Hot Water
Fic O'Ween Day 9: "Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice!"
Captain Will Morgan and the media; or, in defense of FinnLo.
Characters belong to @lumosinlove, who made me fall in love with this man in one drawing and like two scenes. Prompts are from @noots-fic-fests, where all Fic O'Ween posts are also reblogged!
TW for past homophobic comments, sad Breakaway-era FInnLo, and current invasive reporters.
“So, Will, now that we’ve covered the gametime questions…”
“Uh-oh,” Will joked.
They ate it up, chuckling like he was the world’s most mediocre comedian. The man in the front collected himself and set his notepad in his lap. “About O’Hara and Tremblay.”
“Good guys,” he agreed.
“I’m sure you’ve seen the news.”
Will gave him a mild look. Ask, he thought, and all your questions will get a zero-sum answer.
“About their relationship,” the reporter elaborated. His pen was poised. “With Leo Knut, the rookie goalie?”
“I’m not sure you can call Knut a rookie with that record of his.”
“Well,” the man said. Will didn’t like his tone. “You have to admit, the kid’s young.”
“Hockey doesn’t favor the old.”
“Did you know?”
“Yeah, that’s why I started right out of college. Gave my knees a fighting chance.”
Laughter rippled through the rows of folding chairs. Will gave a placid smile and looked for the next hand.
“Did you know about O’Hara and Tremblay? You were on their team at Harvard. Their captain, if memory serves.”
The moment passed with a whiff of air and the tang of gasoline. Damn. Will liked nothing more than a smooth exit. “I wasn’t aware of their relationship until the end of this year,” he said. “As far as I know, it’s still pretty new.”
“Were there signs?”
“Of what?”
“Feelings, between them.”
Will shook his head. “Look, Logan only joined us a couple of months ago. Before that, I’d see them maybe twice a year. I’m a pretty busy guy. So are they.”
“But you knew them in college.”
“Where they were fantastic hockey players and excellent friends.” Too clipped; more than he meant to give. He saw a woman exchange a glance with her companion and pasted on a better smile. “I loved being their teammate, and I’m glad we get to play together as professionals.”
“So they weren’t together in college?”
“They were best friends.” Best friends who shared Finn’s hidden good whiskey on the roof. Who drove Percy half-mad with their late-night conversations across the five feet of space between their beds. Who got breakfast together every single morning, rain or shine, even when it meant they were awake before anyone else in the house. “They dated plenty of other people in college.”
Best friends who had, at separate and distinct times, drunkenly begged Will to take them home right as the other found one of those other people for the night.
“Other people? Like other men?”
A new voice; not a welcome one. “No,” Will said. “I really doubt it.”
“Were there other…” A third reporter trailed off with a vague gesture. “Gay or bisexual people in the frat house?”
“Excuse me?”
“Were Logan and Finn the first?” she rephrased, as if that’s what he had been asking.
‘Shut the fuck up’ wasn’t a permissible answer in his contract. He held it behind his front teeth until he could force it down on a slow exhale through his nose. The cameras would note his pause. The things these people thought they could get away with. “I don’t know.”
“Did you know about them?”
“No.”
“Did anyone else?”
“No idea.”
“Did you ever suspect a relationship between them?”
I don’t understand. Finn, three sheets to the wind and sobbing his eyes out on the curb four feet from where Will had let him out of the car. His face buried in his forearms, his knobbly knees bent up as if to protect his soft underbelly. I don’t—at home—and we—I don’t understand, Will, I can’t keep doing this.
Will’s stomach turned. “No.”
I can’t live like this. Finn didn’t remember a thing past eight p.m. when he woke the next morning. Will had watched him close the next few days. I can’t live like this.
“Finn—” He startled a little at the name. “—mentioned that it had been a long time coming. Do you know what that means?”
Finn wasn’t meant to live in a box. He was so bright at the Cup party. So happy it made Will’s chest tight, just looking at him. He held Logan so close under his arm, and gentle. “I don’t make a habit of interpreting Finn’s words for him,” he said with a half-smile to ease the way out. “There are too many for me to keep up with.”
“Dennis highlighted that you were the captain. Did either of them speak to you about their feelings?”
