Epilogue
Breezy: Welcome to our apartment!
Luca: Technically, it is still your apartment.
Breezy: We can talk about you buying in some other time.
Luca: Really?
Breezy: Yeah, I’m never going to charge rent, but I’d be cool with you owning half the place. If you want.
Luca: I don’t know what to say. I thought you would never let me contribute.
Breezy: Yeah, when I thought you were going to leave. I was trying to, like, entice you to stay.
Luca: You…you…
Kayleigh: How about a tour, guys!
Breezy: Oh, right! So, this here is the living room. We’ve been on a decorating kick, so let us know what you think of all the lights and stuff. Over there is the kitchen. My bedroom’s on the left, and Luca’s is on the right, although these days—
Kayleigh: And is that a gaming console under the TV there?
Breezy: Yup. We have a couple. Don’t film the back of the TV. It’s a huge mess of cables.
Kayleigh: So who’s the gamer?
Breezy: [laughs] I wouldn’t call either of us gamers. We play a round or two of Mario Kart sometimes when we have friends over. We did a Counter-Strike marathon with Fedorov the other night.
Luca: When it’s just us, we usually find a movie to watch. Chris enjoys romcoms.
Breezy: And Luca thinks they’re dumb.
Luca: I’m coming around on them.
Top comments:
sealionsfan82: fellas, is it gay to watch romcoms together, surrounded by strings of fairy lights? And is that a scented candle on the table? Asking for two hockey players.
calabreezy: look, I love Breezy and Luca, but next time can we get an apartment tour from someone who spent their NHL $$ on a kick-ass place and not on twinkly lights?
(From “Italian D-man Bach Pad Tour,” posted in The Rookery, the direct-to-consumer streaming service of the San Francisco Sea Lions and all associated teams, on 11/25/2025)
Luca took a deep, steadying breath. It was December first. He had been dating Chris for about three weeks, and he never wanted to date anyone else ever again. A full year of being in love with someone would do that to a man. Everything was good.
Well, the team still struggled to put together two wins in a row, and while Howie had deigned to speak to Chris after they came back from Canada, he hadn’t stopped keeping everyone at arm’s length. But in terms of their private relationship, Luca had never been happier.
He just had one piece of unfinished business to settle.
If only Chris would finish up with therapy and get to the locker room.
He checked Chris’s stall again, making sure his Secret Santa gift was where he’d put it, and no one had decided it would be a funny prank to hide it or exchange it with something else.
They had agreed to do one gift per day leading up to the Christmas break, and he had pulled day one. His leg bounced up and down.
“What’s got you all riled up?” Vanderbilt asked.
Luca had last seen him warming up in the weight room, with baby Lily crawling around inspecting all the gear, while Cheryl hung out in the PR office.
Luca had to get off the spinning bike several times to stop her from grabbing at the moving wheel.
He didn’t mind her being at the practice rink, but he did mind being forced to look after her because her father couldn’t be asked. Whoever he was.
He squinted at Vanderbilt. Better to change the subject than admit weakness. Hayes might be marginally less awful than Luca had assumed, but the jury was still out on Vanderbilt. “Weren’t you taking care of an infant?”
“Oh, I left her with Dmitriyev for practice,” he said, nodding in the direction of the trainer’s offices where Dmitriyev was getting PT for his hip.
“You just gave him your baby?” Luca asked, aghast. He clenched his jaw shut, but he could hardly take the question back.
Vanderbilt rolled his eyes. “Yeah, man. He loves the kid.”
Luca had to bite his lip to say nothing at all.
“And yes, I know about him and Cheryl.”
“You do?”
“You’re a judgmental ass, you know?”
Luca blinked. “Yes, actually, I do know. What did I misjudge this time?”
“Calling me out on the team plane for sleeping around?”
Luca winced. The very last thing he needed was to be reminded of that plane ride, Lindy’s stupid compliment game, and how badly he’d fucked it up.
Vanderbilt continued regardless. “Bro. Majorly uncool teammate move to start with, and it’s not as if Cheryl doesn’t know.”
“She does?”
Vanderbilt paused. “Uh, yeah, I’m pretty sure she does. Like, how could she not? Anyway, she has Dmitriyev; it works out.”
