Chapter Text

Luca Haas was not raised to be religious. He didn’t know any prayers nor did he own a cross to pray on. His parents hadn’t drilled the faithful hymns and scriptures into his mind. The idea of there being a person in the sky was so foreign to him.

But words.

Words had meaning. The things said out loud are spoken into the universe, and the universe listens. Manifesting, and all that. Just a little sign amongst the natural order of things. If he thinks really hard about it, maybe he does believe in a higher deity; but if God was real, Luca really must've pissed Him off in a past life. 

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When Luca was 9, hockey wasn’t only the most important thing in his life, it was his everything. He slept in hockey tarps and kept sticks to decorate his bedroom walls. He begged his mother to take him to the rink at all hours of the night and cried when it was time to go home. Every win felt massive, and every loss? Totally all-consuming.

“What’s the point of practice if I can’t even stay on my skates? I tripped three times today! I’m not going to make the team and I’ll never make it to the NHL!” Luca had been crying since the moment his mom picked him up from a particularly rough practice and he brought his breakdown into the house when they arrived. With junior league tryouts looming on the horizon, any second Luca was off the ice felt like the world was ending. 

“Luca, honey, don’t say that,” his mom had brushed hair out of his face with one hand and held his chin with the other, “our words have power. The things we say out loud and the things we think even louder, it’s all powerful. How do you expect to make the team if you believe you won’t, hmm?”

“But what if I don’t-”

“But you will.” She now had both hands grasping Luca’s shoulders, her hold not too tight, but grounding. “Say it out loud now.”

“But what if I say it out loud and that's why it doesn't come true?” Luca wiped at his face with the sleeve of his jersey. His mom grabbed his stick off the ground and pushed it into his hands.

“Say what you believe, Luca. It will come true.”

“I’m making it to the league.” He said, voice shaky but strong. 

Luca did, in fact, make the junior team; only a few days before Ilya Rozanov officially made it to the NHL. He also found a new hobby, so that hockey wouldn't be the only thing defining his mental wellbeing. 

The next year, Luca went through about a dozen dry erase markers and declared his “Vision Board For The Future” complete. For nearly a decade, his vision board hung in tandem with an Ilya Rozanov poster that was proudly displayed in his childhood bedroom. They both served as reminders of what he would become and proof that- maybe, just maybe- he would get there. 

10 year-old Luca Haas was cute and all, but he really needed to chill out. Or maybe present-day Luca is now suffering the karmic consequences of too many manifestations ringing true. 

Luca would take any justifications necessary to alleviate the dread overwhelming him right now because here the board stands in the same place it always has, right next to the same Rozanov poster.

 It is also next to the massive, sparkling, straight-out-of-his-wildest-dreams Stanley Cup. And a camera crew. 

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The Ottawa Centaurs winning the Cup was a night ripped from his childhood dreams. His mom and sister are in the stands watching, he’s on the power play with Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov who are also in love and on his team, and the score is tied 2-2 against Chicago with 3 minutes remaining but Ilya has the puck, to Shane, to Luca who takes the puck on his stick and pulls it up mid air and throws it to the back of the net. It’s not an overtime goal, so the celebrations stick to a group hug that’s more enthusiastic than usual but brief nonetheless. 

“Ottawa goal scored by #11,” the announcer echoed through the stadium, it still didn’t feel real,  “Luca Haas!” 

Okay, maybe it felt a little real. 

The last three minutes of the game were played under cutthroat tension. 

Luca was having a blast. Playing wing for Shane Hollander was a whole other level of surreal that Luca still isn’t quite used to. The sound of blades scraping the ice and sticks hitting the puck, along with flying on ice and trusting his instincts always brought Luca to life, but this was exhilarating. Chicago pulled their goalie with a minute to go and their forwards on the ice were fuming with rage and determination. 

Ilya took the last face-off with Luca on his wing instead of Troy. The impromptu line change made Luca’s head spin and his heart race. Luca was playing hard and playing fast, encouraging Coach Wiebe to send him out for the final play. Ilya bumped his helmet against Luca’s with a quick “Having fun?” before skating to the dot. Luca smiled at his captain and got into position.

