An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
“As soon as Matt made contact, he knew he shouldn’t have. It was a blatant boarding call. Ivan had no way to protect himself because he didn’t have the time to realize what had happened.
He really didn’t mean to make him crumple like that, to hit him that hard. He swore he heard a crunch before Ivan went down, lying on his side. At first, he wasn’t even moving. Matt didn’t breathe again until Ivan started to roll over, and he was immediately choking out apologies. Ivan hadn’t deserved that. He knew he could’ve seriously hurt him. His team was rushing towards him to check on him, and the ref had already called the play.
He knew Kirill was going to punish him when they got home, and he knew he deserved it, too.”