Luca couldn’t help the way his left eyebrow raised on its own.
“What?”
“You think she knows? And how does Dmitriyev feel about…” Luca had no idea what Dmitriyev’s role was. Did he want to play the affair partner in a dubiously ethical polyamory situation? The way he doted over baby Lily raised severe doubts in Luca’s mind about his satisfaction with the status quo.
“Eh.” Vanderbilt shrugged. “Not my business.”
Luca tried to make a nonjudgmental expression. Unfortunately, his face didn’t work that way.
“Wow, you are a dick.”
He glared at Vanderbilt. “You are one to talk.”
“Takes one to know one.” Vanderbilt grinned in a way he must think was charming. Luca’s taste in men ran more toward the adorably sincere than the incredibly smarmy, so he couldn’t see the appeal. “Look,” Vanderbilt added, “Hayes has been after me to make nice, so can we start over?”
At the start of the season, Luca had been sure nothing Hayes or Vanderbilt could say or do would make their behavior acceptable to him.
Now, Luca had to admit that while he might not agree with them on much of anything or want to spend time with them one-on-one, there was more to life than fostering resentment.
More importantly, his time was better spent concentrating on how to be a good member—Christ, a good leader—of the team than on dwelling on bygones.
All the same, he wouldn’t let Vanderbilt get away without acknowledging his own faults. “Will you start passing to me?”
“I’ll think about it. Will you stop elbowing me during practice?”
Luca frowned, but he supposed Vanderbilt had a point. “Perhaps, if you do the same, we can get along.”
“Deal. So what’s got you so tense?”
Sighing, Luca admitted, “I’m first up with the Secret Santa gifts.”
“Really?” Vanderbilt snickered. “Secret Santa?”
“As you have so kindly pointed out, social skills are not my greatest strength.”
“Nah, that’s your edgework. You’ll be fine. Breezy thinks the sun shines out your ass anyway.”
Luca knew that, which was why he wanted to do this right.
Finally, Chris walked in and made a beeline for Luca’s stall.
He’d planned to talk to Michelle today about his sexuality and his relationship to Luca, and he’d been nervous before they left for the rink.
So far, no one but Mooney knew, but he’d been kind enough to restrict his reactions to unsubtle winks when Luca left their shared room during roadies.
Chris had spent a lot of the last two weeks googling to find other people who were demisexual—the word he’d chosen as the most fitting—and had been disheartened to discover so many who either didn’t believe in it or thought of it as a disorder.
“And?” Luca asked.
Chris beamed. “She says she’s proud of me. And look, she gave me a gold star!” He thrust out his arm, showing off the sticker on his bare forearm. Interactions like these made Luca put off making his own appointment with the team therapist. She seemed so…American.
“I’m glad. Now go get changed. Practice starts in ten.”
Turning to his own stall, Chris’s eyes lit up with excitement. “I’m first! Look, Luca, my Secret Santa went first! I get a present!”
“Yes, I can tell,” Luca said drily.
“Nope, you don’t get to ruin the magic and excitement for me. I wonder if I’ll be able to guess who it’s from.”
Luca hoped so. “Go on, then.”
Chris tore off the wrapping paper.
The instant he saw the packaging beneath, he started to laugh.
“Luca,” he said when he’d caught his breath. “You didn’t.”
“I did,” Luca admitted. “Please don’t make it talk all the time. If I wake up with it screaming in the middle of the night, I will move out.”
“She can live in the living room,” Chris said, clutching the Furby to his chest.
Vanderbilt looked between the two of them, aghast. “That’s what you got him? A fucking Furby? No wonder you were nervous. You suck at gifts.”
“It’s perfect!” Chris protested.
Luca could end it here. He had gotten Chris a gift he wanted, for some unfathomable reason, and Chris was happy with it. But Luca made himself a promise, and he would stick to it.
He stood up on the bench and whistled.
Most of the team was gathered around already, chatting as they put on their practice gear. At the sound of Luca’s whistle, everyone fell silent and looked over. The only people Luca couldn’t see were Howie and Dmitriyev. He might as well get it over with.
“I know we had a ten-dollar limit for Secret Santa,” Luca said, “and that Furby cost twelve ninety-nine. But I also have something else for Chris.”
