unwandering

So I left hockey (as in, I stopped watching the sport as well as quit writing & reading HRPF) for an entire decade for assorted reasons, but the timing was largely driven by Patrick Kane being accused of rape. It was fairly apparent, even when I left pretty early on, that that situation wasn't what it originally sounded like, but just going through those first few days was rough enough to make staying unbearable, and the uncertainty was enough to kill any desire to keep writing then in me entirely. Sometimes you just need to go and that's fine.

So I can't tell you to keep loving the sport or anything. Sometimes you can't, and that's the best choice to make. Really, in the end, you have to decide what parts of the sport you're going to put your heart into. Sometimes you can still love the game but hate the system. Sometimes you can love players but hate their team. Sometimes you can love a team and hate their coach and GM. It's okay for it not to feel all straightforwardly good or bad all the time - that means you're a person who has a capacity for nuance. And in my opinion, that's a good thing to be.

Sometimes you just have to figure out how to check out of parts of it - maybe get off twitter or reddit which are inevitably a more negative wall of shit that's harder to curate than tumblr. Curate tumblr - unfollow people who bring you stress, really. Block tags you don't wanna see (do I have "Trump" and "Team USA" blocked? You betcha!) You are not morally obligated to See The Bad Stuff every day in a space that's for fun. I keep my tumblr pretty positive-only for a reason - I'm not doing Hockey RPF as my good deed to society. Do I read about what's going on in the greater hockey world? Absolutely. Do I bitch with my husband or with friends on discord about it? Definitely. But in this fandom space I'm here to have fun, and if I'm not having fun, I'm not going to stay.

I curate pretty heavily, and I can always pare back down to "fun posts about the fanfic I'm writing" and ignore the rest of it. I don't generally engage with The Greater Discourse (on really any subject, including fandom itself, not just hockey culture) or reblog it or whatever. I even thought about if I wanted to answer this ask at all, because usually I don't want this kind of stuff here! But I figured I could, just once, talk about the challenges of it a little, because it's very real.

All that said, I'm not a person who can just RPF in my own imaginary bubble while ignoring the sport itself. I love watching the game, I love learning about the strategy and tactics, I love the athleticism and thrill of competition (from afar, I hate playing competitive sports myself), I love the narratives and the highs and lows of winning and losing. I've watched a lot of Oilers games over the last year, even though they're not actually my team, and when you watch a team you get attached. That's how it works! I want the team to win, though mostly I want Connor McDavid to get his fucking Cup.

But my number one thing I've been keeping in mind about being a hockey fan this go-around is: all pro sports organizations are crap. They're all bad. There's no such thing as a Morally Good Pro Sports Team, and expecting that is going to lead to nothing but repeating disappointment.

A lot of things happened in the decade I was ignoring hockey that I'm pretty glad to have missed (most notably the whole "Hawks covering up their staff member sexually assaulting a player" situation, which was a hell of a thing to read about years later, let me tell you), and I expect more shit like that to happen going forward. The former Sens owner had part of a liver donated from a fan, saving his life, and then still turned around, ruined the team with his cheapness, and threatened to move it when we stopped showing up. Sens fans know bad ownership, trust me. And then every single thing one reads about youth & juniors hockey culture is pretty devastatingly awful and makes it hard to believe any of those boys grew up okay.

Honestly, the Babcock thing doesn't really rate on my personal "shitty parts of hockey" scale - hiring Bowman was frankly way worse in my mind. Coaches abusing their players the way Franzen reports and the way everyone agrees he did to Marner is obviously crap and frankly pretty unhinged, but I think everyone's gonna be pretty alert to that this go-around so I'm not actually worried for anyone here. I'm at the "eating popcorn" stage of the Babcock thing right now and have decided to be curious & entertained by how this goes in the fall. Circles of control, etc.

And look, there are going to be better or worse individuals in the system, but you're also setting yourself up for failure if you put too high hopes on any of the guys raised in this sport with that kind of money and privilege to be anything but children of it. Like, Connor McDavid's most objectionable moment is getting into a cab with a woman who wasn't his wife once, which isn't actually the kind of thing that bothers me but certainly is for others, but I'm less holding out hope he's actually a great person and more assuming that he's too private and boring for any truly bad shit to become public. I feel for the Matthew Tkachuk fans who saw him repeatedly do things that clashed with their values and fell out of love with the character of him. It sucks! I have been there. We get attached, we build up ideas in our heads, but they're all fiction. Being unable to sustain that fiction when the real world bends too far from it requires a solid mental resetting, and you can do one of three things: move on, separate the fiction from the reality even more, or figure out how to incorporate that new information into your view of the character.

