalty kills—but you wouldn’t know it from the way they play the game’s first twenty minutes. Rozy’s playing angry, Haas’s heart doesn’t seem to be in it. Even Troy’s weirdly shaken every time he sees Comeau’s helmet. Only Hollander’s playing normally but, because it’s against Montreal, he’s spending half his playtime getting ruthlessly slammed into the boards.
The walk into the dressing room for the first intermission is awkward. Uneasy.
“Shane, they want you for interviews,” Harris calls out as they trudge in.
Troy’s not surprised. Usually they want Roz as captain, but it’s a Montreal night. Roz starts half-heartedly pepping Shane up while Harris takes the chance to give Troy a quick hug.
“You alright, bud?”
At another point in his life, Troy would’ve shrugged off Harris’s concerned look, stoic stubbornness taking the place of vulnerability. But Troy’s grown past that guy. He shakes his head, leaning into Harris’s hug, their normal height difference augmented by Troy’s skates.
Harris hugs him harder. “Comeau’s a right fuckhead, yeah?”
Troy chuckles into the top of his toque. “Yeah.”
“Don’t let him win.” Harris gives him one last squeeze, then steps back to look up into his eyes. “Out there—“ he points out to the rink “—or in here.” He taps Troy’s sweaty head.
“Fuck, I love you,” Troy murmurs, leaning into his touch.
Shane walks past, and Harris finally breaks contact. “I’ve gotta—“
“Go.”
“Love you.”
And then Harris is leading Shane out into the hallway to face the scrum.
There’s a moment where Troy actually does feel better, his fingers tracing the rainbow swirls on his jersey while memories of his first Pride Night with the Centaurs dance through his head. He smiles softly.
“Motherfucker.”
Hazy’s epithet cuts through the shaky threads of Troy’s good mood.
“What’s up, Hazy? Did they recast the Onyx Viper again?” Bood snarks from across the room.
Hazy stares daggers at his phone, knuckles white around the casing. “No, it’s…fuck, nevermind.”
Chewie furrows his brow. “Doesn’t look like nothing. You alright?”
“No, I don't want to—“
“Motherfucker!” This time it’s Roz snarling at his own phone, but he keeps going. “That fucking asshole!”
“Rozy, what’s—“
“Look.” Roz thrusts his phone into Troy’s face and presses the play button on the video. It’s Comeau, an interview—fuck, his intermission interview over in the visitors’ tunnel. Only two minutes old.
“Can you tell us about what you’ve written on your helmet?” asks one reporter.
“It’s a Bible verse,” Comeau responds placidly.
“A reference to the Noah story, correct?" Troy's not that surprised the reporter knows. They've certainly had enough time to google it by now. Anyone watching has.
“Yes. The rainbow, specifically.” Comeau’s tone never changes, never wavers, but Troy can practically taste the smugness through the screen. The rest of the team crowds around him to listen in. “The rainbow is a symbol of God’s covenant to us, and us as believers stand firm in that. It’s something I believe in and I stand firm in that. Thankfully, we live in a country where we have the freedom to believe what we want.”
“Why did you choose to display that verse tonight?”
“Well—“
“Is it a direct response to the Centaurs’ Pride Night festivities?”
“I—“
“Or a reference to Shane Holl—“
“No,” Comeau bites, before visibly schooling his face back into that mask of calm superiority. “It’s not about hate. There’s no hate at all. It’s just what I stand for.” He smiles primly. “I believe in God.”
The video ends there.
The silence in the dressing room is deafening. Troy wordlessly hands Roz’s phone back to him—Roz, who is practically vibrating with rage. Over his shoulder, Haas looks shellshocked, Hazy gripping his shoulder grimly like he’s the only thing keeping the kid upright.
Troy just feels numb.
It shouldn’t hit this hard, he blithely thinks as the team drifts back to their stalls. He knows there are homophobes in the league. Fuck, he was a homophobe in the league, or did a good enough job pretending so as not to make a difference. Since he came out, he’s heard all manner of cruel, twisted things come out of other players’ mouths on the ice, or read about them in his Instagram comments. But he’s secure in who he is. In who he loves. It shouldn’t hit this hard.
It does.
