Chapter Text
The Ottawa Centaurs’ locker room hums with its usual pre-skate din, on the subdued side in deference to the early morning and the approaching torture. Duffles slouch. Tired voices rise and fall. Tape stutters. It’s a comfort, Wyatt thinks, before they get their asses handed to them for the next two hours. Like putting a cow in one of those compressor machines to make it feel safe before it’s slaughtered. Wyatt’s the cow in this metaphor. They’re all cows. Bag skates suck, probably more than a captive bolt pistol. At least that one is fast. He’s not totally comfortable with where his brain is taking this.
But the point is it’s nice. Familiar.
Until it’s not.
The door opens and bangs shut, and then the unmistakable voice of their captain is calling over the chatter, “You are all invited to my wedding this summer.”
The room goes absolutely silent.
One of the rookies fumbles a water bottle.
Wyatt is frozen in his stall, helpless but to stare at Ilya Rozanov’s smug expression. He did this on purpose, Wyatt knows, don’t tell him he’s crazy.
Roz lets them gape. He’s too self-satisfied. Disrespectfully self-satisfied. He hikes his duffle up his shoulder and saunters over to his stall like he’s not weaving around the paralyzed forms of his teammates. Like he didn’t paralyze them.
Wyatt squints at him. He might be able to see through his brain with x-ray vision, but he hardly needs to. Roz is glowing, which is not a word he’s ever used to describe another man before, but if the shoe fits. Wyatt thinks he might start whistling a jaunty tune in the next few seconds. Like fucking Snow White. They should tell building management to look out for squirrels and other woodland critters in the halls. Don’t be alarmed, Rozanov’s just accessed his Disney princess powers. Yeah, no, it’s chill.
Roz unzips his bag and pulls out a towel and his practice gear, and his motions echo like they’re in an empty racquet ball court.
From across the room, Bood clears his throat or chokes on air. “You’re- um. You’re getting married?”
Roz has the audacity to look up like he’s pleasantly startled by the question. “Yes. Is what I said.”
“This summer.”
“Yes.”
“To another person.”
“Yes, your mother is lucky woman, Bood.”
Silence again.
Then the room explodes.
“Since when are you engaged?”
“Why have we never met-“
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“You’re not even my mom’s type!”
“Is this a prank?”
From where he’d flinched back into the protective cradle of his stall, Wyatt spots the evil little grin that curls on Rozanov’s face as he folds a pair of sweatpants, the bastard. Roz doesn’t fold clothes, he chucks them around like any self-respecting mid-twenties white man. He’s doing this on fucking purpose.
Finally, when he’s capped out how much shock he can absorb (not a Disney princess, a super villain, Wyatt corrects. He powers up on other people’s anxiety. He’s using them as batteries.), Roz magnanimously turns to the locker room with his hands raised in a placating gesture like he’s Baptist preacher.
“Quiet, please. Wow, so many questions, so much interest. I know you are all obsessed with me but one at a time, please. Dykstra, go.”
Dykstra only manages to choke out an eloquent, “What?”
“Yes. Bood, go.”
“How long have you been engaged?” Bood demands, hands on his hips in what Wyatt thinks is, in fact, an unfortunate impression of his mother.
Roz flips his phone over and studies the screen. “Eleven hours. Haas, go.”
Luca drops his glove and scrambles for a question. “Uh- um, you have been in this relationship how long?”
“Ten years-“
“Fucking what?”
“What the fuck-“
“How have you kept this a secret-“
“Alright, alright,” Rozanov calls, but then Lenny interrupts him, “How the hell did you trick some poor girl into accepting a proposal from you?”
Roz puts on a terrible approximation of innocent befuddlement. “Who said I propose?”
For the third time, the locker room goes silent, which Roz takes as permission to load them up with more information like they’re not all about to keel over with recently developed heart conditions. (Who would the team meds save first if they all had heart attacks at the same time? Shit, they probably have favorites. Where does Wyatt fall on that ranking? He hopes it’s top half. Marissa seems to like him well enough. Maybe she’d take pity on the team and save a goalie, then he’s narrowed his competition to one of three. He can take those odds.)