“What, generally?” Will laughed, sending hairline cracks through the tension in the room. Dennis. He tucked the name in the back of his mind for later. “I mean, I’ve got stories from every guy on the team after a little liquid courage, but we weren’t a very touchy-feely group.”
“Some could argue,” snorted a voice from the back.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Will kept his smile in place. Several others throughout the room dropped in a domino tumble of awkward coughs. Loafers shuffled on the carpet. He drummed his fingertips on the table.
“No, seriously, what?”
If you want to play ball, motherfucker, step right the fuck up. Black suit. Bad haircut. Expensive notepad. “Ah,” the man said, tapping his pen against the page. He shrugged. “Sorry, I meant it as a joke.”
“What’s the joke? I missed it.”
“Just—” His laugh was still too confident for Will’s liking. “I don’t know, man, the touchy-feely comment, and they’re. You know.”
Will waited. The silence marinated about as well as hot yogurt. “I don’t,” he finally said. “That’s why I’m asking.”
“They’re…together. Touchy. Feely. All that.”
In his periphery, he could see Ella waving at him from the wings. The camera operators were looking at her, too. He would have taken that exit three minutes ago. Batter up.
“Are you single?”
“Married,” the man answered.
“Oh, nice. How do you touch your wife?”
A collective intake of breath burned the air. The man’s face went slack. “Excuse me?”
“You just seem really interested in how other people are touching each other.” He was four rows back. He had brown eyes and a constipated look on his face. “Figured you’d be fine talking about it in front of these lovely people.”
I can’t live like this. And Logan. God, Logan. Hanging off Finn’s every word, shadowing him like Silver after treats for the first six months. Party after party, year after year, never more than a room away from him. Four or five shots would have him half a breath from sharing the same couch cushion as Finn. Will tried to run interference when he could. Because Logan, who looked like a bump of Finn’s shoulder would raise him from the dead, would rather dig himself back into the grave than remember any toe out of line in the morning. And his line was hard. His line was a trench.
“Had you met any LGBT hockey players before Finn and Logan?”
“Are you guys looking for Patient Zero, or something?” Will leaned back in his chair and crossed his ankle over his knee. “I’m just—I’m having a really hard time figuring out what the huge deal is, here. No, I don’t know that anyone was anything during college. No, I don’t know if anyone in the NHL is anything. Black and Lupin were the first. It wasn’t my business then. It definitely isn’t now.”
“Would you say Harvard was accepting of the gay community?”
“It depends on who you ask. It wasn’t on my radar.”
MacMillan was a slimy shithead. Everyone knew it. But he was good on defense, 240 pounds, and always had a girl on his arm. He stayed, and so did the slime. We’re gonna bend that shit over!
“Was the locker room environment accepting of queer players?”
When they played Yale…Will had never heard some of those words before. He didn’t need to look them up. He remembered meeting Percy’s eyes across the locker room and seeing the sickened downturn of his mouth, the hard bob of his throat when he looked away from a crowd of whooping, turned-up seniors. Finn next to him, two months into his sophomore year, picking at his stick tape. He couldn’t remember where Logan had been. He vanished into the liminal space of his stall, one of the only times Will had ever looked at him and thought small.
“We did our best,” he answered. He did. The minute he made captain, the minute MacMillan and his cronies graduated. He tried. Hey, man, don’t. C’mon, gross. A hundred stock phrases to run the line without being pinned himself. The regret hounded him, some days. “It didn’t come up often.”
“Do you think the sport had any impact on players’ sexualities?”
The question stopped Will in his tracks. He felt himself straighten slightly, leaning forward, and had to take a second to replay it in his head. “Are you asking if hockey turns people gay?”
“Well, not like that, I—”
“Dude, what?” A laugh caught in his throat. He glanced around the room. One woman was visibly stifling a smile, thank god. Will shook his head. “This isn’t…no, what? Do you think one gay player goes beetlejuice, beetlejuice, beetlejuice and then a bunch more just pop up out of the ground?”
That got him more laughs. The reporter went red, Will started to turn to Ella, and—
“Do you think such a blatant and physical relationship is appropriate for the NHL?”
