Three Times Damir Bit His Tongue And One Time He Talked: Minor Penalties Bonus Story

1.

“Well, this is it. Goodbye for now, fellow brethren in suffering. We shall reconvene in September, when maybe our third line will have gotten so bad they’ll let us play against the AHL teams instead.”

Top comments:

lissums: gain some perspective bro. at least we made the playoffs.

firecrackers_spark: [saluting emoji]

(From “playoff exit after five games fml” posted to r/chicago_firecrackers on 29/04/2027)

***

“Ah, look at that!” Mr. Howard crowed, elbowing his son. “Fantastic pass.”

Kilian grimaced. “Sure. Look, Dad, I’d really rather not see—”

On screen, one of Colorado’s D-men stole the puck off Rocky’s stick and passed to the forward who scored the game-winning goal on Petterson.

Colorado’s team celebrated (obnoxiously, in Damir’s opinion).

Mr. Howard shut off the TV. “All downhill from here.”

Unfortunately, he was correct. The Colorado Thunder would go on to win the game and the series, booting Chicago from the playoffs in their first appearance in seven years.

After the loss, they had spent a solid week watching replays in their living room with Ketchup, dissecting every moment when they could have done something, anything, different to not lose that fourth game. Then, with the mourning period over, they’d started their off-season. For Ketchup, that meant disappearing into the wilds of British Columbia to go fishing. For Kilian and Damir, it meant training.

They had their sessions with Valeria on-ice as well as routine strength and conditioning at the gym. But downtime was part of recovery as well, and the personal coach they’d decided to hire after reviewing multiple options couldn’t start until July.

On the premise that rest was important, they’d booked three weeks of vacation time with Kilian’s family as soon as Damir’s green card had gone through. The plan had been to rest, recuperate, and return to Chicago to start fresh.

To say they didn’t need a replay of the game that had ended their playoff run would be a massive understatement.

This was the third time Kilian’s father had put it on since Kilian and Damir had arrived at Kilian’s family farm in Victoria, BC, four days ago.

This time, he had just wanted to talk to Kilian about his passing. Last time, it had been his shots on goal, and the time before it had been backchecking.

“So, any big plans today?” Kilian’s father asked.

Kilian shrugged. “Thought we’d just hang out here. Help mom around the farm.”

Mr. Howard frowned, but said nothing.

“It’s a rest day,” Kilian told him. “Those are important, too.”

“Oh, of course.”

In the pause that followed, Damir hoped the conversation had found an end, but then Mr. Howard asked, “Can I take a look at your training plan?”

Kilian stared at him for a long moment. Damir presumed he was debating whether or not to explain, again, that the purpose of this visit was to relax from training rather than overtax themselves. He opened his phone and swiped around a few times. “Sent it to you. Hey, city boy.”

It took Damir a moment to realize he was meant. “Hm?”

“Ever mucked out a stable?”

Damir followed him outside where they put on thigh-high rubber boots and headed toward the sheep stall.

“One day,” Kilian muttered. “One day to lie around and be lazy and eat junk, is that too much to ask?”

“We can do that in Chicago,” Damir offered.

“No, I’ll feel guilty about it.” Kilian sighed and banged the door to the stall open. At the frantic baa-ing that ensued, he muttered an apology to the sheep, which Damir found so charming he missed the point where he could opt out of cleaning up shit.

***

2.

“If I see one more “Top Ten Sea Lions Bench Moments” and it’s all Crowler and Grant in the last two rounds of the playoffs I’m gonna scream.”

Top comments:

stickstickpuck: the effects of somewhere between two and five members of an NHL team coming out and a stanley cup on bandwagoners needs to be studied by science.

calabreezy: been here since day one staying till the end of time and I have this handy compilation of every time Breezy hugged someone this season

(From seelionssaylions’s X account, 12/07/2027)

***

“Damn fair-weather fans,” Kilian’s grandfather continued his rant about the girl they’d passed by in a Sea Lion’s jersey.

“They’ve been a good team for years,” Kilian said mildly. “People harp on last season because of the coaching thing, but the team did okay.”

His grandfather scoffed.

Damir squeezed Kilian’s leg under the table at the café they sat outside of.

It was a beautiful day, clear and bright, with the sun reflecting off the lake. The whole Howard family had taken a few days to visit Kilian’s grandfather in Muskoka, where he spent his summers.

Damir had already been on The Boat and struggled to not show anyone how nauseous it made him. Kilian’s sister Josie had slipped him something ginger-flavored halfway through, which helped. Mercifully, she hadn’t said anything to either Mr. Howard. Being unfit for sea seemed like a reason they might withhold parental and grandparental blessing.

“You had a Sea Lions flag on the boat until they traded Howie,” Josie pointed out.