Rozanov is saying, “Don’t worry, wedding will be in July, after we win the cup and everybody is sober again. So nobody will have excuses. No vacations, no having babies. This is most important. RSVP. Da?”
He gets a smattering of shell-shocked yeah’s and for sure’s because when their captain tells them to do something, they fucking do it. He’s been training them for this moment. Then he dropped a veritable bomb on them and used their incoherence to extract the most efficient round of commitments any group of poorly socialized jocks has ever put up. Wyatt is onto him.
The locker room grinds back into an unconvincing performance of normalcy. But then, of course, of fucking course, Rozanov turns to the corner where Shane Hollander is taping his stick and flying under the radar like the master he is. Wyatt is only half surprised that Hollzy has given no visible reaction; it takes more than a surprise wedding invite to knock him out of his Hockey All the Time mode. But Rozanov zeroes in on him like a homing beacon. He sidles over—sidles, he fucking sidles, like he’s Marlene fucking Dietrich—and props himself on the stalls to loom over Hollander. To his credit, Hollzy doesn’t even look away from his tape until Rozanov speaks.
“You will be at wedding, yes Hollander?”
Wyatt knows, after about five months of playing and sharing a locker room and surviving airports with Shane Hollander, that he’s got a secret knack for being a bit of a bitch when he wants to. Wyatt loves it. It’s his favorite thing that he gets to know about Shane Hollander that most other people don’t, closely followed by his skincare routine. So when Hollzy flicks his eyes up at Rozanov and barely even acknowledges his posturing, Wyatt knows Roz is about to get an answer he won't like.
“I don’t know,” Hollander says mildly. “I’ll have to check my calendar.”
Roz scoffs. “Ugh, your calendar. So boring, Hollander. Is July 15th. You will be there.”
“Like I said,” Hollzy shrugs. “I’ll have to check. I might already have plans.”
Rozanov leans in just a tad, and Wyatt, for some reason, is put in mind of those shows on Animal Planet where the cheetah sinks low on its haunches hidden in the tall savannah grass, and there’s a gazelle at the watering hole with its head on a swivel like it knows something is up and is waiting for it to happen, and Wyatt is just the suburban human watching it all go down from a Lay-Z-Boy 5000 kilometers away.
“What is more important than your captain’s wedding, hm?” Rozanov purrs in that way he does sometimes when he’s in the process of getting under Hollander’s skin and really enjoying it. “You must be there. I will be so sad if you are not. Will have to cancel the whole thing.”
Hollander leans back with his arms crossed over his stick. “Wow, you’d cancel your own wedding if I couldn’t make it? Didn’t know you cared so much.”
“Will not be real Canadian wedding if Shane Hollander is not there. They will not give me citizenship.”
“Ah,” Shane nods. “Citizenship.”
Then the two of them just watch each other with that strange intensity, balanced on the edge of playful and needling, and Wyatt takes the opportunity to slide out from his stall and escape the locker room to breathe the sweet, fresh air of the hallway where he doesn’t feel like he’s about to become a casualty of something he so does not understand.
*
It’s cool that Roz is getting married. It is.
What’s not cool is that nobody knew he was engaged. Or that he was seeing someone. Or even thinking about seeing someone, judging by the number of people he’s brought home from bars in the past two years, which by the way is a nice round zero.
It’s also not cool that he’s on cloud nine the whole practice while everyone else gets the shit kicked out of them on top of being hit over the head with his little piece of news this morning. Hollander’s the only one unaffected; he and Rozanov race each other, always a dangerous millimeter between the end of one skate and the beginning of the next. They weave around and make impossible steals, then turn on a dime to send a blind pass across the ice that nevertheless finds its mark and, a second later, the goal. In other words, business as usual.
Bood and Dykstra share a look between them where they’re slumped over the bench, curling possessively around their water bottles like Roz might come try to take them and announce another round of bag skates. Since Hollzy joined the team at the beginning of the season, he and Roz clicked in a way that is frankly concerning to goalies, d-men, and coaches the league over, like they can read each other’s minds. There’s a silent agreement among the team that their star centers are allowed to play around a little and the rest of them get to use that time to scrape their sorry asses off the ice and catch their breath. The rookies get extra time to gape cause it’s ostensibly a good learning opportunity to watch the finest hockey they’ll ever see up close.