I really like @linskywords's response to an ask about writing Jack Hughes post-Olympics for a lot more nuance on the "being disappointed by your blorbo" thing. When I left Kane/Toews, it wasn't a moral choice and I didn't judge anyone who stayed. I left HRPF in 2015 because staying was going to make me, personally, miserable. I'm not a person who can write characters I don't feel joy about. I know the characters aren't the real people, but I have to be able to suspend disbelief about reality to enjoy the fiction. I personally can't go back and read Kane/Toews fanfic that isn't my own (for some reason, my own fic is fine because they're MY characters, I have detached those versions from the real life individuals) anymore, not really because I hold any particular beliefs about those two players post... everything, but because the experience burnt the affection that drove my RPF interest in them completely out of me. It was rough at the time, but you know what? Eleven years later I feel exactly nothing about it. It's fine. You move on.

Leon's not sure what it is about Connor that makes him start noticing it.

How pale he is, maybe, and how it makes the damage stand out. There are lots of pasty guys in hockey, but there's something about Connor's complexion, the way you can see the veins through his skin, the way you can see the bruises just as clearly, spiraling blue and black. Or it could be how good Connor is: how unusual and shocking it is to see someone nail him like that, all that power and speed stopped in its tracks. So strong on the ice and so vulnerable off it, curling into himself in front of the media, bruises like weak spots he can't hide.

Whatever it is, all of that or something else, Leon can't stop his eyes from snagging on the mottled darkness on Connor's skin in a way he promised himself he'd never let happen in a locker room. He thinks about it a lot that first year, before Lauren's in the picture, before there are girlfriend-shaped reasons not to. Thinks about spreading Connor out, bruises on display, and pressing on them. Thinks about the sounds Connor might make if he did, high and sharp and wounded. Thinks about those galaxies of marks spreading out further under his touch, the way Connor would squirm, the way he'd get hard, maybe, cock filling helplessly against his thigh. Leon thinks about it, and puts his hand on his own cock, and comes before the sick guilt can crawl back in.

Then Connor comes back from the summer with a girlfriend Leon hadn't realized was in the picture, a slim athletic blonde just like Connor was always meant to find, and Leon folds the fantasies up and puts them back where they belong. Think of Lauren, he tells himself when his eyes want to catch on a fresh hit on Connor's thigh. Lauren, who Leon quite likes, who he's becoming friends with a little bit. Who Connor has a good, normal relationship with, where they have good, normal sex instead of the twisted things Leon's fantasized about. Leon holds her up like a talisman, a handhold to keep from sliding back down into the depths.

That's one reason he says yes when Lauren and Connor offer to set him up with Celeste. He wants that handhold further cemented in his life. That, and Celeste is hot as fuck. Leon takes her home the first night, and she tells him immediately when he grips her hips too hard during sex, and he holds her afterwards and feels like he might cry from gratitude. Someone to keep his head above water.

And that's how it is for the next six years, until a different kind of bruise starts showing up on Connor.

***

Leon recognizes it as soon as he sees it. He's watched enough porn over the years, porn he had to wipe from his history after, stomach churning with guilt at having done it again. He doesn't look at Connor's hockey bruises anymore, but he's always aware of them, the way you're aware of a girl in the room with an awesome rack even if you're not staring at her tits. Leon indexes: eyes skating over—yup there's a bruise—the one on his ribs from the game Tuesday—yellower now, not so dark—eyes back where they're supposed to be. All done. He doesn't think about them beyond that, except for what helps him be a good teammate, aware when his best friend and captain is hurt and not letting him hide anything serious.

Today, though. Today, that's not a hockey bruise poking its way above Connor's briefs.

Leon turns his eyes away, face and neck flashing hot. He can't see the bruise now, but he doesn't need to. It's burned into his mind's eye: the long stripe of it, arcing above Connor's waistband, thin and unbroken. A dark angry purple. Like someone hit him with a strap.

Leon feels his cock thicken at the image, the shameful arousal pulling at his balls. He doesn't know that's what caused it. Connor probably fell against the edge of a piece of furniture; that's more likely than someone putting it there deliberately. Lauren wouldn't—Connor wouldn't—

He lets himself look over again. The stripe curves around Connor's hip, just barely visible where Connor's waistband has slipped down. It looks like a bruise from something straight-edged and flexible. A belt, maybe, curling around Connor's hip. Making him cry out with pain. Making him beg for it to stop.

Leon looks down at his knees and tries to breathe out the arousal that's lighting him up. Fire is licking at him, a painful burn. He wants to put his hand on his cock almost as bad as he wants to touch that bruise.

It's not real, he reminds himself. There's no way Connor and Lauren have been getting up to what Leon's imagining. It's just part of what's wrong with him, seeing this places it isn't. He thought he was doing so much better—he hasn't watched that kind of porn in months, hasn't so much as thought about it for more than a moment while getting off—but he must have been kidding himself. He's halfway to busting a nut un the fucking locker room over what's probably just a shadow.

"Hey." Connor's standing over him, looking normal. His bruises, if there are any, are covered by a shirt and pants. "Lauren's trying some new cookbook recipes tonight. You guys want to come over?"