In 2010, the best athletes in the world gathered in Vancouver for the Games of the thirty-first Olympiad. Of all the medals to be awarded at the Games, the host nation of Canada wanted one above all: the last medal to be awarded, gold in Men's Hockey. To this end, Canada assembled a team of superstars, the best and brightest in the NHL, led by Sidney Crosby. On the shoulders of that team they placed the hopes of the nation.

"Sid," Geno said, jogging down the stairs two days later. "You not like jizz. Is like shoes thing, or like chunky peanut butter thing?" Sidney had strong feelings about his shoes, but he grudgingly acknowledged that manufacturers continued to issue updated models every few months, so his running shoes were never quite the same even though he always bought the same brand and style. Chunky peanut butter, on the other hand, was inviolate. You did not fuck with the chunky peanut butter. Or, as I titled the document, Jizz: a love story.

Sid’s gotten pretty used to total strangers asking him what he’s trying to prove, or telling him he wasn’t raised right, and they always expect it to bother him. He doesn’t tell them he hears much, much worse on the ice. When shit gets even worse than usual—when a ref calls him a brat when he’s arguing a call, when another team’s goon tries to put him on his knees five times a game—he sits on the bench and presses down on his chest protector, feeling the shape of the captain’s ring on its chain around his neck, until he doesn’t feel like throwing up anymore. Sid’s never had a dom, not even for a night, but he has his team, and that’s enough. That’s more than enough.

Zhenya checks everything one last time: the artificial slick goes in the pocket of his jeans, and yes, the bottle of wine for Sid’s collection is nestled in a wood box in the back seat. He’d actually gone out and bought cream cheese to make a cheesecake on autopilot before he’d remembered – food is an alpha’s courting-gift, not an omega's. He'd thrown the cream cheese out, and bought the wine the next day.

That's the end of the talking for a while, but it's only the beginning of Patrick thinking about it. He does some research, but it turns out that googling "what does it mean that I like getting held down during sex" doesn't provide much helpful information, and he can't bring it up with anyone, so he just – thinks about it, instead. It's probably more thought than he's put into anything before in his life other than hockey, but it leads him to some pretty interesting conclusions.

Of course Tyler knows that intense hockey makes a sub more susceptible to going under, but he hadn't really experienced it much before. Now, when he’s on his knees on the ice drinking beer out of the Worlds trophy that Sidney Fucking Crosby is holding to his mouth, he can recognize the signs. He can feel a haze settling around the edges of his mind, and he’s spent enough time subbing, and drunk, and subbing while drunk, to know which one of those this is.

Geno ends up with red, white and blue hair after the Caps game, so he’s the first person sent to the new cursebreaker when they make it back to Pittsburgh. Sid is in the lounge when Geno comes back out. “I’m know her,” Geno says despondently. “She’s cursebreaker on staff for media at Sochi.”

Sitting at the table was Sid: Sid as Zhenya had first known him, almost a decade before: dorky, long-haired Sid, his cheeks round with baby fat. He couldn’t have been older than twenty, and even that was generous. “Wow,” baby Sid said. “Are you Evgeni Malkin?"

“They asked me, today, in an interview with Sid right next to me, about that thing I said last year. About leaving the Penguins, being a big star somewhere else.” “And you’re, what? Afraid he’s going to be angry with you?” Zhenya squirms. He feels hot and prickly, his emotions a soupy mess he can’t grasp in order to make sense of. “I think… I think I’m afraid he won’t be.”

It's not like Phil goes around telling people that his old team bought him his best friend like some people buy hookers. He can't really talk about it with Bozie, either, because Bozie will just say something like, "Come on, I provide the full girlfriend experience," which is so much worse than actually being offended.

Hilary is okay with having a rep if it means NHL stars bring her Cheetos.

Geno's a dom and only a dom, Sidney's a sub who doms sometimes but only because people keep asking her nicely, and all their feelings for each other are entirely platonic. Yeah right.

Dylan and Mitch try to settle an argument about who gives the better hand job using Connor's dick.

Soft hockey boys just trying to make it work.

"Hey, so," Tyler says when the marks on his ass have faded to a gross yellow-green. "Next time, you wanna make out first?"

The Washington Capitals part of the D/s AU.

Just because Shea and Steve had spent the night together a couple, okay a bunch, of times didn’t mean that Shea could just… affect him like that. Steve had had plenty of casual-play arrangements with Doms around the country, and none of them could ever… Besides, Steve couldn’t kneel right now, not with his knee fucked up, and that meant he couldn't sub.