#212

[ascryaday]

🦓﹕day 212﹕XYZ

✩ — orca﹕robin﹕splash ✩ — tiger﹕noxtide﹕capsule ✩ — shadow eyes﹕faded

[delusionalbraindeadrpf]

I thought about the hockey gorls (Panecklein) for too long and now me and a 5000 word outline (which is only half-finished) are staring at each other waiting for the other to blink. Every single chapter has the normal outline, then also my notes on what the non-POV character is doing/thinking, and then a SEPARATE note specifically about the nsfw nature of the chapter. And again. I’ve only outline 2015 to 2019. This fic is supposed to go until 2026. It is going to be me that blinks first, I fear

[ohgodshutit]

screenshots of the day review

[bugmerit]

scizor stamps

[roisanscouronnesstuff]

[glasgowbridgetfc]

Sara Underwood

[delusionalbraindeadrpf]

So like. This is my Panecklein headcanon timeline

They first meet in fall of 2014 at the U of M. Kelly already knows who Lee is because she was on the team that won the ncaa tournament in 2013, and then was the youngest Olympian for team usa women’s hockey in Sochi and took home silver, and while she admires her hockey ability that’s it. Lee is vaguely aware of who Kelly is just bc it was kinda notable that this incredible, incredible soccer player decided to go with hockey for college, even if she is also incredible at hockey.

That all being said. Technically, they had met once before, when they played each other in high school. Roseville and Benilde St. Margaret’s don’t play each other OFTEN but they do *sometimes* although neither remembers this until much later.

Anyway, they meet and are on the team together; Lee is an alternate captain and Kelly is this rookie who’s topping lists, leading in rookie point production, blazing trails to the ncaa championship. And yes they’re friends but the chemistry is palpable. If you’ve ever experienced the trauma that is a female friendship that absolutely has homoerotic undertones, that’s the vibe. In my RPFverse, Kelly knows she’s gay. Lee is in denial. But…I mean…everyone experiments in college, right? And they’re at this party and one thing leads to another and they kiss and…well. They both agree that it’s no big deal, friends kiss each other all the time. It doesn’t have to mean anything. (Kelly is dying inside because she knows that’s not true for her, but Lee needs it to be true, so she agrees.) and then they win their next game in just a blowout, they absolutely dominate, and hockey players are so superstitious, and their captain tells them to repeat everything they did before that game to capture that lightning in a bottle, so….so.

It’s for hockey. Obviously. It doesn’t mean anything if it’s for hockey. And obviously it doesn’t work every time, so they have to up the antee each time it doesn’t work and before they know it, they’re hooking up regularly, and it’s all for hockey; Lee swears, it’s because they play better hockey that way, and sure it’s fun, but it doesn’t mean anything because it’s just college. And Kelly wants it. She wants her. And honestly, it’s not that big of a deal, plenty of people have friends with benefits…she can be cool with this. And if Lee says it doesn’t even have to be gay, then sure. Maybe that’s true for Lee. Kelly knows it’s not true for her, but it doesn’t have to be the same.

And they win the NCAA tournament, don’t they? So clearly it’s working. So…so they continue. Lee is co-captain this year, and they’re hooking up so regularly and only with each other it might as well be a relationship in all but name, and they’re both playing the best hockey of their fucking lives; Lee has a +50 season, Kelly is having a career high season, they win the NCAA back to back and they’re fucking glowing. And…well, they’re both treating each other like girlfriends in all but name. Because…well Kelly doesn’t want to say it out loud, because that would be gay. Which would scare off Lee, maybe. And ofc, Lee isn’t going to say it. And they talk just as much in the off season it’s perfect. They end up getting an apartment together off campus, things are genuinely blissful and then-

Well. Then Lee gets a boyfriend. And that’s…well. Kelly knows that they weren’t anything, technically. She knows that, whatever it was they had was unlabeled at best, and purely friends with benefits at worst, but they had spent the entire fucking year in a relationship and then Lee introduced her to this man and expected her to be excited and…well, what the fuck. And Lee is her captain and her friend, (and she’s in love) so it’s gonna have to be just hockey. And she fucking throws herself into it being just hockey, and she has her best season ever, she’s a finalist for the patty kaz for crying out loud. And then Lee breaks up with this man and she’s crying to her best friend about it because it seems like no matter what she does there’s just no spark with him. She likes him fine, but she doesn’t ever see a future where he’s in it and she doesn’t understand what she’s doing wrong-

Kelly comforts her. Obviously. But they lose the NCAA tournament that year. She goes to Lees graduation even though she has to buy a ticket to it and there’s no reason to…that’s girlfriend behavior. Not casual hookup, it’s really nothing, behavior. She tries not to think of it. Mostly because even though Lee graduated, they’re still playing together. It’s the 2018 Olympics, after all. Her first, Lee’s second. She’s taking a red shirt season, and she and Lee already live together and Lee is working for Clif bar or something in the cities and they might as well, and neither are in a relationship right now, so they start hooking up again and well OBVIOUSLY it works because they win gold in Pyeong Chang. Kelly meets Hilary, who clocks Kelly’s deal and tells her to be fucking careful how invested she gets in this. (Lee was supposed to go to Buffalo. She was drafted to Buffalo. But she was playing in Olympics, so she chose to stay with Kelly, even though she could have moved.)

