1
Timmy “Brick” Daniels
Mid-March
As the whole team shuffles out of the plane, I stick close to Benny the way I have for the past two weeks.
It’s been a whirlwind.
Before getting traded to the Pirates, I spent the past year thinking I’d be better off quitting hockey altogether rather than spending one more day on Detroit’s farm team.
Not that there’s anything wrong with being on a farm team, but I was demoted after spending a good season in the NHL because they found out I’m gay. I’m one hundred percent certain of that because it happened the day after the captain of Detroit found me making out with a stranger in the alley behind the team’s bar.
Yeah, they’re those kinds of assholes.
I didn’t see a way out until two weeks ago when the head coach told me I’d been traded and I had to get on a plane ASAP.
The fuckwit didn’t even tell me which team, just gave me an envelope and looked away.
As if I wasn’t the only reason the team wasn’t embarrassing themselves this season.
But then I saw the flight was to San Francisco and I thought that’d be a great change. It’s a great city—historically speaking at least—for queer people. So I thought I was going to join the Dolphins. That is until I was about to board the plane and I got a call from an unknown number.
It was Gabrielle Fucking Darnell.
Yeah, that name deserves a capitalized F. She’s a legend, and she’s a savior for men like me. A champion, a warrior. She’s proven it again and again with the way she’s defended queer athletes in front of the media.
And she let me know she had traded for me and I wasn’t going to be playing for the Dolphins but for the Pirates. The team was currently on a two-week roadie and their second stop was in San Francisco. I had a day to train with them and then I’d be thrust onto the ice the day after.
I thanked her profusely.
“I won’t let you down,” I vowed, and I could hear the smile in her voice when she answered.
“I know.”
Simple words, but they meant more to me than they probably should have.
It felt like so few people had believed in me that way in so long.
But now I could see she wasn’t the only one.
After the brief drama my arrival created, the team embraced me like no one had since I was ten, and best of all, I was once again playing alongside Benny Olsen.
My best friend at the boarding school we’d gone to together.
He decided to go to the draft before we even graduated, but I stayed and then went to college. I played for a year in Connecticut and then was drafted by Detroit at twenty-one. They liked me so much they brought me to the NHL team right away too.
Shit hit the fan before I even finished my first season there, but now...
I smile just thinking about it.
The Pirates even gave me a new fucking nickname—one I really like.
Timmy “Brick” Daniels sounds damn awesome if I do say so myself.
And I’m relieved as hell that Brotnik—Santa—wasn’t mad at me once he realized he hadn’t been traded to another team and I was brought in for backup.
I haven’t felt safe enough, even while alone with Benny on the road, to ask for more details on what exactly is going on between Santa and Sweetheart—no, sorry, he also got a new nickname after my ceremony. He’s now King Charles, though unlike most of my new teammates, I could never choose between Santa and Charlie for who’s the best defenseman.