Work Text:
1)
The articles were everywhere. Every newsstand, every newspaper, every online news site.
Rising NHL star for the Opal City Corsairs, Roy Harper, spotted kissing mystery man in gay club. Harper recently became only the fourth goalie ever to be drafted first overall.
The reporters, the organization, and the fans were all circling, and Roy felt the pressure more than ever before.
Despite the optics of the annual pride nights, the National Hockey League was still, decidedly, anti-gay. Players had been ostracized and "strongly encouraged to retire" for much less.
His manager, his coach, and some of his teammates had suggested that Roy go back into hiding.
"We don't care," they had told him, "but the League does. The fans do."
"You're a good player, kid," Coach Steel had said after practice one day, cornered in the locker room. "Don't throw it away for this. Just tell them that it was some drunken mistake and go find yourself a nice female model to hang off your arm for a while. They'll move onto the next scandal and forget all about you."
"Coach —"
"We drafted you, Harper. We'd love for you to retire with us, but years down the road. Not when you're just getting started."
"I don't want —" This to be a big deal. To forget this ever happened. To have this be what I'm know for in the League. To hide.
"We got your press conference pushed until two days from now. Take some time off. Get your head on right. We'll be seeing you, Harper."
Roy Harper went home. Not to the new apartment paid for by his contract's signing bonus. Not to where he lived before that while he was making his name for himself, the lease not yet expired. Not even to Ollie and Dinah's, where he first discovered his love for the game could be something more.
Instead, he went home. To the desert and her scrub brush trees, to people who spoke his name like a gift, to where a stick and a ball and an open plain helped him grow up into who he was today.
The redhead sat with this back to a sun-warmed rock. He let himself be just Roy, without any of the baggage that came with being Oliver Queen's tragic ward or the expectations that came with being in an elite class of goalies. He hadn't realized how tired the whole ordeal had made him. He was convinced that Brave Bow would have some profound advice that Roy might not necessarily want to listen to, but that would help him, if he were still here.
Roy missed him. Life went on. He had grown; the world had changed. He still missed him.
He watched the sun set and waited until the chill of the desert's night air started to seep in, his rock long since leeched of its warmth, before Roy headed back. His press conference was little more than a day away.
He hoped he could find the answers he needed here.
⋆⁺₊❅.
Roy squinted as the blinding camera flash greeted him. Coach Steel had offered to come with him for the press conference, but he felt that this was something he had to do himself. The other man had looked somewhat defeated at the statement, but nodded regardless.
"Listen, kid, you know the route that would be easiest on yourself — and frankly, that's what I recommend — but at the end of the day, you're a phenomenal hockey player that we drafted. No matter what happens out there, you're still signed to the team."
It wasn't support, but it wasn't outright rejection either. To be honest, it was more than Roy had ever expected.
He sat at the table, full of microphones and recorders, and waited for the noise in the room to die down. Eventually, he could see the reporters again, his vision disrupted by only the occasional flash.
Roy took a deep breath.
The reporters waited.
"I'm gay."
It was like a gunshot.
The camera flash started again. The reporters tried to yell questions. Roy waited.
When the noise died down again, Roy tried again.
"I'm gay, and I have always been gay. I was gay when I started playing hockey as a kid. I was gay when I got a scholarship to play hockey in college. And I was still gay when the Corsairs drafted me. Being in the League is not going to make me suddenly make me stop being gay. Thank you for your time."
Roy stood up and walked out to the sound of even more cameras and hurried questions asked in a panic. He didn't need to answer them because had had covered everything that he cared to talk about. He gave them the information relevant to the public — no more, no less.
Coach Steel greeted him as soon as he was out of sight of the cameras.
"You've got guts, Harper." He sounded oddly… proud? "You'll fit in here."
Leading up to the first game Roy played after the press conference, all everyone could talk about was him being the first openly gay player in the NHL.
The first game Roy played after the press conference, the Opal City Corsairs won, the scoreboard showing 6-0 at the end of it.
Following the first game Roy played, after the press conference, all everyone could talk about was his number of stopped shots on goal.