Wyatt watches them from the posts, heart still hammering. There’s a word for how they interact. Something sciencey. Lisa would know. It maybe starts with an S? He’s getting S vibes.
He still hasn’t figured it out by the end of practice, and he’s disrupted from his efforts when Rozanov calls for him, Barrett, and Bood to step out of the locker room with him.
“So,” Roz starts, clapping his hands together once and looking between the sweaty, gormless faces of his teammates. “You are going to help me plan wedding, yes?”
He’s met with silence.
Barrett is the first to collect himself. “Us?”
Roz raises an eyebrow like this should be obvious. When it becomes clear he’s not going to enlighten them further, Barrett asks, “Why us?”
Well, that’s a little rude.
“Speak for yourself,” Wyatt says, folding his arms, “I know why I’m here.”
“Because you have smart wife and lesbian sister and I know they did not let you have a bad wedding.”
Wyatt whips his head around to Roz. “What? No. I mean, yes, but is that seriously why I’m here?”
“Why do you think?”
“Because I’m your best friend!”
“Mm, no, that is Svetlana,” Roz says without even considering it. And okay, sure. Childhood friend. From Russia. Probably had sex on several occasions. Fine, Wyatt can take a graceful second place to that.
“Best friend in Canada,” he corrects.
But Roz shakes his head. “Best Canadian friend is Nastya.”
“Who the fuck is Nastya?”
Roz shrugs like this isn’t ruining Wyatt’s life. “She owns Russian bakery by the canal. Very nice. We play pickleball on off days.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Wyatt exclaims while Bood says, “Why the fuck do you play a sport on the only days you don’t have to play a sport?”
“Ignoring that,” Barrett interrupts, “How did I somehow make the cut for wedding entourage?”
“You are dating Harris,” Roz says simply. “I know he has taught you things about taste and, what is the word- aesthetics.”
Barrett stares at him. “Sure,” he finally concedes. “But why not just ask him?”
“He will be helping my fiancé with other wedding stuff,” Roz waves him off.
“Wait, Harris knows who you’re marrying?”
Roz shrugs again. “Possibly. I don’t know.”
While Wyatt and Barrett attempt to sort through that confounding response, Bood sighs and shoves his hands in his pockets.
“So Hazy and Barrett are here to channel their much better halves,”—he’s met with a “Hey” and a “That’s fair” —“I suppose Cassie has some critical knowledge that you need to pull off this wedding, Roz?”
Roz meets Bood’s eyes dead on and drops his hands on his shoulders. “No, Bood,” he says gravely. “I must handle food, and you make best food I have ever eaten. You must help me choose caterer. You are the only one I trust. I need my A.”
Bood straightens with the sudden weight of responsibility. “Roz,” he chokes out, “I’m honored, man.”
A moment of true emotion passes between them. Wyatt and Barrett shift in place and trade a Do they know we’re still here? look.
Roz claps Bood’s shoulders once, his mischievous grin returning full force. “Great,” he says. “Svetlana will be best man. You will all be getting many calls from her, and you must answer because if you don’t she will fly up from Boston and find you.”
Wyatt makes a mental note to warn Lisa that he’ll be taking urgent calls from an unknown number with a scary Russian woman on the other line for the foreseeable future.
Before any of them can protest, the locker room door opens and Hollander wanders over to join them with two duffle bags. Roz’s attention immediately snaps to him.
“Hey,” Hollander says, then to Rozanov, “You about ready?”
“Yes, avengers have been assembled,” Roz responds. Wyatt thinks he might weep tears of holy awe at this basic but not inaccurate reference; Roz sends him a wink as he pushes past like he fucking knows.
“Where are you guys going?” Bood asks, turning to watch them.
Roz throws an obnoxious arm across Hollzy’s shoulders. “We have dinner plans tonight with Mr. and Mrs. Hollander. Classy place. Very good dessert, very okay drinks.”
