Two for Charging Bonus Story: Vladi

Content warnings: internalized homophobia, mildly NSFW

Vladi

Vanderbilt: People say this all the time and no one believes it, but team is like family. You go through so much with these guys, and no one else can really understand.

Mazetti: Much like with your real family, you also don't choose your teammates.

Dmitriyev: Is why you never see NHL team with only one Russian player, or only one Swede. Hard to be with family and not speak same language.

Mazetti: Unfortunately for me, there are not enough Italians to go around.

Top comments:

clions2010: Damn Mazetti, you want some water to go with all the salt?

sealions4lyfe: This! People who've never played on a men's team can't understand but the bonds are for life.

1682rox: Howie's trade just got 75% sadder. That's their infant son you took away!

(From: San Francisco Sea Lions Call Each Other Out For Fun 3, posted to YouTube on 09/28/2025)

****

Vladi watched Cheryl slip out the bathroom door. Lily was crying. Lily always cried when Cheryl tried to put her to sleep alone. It bordered on a miracle she'd stayed silent so long. Long enough for them to…

Well.

Long enough for Vladi to taste Cheryl on his tongue, that thick musky perfume of her body after he'd been inside her, when she was open and wet and desperate.

He licked his lips.

Next door, Lily's cries quieted. Cheryl must be nursing her. Smart baby. Vladi was always happiest with his face buried in Cheryl's breasts as well.

Vanderbilt always said they had to let Lily learn to cry it out. He complained about it when he sat next to Dmitriyev on the team plane, on and on. If it had been about the sex, Vladi would have punched him right in the face, teammate or no teammate. But Vanderbilt and Cheryl's marriage wasn't about sex, or not merely about sex. Vladi would know; so would Dmitriyev.

Instead, Vanderbilt talked about sleep. With Lily in their bed, neither of them could sleep right, first because she was so small and the danger of sharing a bed was so large, then because she kicked like a captive zebra.

And Dmitriyev couldn't disagree with his teammate who had dark rings under his eyes, no more than Vladi could disagree with his girlfriend when she complained about her husband not caring how much Lily cried and screamed all by herself in her crib. He wasn't the one who would have to sleep train the baby.

The door opened and the steps creaked. Cheryl. He recognized her by the clicking of her heels as she carried the baby downstairs. She was leaving, then. A good choice for Lily. They'd stayed longer than Vladi expected.

A muffled sound came from above. Noise emanated from a vent above the bathtub. Vladi couldn't make out the words, but he knew the voice by its timbre: Breezy, loud even when he was trying to be quiet.

Too close. Had they heard him and Cheryl?

Vladi shuddered to think what would happen if their relationship became public knowledge. A trade, at the very least. It was one thing for Vanderbilt when they all pretended Vanderbilt didn't know. If everyone else knew he was being cuckolded his tune might change.

He slipped out of the bathroom as quietly as he could and then froze. At the end of the hall, in the dim light emerging from downstairs, where the faint sound of music and voices indicated the party was still going strong, a figure slipped from the room Breezy's voice had come from.

Goosebumps rose on the back of Vladi's neck.

Perhaps it was the late hour, perhaps the alcohol, perhaps the specter of Cheryl, who'd looked both ways as she shut the door behind her the same way Luca Mazetti did. Perhaps it was the sudden knowing Dmitriyev only associated with hockey, with diving in the right direction to stop the goal before his brain understood what his body already knew.

He watched Luca retreat down the stairs without so much as a glance backward.

Dmitriyev gave it a few moments and then followed. The vodka remained mostly untouched (Americans were weak), so Dmitriyev poured himself a generous glass once the Vanderbilts had left. Cheryl didn't like it when he was too drunk; she said his breath smelled and he got too handsy. A year or two ago, when she could still get drunk with him, she appreciated his handsiness. Once she stopped breastfeeding, she'd remember.

He watched his teammates surreptitiously. Not that it would have mattered if he watched obviously. The rest of the team was too soused and too self-centered to follow his gaze. But he could tell it was a secret. As secret as what Vladi had done in the bathroom with Cheryl.

Perhaps, he thought as he watched Mazetti chug a glass of liquor, secret even from themselves.

An unwelcome, uneasy kinship rose in him. He had no desire to feel anything in common with gay men and the thought alone made dread trickle down his spine. But he couldn't escape that he knew how it felt to have inappropriate feelings, feelings that could get him in trouble with the team. For an instant, the ludicrous notion of speaking to Mazetti about it flitted across his mind.

Dmitriyev forced himself to look away. It was none of his business. Talk turned to hockey, as it always did, and he welcomed the distraction. Someone mentioned Denisov, the big, hulking dickbag, and Dmitriyev had plenty to say about him. The asshole thought he was better than the other Russian players, turned them down whenever they offered a drink.

