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Sergei Kuzmenko
Sergei was drafted by Minnesota in 2006, but he got traded to Seattle before his ELC was up and he's played there ever since. It makes a difference, he thinks, and it's part of why a distance has grown between him and some of the other Russian players in the league. He's put down roots in Seattle, unlike the guys who move around to a different team every two or three seasons.
He married Evie, a local girl whose family all still lives in Issaquah. The marriage itself fizzled out after about five years, but both of his kids have American passports, and Sergei isn't unhappy about that. When they were young, he took them to Voskresensk a couple of times during the off-season to see his mother, but now the kids are older, and they have their friends and the fancy horseback riding camp that's slowly draining Sergei's bank account.
He doesn't know Rozanov very well. They're too far apart in age to have gone up against each other growing up, and Sergei has never been quite enough of a name to get selected to the national team. With Rozanov being in the Eastern conference, they only ever play each other a couple of times each year. But, he's heard from the guys Rozanov used to train with that he doesn't go home in the off-season anymore either.
And so when Sergei watches the FanMail video -- just enough of it to confirm it's not a joke before looking away, he doesn't want to see that -- he's shocked, and then a little repulsed, and then he thinks, well, that explains why Rozanov stopped going back to Russia in the summers.
How Sergei finds out about the video is that the Squids are playing on the road against Carolina, and he wakes up early because he needs to take a piss. During his stumble from the bed to the bathroom, he hears his phone vibrate on the nightstand five times. When he gets back from using the toilet, he sits down on the edge of the bed and picks up his phone. The Squids' team chat is blowing up, everyone texting a link to the video without scrolling up to see that it's already been shared a half a dozen times.
He swipes away the team chat without responding and opens WhatsApp. The first thing he sees is a notification that he's been invited to a new group. These messages are coming in at the same rapid clip, but it's easier to keep up in the more familiar Cyrilic text.
Lebedev: Vasilevsky is the only one who can remove people from the other chat and he's not responding, so I made a new one
Kostin: Didn't Vasilevsky retire last year?
Ivakin: Yeah, I don't think he even checks the chat anymore
Lebedev: Has anyone heard anything from home?
Akopov: My brother wanted to know if Rozanov had been arrested yet and I had to explain to him that doesn't happen here ((((
Petrov: I heard that Hollander was a cocksucker but I didn't know that Rozanov had a fucking death wish
Melikhov: Fuck. My family already wanted me to sign with the KHL when my contract is up next year, now they're going to think that playing in America turns you into a fucking faggot
Akopov: These idiots on my team think it's just a prank. I tried to explain that one of us wouldn't ever joke about something like that, but they don't get it
Ivakin: No one should be talking to their team at all. None of us should be saying anything
Kostin: Say what the Americans want to hear and you'll be in deep shit at home. Say what you really think and you'll be in deep shit here
Lebedev: All those women. And the whole time he was hanging noodles on our fucking ears
Akopov: Rozanov and Hollander have that camp they do in the summer, right? Guess we know why now. Makes me feel sick just thinking about the two of them around all those kids
Sergei starts writing out a message, but he can't think of anything to say that won't make him sound like someone's father telling stories about the bread lines, so he closes out of the app. It's different with the younger guys, the rookies like Akopov. When Sergei was growing up, he knew it was wrong to be like that, but nobody talked about it. These kids who come over from Russia now, they think there's going to be a pervert hiding around every corner like some kind of Babayka.
He puts down his phone and gets up to take a shower. The phone buzzes with a new text notification four more times before the shower water drowns out the noise.
Sergei doesn't think that the sight of two men kissing isn't ever going to make him feel a little sick to his stomach. But he's lived in Seattle for a long time. His kids are from there. They used to make him watch that television show, with the hot Spanish lady who was always yelling. He thinks about trying to explain that to a guy like Akopov.
Ivakin has the right idea. Better not to say anything to anyone.
Later, Sergei leaves his hotel room at the exact same time that Heikkinen is walking out of his own room next door.
