Login

***sköldpaddor*** · 02-14-2022, 10:59 PM

Gold in the Water
Chapter 2 - Make a Move

Lias’s rookie season was rough. He has come to terms with that, has let it motivate him instead of dragging him down. He knows he’s capable of more than what he put together that first season, and he gets off to a start in S63 that proves it. He’s not blowing the league away with scoring, but he’s settled into his role on the top two lines, he’s found his rhythm, and he’s starting to put things together.

A large part of that can be credited to the undeniable chemistry he finds with his linemates - he seems to have a good thing going out there with Dave and Conner in particular - or with Ahlo centering the line, either way, it seems like he and Conner click pretty well. It feels good, to finally feel like he’s not in over his head, to know that he wasn’t painfully, horribly wrong about this being his calling in life.

Lias is eighteen, and he is all fire and drive, still young enough to be in hot pursuit of his dreams with no reservations, still bright eyed and optimistic enough to rely on nothing but the fire inside of him to push him to improve, to better himself. It’s never been the motivation he’s lacked, he’s just always needed a little direction to help him focus all of it.

And that season, he finds the direction. Nevada really feels like it’s become more of a second home base to him than it did last season, and his confidence and focus are bolstered by working with a familiar coaching presence again. Lias has been working with Gunnar Söderberg since he was seven or eight years old, and while it remains to be seen whether or not Gunnar is a great coach by broader SHL standards, it’s clear Lias benefits from the familiar guidance.

It’s good that he has that, too, because things take other unexpected turns, things that might throw him a little off balance if he hadn’t already found his footing so early in the year this season.

Lias has taken a lot of hits in his life, and he’s handed out plenty of hits that obviously rattled him harder than the guy he was running into, back in the early days. But he has never encountered anything that hit him quite as hard or unexpectedly as the evolution of his relationship with Conner Snooks. Specifically their second (and final) season on the team together, where the on-ice chemistry comes out of nowhere given how little ice time they got together the first season. They had become friends fairly quickly and Conner had sort of taken him under his wing anyway, after volunteering to room with the world’s most obnoxiously self-confident rookie, so it wasn’t like they never spoke or anything when Lias was first drafted. But that first season, especially in the first half, Lias was nowhere good enough to end up on the ice at the same time as Conner, who was already a first line mainstay by that point, he was just relying on Conner mostly to give him rides to places and help him figure stuff out.

This this year, though, things are different. Things feel like they fit, and they have, since before the season even started, since near the end of last season when Lias and Conner started spending more time in the same places. And Lias is more than happy to tell people Conner is his best friend, but…it’s a little more than that, isn’t it?

He says he doesn’t remember the aftermath of the Söderberg-Tremblay wedding this past summer. There was a lot of drinking that night, a lot of people, a lot of partying. So if he doesn’t remember exactly what happened after midnight on a golf course there on the border between Sweden and Finland, well, who can really fault him for that? There are probably at least a couple dozen people who don’t remember much about that night.

The thing is, Lias does remember.

He remembers all of it, the golf cart, running full tilt across the green with a bottle of whatever that sports drink was clutched tightly in his left hand, flailing out with his right hand to push Conner towards the water. Remembers falling down, out of breath, onto the grass, laughing up at the night sky, and then looking over at Conner, Conner looking back at him, remembers them both leaning in at the same time, and he remembers the taste of alcohol and something sweet, the hungry, demanding thing that sparked to life inside of him as a result.

And Lias knows what it is to want something, he is no stranger to that longing that keeps a person awake at night, but this is something a little different, something that is fulfilling and unfulfilled all at once, something that gives him equal parts anxiety and comfort. They are more or less inseparable, it’s not just Conner hanging out with a rookie to make him feel welcome anymore. And when things come as easily as the way the two of them sync up on the ice, it’s easy for Lias to fall into wanting that natural chemistry to extend to other aspects of their lives. He is far from the place he grew up, in a league that he still has a lot of growing to fit into, but somehow, Conner feels like home.

Lias tries pretty hard to remind himself that this season is all they get - after this year, Conner is headed to Philadelphia and Lias will still be in Nevada for another two seasons. He also gets some good advice from his agent (who apparently saw some things that night after the wedding, or heard from someone who did, Lias still isn’t entirely sure but he’s not surprised, it’s not like they were subtle), advice about the complications that can arise from this kind of thing.

Lias knows all of these things, but being eighteen, he’s not the best at thinking things through fully with his brain and not just his heart and other parts. He doesn’t say anything, definitely doesn’t do anything, but it’s there, always there somewhere in his mind.

