He could have passed them off as Shawn stocking up on his own food, except for a packet of chicken livers at the bottom of the bag.
“You hate liver,” he said.
Shawn hummed in agreement from where he was standing in front of the fridge, playing Tetris to rearrange the contents. “Yep.”
“I hate liver,” Alex continued. “Neither of us eat it. Why would you buy it?”
“Well, I read that it’s really iron-rich.” Shawn made a triumphant noise as he managed to fit a bottle of vinaigrette into a shelf on the door. “I figured it’d be a good emergency backup, in case you can’t find a blood source here quickly enough. And I read online that coconut water can be used as a blood transfusion substitute in an emergency, so I got some of that too!”
“You—I—what?” Alex’s brain short-circuited, and terror flooded his body. Oh fuck, he knows.
“I know, shouldn’t believe everything you read on the internet, but—” Shawn turned all the way and interrupted himself with a sudden laugh as he caught sight of Alex’s face. “What the hell, man. You look like you saw a ghost. Or, well, a phantom. Get it?”
Alex opened his mouth, then closed it. His heart was pounding in his chest, hands shaking slightly. He clenched them into fists and resisted the urge to take a step backward, to put as much distance between himself and the potential threat as possible.
“The look on your face, bro.” Shawn was still chuckling. “Did you think I didn’t know? Wait, hold up, is this what you were trying to talk to me about in the car?”
Alex had to catch himself on the edge of the counter as he shook his head. He sucked in a deep breath, trying to calm his racing heartbeat. “I didn’t think you remembered.”
“That you’re a vamp? Not exactly something I’d forget.”
“Half vampire.” Alex buried his face in his hands. “But—you never said anything.” The bags of food suddenly made way more sense; they were all things that Alex turned to when he had to go an extra few days between feedings. In fact, the groceries read like Shawn had googled a list of iron-rich foods.
He could hear Shawn’s footsteps, and then Alex felt a hand on his shoulder as his friend stopped in front of him. The touch made Alex jump, but nothing else came from it except the comforting warmth of Shawn’s touch through the fabric of his shirt.
The laughter was gone from Shawn’s voice when he spoke again. “I mean, it wasn’t a thing, right? Like, you made it pretty obvious that it was a secret, and you didn’t catch on fire the next day when we snuck out to eat away our hangovers at McDonald’s. I just figured it was like the gay thing—you didn’t mention it, I didn’t mention it, and we pretended like it wasn’t happening.”
Peeking through his fingers revealed Shawn’s concerned face, looking far more serious than he usually did. “And you’re okay with that?”
“With the gay thing or the Para thing?”
Alex exhaled and dropped his hands to his side. “Both.”
Shawn shrugged and reached past him to grab a bag of groceries. “Sure. Doesn’t affect me either way. NHL doesn’t care if you’re gay, either.”
“But they care if I’m Paranormal.” Alex spoke the words to Shawn’s back, voice low.
The flat of coconut water was shoved onto a shelf with a little more force than necessary. “It’s not against the rules,” Shawn said. “I looked it up after our draft. They can’t kick you out of the league for being a Para. It’s a protected class or whatever…. It’d be discrimination.”
It was true, but neither of them seemed willing to say the next part: the rules didn’t apply to sports, where there were always ways to work around them. Everyone knew the story about the fae who’d been a star pitcher for the Yankees… until his nonhuman status had been revealed, and the team had stopped playing him, pushed him out of the locker room, forced him to retire. The NHL, if anything, was even more intolerant than Major League Baseball. There had even been rumors buzzing for months about a proposal during the upcoming CBA negotiations that the league and owners wanted some way to know who was Para and who was human.
“Anyways, it doesn’t matter.” Shawn closed the fridge door hard and turned back around, crossing his arms. “Your secret is safe with me. You’re here now, you made the Show, and no one’s gonna stop you, okay?”
Alex closed the distance between them and wrapped Shawn in a fierce hug. “Thanks, man.”
Shawn patted him on the back. “Of course. Now go crash for a few hours. I’ll text management and let them know we’ll be in around lunchtime.”