“That’s different,” he sniffed. The elder Mr. Howard was closing in on eighty, but he remained surprisingly spry. His hair had turned a bright, shocking white, but his freckled skin gave away that he’d had the family looks in his youth.

Kilian clutched his heart, affecting great disappointment. “I thought you were a true fan.”

“I’m a Kilian fan,” his grandpa said. “Doesn’t matter what team you played for. Or bat for.”

Kilian laughed, but Damir knew the flush in his cheeks was only partly due to the sunshine.

It was a lovely moment, which must have been why Kilian’s parents chose that moment to arrive with the two remaining Howard sisters. They’d elected to skip the boat adventure in order to go shopping for the planned barbecue this evening.

“What are we talking about?” Mrs. Howard asked, taking a seat at the table.

“Fair-weather fans,” Josie offered.

That did it.

Kilian’s father had a lot to say about all the Canadians who’d joined the Sea Lions “band wagon” thanks to the Cup win. As he talked, his voice grew progressively louder and Kilian sank lower and lower in his dinky café chair. Around them, a few heads turned.

“So, Damir,” Lacey tried gamely when Mr. Howard Jr. paused for air. “You don’t eat pork, is that right?”

“Yes,” Damir said, and then could think of no way to continue this avenue of conversation.

“We got hamburgers, so that should be fine, right?” Lacey asked.

Damir smiled and nodded and resolved to check the packaging.

But Kilian had gotten so used to standing up for people he just couldn’t help himself. “What kind of burgers? Did you check to make sure it was 100% beef? Because—”

“Kilian,” Damir tried, but it was too late.

A hand landed on his shoulder and squeezed. Hard. “Denny here cooked us some really fancy meals over Christmas. Bet you get real used to high-class ingredients on an NHL salary.”

Damir had some thoughts on that, actually. Chiefly that an NHL lifestyle incentivized a lot of players to get really fucking excited about terrible fast food, because it felt forbidden.

The solution, in his opinion, was to make better food rather than pride oneself on eating endless amounts of chicken and pasta.

“You know he’s Muslim, right, Dad?” Josie asked. “Just checking. Because it sounds like you don’t.”

The red flush on the neck appeared to be genetic. Damir wondered if Kilian would get it, too.

“Of course I know,” Kilian’s father said. “But not every Muslim eats high quality steak all the time.”

That was a point Damir could concede. Before he could say as much, Kilian’s father continued. “Anyway, it’s not as if he’s a super strict Muslim, or he wouldn’t spend so much time with Kilian.”

Ah, there was that flush on Kilian’s neck as well. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just that Muslims aren’t usually cool with the whole gay thing.”

Three different voices said, “Dad,” in tones of great embarrassment.

Josie just put her face in her hands.

“It’s a subject of some scholarly debate,” Damir allowed. “And there are plenty of intolerant Muslims. But the same could be said of Christians.”

Into the silence that followed, Kilian’s mother asked, “Who wants to get ice cream?”

***

3.

Interviewer (off-screen): What can you tell us about your off-season training regimen?

Vanderbilt: So, yeah, basically I just do what my trainer tells me and eat what my chef cooks me.

Top comments:

stickstickpuck: wow. groundbreaking. money was the answer to being good at things all along.

seelionssaylions: WOOO STANLEY CUP CHAAAAAMPS!

(From “Inside the magic: check out Stanley Cup Champion Tom Vanderbilt’s off-season routine” posted to YouTube on 07/28/2027)

 ***

Damir bit back a swear as he banged his head on the loft door.

They’d been in Victoria for ten days and he still hit his head every single time. In Chicago, he’d chosen an apartment with high ceilings and generously cut doors. But Kilian, as the family baby and the only boy, had gotten the attic at the top of the house, and while the room was cut so Damir could mostly stand upright, the doorframe got him every time.

The bump to the head didn’t help his general state of discombobulation. He’d woken up alone with the sun already high in the sky. That hadn’t happened in months. He was hit or miss on getting up in time for Fajr, and the travel schedule alone during the season made it impossible. But usually, when he woke up, he had six feet of redhead clinging to him.

Not today.

Today, he stumbled downstairs in severe need of caffeine, and found no boyfriend in the kitchen. He wasn’t in the living room either, or in the home gym, where he’d gone most days of this vacation despite intending to take a well-deserved rest while they were here.

Instead, he found no one but Mr. Howard downstairs.

Trying to walk as quietly as he could, Damir padded into the kitchen and poured himself a cup of coffee. Filter coffee. It tasted a lot like what he imagined battery acid would be like. The only milk available was fresh sheep’s milk from the farm, though, and Damir couldn’t stand the taste of it in his coffee.

At least Kilian wasn’t here to mock him for being a city boy.

