Chapter 1
The Callum Rhodes Thing<!
Grady Fletcher has been on Harborcrest's team with Kirill Morozov for the last seven years.
Last week, he figured out the Callum Rhodes thing.
Of course, despite this, Grady had yet to tell Mo what he had figured out.
He still wasn't fully sold on his own theory, didn't know how Mo would take it — either mild confusion or complete nuclear meltdown with no in between — and honestly couldn't explain how he'd pieced it together.
Sometimes, when he looked back on his findings, he struggled to believe his own eyes.
Other times, he looked back and wondered how no one else had fucking seen it.
Look, Grady cared for Mo — he really, really did — and his fondness only grew for the little shit as the years passed.
Especially after he'd become the best captain Harborcrest had seen in decades.
All this to say:
Kirill was not subtle.
He was a disaster.
Chaos wrapped in shoulder pads.
A massive, hockey-playing, absolutely-not-straight catastrophe.
Grady had picked up on all of that the first time they met.
The sexuality part included — even if he hadn't known what the hell to call it back then.
He knew Mo slept with women.
Lots of them.
Even had a long-time fling, or so Grady had heard.
In fact, the team had met one of the women Mo had on his long list of booty-calls.
Katya from "back home." Mo, ever the gentleman, insisted they were just friends and hadn't hooked up in years.
But Grady Fletcher had always known that Kirill Morozov liked men.
From the very first game they played together.
He'd never had a problem with it, never said anything directly, but he'd made sure Mo knew he was safe with him.
Little things: rainbow tape on pride night even when most of the team skipped it, agreeing to hit up a gay club without hesitation, speaking openly about queer people in a sport where few did.
Mo never said anything.
It was the second year of Kirill being on the team when Grady first noticed something about Morozov's...
fixation with Callum Rhodes.
It had made sense in their rookie year.
At that point, it wasn't really fair to call it Morozov's fixation with Callum Rhodes.
Everyone else was obsessed with their rivalry.
It was shoved in their faces after practically every game — sometimes even games that neither of them had fucking played.
While it had been slightly annoying for some of the veteran players to be pushed aside that year, it had been expected.
Honestly, well-earned.
Anyone with eyes and a basic grip on a hockey stick could tell you that Mo and Rhodes were some of the best the league had ever seen.
The only thing more remarkable than their rivalry was the way they could almost telepathically track each other on the ice.
So really, it was Morozov's second year on the team that Grady noticed anything.
The rivalry coverage was still a circus, but at that point it was just part of the routine.
Almost part of the pre- and post-game rituals.
Right skate, left skate, hockey tape, answer Reporter #12's question about Mo and his rival, go play hockey.
But then Cedarwood came to Harborcrest for the first time that season, and Grady noticed something...
else.
He had taken Kirill out for a cigarette because, unfortunately, there was pretty much fuck-else to do in Harborcrest between afternoon practice and game time.
Not if they planned on coming back to the stadium at any point, given the amount of fucking traffic.
Most days, the team just stayed put.
That was how he and Mo ended up with their pre-game cigarette ritual.
Cedarwood had shown up early that day.
How they had managed to get there early when most of Harborcrest's own team could barely make it before the puck dropped, Grady would never know.
Either way, it had happened.
Grady couldn't remember exactly what he'd been talking about — probably a bar.
Somewhere to go after the game.
To celebrate, of course, because there was no way in hell he was putting a loss out into the universe.
Morozov spotted the visiting team's bus before he did.
The second he saw it, he flicked his cigarette to the ground and stomped it under his toe, waving his hand through the air like he might make the smoke disappear.
"Put it out!" he had hissed.
If Grady didn't know him so well, he would have thought it was panic. But he did know Mo, and there was no fucking way.
"You're crazy if you think I'm not finishing this," Grady had said.
"Ritual's important."
But when he turned back, Mo wasn't next to him anymore.
Actually, he was ten feet away, pulling mints out of his pocket and popping them like candy.
"Is your funeral," he'd said.
Grady scoffed, shaking his head.
It was a cigarette, not a bomb.
Cedarwood stepped off their bus slowly, shooting Grady dirty looks the moment they saw him.
He just glared back — this was his home game, and he wouldn't be intimidated in his own damn house.
Cedarwood could suck his dick.
Morozov slipped back to his side, clearly trying to reinforce the intimidation efforts, though Grady noticed he kept just enough distance to avoid him.
As if the lingering smoke from Grady's cigarette might somehow undo the work of the fifty-five breath mints he'd just watched Morozov swallow whole like some kind of snake.
The last person off of Cedarwood's bus was Callum fucking Rhodes.
A player skilled enough to deserve a nickname and yet too boring to have ever earned one.
Surely someone had called him something other than "Rhodes," but Grady couldn't remember one.
He'd even tried to come up with his own nickname for the kid opposite Kirill, but all he could come up with was Flash Blade, and that... well, it certainly hadn't stuck, because it was fucking awful.
But what he noticed now was the fact that Rhodes locked onto the still-lit cigarette between his fingers.
Even narrowed his eyes at it the same way he did at Mo in a face-off.
"Smoking will kill you, y'know," the kid said as he hauled his hockey bag off the bus.
Before Grady could even open his mouth, Mo was chirping right back.
"I am not smoking!" he called, very defensive for someone who absolutely had been smoking.
Rhodes tilted his head like a confused puppy — and wow, it really was like the anti-Morozov.
"I wasn't talking to you, asshole."
Okay, nope.
They were exactly the same.