GAGE PAXTON

You know, Nico's office door isn't ever closed. It's not normally a problem, I never go in there, but it's curious considering I come down this hall a little too often to get to the tape closet. Let's just say my tape job never turns out well the first time around. I should really be better at it, considering I've been doing the same pattern for thirteen years, but it's just not something I'm good at. The day before every damn practice I have to tape my sticks after my workout, mostly because I can't be as cool as Fen or Greenie and tape it perfectly the day of.

So, as curiosity begs me to do, I peek around the corner of the shade that's pulled all the way down. Let me tell you the last thing I expected to see on this golden day in the middle of asscrack-freezing February in the fantastic city of Vagina Sasketchewan, was my assistant captain visibly tongue kissing my goalie partner.

I won't ask. It's not like I didn't know Håkon Rex was gay as hell. But I'm probably the only one that knows. Well, Nico probably knows. Nico is Nico. But the point is, once you figure it out it makes more sense than him coming anywhere near heterosexual.

It's not like I'm shy of that side of things either. Frankly I don't give a damn who I date as long as they're insane enough to put up with my bullshit. That's led to some interesting situations.

I won't talk about it.

It's just so hard with him. I've known Håkon since he was 19, our first season out here, he was painfully shy, his size was still new to him after a growth spurt over the summer. He was only 6'3" at the draft, six five when he started the season and now is a round six and a half feet. He was clumsy and his hands were too big and his english was shit, miles from what it is now. He stuck to himself, scared of what was, at that point, a very old team. He barely talked, barely showed up to optional team things, barely came out of his shell. I remember trying desperately to get him to cave because he's all I had. The next youngest person was 28 and for an eighteen and nineteen year old, that's like a century. Håkon is one of very few second round picks brought up at the start of the season after their draft. Normally they stick to juniors or college or national teams but the Wolves were just so bad they had to bring him up too and he was scared shitless constantly. Looking back on it, the management was awful to him, not me, really. I got drafted top ten in the first round, I was good and I could hold my own. Håkon was only that high in the draft because of his size and his clear strength. Nobody ever said anything positive about him, it was like a middle schooler trying to calibrate himself to a varsity team and I was honestly shocked when he showed up for a second season. But I guess it's all he's ever known. Like it's all I've ever known, like it's all Steph has ever known, like Fen, like Nico, like Bernie.

He was just weird. I wanted to get to know him, badly, I needed a friend, but he was clearly violently sheltered, hot off catholic school. He was uncomfortable without a strict dress code day-to-day, often showing up to practice in a collared shirt. On my first road trip with him we shared a room and I remember staring at him when he whipped out a goddamn rosary. I don't give a fuck, frankly, I just didn't expect it. I remember him being visibly uncomfortable with it and quipping to me about not wanting to have to do it, to which I told him he didn't have to, technically he's in charge of defining his own beliefs.

I remember being in Anaheim with him during the first few weeks of the season and having a girl come up to him and ask him for his number and him being visibly uncomfortable, not because he was awkward, which he was, but because he wanted to but hated the idea of it.

I remember watching a movie with him in the hotel in Tampa and having a gay scene come on and him getting all shifty and uncomfortable and asking me to skip it. I questioned, rather concerned with the idea of me, a somewhat queerish guy, being stuck in a room with a homophobe, but he didn't give a reason, just a shy thanks when it moved forward.

I remember the night he lost his teeth, how scary he was out there, how he didn't bat an eye before pulling them out with his sweaty hand, how he spat blood on the ice, how it was dripping down his jersey. How he casually handed them to the trainer on his way to the penalty box. ...And how he tried to hide his crying that night while he fell asleep. And how I felt completely helpless because I didn't know how to console him. The one time I'd tried to hug him he'd flinched like I'd burned him. I didn't know what to say: 'hey buddy, that's rough that you lost your teeth but you looked badass while you did it?' what's someone supposed to do when that happens other than lay awake in the bed across the room, trying to figure out why he's so hard to figure out.

Then the next year we had Fen and Greenie and Ukkovvsky got traded to us as well as Williams from Annahiem and it was suddenly a bigger group of young people. I expected Håkon to show up just as shy and viscerally awkward as he did the year before, but he boarded up like a goddamn foreclosed home over the summer. He was rigid, an inch taller, stiff, no longer confused and lost. One would have mistaken it for confidence and I did for a while, but it was fear. He flipped from awkward and clumsy and a little goofy to team dad in one summer. He stopped drinking with the guys, he moved out of our shared apartment and into his own home, which nobody has ever seen the inside of (however I have a sneaking suspicion that Rocket is there all the time). He shrugged off every damn question anyone asked him. Where I could get tidbits and stories about his friend Wilhelm and Svea the year before, I couldn't even convince him to come over to play video games anymore.