When the season ended, and the Corsairs hoisted their first ever Stanley Cup, most of the fans had either forgotten about Roy being gay, or at least didn't care if he kept winning them games.
2)
The Gotham Knights were not a… good hockey team, by any stretch of the imagination. No one really wanted to play for Gotham, let alone live in Gotham, so the team took what they could get. They relied on draft picks, half-done trades, and hope.
It was why when Jason Todd-Wayne, one of the best centers to come out of an Ivy League school in decades, said he ws skipping the NHL draft so he could play for the Gotham Knights like his father before him, his team triple checked that he was sure.
In a way, Jason never had a choice. He was the son of both Willis Todd, the most iconic forward that had ever played for Gotham, and of Bruce Wayne, Gotham's resident playboy darling. He was always meant to come home.
And when Jason confirmed it, the Gotham Knights' manager jumped at the chance.
It's also why when the goalie Roman Sionis wanted to be traded to the Knights to play with "the Todd legacy", they still signed him, despite the protests. Despite the concerning comments he made about women and queer people. Despite both Todd's and Coach Dent's very vocal opposition.
The first time Sionis tried to bond with the center, talking about how much he admired his dad, Jason put his face through a wall. "My dad would have fucking hated you," Jason had spat out. "You're exactly the kind of person he dropped on the ice. We're not friends; I don't even like you. We're co-workers, that's it, and I wish that weren't even the case."
Sionis looked at Coach Dent, trying to get some kind of help, but all the older man said before walking away was "Willis Todd was my best friend. The kid's right."
⋆⁺₊❅.
Roy watched with intense fascination as the rookie center out of Gotham took his seat in the press conference. He was the season's leading scorer, and Coach Steel recommended that the goalie watch not just tape on him but also interviews and other interactions.
"Figure out what makes him tick. Find his weakness, and exploit it."
The kid had busted knuckles, a black eye, and a bruise already forming on his chin. Roy had heard that he had taken on an enforcer role like his dad before him. It was unheard of for a center, but from what he'd heard, the Todd kid had intentionally sought to play for Gotham, so maybe he got whatever he wanted.
Willis Todd had been a force to be reckoned with on the ice. If Jason had even a fraction of his skill, either with a stick or his fists, he would be a nightmare to deal with. From what he had seen so far, Roy was going to have to deal with the nightmare.
"Mr Todd-Wayne! Mr Todd-Wayne!" The cameras flashed like they had at the one and only unscheduled press conference Roy had done, but he hadn't heard of any major controversy coming out of Gotham recently. At least, other than their new goalie, who Roy hated. If Todd-Wayne hadn't been so protective of his team, Roy would have made plans for their upcoming game to get a shot at the other goalie.
Jason Todd-Wayne sat with all of the poise that Roy would have expected from someone with the Wayne name, while he waited for the reporters' yelling to die down.
"You. Ask."
The rookie pointed to one of the reporters in the front row, who had been sitting almost as equally as patiently as Todd-Wayne.
"Mr Todd-Wayne, do you feel pressure to conform to the quote enforcer unquote role because of Willis Todd's legacy, despite playing a different position? Or do you think you were always going to end up with something similar?"
The kid's eyes narrowed at the reporter, suspiciously. "Is that really what you want to ask?"
It was a valid point. While Roy could agree it was a good question, the upcoming game between the Knights and Corsairs was just a regular season game. There was no need for their star player to be at a press conference by himself if there wasn't some other scandal to address.
"I write sports journalism, Mr Todd-Wayne. My readers care about what happens on the ice, not about whatever alleged drama happens off it," the reporter fired back, chin raised in defiance.
Jason chuckled, and it was bright and melodic, and not at all what Roy would have expected.
"You… I like you." He turned to the side, and one of the Knights' team members appeared from the wings. They covered the mics and spoke in hushed tones with the player before nodding and hurrying back off stage.
"I think…" he cleared his throat. "I think that yeah, I was always going to end up like this. I don't like it when someone thinks they can push around someone else just because they're bigger or stronger or richer. My dad was the same way. And now that I'm the bigger and stronger one, I get to do something about it." His eyes returned to the reporter, his tone softer. "Just because I play a different position, doesn't mean I'm not my father's son."