He slowly re-wraps his stick, chewing on the thought. Maybe it’s because this night has special meaning to him, and to have it invaded in this way feels like a violation. Or maybe it’s because he’s keenly aware of how dangerous the world still is for queer people, especially at the hands of people who cloak themselves in pretend divine authority. Maybe it’s because Harris spent so long lovingly directing the production of these rainbow-bedecked jerseys, so it feels particularly targeted at the man he loves most in the world.
Whatever it is, the whole team’s feeling it. The march out of the tunnel for the second period feels just like that, a march. There’s little joy in it, on a night that’s supposed to be all about joy.
“Oh no.”
And what little joy is left gets sucked out when Troy sees the source of Haas’s soft sigh.
Half of the Metros are now skating around the ice with that same Bible verse written on their helmets.
***
If the first period was brutal, the second period is a shitshow. No one’s focused, least of all the Centaurs’ queer players. Roz catches a penalty in the first two minutes for hooking Comeau; and while Troy takes a grim satisfaction in watching the asshole slam face-first into the ice, even that disappears when the Metros score on the power play a minute later. The only reason Roz doesn’t spend more time in the box is the cold, sharp lecture Hollander gives him when he gets out.
But Hollander’s rattled too. It’s not like he didn’t know his former team was a hotbed of homophobes, but to have it displayed so openly—even though, or maybe especially because, it’s couched in something so innocuous—means he’s missing passes he normally makes in his sleep. At least Pike looks as wrecked as his friend, Troy thinks, though it doesn’t stop Pike from slamming Troy into the boards and stealing the puck halfway through the period.
Troy’s no better. He keeps looking up into the stands, trying to take heart from the stadium full of Centaurs fans in all kinds of rainbow colors. The queens in full drag screaming support from behind the penalty box. The kids holding signs with Troy’s name on them. The many, many people wearing Troy’s official Pride Night jersey—Harris had told him they’d sold out within the first ten minutes online—all over the stands, cheering him on.
But then a Metro skates by, blocking his view with a verse, and the pit in his stomach turns more sour.
The walk back into the dressing room feels worse than any game Troy’s ever played.
The team stands silently in front of their stalls, Harris at the door, Wiebe and the coaching staff in the middle of the room. Wiebe takes a long, silent moment to make eye contact with each and every player. Then, in a quiet but clear voice, he says, “Focus. They’ve gotten to you. I know it.” He nods. “But this isn’t their night. It isn’t their house. It’s ours. Whatever you have to do to remember that, do it.” As turns and leads the coaching staff out, he calls over to Harris, “No interviews this intermission.”
Harris nods. “Yes, Coach.”
The door closes, echoing through the dressing room.
For a full minute, the room is quiet. Tense or contemplative, take your pick, but it’s like no one wants to be the first to break it. Or, looking across at Roz, Hollander, Haas, no one can break it.
“This is bullshit.”
Until Bood.
“This is bullshit,” he says again, louder this time. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m not gonna let this fucker use my faith against us like this. Fucking bullshit.”
He starts rummaging through his stall, then his bag, looking for something. “Bood?” Chewie says. “What’re you—“
“Come on, come on, I know I have…fuck!” Bood looks around the room. “I need a marker, a Sharpie, anything.”
“I’ve got one,” Harris calls over, producing a thick black Sharpie from his jean jacket, because of course he does. He tosses it over to Bood, who catches it one-handed.
“Thanks,” Bood says, uncapping the marker with his teeth and picking up his helmet with his free hand. He scribbles something on the back of it, then turns to show it to the room. Jn 15:13.
“What is that?” Haas says, like he’s afraid of the answer.
“‘There is no greater love than this,’” Bood quotes, face firm, voice strong, “‘that you lay your life down for your friends.’ Look, I’m not a great Christian. I don’t go to church except when my mom’s in town, and shit like this makes me want to go even less. But this—“ he jabs a finger at the verse he’s inked on his helmet “—this is written in the front cover of the little Bible my parenn gave me when I was a baby. And I’ll be damned if I’m not gonna do my fucking best to do that every day for you guys.” He sets his helmet down on the bench. “If that’s alright.”