The player next to Luca was growling noises that were probably words, but he wasn’t listening, not when his team was only a few seconds away from taking home the Cup. Holy shit. They were about to win the cup.

Ilya won the puck but lost possession, a lucky chance that Chicago must not have actually been expecting; the brief hesitation when a defenseman stole the puck but saw the line was set up for a completely different play, had the game set in stone. Ilya didn't have the time to sink an empty net, but the puck never made it to their defensive zone anyways, so the game ended 3-2 for the Ottawa Centaurs. Holy shit.

Shane was first to hop the boards onto the ice, which Luca only got to see for a split second before he was crushed by the players that were still on the ice. Each of them crowding Luca in a weird half hugging half tackling celebration, the other players followed Shane’s lead to help crush Luca.

Luca laughed and returned the gesture, throwing his arms around whoever was closest. Actually seeing the Cup be awarded to them felt unreal. Seeing Ilya hoisting the Cup, kissing Shane, skating a lap, passing the cup to Luca- wait, what.

“Me before Hollzy?” Luca held the Cup, breathless.

“Haasy, you scored the winning fucking goal! You won us the cup!” Holy shit. Roz was right, wasn’t he. 

Luca couldn’t do much except nod his head toward his captain and ignore the tears in his eyes. After a moment of just staring at the Cup, he finally lifted it over his head and skated a lap before finally handing it to Shane. 

“Luca Haas, did I just see you take the Stanley Cup from Ilya Rozanov and hand it back to Shane Hollander?” Family was being let onto the ice now, and of course, the first thing his mom says to her Stanley Cup winning son is a tease about the fantasies he would babble on about as a kid. 

“Mama, I have absolutely no clue what just happened. I think I blacked out.”

“Well, I have it on video so you can relive it all later.” Luca meant to groan but laughed instead before being pulled into a hug. His mom pulled his head down to hear her as she whispered, “I am so, so proud of you, Luca.” 

And there were the tears, impossible to ignore at this point.

“Hello! My turn with the winner!” His sister, Elisa, pushed their mother away, taking her spot. “I had to spend 23 years listening to you tell me in detail about what you’d do when you won the Cup with those two, the least you can do is let me in on the celebrations now that you’ve done it.”

“What- wait, what do you mean?” Luca isn’t entirely dense, he knew he had an overactive imagination, but every aspiring hockey player dreams about winning the Cup and playing with their favorite hockey players! Or playing with their favorite player and his boyfriend!

Elisa pulled back and shook her head, “later, later, I’ll tell you all about it and refresh your memory. I’m proud of you too, now smile for Mama’s camera and pretend we like each other.” 

“But we do like each other, Lis.”

“Eh, semantics.'

“Big word.”

“Thanks! Smile!”

The rest of the night was completely a blur.

Luca made history as the first person in his bloodline to get waterfalled by beer out of the Stanley Cup still on the ice, Boodram’s reasoning being “game winning goal scorer cannot leave the rink without drinking from the Cup” and well, he wasn’t about to argue against that. Maybe he wished his mom didn’t have to be there to witness it, but his sister had her phone out the whole time and was having the absolute time of her life. Luca left the locker room later drenched in beer and champagne, surrounded by the best teammates he could've ever wished for; then left the club afterwards stumbling with the guys he shared his rookie season with. 

Victor Holmberg, Erik Young, and Ethan LaPointe made a very big deal out of renting a home for a few nights, encouraging Luca that yes, it was a very good idea; no, it would not be the same if they just brought the party back to one of their own Ottawa homes. 

“But what ‘bout the mess? What if we break something?”

“We just won the-”

“And what are their smoking policies? I don’t want to make a stranger's home smell like weed?”

“Haasy, the smoking policies are in the book-”

“But what if-”

“Haasy!” It was LaPointe that had finally smacked his head and grabbed his shoulders. “How are you overthinking this much after going shot for shot with Roz?”