"Kuzy!" Heikkinen says, his face lighting up. "I thought maybe you were dead. Have you even looked at your phone this morning?"
Sergei shakes his head. "Ah, no. I overslept."
"You are not going to believe what happened, Kuzy. Maybe you should sit down."
Sergei tries not to let the grimace show on his face. It's going to be a long fucking day.
Todd Broussard
Todd played for the Voyageurs until 2015, just long enough to grab a ring before he signed with Detroit for the promise of more ice time and a bigger paycheck. So, people love to ask him about playing with Shane Hollander, and he's got a couple of good stories that he keeps on rotation.
That time on a roadie in Arizona when he hustled a bunch of frat boys at pool because they didn't recognize that he was Shane fucking Hollander. How BioSteel discontinued their cherry lime flavor and then suddenly brought it back a month later when they found out it was Hollander's favorite. What it was like to sit on the bench and just know Hollander was going to score the shorthanded goal that won them the 2015 conference finals.
But there's one story about Hollander that Todd has always kept to himself.
It happened during his second-to-last season in Montreal, when they came back from Christmas break and headed straight out for the California trip. Todd was standing next to the elevator at the team hotel, trying to tap out a text reply to his brother before heading out to the bus. He was still staring down at his phone when the elevator doors opened, and Hollander walked out and nearly ran right into him.
"Oh, hey man," Hollander said. "Sorry about that."
"Nah, my bad." Todd waved him off and slid his phone into his pocket. "Probably shouldn't have been standing right there."
They started to walk together toward the side entrance where the bus was waiting to take them to the arena. "Did you have a good break?" Hollander asked.
"Uh, yeah. It was okay. Some stuff went down with my family."
"Oh. I'm sorry to hear that."
Todd scratched the back of his head and wondered if he should just leave it there. But Hollander had always seemed like a standup guy, so maybe he would have some good advice. "Tyler, my younger brother, he told my mom that he has, uh, a boyfriend, I guess? He wanted to invite him over the day after Christmas, and my mom was not into it."
Hollander stopped in his tracks and glanced over his shoulder like he was checking to make sure no one else was around. "Your brother plays too, right?" he asked.
"Yeah," Todd said, not sure what that had to do with anything. "He didn't get drafted, so he's playing at U Mass this year. And then, you know." Todd trailed off, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the handful of increasingly unlikely ways that a player who didn't get drafted in his first year of eligibility could still end up making it to the league. Tyler was a smart kid, and Todd was kind of hoping that he'd decide to stick with college.
Hollander looked pained, probably because a guy like him could more easily imagine being an astronaut than an undrafted free agent. "Well, okay. So, he's still pretty young, right?" he asked in a low voice. "He might be, I don't know, still figuring himself out? It could just be a phase."
"You think?" Todd didn't really know about gay stuff, but he'd googled how to support gay brother at the airport on his way back to Montreal, and that seemed like … not a thing a person was supposed to say.
"Yeah, for sure." Hollander nodded rapidly, his head moving up and down like a bobblehead. "He gets this out of his system now, and then later he meets the right girl, everything works out."
"I guess."
"Uh, good luck to him with everything," Hollander said, and then he started walking again, but more quickly this time. "I'll see you out there."
A few years later, the rumor started to make its way around the league that Hollander was gay. Todd always assumed it was bullshit, just some guys trying to take Hollander down a peg. Because otherwise, why would he have been so weird about Tyler?
So he's pretty confused when he watches Hayden Pike's FanMail video.
He's standing at the bar in his kitchen, where he's been glued to the spot since the Detroit team chat started getting flooded with links to the video and rows of exploding head emojis. No one's said anything too bad yet. No puke emojis, which seems like a good sign. They know Todd has a gay brother because he did a video for the team's socials last year on Pride Night, so maybe they're keeping the worst of it off to the side where he can't see it.
He thinks about calling Tyler, and then wonders if that's offensive, to be like, "Hey, something gay happened, and so I thought I should call you." Nikki left the house early to take the kids to gymnastics, or he'd ask her what she thinks he should do.