NHL Stats: Alexander Fanning (#31)
G | 5’ 11” | 170 lb | Age: 22 | Seattle Cascades
Born: April 30
Birthplace: Minneapolis, MN USA
Catches: Left
Seattle Cascades (@CascadesNHL)
Check out these new threads! Goalie Alex Fanning will wear #31 for the #TealAndWhite and will back up Matthias Hertzog in tonight’s match against Vancouver. https://t.co/NyiQQvWCDS
(Retweeted by @goaliefanning)
Alex Fanning #31 (@goaliefanning)
Going from Portland green & orange to Seattle teal & white! Excited and honored to be wearing this jersey tonight.
ALEX SLID into the locker room unnoticed, hugging the wall until he found his stall at the end. He’d come in a few hours prior to sign paperwork and meet with the team doctor. He’d also turned his duffel and pads over to one of the equipment guys, and now he found his gear bag unpacked, pads and mask set out in his stall with his skates tucked neatly away. A jersey hung behind his seat, bright teal standing out against the dark wood. He ran a finger over the nameplate, FANNING stitched in bold white letters.
He’d been playing hockey for pretty much his entire life and had been in dozens of different locker rooms, but something about being in an NHL room took his breath away.
Changing out of his game-day suit and into his Under Armour was a comforting routine, and the familiar motions helped him relax. He pulled on his leggings and the tight spandex shirt he wore under his pads, then sank to the floor to start stretching.
Other players trickled in while he was bent into a butterfly, stretching his quads and thighs. He tilted his head up to watch, curious about his new teammates. Most of them were familiar from past tournaments or watching Cascades games on TV, but now he’d actually be playing with them.
A ball of nerves coiled up in the pit of his stomach.
Alex stretched his leg out straight in front of him and grabbed his foot as he observed the room. That’s Mikhail Volkov, the Cascades’ first-round pick from this past summer, he thought, watching the eighteen-year-old kid enter, followed by a shorter man with red hair. And Tyler Morgan, who scored that crazy goal in Game 4 against Dallas last year.
A tall blond man who Alex recognized as Akseli Mäkelä walked in, headphones on and bopping his head to whatever song was playing. He immediately unplugged his phone and docked it on a set of speakers on the opposite wall. Blaring music filled the room.
“Shit, dude, turn that garbage off. No one here wants to listen to your awful Finnish metal.” That was Shawn, already tugging his tie loose as he walked in, carrying his refreshing bright scent with him. He looked around immediately, though it took him a second to spot Alex on the floor. “Fanning, hey!”
Alex reached up as Shawn approached, and let his friend pull him to his feet.
“You ready for tonight?”
“Ready to ride a bench, sure.” But Alex was smiling as he spoke, Shawn’s excitement contagious.
Shawn slapped him on the shoulder. “Give it time, man. You’ll get your chance soon enough. Hey, you met the guys yet?”
“I was introduced to Matty earlier when I met with the goalie coach.” Matthias Hertzog had been the backup goalie previously, and he’d been noticeably anxious about getting bumped up to starter so suddenly. Alex could definitely relate.
“Well, lemme introduce you to the team.”
Shawn glanced around
the room, taking stock of the guys in various states of undress, and finally spotted whoever he was looking for. “Merks, Mo, c’mere and meet Phantom.”
Derick Merkley came over, looking every inch the responsible captain. Morgan followed a few steps behind him, eyes wide. “Hey, man,” Merkley said when he was closer. He held a hand out for Alex to shake. “Sorry, didn’t see you over there. You blend in, you know?”
Morgan caught the last part of that and nodded. “Had no idea you were here yet. Sorry, not exactly a great welcoming committee.”
“That’s why we called him Phantom in the NTDP,” Shawn said. “Dude’s quiet and practically invisible when he wants to be.”
Introductions were made, and Alex allowed himself a single moment of glee at shaking Merkley’s hand. The Cascades’ captain was one of the best goal-scorers in the game, and Alex had spent hours poring over old game tape and imagining stopping Merkley’s wicked slap shot. Morgan—“Call me Mo”—was another defenseman and seemed like a genuinely friendly guy.
