Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories:

M/M, Other

Fandoms:

Game Changers Series - Rachel Reid, Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Brad Hammersmith/Sebbin, Victor St. Simon/Arya St.Simon, David Hollander/Yuna Hollander

Characters:

Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau, Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander, Brad Hammersmith, Sebbin (Heated Rivalry), Ryan Carmichael, Boston Bears | Boston Raiders Team Ensemble (Game Changers), Victor St. Simon, Arya St. Simon, David Hollander, Yuna Hollander, Ottawa Centaurs Team Ensemble (Game Changers), Original Male Character(s)

Additional Tags:

POV Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau, No Smut, Crack Treated Seriously, Crack, Boston Bears | Boston Raiders (Game Changers), No Angst, Misunderstandings, The Boston Bears Share One Brain Cell, No Beta We Live like Ilya, Humor, Dumb Hockey Boys, Soft Hockey Boys, Ilya Rozanov's Montreal Jane, Post-Wedding, Ilya Rozanov Loves Shane Hollander, Shane Hollander Loves Ilya Rozanov, Married Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Post-Book 6: The Long Game (Game Changers), Post-Canon, Idiots in Love, Established Relationship, Unreliable Narrator

Language:

English

Series:

Part 21 of Just Game Changer things that my brain needs to write, Part 13 of Hammer/Sebbin is my close personal headcanon

Stats:

Published: 2026-05-12 Words: 6,137 Chapters: 1/1

The Hollander-Rozanov Post Wedding Brunch: Competitive Edition

Summary

Marly is hungover and absolutely not ready for a trivia brunch about Roz and Hollander the morning after their wedding. The Bears know almost nothing about the couple, so they fall back on what they do know, the lovely Montreal Jane, but the more they answer, the stranger it gets.

Or, just how similar were Jane and Hollander, and how did Roz end up with what was a carbon copy of the same person? The lucky asshole.

POV Cliff Marlow, who is the real MVP!

Notes

Maybe I ended up writing another crack fic from my never-ending list of ideas? I can't remember if this idea ever came up in an A/N, but here you go, enjoy!

This can definitely be read as a standalone, but as an fyi for those of you who've enjoyed my Marly POV or other fics before, this fic derives Seb/Hammer, our McGill hockey/board game players, random themes and character characterisation from the rest of the series Just Game Changer things that my brain needs to write so hope you like it!

Marly wanted to punch this emcee dude’s face in.

“Good morning to the married couple and all of you friends and family!”

The emcee had the kind of voice that carried over both the rattling cutlery and the hangry, hungover close friends of the couple who had gathered for a post-wedding brunch organised by Hollander’s mother. If anyone had wanted to say no to the idea before the wedding, no one had said so to Mrs Hollander after she’d confirmed it with them the previous night.

Marly’s only question was why it had to involve waking up at noon after a night of drinking and dancing. Well, it wasn’t his only question, but he had a raging headache and could only focus on that one at the moment.

“We’re going to play a game called How Well Do You Actually Know The Couple?” the emcee announced, walking slowly through the private dining room with a wireless mic and far too much confidence. “You will all answer the same questions about our lovely newlyweds,” he said, handing out tiny clipboards with a marker attached, one for each table. “However, I’d like to assure you that even though the lovely Mrs Hollander hired me for this occasion, she knows none of the questions you’re about to answer today.”

Mrs Hollander, who had told Marly to call her Yuna, raised her glass of orange juice in salute. No one bothered to argue since they all knew Hollander was a stickler for rules, and it had to come from somewhere. Also, they were all fucking hungover.

“Mom, come on!” Hollander complained and dropped his forehead on the table, his voice rough from what Marly assumed was a throat fuck and a rather thorough wedding night.

