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Luca lied in the Centaurs group chat. Of course he did. What else was he supposed to do? Oh hey guys, by the way, I have about 5,000 different fanfics saved from Yuri on Ice, Phan, and uh— oh yeah, MY CURRENT FUCKING TEAMMATES. He would rather the ground open up and swallow him whole than admit to his previous addiction.
And it was a previous addiction, he would like that noted. The Hollanov fics had not been touched in at least two years, since he was drafted and joined the Centaurs. As it turned out, reading about people you knew in real life was weird. Deeply, profoundly, uncomfortably weird in a way that had cured him faster than any intervention could have.
But, it wasn't like Luca was missing out on much anyway, as real-life Ilya Rozanov practically made anything his fictional counterpart said or did obsolete. No author on the world wide web could compete with the absolute masterpiece that was Ilya’s unprompted retelling of a sexual escapade on a random Tuesday.
The rest of Luca’s bookmarks, though— those were the ones he returned back to. Those were the fics safe enough (though not by much) to read around Bergy on flights to and from various hockey cities, angled in a way that he naively thought was careful enough that no one could see the screen. Five thousand bookmarks, give or take, accumulated over eight years. He had a meticulous system for organization: by fandom, then ship, then word count, with a separate filter for completed works, because Luca had been burned by enough abandoned WIPs at a formative age to know better. He had also been responsible for more than a few himself.
There was also, buried somewhere in the architecture of his ao3 account, a collection of fics he had written himself. What they entail is no one’s concern.
He had already decided that he wasn’t going to participate in Ilya’s stupid challenge. It was his day off, and he intended to spend it doing something normal, like playing video games.
But… it turns out getting your ass kicked on Fortnite wasn’t fun in the way reading fanfiction was. Luca’s resolve broke after just four hours. He opened his browser with a shrug, supposing it wouldn’t hurt to indulge in Ilya’s dumb “challenge.” All of his teammates already suspected he was an ao3 veteran, anyway. Might as well prove them right and claim his free fifty dollars.
Luca knew he had some freaky shit bookmarked. There wasn’t a single out of pocket tag written by some deluded, cursed author on ao3 that could scare him off. Luca Haas had absolutely, without a doubt, seen, read, and devoured it all.
The thing was, though, Luca could only assume that Ilya Rozanov would match his freak. And Ilya's freak was, by all measures of account, considerable. Whatever Luca pulled out of his bookmarks needed to be something truly unhinged. Material that would make Ilya blush from shock, which was a bar so high it was quite literally out of this world.
It took a good while of searching but Luca was fairly certain he found something that was adequate in terms of meeting Ilya’s expectations. The tags were as follows: Anal Sex, Bottom Shane Hollander, Top Ilya Rozanov, starts out vanilla but HOLY SHIT., Spanking, Rimming, Ass Eating, munch munch munch mmmm, bimbofication, smoking during sex, shane quite literally gets smoke blown up his ass, ilya puts out his cigarette on shane’s ass, and so on, so forth.
He laughed to himself before copying the link and sending it to the Centaurs group chat.
Except the message did not, somehow, get sent to the Centaurs group chat. To his absolute shock and horror, Luca Haas had sent a porn without plot fanfiction about two of his teammates to none other than his head coach. A coach he would have to look dead in the eyes at practice tomorrow, as if he hadn’t done something completely and utterly mortifying.
It was only at the last text that the three dots— indicating that a response was indeed being typed— subsided. Luca plopped down onto his couch with a sigh of relief. He doubted he was in the clear just yet, especially if news of this horrid mishap made its way back to Ilya’s ears, but at least he could postpone his inevitable panic attack by another 16 hours or so.
…And then 45 awful, dreadful minutes later, Luca’s phone sounded off with another text. If Luca Haas died at just a young 20 years of age, it was because the Ottawa Centaurs hockey organization was actively wishing death upon him.
The fifty dollars Luca was owed arrived via bank transfer the next morning, sent by Ilya at what Luca could only assume was an ungodly hour, accompanied by a memo that read: thank you🙏🙏. Luca shuddered as he read it; he couldn’t imagine what for. He tried not to think about it too much before accepting the payment. After all, fifty bucks was fifty bucks.
The sensitivity training lasted an hour and fifteen minutes. Save for a few knowing smirks and small chuckles here and there, the whole ordeal was rather uneventful. The presenter was a very kind woman named Sandra who had absolutely no idea what she had been called in for and delivered a perfectly polished slide deck about appropriate workplace digital communication to a room full of professional hockey players who sat at full attention for the entire duration.
After the sensitivity training was practice, and after practice it was time to hit the showers. It was there that Luca saw it— he didn’t mean to, he wasn’t checking out his teammate or anything. But sometimes, Luca’s eyes would wander. And on a team with two married players, wandering eyes occasionally meant that Luca became privy to information that he would have been okay never knowing. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when he saw it. Hollander had reached over for his towel, his hair still damp and his demeanor entirely unsuspecting. It was unmistakable. There was a small circular mark, red and fresh, just below his hip.
Luca’s eyes flitted away as soon as he made the realization. He stared down the tiling of the shower walls, willing the image away from his memory, and stood under the water a full minute longer than he needed to.
When he got home, he went through the all too familiar motions of opening his browser and logging onto his ao3 account. He found a fic he hadn’t updated in three years, the Hollanov one. He had started it when he was seventeen and rising through the ranks of junior hockey, hoping to one day be drafted, when he abruptly stopped any and all updates when it dawned on him that he might indeed have to meet these people. It had well over 100 comments, the most recent varying from are you ok? to desperately in need of another update and please come back, the children miss you.
He read the last chapter he had written for old time’s sake and for the purpose of refreshing his memory. Then, he opened a google doc and began to write. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to close the chapter of his life as an author with a nice pretty bow. He kept the author’s note vague: the horrors persist. the ao3 curse is indeed real and so much worse than i could have ever imagined. anyway, thanks for waiting 3 years.
also, if your name happens to rhyme with smilya shmozanov… don’t you fucking get any ideas.
He posted it without so much as a proofread, before unceremoniously slamming his laptop shut and tossing it onto his couch. He hoped to god he would never have to think about any of this ever again.