It was a level of self awareness that most rookie hockey players didn't have, although Roy had heard that Willis Todd's kid came out of an Ivy League school with a literature degree so maybe that's just what they learned there.
Jason's sigh was picked up by the microphones, and Roy recognized the sigh of someone who just wanted to play hockey and not deal with the media circus.
He had found himself sighing the same sigh frequently since he came out. His heart went out to the rookie, opponent or not.
"Now somebody ask the question we're all here for."
The statement caught Roy's attention, as a number of hands went up. Todd-Wayne seemed to point at one at random. They cleared their throat.
"Is it true that you and new goalie Roman Sionis were in an altercation at the last practice?"
The redhead found himself leaning forward, intrigued.
"I don't like Sionis, and I think that the Knights should have never traded for him. I haven't ever been ambiguous or quiet about that. I had hoped that we, as an organization, would have stood for something better than Sionis' bullshit."
Roy remembered an article about one of the Knights' players joining a sit in over the deal to bring Sionis to Gotham. The man was largely regarded as a chauvinistic asshole, but unfortunately the League still enabled that kind of behaviour. At least the fans were starting to take a stand against it. Change was on its way — slower than many would have liked — but on its way nonetheless.
"The phrase 'an altercation' makes it sound like a fight, and a fight makes it sound like he had a chance. I kicked his fucking ass. Thank you for your time."
Jason breezed out of the room, and Roy smiled to himself. Their next game was going to be fun.
3)
The last time Roy had been sitting in front of a room full of microphones, he had cared a lot more. He'd played enough seasons since then; there was nothing reporters could say to him anymore that mattered more to him than standing on his own morals. At the end of the day, his hand was bruised, but he could still look at himself in the mirror.
"Mr Harper! Mr Harper! What would you say to those with the opinion that goalies fighting is unbecoming and unrepresentative of the league?"
He had done so well at staying out of scandal since his first big one, but if the rookie could find a backbone for his press conferences, then so could he, he supposed.
"I would say that they should get better goalies then. I haven't been exactly subtle about how I feel about Sionis' remarks about the LGBTQIA+ community and women. I don't know why he thought he could get away with saying them to me."
"What are your thoughts on Todd-Wayne?"
Roy had never met the rookie. He knew that he had taken on the "enforcer" role for the Knights, but at the same time, he had also stood by while Roy threw hands with Sionis. Teams were incredibly protective of their goalies, and it would have Todd-Wayne's job to protect his, but he hadn't done anything, even when Roy's knuckles and and the ice were stained with Roman's blood. Roy thought that the two of them were bonding, that they had an understanding in how much they both hated Sionis, and then the rookie had to go and drop three fucking scores on the goalie they brought out to replace Roy.
The Knights won, 4-3, and Roy couldn't even be mad about it. The kid had played some of the best hockey Roy had seen; they deserved the win.
"Just met him, and he seems like a decent kid. Played out of his mind tonight. Hope he sticks around the League for a while."
He fielded a few questions about whether he thought he would have been able to prevent Todd-Wayne's hat trick with an answer that didn't reduce his skills nor downplay the rookie's achievements tonight, and a handful of others about the Corsair's season. When he finally got the okay to end the conference, he muttered a quick "Thank you for your time" and disappeared.
⋆⁺₊❅.
None of the reporters asked Jason about his first career hat trick. All of them asked about why he didn't get into a fight with Roy fucking Harper. As if Jason didn't have Harper's rookie season poster hanging on his bedroom's wall in Wayne Manor. As if Jason even looking at the Corsair's golden boy goalie, didn't mean the rest of the team would jump him. As if Jason would have raised a single finger to defend Roman Sionis of all people.
"Mr Todd-Wayne! Mr Todd-Wayne!" The oppressive buzz of the room and the overwhelming flash of cameras hit Jason almost as soon he opened the door. The reporter from Jason's first press conference — the one he liked — was seated in the front row. Once he had taken his place in front of the microphones, Jason turned to him.
"Ask your question."
"Was Roman Sionis aware that in the event of a fight, you would not come to his aid?"