They play very good hockey that season, so it’s clear he manages to compartmentalize all the other stuff, or at least he manages to channel it into something productive. It’s impossible to overstate how important it is for him to be able to fall back on hockey that season, to be able to rely on the one constant in his life while so much else is changing. Last season, he spent so much of the time doubting himself, wondering if something inside of him was actually broken, if he really overestimated his own skill set that badly. His whole life, he’s never let anything anyone said about him get to him - none of the questions about whether his size will be a limitation he can’t overcome, none of it, but that first season in Nevada really put him in his own head overthinking a lot of things.

So when he finally gets past that, time starts to fly a little, because things are…well, they’re not easy but they’re natural again. He feels like he’s in his element again, like he’s actually supposed to be there and isn’t just faking his way through it all. And suddenly it starts to feel like it’s all going a little too fast, because he knows how much is changing next season, and he’s suddenly very aware of how little time there is left in this new comfort zone he’s found before he has to adjust to even more unknown elements.

Just the same, things on the ice continue to go pretty well right up until just after the trade deadline, and he tries to just let himself ride with it, let himself make the most of this exact team, this exact set of circumstances he will never be in again. He knows the timeline, and he knows what they have to do.

Here in the back half of the season with their captain and entire leadership group preparing to make the jump to the SHL, Lias finds himself in the position of needing to step into a veteran role once that happens. And, as Gunnar points out during one of their chats, that kind of thing isn’t something you want to save until last minute. If he wants to try to fill that leadership role next season, he needs to start laying the groundwork for it now, he can’t wait until everyone is gone and then hope that he can make himself fit into the void left behind, hope that people just gravitate towards that without him having to put any additional work into it. So he does, he puts in the work - goes out of his way to try to help out the rookies that season, to set his teammates up for success as much as he tries to ensure his own, shows up for every single optional practice, uses his voice when he feels like it’s important to do so. He grows a lot that season, personally and professionally, matures a lot, learns to talk less about what he can do and just go out there and do it.

But late in the season, when Lias is fully committed to letting himself enjoy the remainder of the time he has with this exact squad, that’s when a few things start to shift again, including Lias’s own focus, much sooner than he was expecting them to. Just before the playoffs, Nevada signs a couple of free agents to try and get that extra push for a deep run, and things get a little more complicated.

One of the players who joins them, Sophie Bordeleau, seems like a pretty natural fit right away, even without the extra effort Lias puts into trying to help her feel welcome. He’s been aware of her as one of the more promising prospects in the upcoming draft, and it seems like an obvious upgrade to their lower lines. Lias has spent his life in and out of LGBTQ+ spaces just by virtue of his family being what it is, even before he knew much of anything about his own identity. So there’s something immediately comfortable about having someone like Sophie, who is fairly open about her own identity, around in the locker room. Lias, who has very much not gone out of his way to be outspoken about his sexuality (seeing as he’s still not entirely sure what it is other than definitely not straight), finds that openness sort of like a breath of fresh air, a welcome addition to the team dynamic. And that’s a great thing to have, something that comes easily, especially compared to the other DFA they sign for the postseason.

Lias has never met anyone like M’Baku Olubori before. And not just because he’s from a continent Lias has never set foot on, but personality-wise as well as on the ice. Gunnar will tell Lias much later that he has met exactly two people with a personality like that, but self-awareness has never been Lias’s primary strength, and this is no exception.

It takes him a day or two to realize that this isn’t the first time M’Baku has interacted with him. Months ago, on Twitter, when Lias had thought he was just some random troll. But here he is now, and Lias doesn’t know what he’s ever done to this guy personally, but it’s clear from the get go that he has some kind of target on his back as far as Baku is concerned. Whether it’s little jabs during practice, the continued random clown emojis, the overall aura of…well, it feels like disdain, Lias has no idea what he’s done to attract this kind of negativity but he is not a fan of it at all.

He knows he’s not always the easiest person to get along with. He knows that his excess of self-confidence has rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, and it’s occurred to him before that maybe he could temper that a little, but every time he’s thought about making an effort to display a little humility, it’s seemed like somebody has written yet another comment about his size or his inexperience and he feels like he has to be his own biggest cheerleader all over again. It’s hard to go out of his way to be humble when it feels like doing so would be admitting things he’s been trying to prove wrong forever.

