Chapter Thirteen
“Heading into the Christmas break, the NHL has given us a few surprises. After their unexpected hot streak in November, the Montreal Wyverne are clinging to a playoff spot. Despite good odds at the start of the season, Texas and Nashville appear to be imploding and can be found at the bottom of the standings, while Long Island is narrowly beating out the New York Liberties for the Eastern Conference wildcard spot for once. Meanwhile in the Central Division, Chicago has taken third place after a win streak that could become record-breaking for the team if they keep it up.”
Top comments:
firecrackers_spark: Chicago also apparently the first team with an out gay player?
hockey_is_for_everyone: @firecrackers_spark—Neither Kilian Howard nor either of the organizations he’s played for this year have issued a statement. Photos can be faked. Let’s not out anyone who doesn’t want to be there, yes?
(From “Pre-Christmas Standings,” published on , 12/23/2025)
The Firecrackers won their last game before Christmas by the skin of their teeth.
Kilian played terribly, as he’d expected, but the rest of the team pulled together.
The Buffalos were nice enough not to call Kilian anything nasty on the ice, which he’d been bracing for all day. He’d have to count it as a win.
The locker room was unnaturally quiet.
Brianna had banned media for the game. She’d told Kilian in their meeting that she couldn’t pull that strategy more than once and had strongly suggested he release a statement with his agent’s help.
But what could he say? Everyone knew. Everyone had seen.
As soon as he confirmed it, he could kiss the camaraderie he’d found in Chicago goodbye and wave the farm team hello.
Lissy tried his best to lift everyone’s spirits, starting loud conversations about Christmas plans with the rookies.
But even the thought of Christmas with the Fullers—and the spectacle of Tyson and Connor pretending they hadn’t beaten each other up less than a week earlier—couldn’t dispel the damper Kilian had put on the team.
“What about you? You headed for Victoria?”
Kilian looked down at his skates. He needed to bend over to unlace them.
He was so tired though. Last night, he’d slept like a log in Damir’s arms, but when he woke that morning to find Damir had made him pancakes from scratch, it still wasn’t enough to shake the exhaustion Kilian felt in his bones.
He wanted to go home, but home right now meant the spare room of the guy he was pitifully into despite knowing nothing could come of it.
Now that he’d been outed, his chances of Damir ever wanting more than sex had gone from miniscule to nonexistent.
“Howie?”
Kilian snapped his head up. “Huh?”
“You going to Victoria for the break?”
Kilian couldn’t stop himself from laughing out loud. “Fuck no.”
Ketchup frowned. “That sucks. Thought we might be flying together.”
“Nah. I forgot to cancel my flight from San Francisco.” Kilian shrugged.
He should probably feel guilty. They’d call his name at the airport, maybe even hold the flight for him.
He sure as fuck wasn’t going to call to cancel now.
He hadn’t looked at his phone in days, except to beg for Damir’s attention the only way he knew how.
The longer he waited to read the copious messages pouring in, the more scared he got.
“But…” Ketchup trailed off.
“What?”
“Don’t you want to be with your family…now?”
Kilian couldn’t think of anything he wanted less. “Nah.”
“Have they been…”
“I have no idea how they’ve been,” he snapped. “I haven’t talked to them since…since…”
His voice broke, and he clenched his jaw shut. Surely there had to be a point in time when he’d stopped crying about shit. He thought he’d run out of tears last night when Damir had spanked him until he was a clean, blank slate, hollow and whole.
Apparently, there were more tears waiting for him, doing nothing to combat the sissy gay boy stereotype.
“Oh, shit, I’m sorry.” Ketchup pulled him into a rough side hug. “Are you gonna be okay? I can cancel; we can do Firecrackers Christmas. It’s—”
“No,” Kilian said. “No, it’s cool. Not really in the mood to celebrate, y’know?
” He’d never wanted the comforting traditions of a Howard family Christmas more, not even last year when he’d stayed in San Francisco and been so brutally lonely for every minute of every day, including the time he’d spent at the team party at Phil’s house.
This year, he’d booked his ticket home for the holidays in July, thinking it would be the lesser of two evils to subject himself to holiday traffic.
Kilian wanted his grandpa to come over for brunch with a suitcase full of presents, dressed as Santa Claus, despite all of them being an easy decade too old for it.
He wanted his mom to make hot cider and scorch the bottom of the pot.
