Chapter Text
January 2, 2026
St. Paul, Minnesota
Porter was flying.
There was, really, no other word to describe it. Team Canada had just cruised through the quarterfinal against Slovakia, Porter notching a goal and an assist, and now they were decompressing in a swanky, closed-off hotel lobby with the other victors of the night—the losers, he thought, were probably on their way home by now. Porter’s eyes took in the room and the factions each nation had made, cutting the room into four colorblocked sections—the Czechs, all red, white, and blue, were in the far corner, talking amongst themselves; the Finns, who’d scraped by in OT, were quietly mingling by the bar; the Swedes were bright-eyed and bumping elbows to Porter’s general right; and the Canadians, Porter’s guys, seemed to be everywhere, loud flashes of red that popped up and down again. They were all toothy grins and jokes and chirping, a familiar culture that poured itself into any room.
Porter, for his part, was standing still, listening to the faint music in the lobby and watching without concentration. His hair was damp from his post-game shower, sticking to his slightly sweat-sheened skin. He was holding a beer that was making his cheeks pink and his tongue loose, something light that had been pressed into his hands by someone he wasn’t sure he knew. The room was buzzing with his people and he was wearing a red-and-white Team Canada jacket and he was a tiny bit drunk, which, altogether, meant he was happy. For a moment, the weight of the C and the country’s expectations wasn’t so heavy, and Porter was happy.
“Hey, dude!” Jack Ivankovic—Kovy—called to Porter, closing the distance between them. He casually slung an arm around Porter’s shoulders and knocked their cans together, smiling the way that seemed to be Kovy’s default. His dirty blonde hair was pushed away from his face with a backwards Team Canada snapback, and he was close enough that Porter could see the light freckles on his nose. He was also, if appearances were to be believed, a bit more sloshed than Porter was.
“Hey, Kovy,” Porter replied easily. He’d been thrilled that he and Kovy got to play together here—they’d been teammates on the Steelheads, of course, and Porter was missing his tendy down at Michigan State. It was a great program, incredibly productive for his hockey, but he did miss his friends.
Kovy just stood there for a second, sipping his beer and watching the room. They’d almost certainly exhausted all the conversation topics earlier in the night—game debrief in the locker room, a flurry of we did it boys that came spread across multiple moments, the infamous Michigan State vs University debate that they’d been having on-and-off since they both committed—but he was probably still trying to think of something to say.
Finally, he landed on something and turned to face Porter. “Isn’t it kind of cool how, like, we’re playing against people we’re gonna be teammates with? And with them, I guess?” Kovy asked. For emphasis, he gestured to Brady Martin’s general direction, since both were Predators prospects. Porter found his own potential Flyers teammate—Jett—in the sea of red and nodded absently. He had considered it before, but he had trouble thinking of his NHL future as concrete; not in the sense that he didn’t trust it, but instead that he didn’t quite believe it.
“Yeah,” Porter said noncommittally, sipping his beer. Spotting something, Kovy pointed across the room.
“Look,” he said, gesturing loosely with his bottle, “it’s your other teammate.”
Porter looked, following Kovy’s gaze to the Swedish contingent, and found Jack Berglund.
Jack was bright in the yellow of a Tre Kronor hoodie, talking animatedly about something with Anton Frondell while holding a red cup in one hand and gesturing emphatically with his other. His eyes were wide, and his mouth was stretched into a sunny smile. He turned his face slightly, probably to look at something Anton had pointed out, and Porter caught a glimpse of his profile—defined jaw, straight nose, strong neck leading to wide shoulders.
When he finally clocked himself staring, Porter looked pointedly down at his shoes.
“He’s not my teammate,” Porter mumbled, feeling a blush crawl up his cheeks. He took another sip of his drink even though he’d barely swallowed the last one in an attempt to keep both his hands and mouth busy. Kovy, annoyingly, caught the slight shift in tone and glanced over at Porter without turning his head, one eyebrow quirked.
Technically, Porter was teammates with neither Jett nor Jack in the regular season. He still had half of his freshman year at Michigan State to finish, and the other guys weren’t playing in the national either—Jett was playing in Brampton in the O, and Jack was in Sweden with Färestad BK.
What the next season would bring, Porter had no idea, but right now, they weren’t anything.
“Eh, guess not.”
Really, he and Jack were enemies—the captains of two competitive teams, the weight of their respective nations on their backs. There was a very large chance that Sweden and Canada would be in the finals together, which would put Porter and Jack face-to-face on the first line. He needed to forget all about the fact that they had been drafted to the same organization and think about Jack as any other competitor, on and off the ice.