Six months into the season I realized why. I realized a lot of things with him. I noticed his tiny half-second-too-long stare at Fenrir, which, who can blame him for. I realized his cold demeanor to the bar culture we all participate in to some extent. I realized he'd never brought anyone home during our time living together despite me kinda having a wild time for myself, and I realized, which was pivotal, that he flinched whenever he got a call from his parents and how he seemed to be haunted by constant shame, like it never left him alone.

And it got worse from there. His strict to-work from-work regime basically took over his life. His daily schedule was the same, his existence was hockey with no wiggle room. You could tell he was pissed off that all this structure wasn't getting him any further along in his training.

Then this year. I thought it was going to be worse, so much worse, when he showed up visibly sick to the first day of practice. Then it wasn't. Then Rocket somehow smashed through every damn wall he could find with a toy toolbox hammer and I love him for it. And Håkon, where I thought he could never do it, instead of feeling violated and scared by Rocket, developed a wee little soft spot for the bastard. And he fucking exploded. Suddenly he's laughing on the plane flights and he's joking and chirping Rocket around every corner and he's fucking visibly flirting with him constantly and shoving him around and letting Rocket do anything he wants, embarrass him, lay on his shoulder to nap on the plane, hug him, grab his cage during a game. Anything. Suddenly he's alive again and coming from a guy that's been constantly keeping an eye on him for five years just to make sure that nothing sends him over the edge, it was amazing to watch. Rocket is an angel in goalie gear for him.

I actually find it quite funny that Rocket was the one that got that far with him. I mean, Rocket. I really wanted it to be me, after all, Rexy and I have been stuck together for five years and I've been trying to get through to him for all five and failing miserably at something that Rocket did in record time, four months or so.

And it's not like I'm going to lie to you, Håkon is a hard guy to avoid feelings for when you're 18 and kinda obsessed with that dark and broken character stereotype. It's been years since Håkon has made my stomach jump like that, but I totally understand why Håkon turns Rockets gears.

However I have no flying clue why Rocket was the one that turned his in return. I honest to god pictured him as someone who would be into coffee shop and film major type boys. He's big, he's quiet, he's tough as nails and doesn't mind listening to people talk. Film major type gays, in my experience, don't shut the fuck up. They could talk his ears off and he'd be completely content to listen. Håkon, probably because heteronormalcy has been drilled into his head since forever, is very much likely to be completely exclusively a male role. That fits with my analysis of him being into Film Major Gays because they're almost exclusively okay with being the latter. I have never ever ever met, in my entire existence, even when I was in college, met a Film Major Gay that's fills the top personality type. 

I hate using top and bottom because it's rude as hell normally, but they're good to use to help figure out how someone's relationship dynamic works. Steph's a sexual top, sure, I'll give him that, but he's a bottom in day to day life. Greenie is the same. Jorgen is a top. Finnican is a top. Bernie is a bottom. It's just the major points of their personality and disposition. 

I just expected Håkon to be way more into Film Major boys. Guys that would put on his jersey and show up to every damn game instead of a guy that puts on his own jersey and gets on the ice with him. I thought he'd be into smaller guys that he's easily stronger than, guys that would always be the little spoon, guys that would make him tea after a hard game and rub out his shoulders. Guys that would undoubtedly be smaller and shorter and really really into his hulk thing.

I didn't expect Rocket to be Håkon's type in the slightest. I thought Håkon wouldn't particularly like being in a relationship with someone as physically strong as him, mostly out of the slight competitive side in him and from what I've seen in the past few years, the side of him that would protect anything and everything that he loves, especially things that are weaker in any way. Rocket can hold his own and I'm not sure who would come out on top if they wrestled, Håkon has more brute force but I've scrapped with Rocket during practice as a joke and he's an absolute weasel. Nothing can hold him in one place.

Håkon and Rocket will be interesting. I'll give them that. But I can't be happier that Håkon finally has someone. 

I do have to ask Nico once I'm back upstairs in the weight room. I figure if she's going to have a biohazard issue in her office she should know.

"You look like you're considering something, what's up?" She asks me the second I start in her direction in the weight room.

"Your assistant captain and my goalie partner are down each other's throats in your office, I just wanted you to know so you can clean appropriately later."

She grins, it's an odd response. "Thank god. Alright, Paxy, don't tell anyone about that, let me get it." She pats my shoulder then trots off.

Fen gives me a funny look from across the room, asking what happened. I just shrug back at him. The guy's thicker than a brick wall, she'll have to tell him directly. 

***

with me all along, not a cameo, 

every scene, every episode, every video,

skip no scenario, there anywhere we go

with me all along - bronze radio return

***

hehe. Also the next chapter won't be up until friday unless something magical happens

also i'm in the US so if I disappear completely it's because we're in the second civil war. <3 I'll post from the battlefield.