He wanted his sisters to squabble over who got the best gifts and end up sharing their favorites anyway, leaving Kilian to pilfer the nail polish colors they deemed too garish for his own toenails.
He wanted to doze off, full and happy, under the tree with the scent of pine and candles in his nose.
He wanted to be the person they wanted him to be.
It would be so much easier if that were still a possibility.
“You’re sure?” Ketchup asked.
From somewhere deep within himself, Kilian dredged up a smile. “Yeah, no worries. I’ve got Damir; he doesn’t do Christmas either. We’ll just…I don’t know. Work out or something.”
Ketchup shuddered in exaggerated horror. “Saddest Christmas plan I have ever heard.”
Over his shoulder, Kilian caught Damir’s eye. He crossed his arms menacingly, drawing himself up to his full, impressive height right behind Ketchup’s back. Ketchup turned a fraction of an inch, caught sight of him, and flinched all over.
Damir’s mouth twitched almost imperceptibly. He thought he was so funny. Kilian wouldn’t stroke his ego by laughing.
They packed up their bags and drove Ketchup to the airport. He spent the drive talking about all the things he intended to do in his three days at home—80 percent of which seemed to center on food.
Driving around the airport meant holiday traffic full of people in a hurry, and when Damir stalled out for the second time, it took him two full minutes to calm down enough to get the car moving again.
Ketchup’s parting words were “Get yourself an automatic for Christmas.”
With him gone, the car went quiet. Damir took deep, slow breaths.
For a while, Kilian debated saying something comforting, but he had no idea what would work. So, he slid out of the back, walked around to the driver’s side, and opened the door. “I’m driving us home.”
Damir studied him briefly, but he got out of the car and let Kilian take his seat. Kilian moved it up until he could reach the pedals. He turned on the ignition and held and released the clutch a few times to get a feel for it. Then he pulled out and into traffic.
The mindless repetition of his feet on the clutch, the gas, and the brake was meditative in a way skating used to be before it became about his failures as a player and a person.
He missed when he could just skate and skate and skate until his brain shut up.
Maybe he should take up driving through the countryside.
Or long walks. Shit, was this how Tom ended up the way he did, with no one but his dog to help him cope?
And most people didn’t even know Tom was gay.
Kilian slid into place in line behind a red light and shifted to first gear.
“You’re good at this,” Damir observed.
Kilian hummed, pleased.
Ten minutes away from the apartment, Damir elected to open his mouth again. “We’re meeting a figure skater tomorrow morning at nine. Her name is Valeria. She’s terrifying; you’ll love her.”
Kilian could say so many things in answer.
Surely Damir could let the extra coaching go now that Kilian’s days in the NHL were very clearly numbered.
He didn’t want to get up early over Christmas break; he didn’t want to get up at all.
He wanted to stay in his room, in his bed, and never face the outside world ever again.
What he said was “You think I like people who are terrifying?”
Damir glanced over at him with a smirk. “Don’t you?”
“You’re not terrifying.”
“The rest of the NHL would beg to differ.”
“You’re a smug bastard is what you are.” Kilian didn’t mention that as soon as the rest of the NHL discovered how much Damir enjoyed cooking fancy meals when he was stressed, his reputation as a menacing wall of danger and destruction would be toast.
Damir scoffed and pointed out that his parents were happily married, thank you very much, and he and Kilian bickered the whole way home.
For dinner, Damir heated up something flavorful and delicious with ground lamb and stewed tomatoes. Kilian had never been a big mutton fan. He’d grown up around too many sheep. But when Damir cooked, Kilian would eat anything.
After dinner, Damir asked him about the St. Louis Arches’ PK unit, which led to watching replays on the TV and arguing with each other over the commentators about whether or not the special teams coach was on crack.
The replay ended, segueing into a darts quarterfinal, and Damir got strangely invested in the bald guy winning, which Kilian had to mock him for.
But darts games lasted a surprisingly long time, and the couch was wide and soft and expansive, so Kilian dozed off somewhere between the fourth and sixth leg of the third game with his head pillowed on Damir’s chest. He became hazily, dizzily aware of being moved later, and then he was laid into soft, cool sheets with a warm body wrapped around him, and the world remained dark.
Kilian woke to the buzzing of Damir’s alarm some hours later, his nose mashed into Damir’s dark chest hair. He smelled of sweat and pencil shavings, and Kilian was in love with him.