What followed was a whirlwind tour of the locker room as the rest of the team trickled in. Shawn introduced him around to guys he’d watched on TV for years, and Alex nodded and shook hands and tried not to panic.
Locker room nicknames are about as sacred a hockey tradition as any, and even Head Coach Daniel Henrique of the Seattle Cascades can’t escape the honor. “We call him Rico,” confesses Cascades Captain Derick Merkley, or “Merks” to his teammates. As for some other nicknames that you might hear in the locker room? “[Johan] Engel gets called Angel a lot, because he’s probably the nicest guy you’ll ever meet. And I guess we have an animal theme going on—Seth Bayer, Pierre Leduc, and Luke Oettenger are Bear, Ducky, and Otter.”
—Jamie Sinclair for Deadspin
SASHA WAS late and pissed off.
He’d come in earlier in the afternoon to recap the previous night’s events for what felt like the hundredth time. First up had been Coach Rico and GM Dubois, who had spent hours going over the events in excruciating detail. It hadn’t just been Ed’s injuries that they’d been worried about, but also everything from the police officer he’d spoken with to the phone call Ed had made to Sasha and how he’d sounded.
Next up had been the team’s lawyer, who had asked all of the same questions that the coach had, but with way more intensity. He’d been noticeably nervous about the charges that had been filed against Ed… and the fact that it was his second DUI. Of course, that had been followed by Alyssa, the Cascades’ PR rep, who had coached him on half a dozen talking points for the media after the game that night. Apparently Sasha’s presence at the scene had been noticed, and the sports news sites were clamoring to know more.
The end result was that Sasha was running far behind in his usual game-day routines. He didn’t think of himself as especially superstitious—not like Engel, who had an almost religious devotion to his playlist on game days, or Carts, who had been eating the same lunch before games for almost a decade. But he did have the timing of things down precisely, and watching the clock tick later and later was stressing him out.
When Sasha did finally burst through the locker room door, he was already half an hour behind schedule. Still, he couldn’t help but pause as he walked inside, head turning automatically to stare at Ed’s stall.
Where there was a kid sitting on the ground and stretching.
And it was a kid. The guy looked like a goddamn teenager, eighteen or nineteen at best. This is our new backup? A literal child? He was bent over his own legs and hadn’t looked up when the locker room door opened, which gave Sasha a moment to study him unobserved.
Okay, the kid was honestly kind of cute. Floppy brown hair, pale skin, and lean muscle that flexed beneath his thin base layers. Under different circumstances he’d be exactly the kind of guy who would catch Sasha’s eye in a club—not that he’d do anything about it, but he’d enjoy watching and fantasizing. The new goalie had an expression of absolute focus on his face as he went through his stretches, showing off flexibility that made Sasha’s mouth go dry.
But circumstances were what they were, so it didn’t matter how nice the kid looked. He wasn’t Ed, which meant he didn’t deserve to be sitting in that stall, with his name on top like he belonged there. Just the sight of him made Sasha want to yell and kick something.
“Sasha, hey!” That was Shawn, calling him over to joke about how late he was running.
His defense partner was enough of a distraction to pull Sasha’s attention away from the child across the room.
“Long night last night. You heard?”
Shawn made a face. “Yeah. Is it as bad as social media is saying?”
Sasha resisted the urge to rub his temples where a headache was threatening to form. “Worse,” he said shortly.
“Shit. Three to six months, huh?”
Sasha hadn’t heard any confirmation, but with the injuries he’d seen, it wasn’t a surprise at all.
But Shawn was the kind of guy who didn’t linger on the negative. He balanced Sasha out that way—usually cheerful and energetic when Sasha was more dour and solemn. “But hey, man, at least there’s some good news. You remember I told you about my best friend from Juniors? Alex Fanning? He’s our new goalie!”
Before Sasha could respond, Shawn was already yelling across the room.
Sasha stiffened. That was Carts’s best friend? The child who had been brought in to replace Ed? Impossible.