Roz, on the other hand, cheered and pointed fingers at Svetlana and the Bears’ table. “One of you fuckers better win this!” How the fuck were they supposed to win without knowing much about Roz and Hollander? The Bears were good, but they weren’t fucking magicians and couldn’t pull answers out of their ass. Roz had mentioned offhandedly to Marly that he was close to David, Hollander’s dad, so that was an unfair advantage Yuna might be capitalising on.

“Mrs Hollander would like to say a few words before we begin,” the emcee handed his little mike to Yuna. Was everything he brought with him in miniature sizes?

“Definitely a small dick,” muttered Carmy from beside Marly, looking worse than Marly felt. Carmy must have taken shots with Roz, forgetting that he’d never been able to keep up with the groom before, and he definitely couldn’t now.

“Good morning,” Yuna said at a normal volume, a wide grin on her face. “Thank you all for being here to see my baby boys get married.” She ignored Hollander’s embarrassed “Mom!” and returned Roz’s “Love you, Yuna!” with her own. “We’ve all seen Shane and Ilya in love in our own little ways, even if we weren’t aware of them being together, so I thought it would be a lovely way to know more about them.” Oh, Yuna was so smart!

“Hell, yeah!” Marly heard the same sentiment repeated a dozenfold across the room. “Let’s do it.”

“We also need to write real answers, yes?” Roz raised a hand like he was in school. “Where is my clipboard?”

“Yes, of course,” the emcee hurried over to give Roz his own marker and board, “I’ve been told the table settings made sure the teams are already sitting together, but you can, of course, split off into more teams, or move tables if you’d like.”

Marly looked around their table. Carmy’s girl hadn’t been able to make it, but Carmy was chugging coffee like it would counter the vodka if he drank the same amount of caffeine. Seb and Hammer, who were each other’s dates, were cutting through obscene amounts of pancakes, and Marly was so jealous that the fuckers somehow rarely ended up with a hangover.

Rounding off their table were Viggy and his wife, Arya St.Simon, and Marly wondered if they hadn’t been too drunk to fuck last night, because Arya had her legs across over Viggy’s lap, and they looked cosy as can be. Marly wished Connors had made it to the wedding so Marly would feel less single, but Connors was off at his parents’ again. Something was going on there, but Connors didn’t want to talk about it, so Marly had left it alone.

The table next to theirs had some of the Centaurs that Roz was close to? Marly recognised Hayes, and Haas, who was Roz’s favourite rookie, and Barrett, and Barrett’s hot, bearded boyfriend, with whom Marly had become good friends the previous night. Marly didn’t care to remember who the rest were, but they seemed to be staying together as a team.

Pike, his beautiful wife, who was way out of the man’s league, and their kids sat at a table with JJ Dagenais, whom Marly had seen with his mouth open in surprise several times the previous night. Still, it could have been because of the weirdass wedding, since Marly also had his mouth open quite a few times during the evening. The kids looked excited to answer questions about Roz and Hollander, and Marly wondered how often Roz saw them.

Rose Landry asked for an extra clipboard. “I’m going to try winning by myself!” Marly could see Roz muttering, and he could only imagine how much beef Roz had with Landry for dating his husband, even though it had been for a measly few months a couple of years ago, considering how jealous Roz got.

Roz’s girl, Svetlana, had officiated the wedding, because Marly had been Roz’s best man and Roz could have two besties, and she was sitting at the same table as Landry, Roz and the Hollanders with Sasha, an old friend of Roz’s from Russia. The dude had hit on almost every hot hockey player the previous night and looked way too fresh for a man who had drunk almost a whole bottle of vodka and offered Marly coke at some point. It couldn’t have made Marly’s hangover any worse if he’d just taken Sasha up on it.

Svetlana and Sasha took another clipboard after giving the one on their table to Yuna and David, who were going to be a team together. Hollander had his eyes closed and was leaning on Roz’s shoulder, and Roz had a fond look on his face as he pressed a quick kiss to his husband’s forehead. They were so cute!