Tyler never made it to the league, but things still worked out okay. He didn't get drafted before he aged out, and decided that he'd rather just finish school and move on with his life than go the crapshoot route of being a UFA or playing overseas. He lives in Boston with his husband -- not the guy he wanted to bring home that time at Christmas, that guy was a jerk -- and has a job in finance that Todd doesn't really understand.
Before he can decide whether to call his brother, Tyler actually calls him.
"Hey bro, holy shit," Tyler says as soon as the call picks up. "Have you seen the video?"
"Of Hollander and Rozanov? Yeah. Pretty crazy." Todd shifts his phone into the crook of his shoulder, turning away from the bar so he can open the refrigerator.
"You used to play with Hollander in Montreal, right?"
"Yeah." Todd starts taking a couple of things out of the fridge for breakfast. The team dietitian turned him on to overnight oats last season, and they're actually pretty good. "To be honest, I'm kind of confused about Hollander."
Tyler snorts. "Why, because he's gay and he's good at hockey?"
"No, c'mon, fuck off. I'm confused because I always thought that he wasn't cool with gay people."
"Uh, why did you think that?" Tyler asks, in that twerpy way that means he's about to remind him that he went to college, and Todd gets head injuries for a living.
"Because of you, asshole!" Todd sputters out, because he's spent seven years holding a low-key grudge against the best player in the league on Tyler's behalf, and he thinks he deserves a little credit. "One time, I told him about how it was a whole thing when you came out to Mom, and he was really weird about it. He was all like, 'You never know, he might still meet the right girl.'"
And for some reason Todd doesn't understand, this makes Tyler laugh. "Yeah," Tyler says. "So, I don't think that was actually about me."
Owen Levesque
Owen grew up in Ft. Meyers, but his parents moved the family down from New Hampshire before he was born, so it made sense that they put him in mites when he was five. Other guys in the league make fun of him sometimes, for being a Florida boy who grew up on skates, but the ice is the same everywhere, and Owen has always been a natural on the ice.
He wasn't exactly thrilled when he got drafted by Ottawa, for a couple of different reasons. Mainly because the Centaurs sucked, but also, Ottawa is really fucking far from home. And, he'd been hoping to avoid ending up on a Canadian team, because everyone knows that Canada is one big libtard magnet. It was a near thing that Kelseigh agreed to make the move with him, and he had to put a ring on her finger first.
Owen thought his luck was changing when the Centaurs somehow managed to get Rozanov, but one superstar didn't turn around a legendarily shitty team overnight. And Rozanov was different from the stories Owen used to hear about him. Quiet a lot of the time. Didn't go out much.
And also, Rozanov is fucking gay, apparently. What the fuck.
Owen finds out about the FanMail video from his buddy Chadbourne. He plays for Detroit, but sometimes they train together when they both go home to Florida during the off-season.
Chadbourne: 🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮
Chadbourne: Better find a way to get off that team dude
Chadbourne: But I guess if Hollander and Rozanov are fucking it might not be safe anywhere. They're gonna start calling us the National Homo League
Owen tosses his phone aside on the couch and just kind of stares into space for a while, because seriously, what the fuck. He sits there like that until Kelseigh walks through the living room on her way to the kitchen, still wearing her fuzzy purple bathrobe.
"Hey babe," she says, pushing her hair out of her face. He knows she's got a lot going on, with the kids and everything, but he does wish she'd go back to making a little more of an effort. That bathrobe covers her up from chin to ankles, and it reminds him of his mother.
"Hey." He picks up his phone and waves it vaguely in her direction. "Did you see this--"
"Yeah," she says. "The girls are all talking about it." Her nose scrunches up like she's caught a whiff of dog shit. She doesn't really get along with the other WAGs.
Kelseigh goes into the kitchen to start the kids' breakfast, and Owen dooms himself to another scroll through the team chat. The Centaurs are in full crisis mode, but he and the rest of his teammates seem to have a different understanding of what exactly the crisis is here.
Boodram: Okay, so we still haven't heard from Roz
Boodram: Anyone had any luck getting in touch with one of the Montreal guys to see if they've talked to Hollander?