“I-” Yeah, he had a point. Luca’s bloodstream was probably mostly vodka at this point and his thoughts probably shouldn’t even be in English right now. “So does this mean I can bring my bong?”

“Luca, man, I’d be really upset if you didn’t.” 

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The first night at the party house was spent with just the four of them. Four players that entered the NHL together and got drafted to the worst team in the league were now celebrating their Cup win just three years later. They tried in earnest to keep the party alive once they unlocked the door, but Young collapsed on the floor as soon as he took his shoes off; Holmberg decided to bring out some pillows and crash with him on the floor. 

LaPointe promised Luca he’d just change his clothes really quickly and come back ready for another round of shots. This did not happen, but Luca found he didn’t care. He was on top of the fucking world, and honestly could just really use a quick shower and a bed. 

He had the sense to snap a quick picture of Young and Holmberg snoring on the floor for the team chat, then a brief sense of urgency to text his mother and sister telling them he was “mmojaay :)$” and fell asleep before his head hit the pillow.

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For his day with the Cup, Luca chose to take it home. 

He didn’t get to spend time during the season with his friends and family in Switzerland and considering this was his first season that didn’t end before June, celebrating with them was the least he could do to show how grateful he was for their love and support. He agreed with the Cup keeper to have it stay in his childhood home with his mom and Elisa. He also invited friends he made playing hockey in Switzerland over to take photos with the Cup. The day felt like an endless parade of “thank you” and “I love you” and the camera crew was enjoying every second of it, because of course the NHL media team wanted to film inside his childhood home. But Luca was enjoying it too! He felt dizzy with gratitude and nearly overwhelmed by the love flooding the house. 

Until his sister fired Hollanov’s gun during the final act.

“Luca! We cleaned your childhood room! Bring the Cup!” She tugged at his sleeve before excitedly rushing up the stairs. 

Luca hadn’t been in his childhood room since he started moving in and out of billet homes at 16. He found it made homesickness worse when he was put back in his childhood space just to leave a few weeks later, so they set him up a new room out of their guest room and used the old one for storage. Luca honestly did not really know what to expect.

In retrospect, he did not know how he didn’t see this coming. Obviously, Elisa made sure to dust the poster he now got endlessly chirped for and obviously she wouldn’t have dared move the Vision Board. 

Oh god, the Vision Board. Luca could not, under any circumstances, let the camera crew in to see it. 

Luca would like to state for the record that he did not let the camera crew do anything. Luca Haas would like to state that, for the record, he did not let the camera crew do anything. Nor did he, under any circumstances, plan on having the camera crew zoom in on the nervous expression on his face when he had to explain to them that… Well, he also didn’t want anyone to see through what would definitely be the worst bluffing of his life. 

But the crew was already there when he reached the top of the stairs. His face flushed red as his heart sank at the sight of the camera about to record the whiteboard of his childhood drawings, about to catch everything in 4k. 

“Oh!” Luca shouted. “We do not need to look at that, thank you.” He attempted to knock the Board off the pushpin it was hanging on.

“Hush, Luca, none of that,” Elisa slapped his hand away. “Now show them your board!”

Seeing the panicked expression on Luca’s face, she pulled him to the side and whispered, “if you really don’t want to share this part, they can cut the segment after. Okay?”

“Okay.” He nodded his head and turned back to the cameras, as photogenically and nonchalantly as he possibly could in this moment.

Luca couldn’t move. This was his penance. He had so much good come to him and now that good was about to find other people in the form of his misery and embarrassment. Harris better kiss him on the mouth for these clips… or maybe just let him off media duty for a bit. Time to bow to fate, cross the Rubicon, face the music, other idioms that would maybe distract him to think about instead of facing the glaring “81 + 24” shaped elephant in the room.

He sighed and tried to relax his breathing, “can we at least do it not in the same shot as that?” He grabbed the board and shrugged toward the poster.

“Same shot as what?” His mom asked from outside the room where she had been waiting to see his reaction.

“I don’t know, Mama, maybe the giant poster of the guy I just won the Cup with?”