“Unfair, we only just learnt about them a few months ago,” Marly heard from the last table, which had a bunch of men in their mid-fifties who Roz swore were fucking awesome, and who Roz played board games with? They were apparently college buddies of Hollander’s dad, though Marly was unclear on how close Roz was to them to make them attend a post-wedding brunch.

A sour-faced dude snatched the clipboard from a man bigger than Marly and used the eraser on the back of the marker to clean an already clean board. “I hate you, Rozanov,” he shouted across to Roz, and the rest of them laughed soundly, like literally soundly because they all had belly laughs. Weird that the dude would say that to Roz, but whatever floated Roz’s boat.

“Liar, don’t lie,” Roz grinned toothily back at the man who’d said he hated Roz, “you know you love me, Turny.” Ah, it was some weird rivalry thing Roz seemed to drum up everywhere he went, annoying people into liking him.

“Let's just answer with things we know about Jane?” Carmy suggested from beside Marly, distracting him from whatever was going on with those old dudes.

Marly knew Roz had a type, so they could reasonably assume some of the answers would match, hopefully. “The name Jane is close enough to Shane anyway.”

Viggy and Arya rolled their eyes at the same time, mostly because they had been married for far too long. “What, you think since their names are similar, the stories are too?”

“Do you have a better idea?” asked Hammer. How was Hammer being the voice of reason for once?

Marly took that back once Seb spoke, because Hammer nodded at Seb’s nonsensical question. “Who’s Shane anyway?”

“Fucking Hollander, dude,” Marly hissed, “Shane Hollander, Roz’s husband, whose wedding we’re here for?”

𓅢 𓅢 𓅢

“Question one, you have one minute to answer!” The uncomfortably loud emcee had scrounged up a set of cards from somewhere and held up the first, “Who made the first move? Double the points if you guess where or how.” How was that tiny ass microphone capable of amplifying this man’s voice so much? Marly rubbed at his temples, hoping it would alleviate his pounding headache.

“I mean, Seb jerked off at me in the showers, and I liked his dick immediately that first time,” Hammer whispered loudly, like someone would steal their answer but not bothering to keep their fucking a secret, “it works for hockey players, and the two of them could have stayed late after a game at an All Stars or something.”

“I hate to agree with that story, but like dude, why did you even sleep with Seb after that?” Viggy shook his head in exasperation, “But it’s not like Hollander seems the type to get picked up at a club otherwise.” It was true, the good boy of hockey was rarely heard about having a night out on the town, and certainly not at the places Roz frequented.

“Roz and I do have a very similar pick up style,” Seb tapped at his chin with a finger. “He would do it too, so we might not be wrong.”

“Obviously, it’s Roz,” Carmy shrugged, hidden behind another cup of coffee, and Marly tried to write down ‘Roz jerked off at Hollander in the showers' on the clipboard, but the marker was too small for Marly’s giant fingers, and Arya took over.

“Ten seconds to go.” The emcee cut through the Centaurs’ furious whispering, and Marly thought they probably agreed about Roz making the first move but couldn’t decide on how. Barrett’s cutie Harris scribbled down something, waving away the others’ suggestions.

“I’ve been such a fan of Rozanov and Hollander’s hockey since they started playing,” the emcee offered, though no one had asked, “I’m so honoured to be hosting this for them today, and after several NDAs, of course.” Yuna was the fucking best and had, of course, made this overly enthusiastic man sign them. “Could we get the couple’s answer, please?”

Hollander groaned when Roz held up their board. ‘I showed my dick to Hollander in the shower, and he could not resist.’ The emcee read it out, then promptly choked on his words when he realised what he’d said.

The Bears cheered, and Arya held up their answer. Svetlana and Sasha had also guessed ‘Roz showed Shane his dick, we know how big it is.’ Marly also knew how big Roz’s dick was, but he supposed both of them knew first-hand.

“I didn’t think anyone would get it right,” Hollander goggled at them, “How the fuck do any of you know that?”