Hayes: I tried Boiziau again but he's still not picking up
LaPointe: I have Smithy's number, we're in a chat with some guys from our draft year. I texted him but I haven't heard back yet
Dillon: This is so embarrassing dude. Every guy I've ever been on a team with in my entire life is texting me to find out what's going on and we don't know shit
Dillon: Like I haven't talked to Cal Brunson since we played together in Kitchener and he's already hit me up six times this morning
Boyle: Isn't Brunson out in LA? How is he even awake yet?
Holmberg: Oh hey I played juniors with Max Florentino, I could text him
Boodram: Isn't Florentino on the Admirals?
Holmberg: Yeah, so he could ask Hunter if he knows what's up
Boyle: Bergy do you think all the gay players have a secret group chat 🤔🤔🤔
Holmberg: I don't know!
Holmberg: Where's Barrett, I bet he knows
Young: Probably busy with the secret gay players group chat
Boyle: Dude, have you looked at Twitter? He's probably busy giving his boyfriend CPR
Owen looks away from the chat again in disgust. In retrospect, he should have seen this coming. Rozanov cheered the loudest when Barrett started sucking face with the social media guy, right in front of the whole team. At the time, Owen had hung back and shot his eyes up at the ceiling, waiting for someone else to be the first one to tell him to get that fag shit out of the fucking locker room.
But none of the other guys said what he was thinking, and it's starting to dawn on him that none of them ever will. He has somehow managed to get stuck on a team with the world's biggest group of woke-ass idiots. Apparently, they don't see the problem with sharing a locker room with a guy who doesn't just want to fuck other guys, but a guy who actively wants to fuck other players.
And then there's the fucking Hollander of it all. Why a guy who plays like that would want to be known as a double diversity hire, Owen will never understand. He probably sucks Rozanov's dick while Rozanov tells him the secret to beating the Centaurs' penalty kill. That seems like the kind of thing that would get a guy like Hollander going. Not that Owen is thinking about any of that shit.
He stews in his head for a little bit and then checks the group chat again. The situation has not improved, at least not from Owen's perspective.
Dykstra: Okay I got an update. I told Caitlin that we were trying to get in touch with one of the Montreal guys, and she did a charity fashion show thing with Johanson's wife last year, so she called her
Boyle: Hell yeah, WAG network FTW
Dykstra: Johanson's wife says that Montreal knew about Hollander but they didn't have a clue about him and Roz. Nobody's heard anything from either Hollander or Pike. Wife made Johanson let her look at the Voyageurs group chat and uh … the vibe is not great
Boodram: I mean we know that team is full of assholes
Boodram: Look, I think at this point we just have to wait to hear from Roz. I'm sure he'll check in as soon as he can
Wyatt: We love you Ilya!
Young: 🏳️🌈🏒🔥 🏳️🌈🏒🔥
LaPointe: Bro, what does that even mean?
Young: It means that gay players are fire!
Boodram: I'm sure he'll appreciate that man
Owen tosses his phone aside again. He's played with Bood longer than any of the rest of them, and he always seemed like a normal guy. Needs to take the hint that some people just don't like ethnic food, but other than that, Owen has never had a problem with him.
He slumps down further into the couch, even though he knows he should get up and get in a workout or something. He needs to burn off the "ate some bad egg salad" feeling that's been churning his guts since he started watching that moron Hayden Pike try to wish some stupid fucking fan a happy birthday.
What he really wants to do is tell the other guys that they're the laughingstock of the entire NHL right now, but he knows there's no point. One thing about Owen is that he knows how to go along to get along. He needs to keep his mouth shut and hope somebody steps in to do the right thing. Because it seems pretty fucking straightforward that the two of them should be thrown out of the league.
Otherwise, well, Owen will be a free agent at the end of next season. Kelseigh would love it if he could get signed by an American team, especially now that the kids are all in school. It pisses him off, though. He's put in all these years playing for this shit franchise, and now Ottawa is finally getting good. It doesn't seem fair for him to be the one who might have to leave.