Foul ball. Will took a breath.
“I think your obsession with one kiss to celebrate the highest achievement of our sport is, frankly, concerning.” In the wings, Ella took a step back. Permission granted. Will took a swig of water and folded his hands on the table. “I think a lot of you are abusing your position in this room to dig up gossip instead of actually doing what you’re paid for. I think you’re wasting my time and your network’s.
“I think hockey is hard game,” he continued. That would be bleeped out later. He hoped it wasn’t. “I think being a young man in any sport is hard, and I think it’s harder when you feel different than your team for reasons you can’t control. I think a lot of guys feel really isolated, for a lot of reasons, and I know that it’s a captain’s job to make sure the locker room has space for them.”
I’m a bad person. Eighteen years old. Logan had been eighteen years old, vacant-eyed, petting a stray cat on the back porch in the dead of winter. Dumped by his girlfriend in a pretty spectacular and heartbreaking series of accusations. Will was pretty sure rum was the only thing keeping him warm. You’re not, Will had said, pulling the blanket around his shoulders. Hey, man, you’re one of my favorite people. Logan shook at the warmth and leaned into him with a soft sound that should have been tears. I’m a bad friend. I’m hurting him so much. I just wanted to fix it.
“I think, regardless of the locker room, or Harvard, or whatever else, Finn and Logan knew about you people.” Oh, he wouldn’t be seeing a postgame interview for months. “I think they knew the minute they weren’t heterosexual beyond question, you would tear their dreams apart for a story and a Christmas bonus. I think they were best friends in college, and best friends now, and neither of them was willing to risk watching a life go down in flames because someone like you was just dying to know whether they made out when they were nineteen and how they did it.”
Once. One time, when the room was spinning and Will was feeling like a god on earth with his medal and the most beautiful girl he ever saw holding a booth for them. Finn’s back to the alley wall and both hands holding Logan’s face, black eye and all, like he would break if Finn held too hard. Logan had been all but melted against his chest. In the haze, Will couldn’t tell whose legs or arms or body were whose. Just that the kiss was more tender than anything he’d seen in his life.
If Will flicked a drop of water onto the floor, they’d all hear it like a bomb going off. He tapped his pen against his opposite thumb. They gave him time.
“I think Sirius Black is the bravest person I’ve ever met,” he said. “I know that I can sit here and say all this because I have a wife and a son who mean the world to me, so I don’t have to be afraid that when I leave this room, people will accuse me of something that would ruin my entire career. And I can tell you right now, I’m not letting my son touch this sport with a ten foot pole while this is still happening.
“I’ve spoken with several queer hockey players.” Their eyes flicked up again. Vultures. “You want to know what they said?” Hunger, like sharks in a blood frenzy. Will didn’t hate a lot of people, but he hated this. “They talked about fear. Fear of your friends, your team, the future, the world. They had to choose between living their lives and playing the sport they excel in beyond millions of people.”
Finn, still an emotional drunk by his senior year, breathing through a panic attack Will wasn’t sure he knew he was having in the 3 a.m. aftermath of a house party. Please don’t go. I don’t wanna be alone. Showing up on their porch after saying goodbye, so torn up and halfway to incoherent that Will thought he had been in an accident. Is Logan here? I forgot something. Letting Finn leave, alone.
“That shit kills people.” Will saw them flinch. “Do you understand that?”
“Will,” Ella said quietly.
“I don’t even know if these cameras are on anymore,” Will said. Though in the back, with a big one perched on his shoulder, he saw one man nod. “I don’t really care. Yes, I was Finn and Logan’s captain. I was in charge. I know what I know. They’re young and happy and some of the best hockey players I’ve ever had the privilege of meeting. Stop asking me about them, do your job, and let everyone fucking breathe.”
He stood, and he left.
Ella let him go.
He didn’t know the way out, he realized, blood thundering in his ears. There were fewer people around back here. They were all looking at him. Will found the nearest door and shoved it open. He needed to call Ray. She would be in the family box, with Noah, and maybe they had heard it all but he needed her. There was a rough feeling building in the back of his throat.
“Will.”