“Damir!” Mr. Howard’s voice was far too loud for eight in the morning. Damir liked his days to start quietly, with some solitary exercise or a nice breakfast. The Howard clan talked a lot in the mornings and none of them ate breakfast sitting down. Knowing Kilian, this was absolutely no surprise, but at home by the time Kilian was up and chattering and having his smoothie-on-the-go, Damir had usually been awake for a while already.

He was totally unprepared for this sneak attack.

“Good morning, Mr. Howard,” he managed with a small smile.

Mr. Howard clapped him on the shoulder. The touch lingered, itching at Damir’s skin under the T-shirt he’d slept in. He wished he’d had the foresight to get dressed.

“Kilian’s in town with his sisters. Some fashion emergency. You know what they’re like.” The latter was said with an eye roll.

Damir bit back any number of responses, not least that he would vastly prefer clothes shopping to this interaction.

“So tell me. Man to man.”

Damir clenched his teeth.

“How did you get Kilian’s edgework to improve so much?”

For a moment, Damir had one of those out-of-body experiences where he could see multiple possible futures laid out before him. In one direction, he reminded Mr. Howard that Kilian was an adult and any change or improvement in his own game was his own responsibility. Mr. Howard would then remember his son had written a whole statement about how hard being a coach’s son had made it for him to be himself.

Mr. Howard would then hate Damir forever.

Damir could also tell the truth: their figure skating coach had unlocked some new capabilities in Kilian and without the Damocles sword of his sexuality hanging over him, Kilian had an easier time unleashing his full potential. Mr. Howard would remember how a huge part of Kilian’s identity was shaped around something he’d had no access to until Kilian was fully grown, but something Damir had known and loved about him long before Mr. Howard.

Mr. Howard would then hate Damir forever.

Alternatively, Damir could deflect and talk about the Firecrackers staff and coaching team and how wonderful they were. To Mr. Howard, a born and raised Vancouver Orcas fan, who had reluctantly supported San Francisco for drafting his son and now even more reluctantly watched Chicago’s games.

Then, Mr. Howard would hate Damir forever.

Damir grunted an indistinct sound.

Fortuitously, his phone rang before he could try to construct more words.

It was his mother. He checked his watch. It was Thursday, and near enough to midday in Chicago time to count.

“Sorry,” he told Mr. Howard. “I have to take this.”

Long after his mother had hung up again, even when the summer sun climbed higher in the sky and made the attic unbearably warm and stuffy, Damir remained in Kilian’s room. He didn’t emerge again until he heard the click of the downstairs door opening and the sound of voices belonging to people under the age of forty.

***

+1

“After a standout first season in Chicago, the city expects great things from Kilian Howard. Not only has he been a big part of making the Firecrackers a contender in this year’s Stanley Cup playoffs, he’s also put Chicago hockey on the map in a very different way. From bringing truly unique pieces to the walk-in look to starting the conversation of what it means to be a queer person in traditionally cishet male spaces, Howard’s influence cannot be overstated. We’re excited to see what comes next!”

Top comments:

lissums: damn let the kid have some fun before you put the weight of the world on his shoulders!

Jefferson Howard: That’s my boy!

(From: “2026/2027 Hockey Season Retrospective”, article by Mark Tungsten posted to the sports section of the Chicago Star, 06/15/2027)

For their last evening in Canada, the Howards insisted on taking Damir and Kilian out for “a nice meal”.

“Don’t say anything,” Kilian told Damir under his breath as they walked across the gravel path from the parking lot to the restaurant.

Damir didn’t say anything.

“Derek—the guy who runs this place—he buys all his produce and most of his meat from Mom.”

Derek turned out to be a big, burly man in overalls who patted his belly when he explained the restaurant’s concept, which was “I love food”.

“So do I,” Damir told him.

He got a handshake and a free beer, which he passed on to Kilian.

“You should take an example from your roommate here,” Kilian’s father announced. “Abstaining even in the off-season. Your body is your biggest asset, you know—”

“He’s Muslim,” Kilian said, again, perhaps a touch too loudly and bookended by large sips of the complimentary beer.

Derek brought over the appetizer then, a family-style platter of various pickled vegetable and deep-fried cheeses. Apparently this was an experience that would not include a menu. Damir scanned the platter and found nothing obviously haram, so he dug in. It was alarmingly delicious, fresh and tangy and fatty and salty all at once. Unfortunately, Howards with a topic of conversation in mind were like dogs with a bone and even piles of delicious, steaming food could not put them off.

“Still.” Mr. Howard forced a laugh. “Kilian lost trust in San Francisco with all the drinking and partying. It’s a good thing he has a mentor now to keep him away from all that.”