And well…it’s Kelly’s senior year. 2018-2019. She’s the captain now. And Lee was traded to the new expansion team in Minnesota! So she’s just going to stay there, why wouldn’t she? Lee wins the isobel cup because of course she does, god, she’s so perfect she wins everything and Kelly doesn’t win the ncaa, but she leads the league in hat tricks, and that’s gonna have to be enough because Lee has a different boyfriend and she just-

Well, she comforts Lee when she hears the same things again. And then they start hooking up again. Because it was always gay for both of them. (Kelly knows this. But she still doesn’t say it because she knows Lee isn’t ready to hear it and she’s scared that if she says it, Lee will leave. And she’s a coward, because she’d rather have this than nothing at all)

It’s 2019 and Kelly gets drafted fourth overall to the same team as Lee, because of course she does. Because everything she’s ever won, she’s won with Lee. Lee can win without her, she can’t win without Lee. And isn’t that such a sick metaphor? Because Lee has another fucking boyfriend and Kelly just knows that it’s gonna be the same thing over again. Funny that Lee never asks her why she doesn’t ever date anyone. This time, her boyfriend breaks up with her…he turned out to be just the worst, as evidenced by his reaction to Lee’s decision to boycott her league with the PWHPA. Kelly was never more happy to kick one of the boyfriends out.

She obviously boycotted with Lee. Even if she secretly was dying inside over never actually getting to play professional hockey with her.

And for years, from 2020-2023 they competed in the dream gap show tours. They go to the Olympics again, and take silver in Bejing, and they play in worlds and internationally, and it’s off and on, but whenever they’re in Minnesota, they’re living together. The apartment is now the fourth one they’ve had, and every time they move there’s no question that they’re moving together, neither wants to live apart. (Kelly once joked they should just buy a house together at this point, but Lee had gotten weird, said she wasn’t sure what they’d do then once they got boyfriends. Kelly had dropped it, even though she had wanted to laugh and say “even if I did try to find a girlfriend, at this point, you’ve ruined me for everyone else. No matter what I do, I’ll only ever be wanting you.”) And whenever they play on team USA, they see their friends from college like Hannah, and their other Olympians like Kendall and Hilary, and Hilary will fix this pitying look at Kelly and her stomach ties up because yeah. She knows why she’s getting that look. She can’t bring herself to explain herself to Hilary. She knows deep down it isn’t healthy, but she can’t break it off.

And then the pwhpa backs the PWHL and of course they’re both selected along with Kendall to PWHL minnesota, and they’re so happy. They go back to back in 2024 and 2025. It’s electric. She’s really getting to play professional hockey with Lee. Fuck, it’s the greatest. Sure, at this point, everyone and their mother assumes they’re a couple and Kelly can’t bring herself to correct them. Lee does, of course. And it’s fine. It’s really. Really. Fine. And all of her friends on team USA and in the league are engaged or married or having kids; the fucking wife line in Montreal makes her so irrationally angry that she can’t play right against them because she wants that. Why can’t she have that? Hell, she’d even take whatever Emily and Jamie have going on and play against Lee if it meant that they could really, actually be together. But no, the love of her life is so deep in compulsory heterosexuality and has been clinging to the idea that everyone experiments a little for a decade. And it’s fine, it’s SO FINE.

They lose in the semi finals in 2026, it’s so fine.

And then Lee tells her she can’t keep doing whatever this is, and she just…it’s not fine.

It’s.

Not.

Fine.

She can’t handle it. And she says some things she’s not proud of, and she’s sorry for those but she can’t apologize for the outburst given the circumstances that led to it. And then they ask her to be captain and she can’t do it. She can’t be Lee’s captain. They end up having three alternate captains that year. And they’re having…a weird year. The start is rocky. There’s clearly some breakdown in the team and the rift started between Lee and Kelly and no one’s quite sure how to fix it because how to do you help two people through a break up who were never dating?

Ken asks Kendall, who’s not even playing that year, to talk to them, as their friend. Kendall, who pieced together the broad strokes of the issues says, “this is out of my skillset, but I’ll do what I can.” And calls Hilary, who, despite literally playing against them sits them down mid December 2026 and encourages them to fucking talk it out, and either acknowledge that there was a relationship and actually, for real, break up and get the closure they both need, or acknowledge there was a relationship and mend things and get back together. (Hilary thinks that Kelly should move on for the love of god, but she already thinks this is far too much meddling to be doing in the lives of her fucking 30 year old colleagues. This is a favor to Kendall, and she’s not getting ANY more involved.)

And they do. They talk about everything, and they both explain their perspectives of the last decade of their lives and apologize for everything and they just can’t break up. They can’t. Because at the end of the day, Kelly was right four years ago. She was right eleven years ago, honestly. They’ve ruined each other for anyone else. And it was always. Always. Gay.

And yeah, Lee will admit finally. She is also gay. And she always was. And they don’t announce it. But at their next game, they play the best hockey of their lives. They keep playing the best hockey of their lives. They play such amazing hockey and are so fucking in love with each other and Kelly can finally show it. Say it. Name it. And they win the Walter cup, and there’s no captain for it to be handed to first, because there’s three alternates, but Lee asks Taylor to take it first and then hand it to her second, and Taylor’s not really paying attention because she just won her third ever Walter cup, hello? So she agrees and takes her lap around the ice before handing it to lee, who yes, takes her lap, but when she hands it to Kelly, she kisses her, on the ice, in front of everyone. Because yeah, she’s gay, and she’s so fucking in love with Kelly, and she’s wasted so much time and made Kelly wait so long, it’s time she showed it.

They get engaged on their cup days that summer. Some people ask them if they’re moving too fast. But they both know. No where near fast enough.

(A year later Lee realizes they actually met at that one hockey game she played against Kelly in high school)