Will turned hard enough to make his head hurt. “Hey,” he said hoarsely, and then Logan was there, arms around him, squeezing like Will didn’t need air. Will held him back just as hard.
My boyfriend loves those. A hiccup of hesitation from someone loud and hotheaded enough to break so many fingers they started a scoreboard. Baby baby baby baby Lo baby, so much he’d be sick of it if he didn’t love hearing it so much. Hours on the roof like they were the only two people in the world. He didn’t know Knut as well as he wanted to, but Will had never seen someone fit between Finn and Logan so seamlessly.
A tear slid down Will’s cheek. Logan was hot under his hands, even through his shirt. “You’re so happy,” he whispered. “I’m so happy for you. So happy.”
Logan held tight to the back of his shirt.
“I lost it in there, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t.” Logan’s voice was barely a sound.
“You’re...” Waves of it all, hammering the inside of his head. Will screwed his eyes shut. “I can’t listen to that shit anymore. I can’t do it.”
Logan took a shaking breath. “Yeah.”
“I don’t wanna hear them talk about you like—like it doesn’t matter.” He could hardly breathe, but he needed to speak. “You matter so much to me, Lo. Both of you, I can’t…god, I almost lost you both.”
Logan made a sound like he’d been hit. “Will.” A hand caught him by the scruff and gave a squeeze. "Morgs. Hey. Listen to me. Will, listen.”
He let Logan pull him up. That green stare had never been anything but intense.
“You never lost us.” Will felt his lip tremble. Logan pushed his knuckles against his chest, gentle and firm. “You did everything you could, compris? Even if it didn’t work out, you wouldn’t have lost us.”
“I was really worried about you,” Will rasped. “Like, really worried.”
The sides of Logan’s mouth turned down hard, like they always had. He pulled Will back in for a hug. It was less desperate, now. Nobody could stand between heaven and earth like Logan.
They swayed for a minute more. He was glad Logan didn’t have to get wasted to talk about his feelings anymore. He deserved good things without suffering for it the next day. Hockey, and boyfriends, and tentatively colorful shirts. “It’s a hell of a lot easier to talk about this when you’re not sloshed.”
Logan hit him on the shoulder for that, but he was laughing.
“Finn, too.”
“Oh, god, Finn,” Logan groaned. “Worst person to babysit.”
“I loved it.”
“Yeah, I’m sure he told you all the juicy details.”
“Nah, man, it was just good to know someone else on the team had feelings.”
They separated, lighter in the shoulders and chest. Will jostled Logan’s hat around until it was sideways.
“He’s going to propose next time he sees you,” Logan said as he smoothed his hair back out of his eyes. “Finn, I mean.”
“I’ll see if Ray has an extra ring laying around. She loves him.”
“Everyone loves Finn.” Logan glanced at the conference room door and his mouth twisted with wry mischief. “By force, if needed, apparently.”
“You’re looking at your number one defender, Tremblay.”
He expected a quip back, but Logan just knocked their shoulders together and looked ahead, toward the street-level window that let the late-night lights in. “Ouais,” he finally said, turning back to Will. “Sounds right to me.”
“We’re going to talk about all of it sometime,” Will warned.
“Okay.”
“You can bring Finn if I get to bring Percy.”
“Alex already interrogated me, so go crazy.”
Will scrubbed both hands through his hair. “Christ, Tremz, I think I just did.”
Logan laughed. Loud. It hit somewhere below Will’s ribs. “No kidding,” he said. “I think I still smell smoke.”
“I gotta get out of here, man.”
“Your family?”
“The box.”
Logan hummed, and the solid weight of his arm across Will’s back cooled the pounding in his skull. “Allez. I want to watch you fry them on the big TV.”
Nobody bothered them as they moved through the halls. Will caught a couple sideways glances, but that was all. He saw Ray across the room the moment the door opened. She had handed Noah off to Saint, whose keen eyes were fixed on Will with the weight of the world. The choked feeling hit him again when she began to move.
“I love you,” she murmured into his ear when he brought her in close. Will closed his eyes. The collar of her coat scratched his nose. Her fingertips scratched gently through the short hair at his nape. He felt her shuddering breath. “Good job, baby. Good job.”