Yes, Jason wanted to say. I told him that, and he ran his mouth anyways.
Instead, what came out was "I'm not sure if you're aware, but fighting is actually against the rules of hockey. I didn't want to make more work for the refs."
There were some questions about if he knew Roy (he didn't, unfortunately), a few clarifying questions about his issues with Sionis, and finally questions about his hat trick. When one of the reporters asked if he thought that he would scored that many goals on Harper, Jason was suddenly possessed every ounce of PR that Brucie Wayne seemed to have an endless supply of.
"Roy Harper is one of the best goalies to ever touch the game, and it is an honour to get to play hockey at the same time as him. I wouldn't want to make presumptions about either of our skills. I guess we'll have to see at the next game."
He thanked the press for their time and walked off stage. Harvey greeted him at the door with a sigh. "Remind me to never introduce you to Harper, kid."
Jason laughed.
4)
Roy Harper reached out to Jason via text.
-
got ur # from dick
-
grayson obv. not mine lol
-
hope u don't mind!
-
this is roy harper btw
Jason threw his phone across the room.
Jason Todd responded to the text fourteen hours later after he had gotten a new phone screen and an upgraded his case.
-
Sorry for the late response. I had to get my phone fixed today.
Jason almost threw his phone across the room again.
⋆⁺₊❅.
The Todd kid was smart, funny, and pretty to look at, although Roy would only admit two of those to Dick. At first, the redhead had only texted because the hero worship in his press conference responses was nice to hear and it was the least he could do since Roy had no misconceptions about whether or not the center could have laid him out if he had wanted to. Roy wasn't the worst fighter in the League, but he definitely wasn't on Todd's level.
And then Jason just had to go and be interesting.
They talked semi-frequently, especially on off weeks, and the distance between Maryland and New Jersey was… doable, so they even managed to meet a few times in person. It felt like they were moving towards something more-than-friends adjacent, and then it happened.
The two of them had kissed.
Roy didn't remember if Jason kissed him or if he had kissed Jason (he kissed Jason), but he didn't think it mattered (it mattered to Jason, he would find out later).
They had kissed, the Corsairs were winning most of their games, and somehow the Knights were too. For the first time in what must have been franchise history, Gotham City was making a genuine bid for the playoffs.
All of it came crashing down when Roy and Jason were accused of collusion. In preparation for the Corsairs and Knights' upcoming re-match, someone had compared the games both teams had had since their last match. Apparently, the Corsairs and Knights had lost the same amount of games in that period of time, usually in the same week. Someone else posted photos of Jason and Roy being together much more frequently following the Gotham and Opal City game.
Obviously, Roy wanted to scream at them. We didn't know each other before.
Based on that information, fans made speculations, and the Corsairs' wanted to get ahead of any of the accusations. Which is how Roy found himself at yet another press conference. He was trying to explain what he was pretty sure was the concept of friends to the shiver of shark-like reporters who smelled the blood of controversy in the water.
"Todd and I are friends," he said. "We've been hanging out, because that's what friends do. That's all." Even before the sentence was fully out of his mouth, he was already regretting it.
Yes, he would say that he and Jason were friends, but calling them just friends in a press conference might just kill Roy's hopes of them becoming more than friends.
He answered a few more questions that he couldn't recall, before disappearing to mope in his apartment until the next practice.
⋆⁺₊❅.
5)
Collusion, they had said, and Jason fought every instinct in him to scoff. He was pretty sure that both Harvey and Roy's coach wished that they had been colluding instead of the PR nightmare that they had been on the verge of.
Jason had the thought not infrequently that maybe he and Roy should be less visible, but then Roy had kissed him, and Jason had never had another thought again. Roy had kissed Jason and eliminated the growing doubt in his mind that the almost more than friends thing they had been building to was all in the younger man's head.
The organization was making him do a press conference about it before the Knights' next game against the Corsairs. Jason thought it was ridiculous. Some pictures of two people hanging out and a similar season record should never have been considered adequate proof for a "credible accusation of collusion".