Jack looked over and caught Porter’s eye from across the room, offering a smile. The Swedes had dominated their game, too—a 6-3 win against Latvia that was also a two-point night for Jack—and they were mingling easily among themselves. Jack’s face was flushed with the alcohol or the heat of the room, his green eyes bright and his posture relaxed. His pale hair was in his face, which must have been annoying.
It didn’t seem to be bothering Jack, but Porter wanted to move it out of the way. His fingers itched for it.
Only, like, because he didn’t want Jack to be inconvenienced. Obviously.
Then, Jack did something unexpected. He raised a hand to his teammates and broke through the wave of Swedes, cutting across the room, and suddenly he was at Porter’s elbow. He had four inches on Kovy, so he bent his head to talk to him at eye level. “Uh, hey. I’m Jack,” he said, slightly accented, while offering a fist bump. Kovy only looked confused for half a second before meeting Jack’s fist and breaking into a wide, tipsy grin.
“That’s my name, too!” Kovy said happily. Then, he found Schaef over by the bar and excused himself without further consideration, yelling something incomprehensible toward him. Jack watched him go, slightly amused.
“Is he usually like that?” Jack asked, turning back to Porter. Porter shook his head.
“Nah, he’s—he’s pretty chill, actually. Just gets hyper on alcohol.”
“Ah, okay.”
Standing next to him, Porter could tell that Jack was taller than him, too. He was taller than most people, but the Swede was about an inch above him, which Porter didn’t hate. As he figured this, he stared at the golden pieces of hair falling across Jack’s temple and absently ran his tongue over his teeth. He could tell he was doing it, and he had a faint awareness that he was being awkward, but it was all kind of blurry. He put a hand on the back of his neck.
“Uh, good—great game,” Porter offered. Jack snorted.
“You didn’t watch,” Jack pushed back, though he was still smiling. Porter shrugged, gracious.
“I was kind of busy. But I saw the highlights.”
“Mm. I heard you had a great game, too,” Jack said, completely sincere now. Porter felt the palm of his hand, resting on the nape of his neck, start to leach heat from his skin. He took it away and put it in the pocket of his jacket.
“Thanks,” Jack replied. He looked away from Porter’s eyes to an empty spot on the floor, then brought his gaze back, green behind long, light brown lashes. “I like this jacket,” he added, lifting his free hand to idly run a finger down the sleeve of Porter’s Team Canada jacket, not breaking eye contact. The fabric was thick, high quality, but Porter swore he could feel Jack's touch against his skin. Little sparks collided at the contact points, and he bit the inside of his cheek. He hated this. Fucking hated it.
The thing was, Porter had been thinking about Jack since the 2025 Summer Showcase, for no reason other than the way Jack had skated and his stupid floppy hair and the Atlantic ocean color of his eyes. They hadn’t spoken, and Porter had only heard Jack’s voice at all because he’d caught the tail end of some Swedish conversation Jack was having with Frondell and a few other Swedes.
Stupid, beautiful fucking language.
Then it was dev camp, which—Porter didn’t even want to think about. Embarrassingly, he’d spent the camp focused on two things: proving himself as a top-ten pick and avoiding talking to Berglund. It wasn’t too difficult—they were on different squads, and besides, Jack didn’t seem particularly interested in him—but Porter came home each day with his heart in his throat and his knees shaky. Denver, his dev-camp roommate, had shot him bemused looks during Porter’s post-practice decompression hour, but he never brought it up.
Since then, Porter had been keeping an eye on Jack—his Instagram, stats, whatever—and telling himself that it wasn’t weird, since Jack was with the same organization. Jack followed him back.
But it wasn’t that. It was never, ever fucking that with Jack, because Porter was stupid and caught feelings for people he didn’t know, guys he couldn’t have, guys in general. All of it stupid, which was why Porter hated this.
He hated being face-to-face with Jack because, for some inexplicable reason, Jack made him feel like he was going to explode, and Porter didn’t want to explode. He couldn’t.
“Uh, thanks,” Porter muttered, which was the most he could manage to get past the lump in his throat. Jack took his hand away and grinned, wide and uninhibited. God, he was so beautiful.
“What’s, ah, your plan for tonight?”
Porter shrugged. “Not much,” he said, and refused to add depends what you’re up to because A.) generally, he wasn’t that forward and B.) he wasn’t drunk enough to try and change that tonight.
“Mm. Okay,” Jack replied, barely. He flicked his eyes over Porter’s face, cataloging the Canadian’s expressions. Then—almost like an afterthought, he added, “do you want to get some air?”