Kilian’s face and neck had gone prickly strawberry red. He didn’t say anything, but Damir knew what he was thinking because he’d told Damir so many times. He thinks just because he stopped sending me his training plans he’s treating me like a player instead of his kid, but he hasn’t. I don’t think he even knows who I am outside of hockey.

“I certainly hope Kilian doesn’t see me as a mentor,” Damir said as levelly as he could.

Josie choked on her ginger ale.

“Why not?” Mr. Howard laughed jovially. He clapped Damir on the shoulder. Again. How could Damir get him to stop, or at least do it to Kilian instead? “Art Ross winner three years ago, weren’t you? That’s a good role model right there.”

Lacey cleared her throat. “Wasn’t last year’s Art Ross winner spotted at a MAGA rally?”

“That’s a great point, sweetie,” Mrs. Howard said hurriedly. “Have either of you heard about—”

But Kilian interrupted before she could change the subject. “Dad, you know Damir is my boyfriend, not my team-assigned babysitter, right?”

The shock on Mr. Howard’s face made it evident he had not, in fact, known.

Lacey and Jeannie traded concerned glances. Josie leaned forward in her seat, placing a hand on Kilian’s where he gripped the silverware far too tightly.

Damir used the distraction to pilfer the last of the tempura-fried cheese curds from the appetizer platter.

“You’re living with him,” Mr. Howard said astutely.

“Yup.”

“You’ve been living with him all season, that’s—Kilian, have you thought this through?”

Kilian’s neck shaded from strawberry to cherry.

“He’s on your team! Do you want your teammates to think you can’t keep it professional at work?”

“Ryan,” Mrs. Howard tried.

“And he’s Muslim! What will…his people say if they find out? You don’t want that kind of talk when all the buzz about you being…well, you know—”

“Gay, Dad.” Kilian’s teeth were gritted so tightly the words barely made it out. “You can say gay.”

“I know,” Mr. Howard said, but didn’t say it.

Damir finished his cheese and wiped his mouth off with a napkin. “Mr. Howard,” he said.

Five heads snapped in his direction.

That was more audience than he really wanted, but he’d make it work. “Kilian and I were seeing each other before he was traded to Chicago. The team has known since January, and neither of us have gotten any negative commentary.”

“Before he was traded?” Jeannie repeated with a frown. “But—”

“Kilian is also more than capable of making his own choices regarding training and nutrition,” Damir continued. “The only reason I have any input is because I enjoy cooking.”

“You did force me to work with Valeria,” Kilian muttered.

“Who’s Valeria?” Jeannie asked.

“She’s a figure skater,” Kilian explained. “We’ve been training with her for about six months.”

Lacey opened her mouth to ask a question, but Mr. Howard steamrollered her. Apparently, that was his thing. “Figure skating? What if you sprain something doing those jumps, won’t you be in breach of contract—ah!”

He cried out a sharp, pained noise as one of the women in the family kicked him.

“Am I doing it again?” he asked.

Only every moment of every day, Damir thought. What he said was, “Would it help you at all to know that several of the team coaches in Chicago have praised Kilian’s work ethic and improved checking?”

“Damir,” Kilian hissed.

“He wants to be proud of you, in his own way. And there is so much to be proud of.”

When Kilian appeared to soften, Damir risked kissing the back of his hand.

A furrow drew down the center of Mr. Howard’s forehead. “So you’re living with my son. That means it’s serious, yes?”

“Dad!” All four Howard children yelled.

“What? Can’t I ask about his intentions? That’s not a hockey question.”

Damir’s intentions were to continue dating Kilian until Kilian no longer felt too young for a serious commitment, at which point he intended on proposing. He also had a few bookmarked websites about surrogacy and adoption, for whenever they were ready for that discussion. He was a planner. Kilian knew and loved that about him. However, since Damir didn’t want to terrify his boyfriend in front of his entire family, all he said was, “I’m very serious about Kilian.”

Derek came by to collect the appetizer board and plates.

“Oh, hey.” Kilian stopped him before he could rush off again. “Damir doesn’t eat pork.”

“Not on the menu tonight anyway!” Derek breezed off again and with him went the distraction.

“So,” Mr. Howard began again, brow still furrowed.

Damir wondered if he’d have to unroll the five-year-plan, including his citizenship status and the bookmarked links on his phone of various jewelry stores he’d noticed Kilian lingering over when they’d walked past. It might at least move the constant cross-examination off of Kilian’s hockey and onto his taste in partners.

A loud clinking drew his thoughts away from possible distraction techniques and toward Josie, who was banging her spoon against her empty wine glass.

“Alright,” she said with a bright smile. “Now that we’re all riled up, I have news, too. I’m pregnant.”

Damir heaved a sigh of relief and resolved to buy her something sparkly as well.