"Denisov is Tatar," he growled.

He wasn't expecting Howie to get into his face about it, yapping like a terrier in a green dress with his stupid glittery Halloween costume, but the next thing he knew he had called all Americans idiots and Howie had called him a stupid fuck.

Dmitriyev didn't understand everything about the ensuing fight or reconciliation with Howie. Howard used so many words in such quick succession. Dmitriyev's English was all right, he flattered himself, but Howie had so many things to say no normal human could understand them all.

He called an Uber, after, rather than face everyone again. He'd caused enough harm tonight.

****

For a while, he didn't have to think of it. Shortly after Halloween, he found himself in a hospital bed awaiting surgery for a hip dislocation with significant secondary injuries.

Gifts lined the room, stuffed sea lions in his jersey from fans, fancy vodka from teammates, flowers from the PR department. On the second day, another bouquet arrived. Chamomile and lilies, an odd and beautiful combination, and a card. Get well soon. All our love, the Vanderbilts.

The surgery went well.

The recovery bored him.

He threw himself into rehab, into stretching and pulling and weight training and reading boring self-help books about men who had pulled themselves together after life-changing injuries. He wondered if there were any books about men who had simply given up.

But if he gave up, he had to move home to Russia, and then he wouldn't see baby Lily, or Cheryl, again.

Vanderbilt picked him up for his first appointment with the team physical therapist.

"It's on my way anyway," he bluffed, one hand on the steering wheel and the other down his pants.

"You disgust me," Vladi muttered in Russian. Then, he put on Dmitriyev's face and fell silent for the rest of the car ride.

Vanderbilt did not return the favor. All the way into the practice rink, he talked and talked and talked. First about the team. Luca and Breezy had been given the vacant alternate captaincy jointly and Vanderbilt had opinions.

"I mean, it's not as if I wanted it," he expounded, which was a lie. "But those two? They're fetuses! How are they going to lead the team?"

Dmitriyev grunted.

"I mean, Breezy I get, I guess, he's a team player. But Mazetti? What a tool!"

Dmitriyev shrugged.

"What, you think he should be a team leader?"

"Is good player," Dmitriyev pointed out. That was why Crowler had the captaincy, wasn't it? The position had nothing to do with likability and everything to do with legacy. Luckily, goalies couldn't be captains, or he would have to be concerned about his own failures in both regards.

Vanderbilt glanced over at a red light. "You like him now?"

Dmitriyev didn't know him. Not in any meaningful way. He knew Mazetti was always good for a sharp comment or an unlikely pass; he knew Luca had experienced the sharp agony of an unfulfilled love. But he hadn't had a conversation with the man about either. He doubted Mazetti would appreciate comments about the former, and they lacked a common language in which Vladi would have the words for the latter. He shrugged again in lieu of an answer.

Shaking his head, Vanderbilt turned back to traffic. He pulled his hand out of his pants to honk at a passing bicyclist going too slow for his comfort and changed his subject to Lily's latest attempts at walking, and Dmitriyev forced the thoughts of love and loss from his mind.

He succeeded through a few more weeks of grueling rehab.

(Cheryl visited him in the weight room once when the team was on a road trip and another time when they weren't, and as ever, he was helpless to resist her. For the first time, he held out long enough to experience the sensation of her coming around him—with his hip recovering he couldn't move at all. Watching her gyrate on top of him, unable to take anything but what she gave him, was pure torture, but not so much as watching her leave with a wave and a giggle as soon as they'd both finished.)

But hockey was a team sport, and no tacit avoidance could continue forever.

"Yo!" Jax called into the crowded locker room as the team changed out of their gear after the last match before Christmas.

Fedorov looked up over to him. Dmitriyev rolled his eyes. A sweet boy, but he would have to grow out of his puppy-dog habit of trailing anyone who treated him with kindness.

Henderson paused in rolling up his socks, but he could be forgiven, being new.

No one else paid Jax any mind, not on the first try.

Well, no one besides Dmitriyev, but Dmitriyev didn't count, being on LTIR. He hadn't played, he wasn't changing out of his gear and getting ready for the Christmas break with his family. He sat in his spot in the locker room in his favorite suit, a gray wool two-piece with a white turtleneck underneath, all of it worthless. Cheryl hadn't come to this game.

A year ago, he'd taken a maintenance day on the last game before the holiday, and she'd met him in the press box. She'd told him she loved the last game before break because afterward, it felt like she was taking Vanderbilt home for the very first time.