And fuck. That was all it took.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Take this off,” Jack said, tugging on the hem of the Team Canada jacket he’d complimented earlier. His voice was husky in the near-dark of the hallway they’d found, accent more pronounced, and Porter—well, Porter complied without argument and shrugged it off, dropping it onto the floor. With that settled, Jack pressed a hand against the side of Porter’s stomach and slipped his hand under Porter’s t-shirt, warm fingers creeping over each rib. Jack was gentle with him, slow as he made his way up—Porter had taken a nasty check in Prelims that was still bruising—and Porter let himself relax into the touch. With his other hand, bruised across the knuckles from a slash, Jack cupped Porter’s face and bent his own head down to kiss him, tasting like vodka and something distinctively blue.
Porter breathed in the scent of Jack as he tilted his head to adjust the angle, the line of his jaw brushing rough, light stubble on Jack’s face. Apparently, there was a Team Sweden superstition about not shaving during the tournament, similar to the NHL’s playoff beards, and it was really working for Porter. He felt the heat of Jack on his face, the steadiness of the wall against his back, the light, blitzing touch of Jack’s hand as it traced a circle around Porter’s pec, nails grazing over the collarbone. It was everything—everything he’d dreamed about with Jack, tucked away in those dark corners of his mind; everything he’d wanted from a relationship; everything he’d thought he’d never get. Jack was so good at this, so easy, that Porter had almost forgotten that he was breaking his one cardinal rule.
Almost.
Jack’s hand moved to the back of Porter’s neck, fingers entangled in the chocolate waves there, and Porter let his own migrate without much thought. He pressed one palm against Jack’s hip, right under the waistband of his jeans; he brought his other to Jack’s temple, finally pushing away those blonde strands that had been bothering him all night. Jack smiled into Porter’s lips, which Porter took as a good sign, and traced the shell of Jack’s ear as he shoved the hair back.
They broke apart for air, noses millimeters apart. “Have you done this before?” Porter whispered, his voice barely audible above his crashing breaths and pounding heart. The corner of Jack’s mouth, slightly reddened from Porter’s, turned up. Porter was close enough to see every microexpression, every mark and spot on Jack’s face, and he drank it in. Pressed harder against Jack’s hip bone.
“Kissed a guy?” Jack asked. His words landed like little stars on Porter’s skin.
“Mm,” Porter hummed. He watched Jack’s Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed.
“What do you think?” Jack replied, tongue-in-cheek, before leaning back in to kiss Porter again. Porter cradled the back of Jack’s head, wisps of blonde between his fingers and pleasure sparking throughout his body, and thought yes, you probably have.
Jack angled his chin and kissed the hinge of Porter’s jaw, his lips close to Porter’s ear. “Många, sötnos,” he whispered in his native tongue, the tone dripping with confidence, “Oroa dig inte.”
Porter didn’t know what that meant, but fuck, he liked it. He dug his fingers into Jack’s hair. “Can you say more?” Porter asked, a bit clumsily, because he didn’t exactly have the vocal dexterity Jack did when it came to flirting. Jack had been using his mouth in more ways than one; Porter felt like he wasn’t reciprocating—another reason why he thought Jack had probably kissed guys before.
“Du är så vacker. Jag—”
Jack cut himself off as footsteps echoed through the hall. “Porter?” someone called cautiously, walking toward them. “We’re all headed up now, and Schaef wanted—”
Jett froze in place when he saw them, pressed against each other in the empty hallway. His hair was rumpled, and his thick, dark eyebrows were raised to his hairline. He stared at them.
Jack pushed away from Porter immediately, mumbling something in Swedish. Porter hit his head on the wall trying to escape—not that he had anywhere to go. Jett had clearly seen them, and besides, it was obvious enough—Porter’s jacket on the floor, Jack’s flushed cheeks, both of their swollen lips. Porter’s stomach dropped. He could feel Jack’s gaze, trying to catch his eye, but he stared at the floor, hoping it would swallow him whole.
Jett, in front of them, cleared his throat. “Uh. Okay. I’m—yeah. Bye,” he choked out, blinking. Then, he turned on his heel and left, walking as fast as he could without it becoming a run. Porter swore, running a hand over his face.
“I—I have to go. Curfew,” Porter said, not even looking at Jack. He felt like there was a monster ravaging his insides, and he was doing his best not to throw up. Or, possibly worse, to cry. He turned around before Jack said anything.
Fuck, why was he such a fucking idiot?