I love the relationship Pascal has with everyone on the team and how they all look up to him. I was wondering if you were interested, would you write something about a game where maybe he gets hit? Like I can just imagine Logan and Sirius rushing over because it's Pascal! And the whole team is in uproar of Pascal getting hurt? Up to you!!
Fic O'Ween Day Two: Gatekeeper/ Keymaster
Hurt with a dash of guard dog Logan, a healthy dose of pre-Coops R.J. Lupin appreciation, and a good amount of Dumo being just as crazy about hockey as the rest of them. Good job, hot PT on the bench. They'd be lost without you. Characters belong to @lumosinlove, prompts from @noots-fic-fests!
They came out the gate hot, with two clean goals in the first five minutes that got the crowd on its feet. It was a rare sight for a weeknight game, but a welcome one—Pascal loved the Canadian fans with a certain softness for their undying passion for a slugger of a game.
His line hit the boards soaked and panting and ready for a break, however short. The Habs drove t hem hard. Something about the icy winters set them on a warpath. As much as he hated to admit it, matching their physicality took a lot more out of him than it used to. He took a swig of water, then drenched the back of his neck for a little relief. Sirius tore past and he banged on the boards with the others, too breathless to shout and too worn out to go through the rigamarole of standing. He’d be back around soon enough. Roadies to his home turf were fun until he was staring down the barrel of an extended everything-but-vacation.
Sirius scored; the stadium exploded with noise. Pascal was up before Arthur finished calling his line, flexing his ankles against the door. Logan was a ball of red-hot adrenaline beside him. He had been racking up assists like tokens at an arcade all night.
“Your parents are here?” Pascal asked over the noise.
Logan blinked up at him, all blown-dark eyes and a feral grin. “Ouais. First time they could come.”
“Finally picking points over punches, eh?”
Logan hit him for that. Pascal thumped him on the back of the helmet for good measure.
“Dumo!”
Familiar calm dripped through his veins as he took his place at the boards. An endless sea of red and blue. Ice he had skated for so long, he could dream of the feeling beneath him on a breakaway. “You’re looking good,” he called to Logan over his shoulder. “Keep your head up.”
He hit the ice running and didn’t wait to make sure Logan followed. Beck swept past and Pascal shadowed his every move, cutting a hard left to block his path to the goal as he jabbed his stick forward to knock it free. Plastic and fiberglass clattered between them—he muscled the kid back a step, enough for Logan to snatch the puck off his stick the second it came free. Good kid. Fast, when he got out of his own head. Endurance like Pascal couldn’t believe, even as he watched Logan race off before his very eyes with a low-set power that said he could do it forever.
Tap-tap-tap and a shot that bounced off the right post. He caught the rebound, but his slapshot slammed straight into Montembeault’s blocker, to the crowd’s obvious glee. Pascal swore under his breath and dug his skates in to chase it back down the rink.
Impact knocked his breath and half his vision out before he could think to shout.
His stick went one way; his body went the other. Boos split the silence in a scream of sound. A dull ache bloomed between his shoulder blades. The game was still going, blurred figures shooting past. Pascal rolled onto his back in time to see Sirius and Logan slam into Wideman from either side, sending him sprawling in four different directions at once. A whistle shrieked. The booing rose to a fever pitch.
“Dumo?” A new voice. A familiar voice. Pascal wheezed. Above him, Remus’ face swam in ripples and blurs. “I’m going to feel your ribs, okay? Anything feel broken?”
My pride. He coughed hard and felt a wisp of oxygen force its way in. “Non,” he choked out. “Lungs.”
“Yeah, he got you good.” Stabbing, aching, vicious pain. It crawled from his back around the side of his ribs, digging deep into soft tissue. He ground his teeth against it at even the gentlest touch of Remus’ hand. “Can you try another breath?”
It stop-started like a faulty engine. Panic stole through him in icy waves. He shook his head hard. Heat, heat all over.
“We’re getting a stretcher for you, just keep trying and stay still.”
“Call—” He grabbed for Remus’ hand on his chest. “—Celeste, call—”
“Hey, hey.” He had lost a glove somewhere along the way. Remus cupped his hand in both of his own. His image sharpened, calm even in the face of Pascal’s struggling. “Look at me,” he said. “When have I ever let something bad happen to you, huh?”
Never, he thought. Not once. Air rushed back into the left side of Pascal’s chest. Blistering pain filled the right, and he still couldn’t get a full breath in, but the dark spots on the ceiling far overhead were starting to fade with every blink.
