Chapter Sixteen
Hayes: What does it mean to be an alternate captain? Unlimited power over the aux cable in the locker room.
Jax: Lies. We have a rotation now.
Hayes: Which you came up with when no one could agree on a playlist.
Jax: I guess that’s true. I never went to summer camp, but I imagine it’s like being a camp counselor.
Hayes: Accurate. You’re the person people are supposed to trust, and you’re in charge of planning events and activities, but you still get to have fun times by the campfire with everyone else.
Jax: Of course, everyone does it differently, and every team has different structures.
Hayes: And leadership is a team effort.
Jax: Yeah.
Top comments:
seelionssaylions: this is the most awkward video I have ever watched on this site including the time Tom Crowler tried to model merch
sealionsfan8216: @seelionssaylions—I thought Crowler did a good job with the baseball cap!
clions2010: who’s taking over Easton’s A now he finally retired?
(Video posted in The Rookery, the direct-to-consumer streaming service of the San Francisco Sea Lions and all associated teams, on 11/12/2025)
Waking up in bed with Chris was everything Luca thought it would be. Chris looked perfect, his curls tousled and his big brown eyes sleepy in the morning as he joked around, wheedling Luca into watching cartoons under the sheets until they had to go downstairs for breakfast or risk missing it.
Hockey players could not miss a meal, not even for love.
Love.
Luca couldn’t help but smile at Chris over his heaping soup dish of granola and Greek yogurt.
“What’s got you in such a good mood?” Mooney asked, nabbing a free seat at their table.
Chris, who had been smiling back widely, schooled his features into something less ecstatic.
“I slept well,” Luca offered.
“Nice for people who skipped out on their curfew.” Mooney whispered the words low enough that Chris couldn’t hear, but his gaze revealed his anger.
Luca winced. He hadn’t slept in their shared room last night. Of course Mooney noticed.
“Did I do something?” Chris asked when Mooney turned the glare on him as well.
“Uh, yeah. You had incredibly loud sex for an hour last night. I was on the other side of the wall, bro.”
Chris and Luca exchanged panicked glances. They had not discussed telling anyone about their relationship and, if so, how. This did not seem like an auspicious way to start.
“Um.” Chris was already flushing red. “We finished before curfew?”
Luca had met Lindy in the hallway, pretending to be en route to his room during curfew checks.
As soon as she’d moved on to the next room, he slipped into Chris’s room again.
No wonder Mooney was angry. He must have been worried that Luca would get in trouble.
But he could hardly confess to having slept in Chris’s room now, not without giving himself and Chris away.
“Yeah,” Mooney said, “by like a minute. And curfew started late last night. I was trying to sleep before then.”
“Um. Sorry?”
“You should be. I love you, man, but I did not need to hear your sex noises.”
Two tables over, Vanderbilt twisted in his seat to stare.
Luca kept his face as bland as possible and ate more granola.
Chris made a face. “I’m really sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
“That’s not a new one, eh?” Vanderbilt called.
Everything in Luca clenched down. How dare Vanderbilt make such a cruel joke? He glared at the man.
“Okay, okay.” Vanderbilt held his hands up, motioning as if Luca were a wild animal. “I’m only teasing, Mazetti. So who was she?”
“We’re in Montreal,” Mooney said. He had a massive plate of scrambled eggs and whole wheat toast, and he spoke between bites, flecks of bright yellow egg peeking out between his teeth.
“So Breezy had dinner with his folks, and I’m guessing they dug up another French-Canadian-Italian girl for him to marry and have French-Canadian-Italian babies with. ”
Luca took a long sip of his espresso so as to avoid eye contact with Mooney, or he would be forced to hiss and spit at the mere concept, which would do nothing to dispel the feral cat jokes.
“Ooh.” Hayes had turned to get in on the conversation as well. “The Italian Stallion rides again. Is she in the mob too? Can I do the Godfather speech at your wedding?”
“I—” Chris said. “Um.” His face was bright red.
Jax took the last remaining free seat at their table while Tom pulled up a chair at Hayes and Vanderbilt’s table. Luca wondered if they’d discussed in advance who would sit where to make sure they spent time with the whole team and not only each other.
Would Luca and Chris have to come up with a rotation? Luca hoped not. He wanted to spend time with Chris and no one else. He didn’t like anyone else.
Mooney laughed at Chris’s embarrassment, and Luca begrudgingly admitted to himself he was long past being so standoffish.