There was a moment when Troy was a kid and his mom’s mom insisted they all go to a Christmas Eve service. She lived in the Interior in British Columbia, so the church was this little building surrounded by tall snow-covered pines. Most of the service was boring to little Troy, but there was a thing at the end that’s stuck with him his whole life. Every person in the packed, dim little church was handed a candle, and while they sang some song—Troy thinks it might’ve been Silent Night, though that’s the only Christmas song he really knows, so he might be backfilling his memory with it—they lit each other’s candles. Row by row, little Troy watched as the light traveled from person to person, down the length of the building, until finally it reached his grandma, who lit his candle, and then gestured to him to light his mom’s. There was something about that moment, watching the light travel, their shared candles slowly brightening the dark sanctuary, that was the closest thing Troy’s ever felt to a religious experience. Seeing light break through the darkness.
Listening to Bood feels a lot like that.
“Zane,” Harris says, a little teary.
“Yo, Bood, throw me that marker.” Chewie’s got his face squinched up looking at his phone, his other hand making a grabby motion toward Bood. Once he has marker in hand, he scribbles his own verse on his helmet. 1 Jn 4:19. “‘We love because God first loved us.’” He shrugs. “I’m not a Christian, I just googled ‘queer-affirming Bible verses.’ But I’m a big fan of fighting fire with fire, and that one makes it sound like everyone deserves love, so.” He shrugs again, then looks over at Roz and Hollander, then at Haas, then at Troy. “But, like, happy to cover it up with tape if you guys want.”
“Yeah,” Bood nods. “The church’s been terrible to queer people. So…”
Roz fishes his Orthodox cross out of his jersey. “Is not just for show,” he says, voice rough. “My mama…well. My mama believed. And she loved me. So fuck these fuckers if they want to twist that into something evil. Besides,” he continues, frown morphing into a smirk, “this is perfect example of…what is it when you obey but meanly?”
After a pause, Haas tentatively volunteers, “Malicious compliance?”
“Malicious compliance!” Roz claps. “Haasy, you are as smart as you are beautiful and queer.”
Haas full on blushes. Troy snorts.
“We are all fucking beautiful and queer!” Roz shouts, then considers. “Except for you all who aren’t queer. Whatever. I’m doing it. Hand me that fucking marker.”
The tension in the room dissolves into laughter, most of the team pulling out their phones and following Chewie’s lead. Not everyone—Hollander chooses not to, for one, which Troy respects—but enough that Troy doesn’t weird pulling out his own phone. It doesn’t take him long to find one, calling out for Young to throw him the marker so he can write it on his helmet.
“Song of Solomon 6:3?” Harris sits down next to him, a tentative note in his voice.
Troy gives him a lopsided smile. “‘I am my beloved’s, and he is mine.’”
Harris breaks out into a brilliant smile. He leans in for a quick kiss that Troy immediately deepens, Troy cheerfully flipping off the catcalls from the rest of team while he quickly makes out with his boyfriend. “I love you so fucking much,” he says when they come up for air, forehead-to-beautiful-forehead.
“My beloved,” Harris whispers back fondly. “Happy Pride.”
Troy glances around the room, at a team so quick to hurt when he hurts, so quick to fight on his behalf, so quick to love no matter what. At Young (with Ps 139:14 on his helmet) and Holmberg (with Mt 6:5 on his) and LaPointe (with Gal 5:12 on his) giving Haasy (whose helmet remains blank) a huge group hug. At Hazy, cheerfully explaining genderfluidity in Buddhism to Bood and Chewie while writing VinA 5.1016 on his helmet. At Roz laughing maniacally at whatever he’s writing on his helmet while Hollander rolls his eyes with obvious fondness.
Troy couldn’t be more proud in this moment.
As the intermission winds down, Roz climbs up onto a bench and bangs his stick on his stall for attention. “Listen up! Coach is right—those fuckers got in our heads. We let them get in our heads. But this is our fucking house! Our fucking night! And no shithead Metro, or dumb book, or group of fucking backwards idiots who use that book to make people feel small is ever going to make us feel small! We are giants! Because of all of the fucking people who lift us the fuck up! Are you gonna let them make us feel small?”