The stretcher was a boon on his aching neck. His feet were sore. That was a good sign.
“I’m gonna stay with you to the ambulance,” Remus told him, tapping two fingers against the back of Pascal’s hand. Wheels rattled under him. “Hey, what are you doing for Halloween this year? We’ll be home.”
“Ghostbusters,” Pascal managed. Every breath came in half-measures, but at least it came. Thank god it came. “Keymaster, Celeste’s—Gatekeeper. Kids are—crisse—Katie’s Slimer.”
“Oh my god,” Remus laughed. The hallway tunneled around them in sudden darkness after the overwhelming light of the stadium. “That’s amazing. Poor kid.”
Pascal attempted a laugh that was more like a pathetic cough. “Picked it herself.”
“The others are the Ghostbusters?” Remus guessed.
He nodded. The tight feeling was building again, nearing a peak that made him grimace. He wanted to curl away from it, but the restraints gave him nowhere to go.
“Hey. Hey, Dumo. Pascal. We’re almost there, you’re gonna be fine.”
He wanted to believe it. Remus sounded so sure. “Chest,” he mumbled.
“Yep, they’re thinking one of your lungs collapsed. Wideman got you with his shoulder, really wound up for it. They’re gonna take you to the hospital and you’ll be a-okay in a couple days.”
He couldn’t help a groan.
“They see these all the time,” Remus said, quieter. Just for him. His smile was small, but Pascal believed it. “C’est bon.”
“I’m too old for this shit.”
“Wideman’s old enough to know better.” They had reached the ambulance already. It had been forever and no time at all. Remus folded his fingers for him and bumped his knuckles gently with his own. “Go get ‘em.”
He was so kind. Down in his bones, from the moment Pascal had met him and every minute since. Old enough to know better, he said, and it was true. Remus never let them dwell or blame. His chest hurt so much. Celeste would be worried sick. The doctors would call her. Would tell her he was okay, that they saw it all the time, that he’d be fine in a week.
He would call Celeste as soon as he could speak, he decided. And then he would draft a very sincere thank you card.
--
“But he’s okay?”
“He called Celeste, like, twenty minutes ago.”
“That doesn’t tell me he’s okay.”
“He’s fine, according to every doctor that’s come through.”
“What do you think?”
“I think he collapsed a lung and needs to rest for a couple days, and then he’ll be good as gold.”
“Thank you.”
“Any time. How are you?”
Silence fell. Sirius would be doing his funny sort of face communication, all subtle cues and hand-waving at the concern, and Remus would be reading him like he always did. Pascal heard a laugh from the hall—no, two, one lower than the other. “Wideman’s a fucking loser.”
“Pretty sure he knows it, now.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“Seriously, though, how’s your knuckle?”
“Better than Wideman’s face.” Another beat of quiet, then, “It’s fine. I promise.”
“The doctors think all the flights had something to do with the lung going, so. Not something you need to worry about in the future much. They’ve seen it all before.”
“Thank you, Re.”
Oh, that nickname. Every time Pascal thought he was seeing things. Every time he thought, surely not. Re. Loops, most often, save for those blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moments. Thank you, Re.
Hockey had a deep love of irony, he had come to find over a lifetime. He thought of himself, feeling brazenly young until skate-cut snow met him head on. He thought of Sirius, and that ankle, of blood and bone and the light going out of his eyes when they pulled him off the ice that night. Of Remus, watching from the sidelines like nothing else in the world was happening. When have I ever let anything bad happen to you?
That injury could have killed Sirius. It should have left him hollow. He looked good tonight in front of Logan’s parents and his home crowd, strong and whole. Pascal wouldn’t push. He wouldn’t pry. But the minute Sirius crossed the threshold to come be a worrywart over him, he would make it abundantly clear who was to thank for his recovery tonight. It took a certain type of person to stand between this team and the worst parts of the game. Maybe somewhere between his fussing and tutting and a thousand confirmations of yes, I can breathe, I’m talking to you, Sirius would even think to let a little of that into his life.
Perhaps he should have waited to call Celeste. Ah, well. He needed something to do for the next three days if they weren’t going to let him back in the game, and she loved few things more than a debrief. Pascal was still only half-sure she hadn’t married him for his gossip.
Re. Unreal. He shook his head in the dim solitude of his hospital bed and turned to the window, where the lights of downtown Montréal glowed forever. If it took a collapsed lung to get some sense into this team, they’d never hear the end of it.