He'd told her how he woke up before his parents, his last Christmas in Russia. He'd stared out the windows in the living room, taking in the grey December skies, and he'd felt perfect and hollowed out all at once.

They fucked savagely in an unoccupied VIP room afterward, and then he'd gotten her off with his mouth and fingers, and when she took Vanderbilt home afterward he could smell her on his skin.

"Yo!" Jax repeated, louder this time.

The chatter quieted to a dull roar. The Swedes and Finns had switched off the English parts of their brains, though, and they had yet to notice.

"Everyone, listen up!" Breezy bellowed.

Dmitriyev shuddered, but the room went silent.

Jax gave Breezy a thankful nod and Breezy ceded the center of the floor to him.

"I know everyone's ready to get going for the holidays, and I don't want to keep you long, but I have a quick announcement."

"We," Crowler corrected, getting to his feet.

The smile Jax gave him could have melted an entire hockey rink.

Vladi imagined the Titanic must have felt something similar to the sensation inside his chest when it hit the iceberg: disbelief, followed fast by recognition and then dismay at knowing what would come. He could see the end result of this announcement before the words had been spoken, before his team captain slid an arm around Jax's waist and looked around them, daring them to speak with his eyes.

"So, uh," Jax said with an unsteady laugh, "Tom and I are, y'know, together, and with everything that happened after Howie's trade, we're thinking about going public, so—"

Vladi tuned him out. They had nothing to say he didn't know: Tom and Jax were both available to speak to if anyone had questions, they hoped everyone would be respectful, if anyone struggled to adapt there were resources available.

Instead, he looked to Luca.

The expression on Luca's face shocked him more than any words from Jax had.

He was smiling.

Vladi couldn't have repeated a single thing anyone said after that. He remained frozen in his seat, tracking the play of expressions worn by the team's first D-pair.

He saw nothing but open, honest joy. No surprise, no consternation, no pain.

That wasn't right.

Vladi had thought he'd have a problem with the gay part. Last year, when the whole business began with the shelter, he'd been sure to keep his participation for times when no cameras were on him, and he'd stopped taking part in the new year. It wasn't personal. The children were as nice as any teens their age (which was to say not at all) and the staff was enthusiastic. He simply couldn’t afford to develop an interest in the cause, not when Russia beckoned him home every year in the off-season.

When he'd realized—when he'd seen Luca leaving that room—he'd been shocked by his own sympathy with the pain on the younger man's face.

But it turned out his teammates sexualities' didn't interest him. They could suck as many dicks as they liked, so long as no one involved him. No, his problem stemmed from all the happiness.

"I thought the big gay reveal was gonna be those two," Vanderbilt blurted from his place beside Vladi. His outstretched finger pointed at Luca and Breezy.

Vladi winced. So Vanderbilt knew as well. That could only bode ill. Now. Now the misery would start. Now—

But Luca shrugged fluidly. "Us, too," he said.

Breezy wrapped arms around him from behind and pressed a smacking kiss to his cheek. "Sorry," he said, directed more at Jax and Tom. "We didn't want to steal your moment."

Jax waved him off, and from somewhere Vladi couldn't see through the tunnel of his vision, Mooney called, "We all knew anyway. Apparently even Vanderbilt knew."

"Hey," Vanderbilt said. His offended hand gesture jostled Vladi, but Vladi was too focused on the smug smile now adorning Luca's face to care.

The teasing lasted a while, lighter and easier than it had been in some time. The locker room was nicer to be in now already than it had been a month ago. Vladi supposed happiness did that to people. Distantly, he noted Abrahamov packing up in a hurry and Fedorov looking to Dmitriyev over and over for guidance. The boy would have to find it elsewhere tonight.

Finally, people began to trickle out. The draw of the holidays and their families waiting on them was too strong, and ultimately none of tonight's news had shocked anyone overly much. There would be ruffled feathers to smooth and questions to answer, but as a goaltender, Dmitriyev couldn't wear a letter. It wasn't his job.

Even the happy couples vanished before Vladi could make himself move, presumably preferring to spend time alone together.

Time, together, in love. Because love was a good thing for some people.

"Hey," Vanderbilt said.

Vladi started in his seat and put on Dmitriyev's face once more. "Hm?"

"You going to Phil's for Christmas?"

He hadn't thought about it yet. He never did, too hopeful he would find an alternative.

"Probably."

"Great. Cheryl was worried you'd be all alone, with no family in town."

Vladi smiled Dmitriyev's ironic half-smile.

Vanderbilt patted down his pockets and made for the door. He turned after a few steps.

"Will we see you for New Year's? There's a club at the Marina we were talking about…"

Don't, Dmitriyev thought, and it's not supposed to hurt this much.

"Of course," Vladi said.