Her laughter echoed through the room, making Luca blush harder. The person holding the camera laughed as well before turning to face a different wall. Luca propped the board on the desk he had on the opposite side of his room and the Stanley Cup was placed next to it. 

“Thank you, uh, yeah this is my vision board. I drew it when I was probably 10 years old? I was just learning to draw because Mama said it would be good to have something I enjoy doing besides hockey, so…” He knocked the board over after that and tried to move on, hoping the damage was minimal and everyone could go home now.

Elisa walked into the camera frame and picked it back up, giving Luca a stern look as she backed away. Older sisters are the worst, and Luca would love for his to leave the room. That wouldn’t be happening anytime soon, so Luca let out a loud sigh before continuing.

“Um, so here, it says, ‘MAKE THE NHL!!’ in Swiss-German, English, and French. I wanted to make sure that was written in whichever language the team I got drafted to spoke, so that was a big one. This is a drawing of a stick I begged Mama for and the tape on it is real stick tape I liked using. There's a drawing of the Cup, and a few motivations written in my first language. So, yeah, that’s my board! Are we done here?” 

During the whole segment, Luca was wildly gesturing around the drawings and lines he mentioned, desperately trying to distract from the drawing of him, Shane, and Ilya holding hands in front of a net, smaller cups were drawn on both sides of the trio. With his body, he was entirely covering the other side of the board. Small mercies.

The camera took pity on him and redirected to get a clip of other hockey related drawings on his walls, those consisted of less embarrassing screencaps of other notable NHL highlights. If most of them are of Ilya and/or the Bears… mind your own business. 

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The video was greenlit and hit the internet a week later, a permanent mark on the NHL YouTube channel and the sole cause of a grey hair Luca found that morning. Hands shaking and mind buzzing, Luca sat at his desk and clicked play.

In the days leading up to the video going public, Luca had another problem to fix: If there was one good thing to come of the public humiliation ritual he was forced to participate in, it was a warning to wipe any and all traces of him on his old fan accounts. 

Because fucking obviously Luca had to have fan accounts. 

An old Tumblr blog he used to run had a post written about something a teammate had said at a hockey practice when Luca was 16: someone had mentioned Shane Hollander’s girlfriend, so Luca wrote a manifesto about compulsive heterosexuality. There was a picture he had taken at a hockey game in Zurich, an offhand comment about hating how his current team calls him Lulu, a photo of the art wall in his room- that one definitely had to go. It was about to be put on YouTube with Luca’s name and face plastered on the thumbnail, oh my god.

He combed through his Tumblr and his rarely used Twitter, making sure nothing identifiable stayed up. The accounts had been abandoned since he had gotten drafted, but he chose to leave up the art and the rest of his hockey commentary (okay, some of the chirps he posted on Twitter were way too good to delete). The Hollanov content can stay up too, as a treat. 

This did not make the video reception any easier.

He skipped most of the video- it was only five minutes long, he can watch the rest later- and found the segment filmed in his room. Despite the high quality cameras used to film, the lens mostly focused on his face rather than the background. Luca debated sending a fruit basket to the camera operator who could’ve chosen to focus and zoom in on the board, but didn’t. Relief started to wash over him, but the moment of peace did not last. 

The camera focus might have made the board a little blurry, but there was no hiding the drawing he had of him, Shane, and Ilya. It was unmistakably them. Luca might not have been the best artist at age 10, but by age 14 he had been pretty damn good. Most of the board was written when he was 10, he foolishly believed that making it to the big leagues was a good enough dream for him. But 14 year old Luca had unlimited internet access and a whole lot of pent up gay panic. 

When he first made his Tumblr account, it was purely to connect with people that loved hockey as much as he did. He found he could only gush about Ilya Rozanov’s backhand so much before Elisa started locking her bedroom door, so off to the internet he went. 

Initially, he was just excited to have a platform to talk on. 