But the thing about Baku is that Lias doesn’t even have to mouth off at him, he doesn’t even have a chance to. Baku seems to have walked in the door already determined that Lias isn’t worth his time or respect, and that just doesn’t sit well with Lias. He knows it’s hard to find yourself on a new team, especially one where you’re not sure you’ll be staying, one where you might not want to put down roots it’s going to hurt to have to pull up. But Lias has also spent his whole life trying to play in a way that demands respect, trying to make a name for himself in way that isn’t easy for someone of his particular build. And here Baku is, absolutely built to do the things Lias does without all that extra fanfare. He doesn’t have the fine-tuning Lias has been working on for the past two seasons; he’s still very raw, but Lias immediately feels threatened and he can’t even deny it.

Because really, who the hell does this guy think he is? Showing up at the end of the season on the team that Lias has worked so hard to try to fit in with, with a natural propensity for things Lias has to work much harder for, and with the absolute audacity to try to start shit. It’s so unnecessary, and there is literally nothing Lias hates more than feeling like people don’t respect him.

It’s a test, Lias is convinced. It’s some kind of test being thrown at him to make sure he’s actually ready to step into the shoes of everyone in their leadership group who is getting called up next season. Lias knows he hasn’t been the best at that stuff in the past. He’s hotheaded, he sometimes makes bad decisions, and he has a higher opinion of himself than a lot of people think he’s earned. But he wants to believe he’s come a long way this season, wants to believe that he has it in him to help keep the ship straight once so many of their veterans leave, and he knows the bare minimum there has to be getting along with his own teammates.

So he tries, he really does. He doesn’t want Gunnar to think that he can’t handle being thrown together with personalities that clash with his own, doesn’t want to be the reason that what ought to be an upgrade for the playoffs turns into something that just screws with team chemistry. So he tries his hardest to behave himself, and he doesn’t say a single word of it to Gunnar (although he does mention it briefly to Johnny, since Johnny represents both him and his new nemesis). He and Baku aren’t on the same line, they don’t have to figure out how to function as a unit or anything, they just have to keep their personal issues from screwing anything up for anyone else. Not too hard. Hopefully.

Nevada finishes the regular season strong - Sophie comes out of the gate incredibly strong, finishing with five points in their last ten games which is pretty damn good for somebody who wasn’t even in the league a month earlier, and M’Baku takes a little longer to get started but ends up with four points in those last few games. But it’s clear the two of them are a good addition and are serving the purpose of the upgrade Gunnar intended them to be when he signed them. Lias himself wraps up the regular season with 45 points - more than double his total from last season, so if there was any doubt that he’s stepped up his game, he feels reasonably sure that’s been left in the dust.

They lock up the division with a key win against Carolina close to the end, and earn themselves a week to practice during the first round of the playoffs. Lias is pretty sure not a single one of them considers it an “off week” as the media has a tendency to label these things - it’s not a vacation, it’s time to watch the competition and prepare to face off against one of these teams in the next round, time to put as much effort into practice and refining their play as a team as much as they can.

Lias’s family decide to come over for the week, too, planning to stay for however long he and Nevada are in the playoffs, which he thinks will be a nice distraction from all the other things he’s trying really hard not to think about, like god I am not ready for Conner to not be on this team and why does this new guy hate me so much when he doesn’t even know me, those kinds of things. He keeps himself busy between practice by making plans to take his moms and his sister out in Las Vegas (all of the places he’s legally allowed to be hanging out, anyway). He tells them upfront, though, that he won’t have too much time to hang out, that he has to keep his full focus on the games they have coming.

The Battleborn have work to do, and they’ve come too far as a team to let any of Lias’s personal nonsense get in the way of it. So he pushes all the other stuff down, he keeps his mind fixed on the goal in front of them, and he hopes he can keep that up until summer when he has time to work through it all on his own. Just keep moving in the right direction, he tells himself, one day at a time. Regardless of anything else, this group of people here is his team, something he wants to hold onto, something worth fighting for, something worth putting in the effort to not ruin.

Gunnar has always told him to try not to think about what other people are thinking or saying. “The only thing you can control in any of this is yourself,” Gunnar always reminds him, and Lias knows that’s true, even when it’s hard to keep from getting distracted by all of the things other people are saying or doing. He can’t control what happens after this season. Can’t control who gets called up and who doesn’t. Can’t control whether people show up and immediately dislike him when he hasn’t even really said anything to them. But he can buckle down and play hockey, and that’s what he intends to do.

----

PREVIOUSLY:
Chapter 1

***boom*** · 02-15-2022, 12:15 AM

this is so good! glad to be a part of this team

Navigation

Extra Menu

About us