Max Florentino
One of Max's teammates saw the FanMail video right as the Admirals were boarding their flight to Tampa, and nobody's talked about anything else ever since. Guys are up on their knees hanging over the seatbacks and leaning forward in the aisles. Max is sitting across from Vaughan and Hunter, which is how he notices that the cap kind of looks like he's going to puke. Which is a little weird, because Max has never seen him get sick on a flight before, and also, the plane hasn't even pulled away from the gate yet.
"You okay, Cap?" Max asks, nodding at Hunter. "You look like you need a barf bag."
Hunter seems to take a few seconds to realize that Max is even talking to him. "Uh, no thanks, Tino," he says. "I'm fine." He doesn't really look fine, though. His forehead is all sweaty.
"I'm calling it right now," Breezy says from where he's leaning over a seat a couple of rows back. "It's gonna turn out to be one of those fake viral videos that's actually an ad for something."
Looking over at Breezy, Woody shakes his head. "Dude, there's no fucking way," he says. "What the hell could that possibly be an ad for?"
At that point, the guys all start talking over each other, and Max can't even follow who's saying what.
"So you think it's real?"
"Oh, I'm not saying that. I just don't think it's an ad."
"I think it's fake. I saw this whole thing on YouTube, they can do crazy stuff with green screen now."
"Dude, are you stupid? You think they were making out somewhere else, and they used green screen to make it look like they were at Hayden Pike's house?"
"Okay, no, but--"
Max leans forward into the aisle. "Cap, do you think it's real?"
Heller pops back up over the seat in front of Max, rattling a can of Zyn. "Yeah," he says. "Did they, like, give you a heads up first?"
Hunter wipes his hand down his face in a way that's not exactly helping his case that he's not about to start blowing chunks everywhere. "Look," he says. "I have no idea. There's not a secret gay player group chat."
Max turns to look at Ivakin, who's hunched over in the seat next to him. He's been glued to his phone since they sat down. "Hey man, you must talk to Rozanov sometimes, right?"
Ivakin's head shoots up, and he slaps his phone down on his thigh. "What do you mean?" he says, his accent sounding thicker than normal. "You think we all know each other?"
Max holds his hands up in surrender. "Right, okay," he says. "Got it. Nobody knows anybody. Jeez."
Standing up halfway out of his seat, Vaughan gets everyone's attention by letting out a sharp whistle. "Hey guys, that's enough. Everyone sit down and buckle up," he says. "The plane's gonna take off soon."
Max downloaded Justice League to watch on the flight, but he's not sure he can concentrate on a movie right now. Everything that's happened this morning is nuts, and there's part of it that reminds him that he's a long way from northeast Alberta.
Because, the thing about Max is that he grew up in Cold Lake, playing pond hockey against guys whose dads all worked at the Air Force base. He had a junior high English teacher who talked with his hands a lot, but as far as he knows for sure, Scott Hunter was the first gay person he ever met in real life.
It hasn't been like he worried it would be. Hunter is just like any other guy in the showers. He doesn't play Lady Gaga or whatever when it's his turn with the aux in the locker room. He's a nice dude and a good captain. He's the only person who's ever been able to show Max the right grip to fix his weak slapshot, which has been a problem since he played midget.
By now, Max has even met the husband a couple of times at team events. He's a lot more like what Max expected from a gay guy based on TV. He never really knows what to talk to him about, exactly, but that's more because he's really smart and his job involves, like … old paintings or something.
The plane starts to pick up speed on the runway, and across the aisle, Hunter and Vaughan are having a hushed conversation. Max can only pick up bits and pieces of what they're saying over the roar of the engines.
"--was my worst fucking nightmare."
"Have you talked to--"
"--giving a lecture this morning."
"Did you know about--"
"--guess Kip's right about my broken gaydar."
"Look, it's gonna be--"
"--don't understand, it's going to be so much worse for them. It's not gonna be like it was for me."