Hollander nudges an elbow into Roz’s ribs but does nothing to dislodge his arm. “You suggested it.”
Roz shrugs. “There is a dog on the sign.”
“That’s why you picked it?”
Roz grins and steers them away. “No, it has very good dessert. Do you even listen to me, Hollander?”
Wyatt, Bood, and Barrett watch them retreat down the hall, bickering the whole time.
“Sooo, Roz gets dinner with Hollzy’s parents now?” Bood folds his arms.
“Apparently,” Troy mumbles.
“Charity stuff?”
“Probably.”
“Symbiotic,” Wyatt blurts.
Troy and Bood stare at him.
That’s the word. “They’re symbiotic,” he explains.
Bood’s brow furrows. “Okay, buddy.” A buzzing noise comes from the pocket of his shorts. Bood fumbles his phone out and his brow furrows further. “617? What’s 617?”
“Boston area code,” Wyatt supplies.
“How the hell do you know that?” Bood mutters and answers the phone. “Hello? Who is- Oh. Yeah, this is- Okay. Sure. I mean, yes ma’am. He did. Um, no. I- Yes. Okay. This weekend?”
“Best man?” Troy guesses.
“Bossman,” Wyatt corrects.
Bood gives them both a glare and holds his free hand up to his other ear. “Um, yes ma’am. Uh-huh. Let me find a pen and paper real quick.” He turns and pushes back into the locker room.
Troy goes back to staring down the hall at where Roz and Hollzy disappeared around the corner, like the cinderblock walls might give up some secret.
Wyatt thinks about Boston’s historic zoning districts.
*
Dispatches from an Ottawa Centaurs group chat:
THE A TEAM
Hannibal (Bood): I have received no fewer than six calls from Ms. Svetlana Vetrova in the past 72 hours.
Murdoch (Hayes): our fearless leader
Faceman (Barrett): Hold the line
Hannibal (Bood): This is serious. Cassie’s gonna think I’m having an affair.
Faceman (Barrett): Dude if this is what your affair looks like you kinda suck at it
Hannibal (Bood): Real talk why am I the one fending this woman off? Roz conscripted all of us.
Murdoch (Hayes): I think the nature of our recruitment would be better described as “impressment”
Faceman (Barrett): You’re Hannibal Bood
Hannibal (Bood): Wyatt’s outdated cable tv analogies can’t be what puts me in Svetlana’s line of fire
Faceman (Barrett): Ok but you’re still the A
Murdoch (Hayes): the A Team is an all timer
yeah see? A
Hannibal (Bood): This is not in my job description.
Faceman (Barrett): Wyatt who is Svetlana in the A Team analogy??
Murdoch (Hayes): military police
Faceman (Barrett): Oh yeah for real
Hannibal (Bood): Guys. Do you realize how much fucking work it is to plan a wedding?
Murdoch (Hayes): yes
Faceman (Barrett): No
Hannibal (Bood): In six months??? Roz is insane but his best man is even more insane for telling him this is possible
Murdoch (Hayes): bossman
Faceman (Barrett): Bossma'am
Hannibal (Bood): I have a fucking notebook for what needs to get done.
The list is four pages
That’s just for February
Faceman (Barrett): Ok that’s insane
What do we know about planning weddings again??
Murdoch (Hayes): I mean
Faceman (Barrett): It should be Lisa Cassie and Harris in a group chat right?
That would be way more efficient
Hannibal (Bood): Already exists dude
Murdoch (Hayes): my sister’s in it too
Faceman (Barrett): Oh
Hannibal (Bood): Can we go back to my problem?
Murdoch (Hayes): your four page problem?
Hannibal (Bood): Yeah that one
Faceman (Barrett): God it’s like you’ve never been A before
Hannibal (Bood): Fuck you.
Faceman (Barrett): Dude
First rule of leadership
What does Roz do when he’s got too much to do and doesn’t want to do it?
Murdoch (Hayes): 👀
Hannibal (Bood): Oh
Delegate
Faceman (Barrett): Fucking delegate
Hannibal (Bood): We’re gonna need reinforcements.
Murdoch (Hayes): 👀