“No!” the team shouts, banging their sticks on the ground.
“Are you gonna let them ruin our Pride?”
“No!” they shout again, impossibly louder. Troy’s eyes are bright, cheeks damp.
“Then let’s get the fuck out there and show them what the fuck makes us proud!”
The whole team erupts in cheers, banging into each other, pushing Shane and Ilya and Troy and Luca to the front of the parade down the tunnel. Troy gets a brief glimpse of Harris’s laughing, shining face—full of so, so much love—before he’s swept up in the cacophony of joy that erupts out onto the ice.
There’s a brief lull in the rink noise while the crowd clocks what the Centaurs have done to their helmets. And as the slow buzz of laughter, frantic googling, and finally cheering builds around the ice, Troy hones in on the dismayed look on Comeau’s face.
“Yeah, fuck you, you hypocritical-ass motherfucker,” he murmurs.
Comeau’s properly angry by the time he skates up to Roz for the third period’s first face-off. Troy stands on the edge of the circle, waiting for the pass.
“Comeau,” Roz nods, tone pitched to be his most annoyingly calm.
“You fucking—“ Comeau clearly struggles to cut off the rest of the epithet. “I can’t believe you would desecrate the—“
“You think you are only one who knows how to read the Bible?” Roz says loudly, turning his head slightly. Troy clocks the move immediately from the ‘What Not to Do’s of social media training; he’s positioning his face so the cameras—and any lip readers watching—can clearly see his mouth. “How about Matthew 7:1?”
Comeau’s brow furrows, ignoring the lineman positioning himself between the two centers. “What’s—“
“‘Judge not lest ye be judged,’ motherfucker.”
Rozy wins the face-off.
The energy of the third period is palpably different. The Metros who’d chosen to follow Comeau’s lead are clearly rattled by the Centaurs’ response. Whether it’s because they're getting their own smug self-righteousness thrown back in their faces, or because they know they’re being mocked but not precisely how because they don’t know their own book well enough, Troy can’t tell. It doesn’t really matter, though, when he easily passes the puck past one of the Metros defenders to the waiting Rozanov, who sinks the puck top-shelf to tie the score.
“That’s what we call divine fucking intervention, baby!” Roz crows at a disgusted Drapeau before the rest of the line buries his celly in a pile of laughter.
Hollander’s line does a masterful job pinning the Metros on their side of the rink after the next face-off, wearing down Drapeau with shot after shot, priming them for the next time Roz and Troy’s line leaps back over the boards. In moments, Troy finds himself in the middle of a scrum, fighting for the puck.
“What—“ Comeau snaps, out of breath. “What the fuck is yours anyway?”
Roz grins maniacally, stick a blur of motion. “Is Ezekiel 23:20! You do not know your Bible, shithead?”
Comeau grunts, elbowing Rozy and pushing Troy back, trying to give Pike an opening to hook the puck. “I fucking know—“
“‘She lusted after her lovers,’” Rozy interrupts with a look of pure glee, ecstatic that someone finally asked, “‘whose genitals were like those of donkeys, and whose emissions were like those of horses!’”
Troy can’t tell if Comeau goes scarlet from anger or embarrassment, but Pike’s surprised belly laugh only makes his face curdle more. In any case, whatever the fuck it was that Roz just said stops them both for the half-second Troy needs to steal the puck and slap it away down the boards.
“There’s no hate at all, jackass!” Roz loudly echoes Comeau’s earlier interview as he races after the puck, with exactly the same meaning behind it.
Fuck, Troy fucking loves his team.
He leaves a spluttering Comeau and still-laughing Pike behind, flanking right to draw one of Montreal’s defenders away from where Roz is headed. It works; Roz is easily able to retrieve the puck before the right defenseman can get there, passing it like an arrow right to Troy.
Who spins into a beautiful slapshot that takes the puck right past the frantically approaching left defenseman, across the ice, under Drapeau’s glove, and into the net.
The explosion of noise at the go-ahead goal rivals the sound of the crowd when they won the cup, or at least, it feels like it. As his linemates rush over, a blur of multicolored motion, Troy raises one hand in a big, high arc over his head for his celly.
The power of gay love and sunshine and fucking rainbows.