At that point, Max decides he should stop eavesdropping and slips on his headphones. But, he's pretty sure that Hunter is just saying what everyone is already thinking. Two players in the league, that's a little different than Hunter and his guy. It's not like either Hollander or Rozanov is going to sit in the stands during a game with the rest of the WAGs. Max has learned enough by now to know that he shouldn't really think this, but he does sort of believe that even in a relationship between two guys, someone has to be the girl.
He scrolled through Twitter a little bit before he put his phone on airplane mode, and the fans are already saying some pretty crazy stuff. It's hard to believe that those two would ever, like, throw a game for each other. But before this morning, he never in a million years would have believed what he saw in that video. There's a lot to figure out there. He slumps back in his seat and closes his eyes, glad that none of it is his problem to fix.
Jeremy Martin
When Jeremy sees Hayden Pike's FanMail video, the first thing that he thinks is that he shouldn't be watching it on something as small as his phone screen. If one video is going to change Jeremy's entire life, he should be seeing it in IMAX or on a Jumbotron. A ten-story billboard in the middle of Times Square.
Because of the time difference, the video has already exploded by the time Jeremy wakes up at home in LA just after six o'clock. Even this early, there's already guys messaging about it in the Monarchs' group chat.
Laughlin: Brunny why the fuck were you texting about this at 3:30 in the fucking morning
Brunson: Eat shit man I was up with the baby
Markstrom: Dude why the hell are you awake right now then
Brunson: I'm trying to let Gina get some sleep and I swear to god this kid wakes up every 90 minutes on the fucking dot
Laughlin: Lebedev did you know about this? I thought you said it was like illegal for Russians to be gay
Markstrom: I got Hollander's number when we played together a couple years ago at All-Stars, should I text him?
Brunson: Yeah man I'm sure he doesn't have anything else going on right now
Brunson: 😂 😂 😂
Taffe: Okay so at this point I think we've gotta ask if being gay makes you better at hockey
Jeremy lies back down in bed, propping his phone up on his sternum. He was going to get up and go for a run, but there's no way that's happening now. With the way his mind is racing, he'd probably run straight into traffic. He scrolls up through the group chat to make sure, but the one name he's looking for hasn't appeared yet this morning. Not that Jeremy can blame him, he doesn't have a clue what to say either.
Hey guys while we're on the topic I've been meaning to tell you that I'm gay. Sorry, I don't know if it makes you better at hockey.
Jeremy tosses his phone aside because he's not going to say any of that.
It would probably be fine. None of the Monarchs throw around extra slurs when they play the Admirals, and everyone was surprised but pretty chill when Barrett came out last month. But Jeremy isn't like Hunter, or the handful of other guys who blipped on the radar after him. He's not like Barrett, and not just because he's never tried to blend in by acting like a homophobic prick. He has a whole other thing going on, because he's in love with his fucking teammate.
Jeremy signed with LA three seasons ago, and he's been hooking up with Leo Svensson on-and-off for that long, minus the time between the start of Jeremy's first season on the team and the tail end of their second road trip. The first time he stayed over at Leo's house, when it became clear that this was going to be a thing and not just a series of freak dick sucking accidents, they had a conversation.
"Do the other guys know about you?" Jeremy asked. They were sprawled out in Leo's bed in a way that felt weirdly intimate. At that point in his life, Jeremy was a lot more familiar with impersonal hookups that didn't make it past the living room.
Leo shook his head. "Maybe they suspect, but I have not said anything."
"I heard that after Hunter, some guys are telling their teams," Jeremy offered. "Even if they don't want to be, like, out-out."
"Yes, I heard something like that happened in Montreal." Leo paused for a moment. "If you want to tell the rest of the team, we can't do this again. They would figure it out, and--"
"Right. Yeah." Because Jeremy had heard the same rumor coming out of Montreal. But that was one guy -- one generationally talented guy, holy shit -- and two players together, that would be something different. It was hard to imagine anyone being okay with that. "Well, I just got here, so it'd be kind of weird for me to tell them right away. So if you want, we can--"
"Yes," Leo said, rolling over to drape himself on top of Jeremy. "I want."