From the corner of his eye, he spotted Lindy and Phil entering the locker room. He hoped Lindy wouldn’t think he was doing this for her approval. He was doing it for his own peace of mind and, hopefully, Chris’s happiness.
She seemed distracted anyway, glaring at Phil. Odd. Lindy’s need for pathological friendliness tended to outweigh any animosity.
“A few months ago, Lindy asked us to play a very stupid team bonding game on the plane. Some of you may remember what I said about Chris.”
“Vividly!” Mooney shouted from the other side of the room.
“I think about it every time I see his stupid underwear,” Jax agreed.
“Yes, yes, we can all agree I fucked up.”
Chris made a sound of protest, but Luca waved him off. “My other Secret Santa gift for Chris is that I would like to make it up to him now. So here is every nice thing I have to say about him.”
Chris’s eyes went wide.
“First, he is very generous. He’s let me live in his apartment rent-free since I moved here, although I spent a lot of time mocking him for various reasons.”
“You have to let the rent thing go, man. I’m a millionaire,” Chris said with a fond shake of his head.
“Shut up. Second, Chris is friendly. I know you all know this, but he is always happy to meet new people, always welcoming and offering his time and his resources to others.”
Chris flushed. “I don’t do anything special, Luca. You—”
“No, you don’t get to talk now. I’m not done. Third, he is the nicest man I’ve ever met. He doesn’t let anyone else’s bad temper or cruelty stop him from being kind even when it is to his own detriment.”
“Luca.” A sheen of tears covered Chris’s eyes.
“Fourth.” Luca’s voice broke. He was going to make it through everything he had planned if it killed him, and he refused to get emotional in front of everyone. “He gives the best hugs of anyone on the planet.”
“Are you done now?” Chris asked hoarsely.
“Yes.”
Chris wrapped both arms around Luca’s waist and lifted him bodily off the bench, hugging him so tightly Luca’s ribs protested. “I’m surprised my dick didn’t make the list,” he muttered in Luca’s ear in Italian while the team gave a half-hearted smattering of applause.
“It’s number five,” Luca assured him in the same language. “Didn’t want to tell everyone about it. It’s mine.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
Luca caught sight of Vanderbilt’s shocked expression before he schooled his face back into bored neutrality. Oops. He supposed some Italian words were recognizable to an American.
Would it be rude to jump the line for coming out to the team? Jax and Tom planned to do it in a few weeks, but Luca didn’t trust himself to wait that long. He’d never been so happy, and he didn’t understand how the whole world hadn’t seen it all over his face already.
Maybe they had and chose to be polite and circumspect, waiting for him and Chris to say something themselves.
Luca liked the thought of being so understood.
He pulled out of Chris’s hold and looked around the room of teammates, half-in, half-out of their gear, smiling and talking, excited to play together for another day.
The team wasn’t perfect, but Luca had found more than the person he hoped to love for the rest of his life here.
He’d found a place where he could be vulnerable and honest and know he would still be respected tomorrow.
He’d found a home when he hadn’t expected one, and no matter what the future brought, he would cherish these moments in this room forever.
“Are we done with the lovefest now?” Hayes asked, sounding more resigned than annoyed. “Only we’re supposed to be on the ice in two minutes.”
“I thought that was wonderful!” Lindy said, still clapping. “Thank you, Luca! We do have a few more announcements before practice, if everyone’s here?”
Phil crossed his arms and leaned against the doorway, expression thunderous. Lindy nudged him in the shoulder, but he didn’t budge.
After doing a quick headcount, Chris said, “I think we’ve got everyone but Howie.”
“That is actually our announcement,” Lindy told them. “I know this is a bit of a surprise, but Howie left for Chicago last night.”
Chris froze. “Chicago?”
“Yes, we completed the trade yesterday. Everyone, welcome the newest member of our team and our starting goalie until Dmitriyev is back on his feet—Arnold Henderson! He even switched his number for you guys.”
Phil stood aside. He paused in glaring at Lindy to give Henderson a smile and a handshake, but returned to his former scowl as soon as the goalie had passed by him to enter the room.
He wore a Sea Lions jersey with the number four sewn onto the sleeve.
“Well, fuck,” Luca muttered. Just when he’d finally gotten the whole team to like him.