Then, he had started staring a little too closely at Ilya’s mannerisms and facial expressions, excusing it as studying drawing references. Sure, he would in fact draw every single one of those facial expressions, but after a while, Luca started noticing… patterns. Specifically how Ilya tended to react around Shane Hollander. During interviews with the press, Rozanov always acted confident. He knew whatever answer he would give would be enough of a soundbite, whether it was actually a good answer or not. He never hesitated and never failed to come up with a chirp or two. But with Hollander… 

Ilya would stay reserved. He never looked Shane in the eye and never talked directly to him. His confidence cracked but Shane was always there to pick up any hesitation Ilya had. That is how Luca Haas became the pioneer of Hollanov Tumblr. Maybe not the first, but definitely an unavoidable influence. 

That is why Luca decided that he needed to be on the ice with the two of them. That is why he had made some revisions to the board. He added lines like “81 + 24” and “HOLLANOV CUP WIN (ON MY TEAM!)” and drew art of the three of them. Fortunately, he kept most of it to one side. Unfortunately, the exposed drawing went insanely viral.

soph <3 go cens! @rozshollzy

10 YEAR OLD LUCA HAAS DREAMING OF PLAYING WITH HOLLANOV MR. HAAS YOU ARE A VISIONARY

val @forpuckssake

Luca has all that hollanov PROPAGANDA on his walls, and now lives in the  hollanov REALITY, which could mean nothing. Which could mean nothing! But manifesting works. In this essay, I will

miffy ☆ @yurihaas

luca im gonna need the links for whatever etsy witches you hired holy shit

shane hollanders chiropractor @shootandscore

ooooo look at me i’m Luca Haas and i just won the stanley cup with my childhood dream team girl fuck you

e @basichockeyusername

this is the funniest thing that could’ve happened to the cens

:) @h44sy

Can anyone make out what the other side of the board says please I wanna KNOW

Luca shut his laptop. He unlocked his phone.

STANLEY CUP CHAMPS #neverstopwinning #youngpleasestopusinghashtags

cap: Soooo we all have Haasy to thank for my Shane coming to Ottawa and winning us a cup

cap: Thank you Haasy!

shane hollander: Ilya.

cap: What! Is true! Did you see the new video Shane? Our child drew us and it came true!

shane hollander: No? Where is it

shane hollander: Also, he is not our child. Do you know that? It’s important to me that you know that.

cap: Buzzkill.

shane hollander: You love it, do you not?. Watching the video now.

lapointe: THANKKKK YOU HAASY!!!

lapointe: i will bring more than just gummy worms 2 da function next time man promis

luca: Yeah please don’t do that again the sugar got everywhere

young: THATS why there was sugar in my glove??????

bood: We are getting so off topic

hazy: I watched the video!! Luca I love your art :) And at 10 years old??

luca: Thanks hazy

luca: 14 actually! i only learned how to draw a few years later

hazy: Awww so sweet

luca: hazy Please

barrett: Hey luca

barrett: Harris wanted me to say thank you and that your video is “performing very well”

bood: The videos doing mad numbers

barrett: Ohhhhhhhh yeah the videos doing mad numbers

luca: Holy shit I need to change my name

holmberg: and probably flee the country too

holmberg: i heard paris is pretty nice rn

lapointe: luca parles-tu Français?

luca: you know I do stfu 

shane hollander: Luca, you speak French??

luca: Uhhhhhhhh yeah a little I just wanted to learn in case I had french speaking teammates in canada

luca: I always felt so bad when a teammate couldnt speak any of my languages 

lapointe: shane he watched all of your french post games 

luca: holy shit

lapointe was removed from the chat

luca: That was so weird haha its so funny when Lapointe just says words

hazy: Brutal, kid.

shane hollander: Haha I’m flattered

cap: I am not.

bood: 🚨🚨🚨

luca: This is the worst day of my life.

young added lapointe to the chat

lapointe: THANK YOU1

young: sorry guys i was #bribed

luca: After all I’ve done for you ??

young: also roz btw he can understand some russian bc of u :D

luca: Et tu brute ??

Luca got a text from Shane an hour later.

shane hollander

Just finished the video! Ilya is asking if we can copy and frame the drawing, we’d love to have it.

Luca’s head dropped on his desk with a loud thud. Maybe he could convince Young to properly recreate the Ides of March with him.