Now almost three years later, Jeremy and Leo are still tangled up together, like two snakes eating each other's tails. Neither of them can come out to the team because the other guys will figure out that they're hooking up. And since they can't ever manage to stop hooking up, neither of them can come out.
Part of the problem is that Jeremy actually wants to come out, and Leo doesn't really seem to care either way. He says part of it is a cultural thing, that Swedish people don't make a big production about announcing that they're gay the way people do in North America.
So, what happens is that every couple of months, they're showering together in a hotel room in Vancouver, or grilling kebabs on Jeremy's back deck, or stretched out on Leo's couch, rubbing arnica gel on each other's bruises, and Leo says, "We need to stop. You're not going to be happy unless you can come out."
And Jeremy says, "I'm happy when I'm with you."
And then Leo says, "Sure, but you could be happy with someone else. After you come out, you can start dating that physio who makes eyes at you when you go in to get treatment you don't need for your knee."
Then they argue, and after that they avoid each other for a couple of weeks or a couple months, until they can't stand it anymore. What's kind of ironic is, at this point, Jeremy is pretty sure that how they feel about each other gets ten times more obvious during the times when they're broken up.
And it's not like Jeremy is a monk when he and Leo are apart. The average LA sports fan would recognize a USC football player before being able to pick someone who plays in the NHL out of a lineup, so it's pretty safe for him to use the apps, or even go out and pick up if he feels like it.
But the longer they do this, the harder it gets to imagine ever breaking things off for good and finding somebody else. When they first met, Leo was an extremely hot and very convenient guy with a big dick. Now Jeremy knows that he also has a million pictures of his sister's one-eyed cat saved on his phone, and wears wool socks year round because his feet are always cold, and insists that he'll die without Kan Jang when he's sick.
Two months ago, over the All-Star break, Jeremy and Leo rented an Airbnb in Joshua Tree, fucked on every flat surface in the house, and racked up an extra $600 in cleaning fees. On the drive back, Leo said, "When we get home, we need to stop."
Even then, Jeremy knew that it wasn't forever, because it's never forever between the two of them. But as of right now, that was the last time they hooked up or talked like they were anything other than teammates or texted anywhere outside of the group chat.
Jeremy sits up, because if he's not going for a run, he should really get out of bed and eat something. He's going to get up, reheat some egg bites, and stop thinking about Leo. The one problem is that now he can't stop thinking about his last conversation with Ilya Rozanov.
The Monarchs lost a tight game in Ottawa last year, back when it was still pretty fucking embarrassing to lose to Ottawa. But they had an off-day before they flew out again, so they ended up at the same bar as a bunch of the guys on the Centaurs later that night. It was during one of the times when Jeremy and Leo were trying to stay away from each other, so Jeremy spent the night pounding back gin and tonics and pretending to listen to Brunson talk about his wife's morning sickness.
He was standing at the bar trying to decide whether he should get another drink or go back to the hotel when Rozanov saddled up next to him and clapped him on the shoulder. "Don't worry, Martin," Rozanov said. "It will all work out."
Jeremy gave him a confused look. "With the team? I mean, yeah, it's tough with Jonesy and Zaitsev both on IR, but Jonesy's gonna be back in a couple weeks, and--"
Rozanov shook his head, "Mmm, no. Your team is not getting past Anaheim this year. But the rest of it, that will all work out." He nodded over to where Leo was playing darts with a couple of the other guys, and then he looked back at Jeremy and fucking winked. Before Jeremy could get himself together enough to pretend that he didn't know what Rozanov was talking about, he was gone.
Fucking Rozanov. He could have just said, "By the way, I've been dicking down Shane Hollander, so probably no one will care if you're daydreaming about marrying your linemate." Or maybe Rozanov is the one getting dicked down by Hollander? Honestly, Jeremy can kind of see it going either way.
He's still sitting on the edge of the bed when his phone starts ringing. He picks it up on autopilot, like his body has been waiting for this call to come, even though he's been trying to banish the possibility from his mind. When he picks up, before he can say anything, almost before he even gets the phone up to his ear, Leo says, "I'll be there in 10."