Chapter 1
"It's not like I meant to keep it a secret," Oliver says, though he's not sure Nolan can hear him over the sound of his own pacing.
He still hasn't decided if he wants him to.
He was never going to tell anyone.
He was going to die with this secret, probably, or at least retire with it in twenty years.
He hasn't even told Felix and he tells Felix literally everything.
Well, almost everything.
Except for the bit where he's in love with him, but that's mostly irrelevant.
"Okay..." Nolan says, exchanging a confused glance with Graham, who shrugs.
"Keep what a secret, exactly?" Graham probes.
Oliver holds his breath.
He should tell them.
He came here to tell them, because this is getting weird and he doesn't know what to
do
and if he keeps trying to figure it out on his own, his brain might combust.
"ISpeakMoravian," Oliver blurts out finally, in a rush, all as one word.
Nolan lets out a laugh so loud that Oliver startles.
Graham, for his part, doesn't blink.
"Oh my God, kid, don't scare me like that," Nolan says.
"I thought you murdered someone.
Or cheated on someone, more likely.
Do you know how many guys in this league cheat?"
"Uh," Oliver answers eloquently.
"Not all of us," Graham says pointedly to his husband.
"Okay, so you speak Moravian.
So what?"
"So," Oliver says, hoping the rest will be obvious, "Wil doesn't know that I do."
"Okay.
And you're worried he'll feel...
left out?" Graham says.
"No I..." They don't know.
Of course they don't.
Because they're lucky enough to not speak Moravian.
Oliver sighs, settles into a seat across from Nolan, and starts from the beginning.
*
It makes sense, really.
Of course Wil doesn't assume the rookie plucked from Blackwood University knows Moravian.
Oliver's last name is literally Grant.
He's not famous enough for a Wikipedia page with a detailed early life section, not yet anyway.
So no one really knows that his mom's mom came over from Moravia and barely speaks a word of English.
She's too sick to leave the house much these days, so she couldn't fly out with his parents for their home opener.
It's not a secret he's been carefully harboring or anything.
It just would be deeply embarrassing to speak Moravian with Victor Wilcox.
Because unlike Victor Wilcox, Oliver grew up in the suburbs of fucking Westmoor.
He learned Moravian in bits and pieces, scraps fed to him alongside his grandmother's blini.
His grasp on pronunciation is atrocious.
But he understands it perfectly.
So before Oliver's second PHL game, when Victor turns to his husband and mutters something in Moravian, Oliver knows exactly what he says:
If you score tonight, you'll score later.
"Stop," Marcus says in Moravian.
"Not here."
Oliver blushes and drops his head, staring intently at his skates.
He has no clue how much worse it's going to get.
*
Their first road trip is, in a word, brutal.
Not game wise.
Game wise, they're playing great.
Oliver scores two goals in one game against Newhaven, along with an assist on one of Marcus's.
After, Felix sends him a long string of smiley emojis that make Oliver's heart beat stupidly fast.
Oliver is debating if it would be too much to send a kissy emoji back, when Victor's voice rings out, loud and clear.
"As soon as we get back, you're going to ride me harder than you were riding that poor, poor goalie."
Oliver's head pops up, shocked no one's reacting, because the dude's basically shouting and somehow he's not getting chirped within an inch of his life?
!
It takes a second for Oliver's exhausted, mashed potato of a post game brain to realize Wil is speaking Moravian.
He sneaks a glance over at Wil, across the aisle from him, Marcus listing over in the window seat.
He's gone quiet and is stroking a light hand up Marcus's back.
It's such a sweet, tame gesture that Oliver starts to wonder if he hallucinated the words.
It's not outside of the realm of possibility.
He really needs to get laid.
"One finger, then two, til you're begging for more," Wil says, and okay, nope that was definitely real, Oliver can see his lips moving now.
Shit.
Oliver ducks his head down, scrambling for the AirPods nestled way too deep in his pocket.
Lex casts him a concerned glance, which he pointedly ignores.
"Don't worry, I won't make you beg long.
That goal was so beautiful.
You think I won't reward you for that?
I'd reward you for every goal if you'd let me.
You deserve it.
You deserve my—"
Oliver's fingers move so quickly, so violently that he drops his headphones in the aisle.
He watches in what he swears is slow motion as Victor leans down and swoops them up.
"So slippery off the ice," Wil chides in English, clicking his tongue.
"Like the candy."
"What?" Oliver squeaks.
"He's saying you have butterfingers," Marcus supplies from his post of leaning sleepily against the window.
"Oh.
Right.
Yeah.
Ha." Oliver doesn't manage to actually laugh, but he does say it.
He reaches a hand out for his AirPods, but Wil holds tight, swipes a thumb over the Paddington Bear case.
It's definitely embarrassing to have as a twenty-one-year-old, he knows, but his dad got it for him and Oliver brought it on the road for all his games back at Blackwood University.
Sometimes he thinks he got to the Frozen Four by the grace of it alone.
Oliver stares down at that dingy little case with a ridiculous amount of longing.
He wants so badly to shove them in his ears, crank up the volume, and listen to the latest playlist Felix made him until he forgets what he just heard.
But Victor keeps gripping it, for some reason.
Oliver is starting to wonder if it would be taboo to forcibly claw them out of his captain's hand.
"You did good tonight, Grant," Wil says, spinning the case around in his palm.
"Very good."
"Oh.
Uh.
Okay.
Thanks." He tries not to think about Wil rewarding Marcus for his goal and fails miserably.
Ugh, this would all be so much easier if he was straight and didn't find that stupidly hot.
He needs this bus to go faster.
He needs to get back to the hotel and get himself off in the shower thinking about some random, ambiguous set of abs that don't belong to Victor Wilcox or Marcus Thorne or God forbid Felix.
Or maybe he needs this bus to crash.
Maybe, he needs to look Victor in the eyes and speak some fucking Moravian.
Say something.
Say
anything
to let him know that he knows.
But he can't.
He just can't manage it.
He's frozen by his hyperawareness that he heard something he wasn't supposed to and his nagging semi.