One of the team's PR representatives appeared to talk to Jason before the conference. They tried to give him some talking points, and for a moment Jason thought about how easy it would be to use them. He knew the Corsairs were also making Roy do a press conference, that he probably got some PR person giving him a list of similar talking points.
Except he thought about the first press conference Roy ever did. The one where he told the entire League, all of the press gathered, and everyone who would see one of the many, many clips that were made of it, that he was gay.
It had been a guiding light for a younger Jason — one who had just learned what "gay" even was and who was scared that he would never get to follow in his father's footsteps because of a label — to keep chasing his dreams.
He couldn't — wouldn't — hide behind League-approved talking points when there might be some kid out there, like he had been, who needed this as much as he had.
The press room was nearly silent when Jason opened the door. The silence lasted until he crossed the stage and sat down at the table. Voices overlapped, each trying to demand his attention, but the room fell quiet again once he cleared his throat.
Jason took a deep breath. He exhaled, purposefully, to ground himself.
"I'm gay."
He had thought the room was silent before, but he was wrong. That was nothing compared to the absolute nothingness that permeated the air after those two words.
"I'm gay," he started again, "and for years I thought that meant I wouldn't get to play the sport that I love, that I grew up on. Then Roy Harper came out as gay, and a world of possibility opened that I had never before imagined."
He had already done the coming out; that was the hard part, he was pretty sure.
"Roy has been a good friend and helping me work through the logistics and implications of coming out, and decide if I even wanted to. Which I guess is irrelevant now since the choice was taken from me anyways."
He stared down the press room in what he hoped was a good rendition of his dad's disappointed look. Some of them started to look abashed so Jason would count himself at least somewhat successful.
"Thank you for your time," was all he said before walking out.
⋆⁺₊❅.
Roy called Jason after both of them finished their press conferences. He sounded about as tired as Roy felt.
"So how about that bullshit?" the redhead asked, and felt warmth settle in his chest when Jason responded with something halfway between a laugh and a sigh.
"You think any of those fuckers have friends?" Jason asked, his voice tinged with what Roy thought was bitterness.
"The way they were grilling us? Hard to think they do."
He took a deep breath.
He was Roy Harper; he had been the first overall draft pick. He had won the Stanley Cup as a rookie.
He could do this.
"I watched yours, you know?" Roy pushed on without waiting for a response. "I'm proud as hell of you. We should… go out. Get dinner or something. To celebrate."
On the other side of the call, he could hear Jason take a deep breath as well.
"As in— Like— Like a date?"
"Yeah, Jaybird. A date."
⋆⁺₊❅.
+1)
Somehow, to the surprise of both the Corsairs and Knights' organizations, Roy Harper and Jason Todd managed to stay out of new controversies for two seasons. It helped that Sionis got dropped and Bruce Wayne and Oliver Queen's legal teams started threatening to sue publications.
The story broke in the Gotham Gazette sports column, the morning before the season's first game: an exclusive interview with Jason Todd as he prepared for the new season. He used the opportunity to announce his mystery engagement, and many people took to social media to announce their dismay, or to speculate on who the lucky fiance might be.
The Gotham Knights had their first season game away, and the speculation lasted until their first home game. It was a bloodbath against the Opal City Corsairs, with their minor league goalie not yet used to the higher level of play, and Roy Harper still out on an off-season injury. The injury did not, however, prevent him from being healthy enough to attend the game, and it didn't stop Roy from kissing Jason Todd during his post-game interview.
Even outside the press room, Jason could hear the buzzing of the reporters inside. All of the press conferences he had done for the last two seasons were related to the game instead of his personal life, and he wasn't looking forward to it.
He had talked the team's management into letting him skip the press conference directly after the game by promising to hold one the next day. Jason wasn't sure how long Roy was in town for, and he'd much rather spend the post-victory evening with his newly announced fiance, instead of a bunch of almost-strangers.
At least, he thought as Roy smiled at him, I'm not doing this one alone.
The redhead, Jason's fiance, opened the door, and the room got impossibly louder. They crossed the stage to the calls of "Mr Harper!" and "Mr Todd-Wayne!"
Roy took the first question, letting Jason get settled.
Everything was going to be okay.