He liked Mooney. He liked Jax and Tom, and whenever he decided to speak to them again, he’d like Howie.
Fedorov seemed to be a nice kid who could use some friends in a new country.
God knew Luca had been there. He was even coming around on Hayes and Vanderbilt against his own better judgment.
They were assholes and idiots, but hockey as an institution primarily produced assholes and idiots.
If Luca refused to cooperate with them, he might as well quit. Far better to attempt to change them.
Jax had opted for the hardboiled eggs and turkey bacon with his whole wheat toast, but he made a face as he started to unpeel the eggs and discovered they were so hardboiled the yolks had started to turn blue. “What are we talking about?”
Before either Luca or Chris could use the opening to change the subject, Mooney jumped in. “We’re talking about the epic hookup Breezy had last night. The mattress squeaked for a good twenty minutes. That’s some impressive shit after he took a puck to the thigh.”
With anyone else, Luca could improve on twenty minutes, but it was his best showing with Chris.
He would take it. By the end, he’d been so turned on he could barely see.
He’d managed to hold on long enough to get Chris there a second time through sheer bloody-minded stubbornness, and as soon as he had, he’d come so hard his ears rang for long minutes after.
Chris kicked him under the table.
Luca attempted to look less smug.
“You don’t thrust with your thigh; it’s a hip thing.” Jax said. “What are you doing to Mara, and is she okay?”
Mooney rolled his eyes. “Okay, great master, what position do you use to avoid the front of your legs hitting something? Especially”—he glared at Chris—“when you’re going so hard the headboard’s banging into the wall.”
“Hmm. Depends.” Jax sent a sly look over in Tom’s direction.
Mooney gagged. “Ugh, forget I asked. I do not want to know details. That’d be like walking in on my parents.”
Fortunately, Lindy chose the perfect moment to announce they had ten minutes before the bus pulled up, which meant everyone had to eat fast before grabbing their things from their rooms and meeting in front of the hotel.
As soon as the door to their room clicked shut, Mooney turned on Luca. “Dude,” he hissed. “You’re fucking lucky Breezy managed to get laid last night, or everyone would be asking where the fuck you were instead of talking about him!”
Luca swallowed.
Mooney glared at him, arms crossed.
Did he want an answer? Luca couldn’t think of one besides the truth, and he had no idea if he ought to reveal it.
“So? Where were you?”
“I…”
With a huff, Mooney turned away and began stuffing his things into his suitcase. “Fine, don’t tell me. I covered for you last night with Lindy, by the way, so you’re welcome. If you do it again, you’re on your own. The team needs you. I can’t believe you’d put getting tail above us.”
“I’m sorry.” What else could Luca say? He hadn’t put a random hookup above the team, and he hadn’t needed Mooney to cover with Lindy. She must have questions now about why he had.
They finished packing in silence.
Luca managed to catch an elevator down alone with Chris, claiming they wouldn’t fit with Mooney, Howie, and Vanderbilt, along with all their luggage.
As soon as the doors shut, Chris burst out, “I’m not ashamed of you; I promise. And I’m also not ashamed you were the one who fucked me.”
“I didn’t think you were.”
Chris appeared not to hear him, wringing his hands together and continuing to talk. “But, like, I’ve been not-straight for two days, and—”
“Chris, it’s fine.” Luca put both hands on his shoulders to get him to stay put. “We don’t need to tell anyone right away. We can wait as long as you want.”
“Okay.” Chris smiled, a little abashed. “Probably won’t be long. I hate lying to people.”
“You’re also very bad at it.”
“Sorry.”
“No, it is a good thing. You are an honest person. If you weren’t, we might not…last night might have not…”
Chris kissed him quickly, just in time before the elevator dinged and the doors opened.
On the bus, Mooney, Vanderbilt, and Hayes claimed the seats surrounding Chris and continued to rib him mercilessly about his alleged Italian lover (which wasn’t incorrect).
This left Luca sitting next to a taciturn Howie, who stared out the window with his headphones firmly in place and refused to talk.
If Luca hadn’t assumed Chris knew how he felt, if he had been clearer with his words, he could have spared them both the day of agony in which they both thought there would never be any more between them.
But Luca had been so caught up in his own hurt pride he had utterly failed to so much as try, and what for?
He might have missed out on the best thing that had ever happened to him because he’d been so sure he would be hurt—when, all along, Chris had never been anything less than unfailingly, unflinchingly kind, even when Luca was being rude.