There wasn’t any chance to digest this realization properly, however, because Shawn grabbed him by the arm and spun him around. And, sure enough, the man who shared his name, and who he’d heard so much about from Shawn over the years, was the new goalie.
Up close, the guy didn’t look quite as young as Sasha had initially thought. His face was young, cheeks still a little soft, but his eyes were intelligent and bright, and showed far more maturity than the rest of his appearance.
And, somehow, he was even more attractive up close. Handsome wasn’t the right word, or even cute. Fanning’s brown eyes were fierce and bright, and his skin was flawless, like he’d look more fitting on a runway than in a locker room. Прекрасен, Sasha thought, then immediately banished the word from his thoughts with a sour taste in his mouth.
Beautiful or not, he didn’t want anything to do with this temporary replacement, and he’d make sure this kid knew it.
NHL Stats: Alexander Petrov (#12)
D | 6’ 6” | 245 lb | Age: 25 | Seattle Cascades
Born: November 12
Birthplace: Nizhny Novgorod, Russia
Shoots: Left
THE ROOM emptied out before too long, guys splitting off to the players’ lounge for a pregame snack or to join in a round of two-touch in one of the back hallways. Alex finished his stretching on the floor, head down while he tried to get into his usual pregame mindset.
But something was keeping him from being able to focus. Locker rooms were always a miasma of weird smells to him: sweat, blood, the artificial tang of a sports drink, and sometimes even the rare, distinct scent of another Para—though most of them smelled just as human as they looked. But there was something different about the Cascades’ room.
Between the usual layers of cologne and sweat, he kept catching a hint of something new, a scent that tickled at the back of his mind. Alex closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, trying to single it out. It was faint but enough to make saliva flood Alex’s mouth.
Whatever it was, it smelled delicious.
Shawn’s voice picked up from the other side of the room, where he’d been taping his sticks, at the same time the smell grew stronger.
“Sasha, hey! Was wondering if Coach was ever going to release you.”
Alex opened his eyes in time to see Shawn reach out to bump fists with another man. From the back, Alex could make out shoulders and arms straining against the fabric of a dress shirt, and a pair of thick thighs inside pressed slacks.
Whoever Sasha was, he was built like a freakin’ brick house
.
“Alex!” Shawn called. “Stop meditating for a second and come here. I want you to meet someone.”
Alex pushed himself up easily, stretching his arms above his head before following the command. Up close, it was obvious that Sasha was even bigger than Alex had thought. He was the same height as Shawn, but had at least thirty pounds more muscle on him. While most guys were struggling to maintain weight and muscle mass in the middle of the season, Sasha apparently had nothing to worry about.
“Sasha,” Shawn said, yanking on the arm of the man and jolting Alex out of his thoughts, “this is my friend Alex Fanning. We played together as kids, and he’s here as our backup goalie while Eddie is out. Alex, meet Alexander Petrov, my D-partner. You’re both Alexes, but thankfully he goes by Sasha or this would get confusing really fast.”
The hulking defenseman turned around, and the polite greeting on Alex’s tongue vanished.
Holy hell. Petrov was hot. Dark brown hair cropped short made his face look more angular than it actually was. Cheekbones sharp as knives jutted out from beneath a pair of icy blue eyes. He looked like he could hold Alex up against a wall without breaking a sweat. And I’d let him too.
The strange scent that Alex had caught before returned, stronger than ever, and Alex almost choked when he realized it was coming from Petrov. It was earthy and rich, and it overwhelmed everything else in the locker room.
After a second, Alex realized that he was standing there like an idiot. He inhaled more of that incredible scent, then opened his mouth to speak and introduce himself—and maybe test the waters a little with Sasha. But he was interrupted by Mikhail Volkov, who shouted across the room, “Hey, you’re late, Паразло!”
Alex’s mouth closed with an audible click. He didn’t speak Russian, but he’d played in enough international tournaments to have heard that word before. North American teams usually penalized a player who used an anti-Para slur like that, but the Russians didn’t seem to care.
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