“We’re just that good,” Marly hollered at Hollander, mostly to stop Seb from explaining how they’d guessed from his tried and tested method.

The Centaurs had also guessed Roz, but their answer was ‘Roz knocked on Hollander’s door after midnight’. After the emcee read out the Centaurs’ answer, Landry held up her own board, and it said ‘Shane knocked on Roz’s door’. She had started with too much confidence to be this bad at the game. “You’re not far off,” Hollander said to their slumped shoulders, “he did knock on my door after asking me my room number, and I’ve knocked on his plenty.”

“The first room number was 1410.” Roz was such a fucking sap. Hollander smiled softly at Roz and leaned up to feather a kiss on Roz’s nose.

The Hollanders were next, also having written Roz, but their how was tame, the guess being that Roz had hit on Shane while working out together in a hotel gym. “Very close,” Roz grinned, and Hollander rolled his eyes at his husband, “I hit on Hollander in the gym after racing him, but he did not understand I was hitting on him.”

The old men had just written ‘Rozanov’, probably unwilling to guess what Roz had done with their poor little nephew Hollander, and the Pikes had answered with Roz as well. “We couldn’t think of a kid-friendly way to write how Ilya hit on Shane,” Jackie answered, holding up the board, which had Uncle Ilya with a lot of hearts around the name. Marly wasn’t sure why their answer needed to be kid-friendly when the rest of theirs definitely weren’t.

The emcee’s assistant rolled out a whiteboard with seven columns for the scores and went about writing their group names in some fancy cursive until Marly couldn’t even read which column was theirs.

𓅢 𓅢 𓅢

𓅢 𓅢 𓅢

“It’s time for Rose Landry’s redemption!” The emcee declared, reading from the next card. Landry was sitting on a solid zero and desperately needed that redemption. “Second question. Who said I love you first? Double points if you guess when.”

“It was Roz, right?” If there was one thing Marly knew Roz could say, it was an I love you. Roz said it to them all the time, and had done so even when they had been young, when Roz had been a newly appointed captain.

Arya nodded seriously. “Hollander seems like he would debate himself for a while before calling it love because he isn’t sure what love means.” Viggy quoted the air with his fingers when Arya said the word love.

“I don’t know,” Seb mused, “if Roz jumped from Jane to Hollander on a rebound, wouldn’t he take longer to say it?”

“No matter how long Roz took, Hollander would take longer,” Hammer replied, “but how are we supposed to know when he said it?”

“We agreed to do answers about Jane,” Carmy said, “so let’s say 2017 when Roz came back giddy as fuck from that summer?” Was that another coffee Carmy was sipping? The fucker couldn’t handle his vodka, but he could have a thousand coffees and still fall asleep.

Carmy had a point though, because Roz had come to his last season with the Bears attached to his phone, because of what they all thought was a relationship with Jane. “Okay, let’s go with 2017, we’ll get a point for guessing Roz anyway.” Arya wrote ‘Roz, Summer of 2017’.

The emcee counted down from five. “Let’s hear from the couple now!”

Hollander held up their board with an ‘Ilya, 2017’ on it. The Bears were killing it with their answers, and Arya held up their board, but they also exchanged confused glances. Had Roz been on and off with both Jane and Hollander?

“Maybe they were in an open relationship back then?” whispered Seb, “that’s not unheard of.” Seb and Hammer would know all about that, and Marly still didn’t understand why they weren’t together, but it was something to work on next season. Marly needed a personal project anyway.

Sasha shrugged when Svetlana held up their board. ‘2017 Ilya’. “Fucking yes,” cheered Svetlana when she saw their score go up to four, and so did the scores for the Bears and the Hollanders, who’d also written ‘Ilya, July 2017’. The Bears had totally been right about the summer!

“Really? Mom? Dad?” protested Hollander, pouting at his parents, probably about how they could believe that Roz had said I love you first when it was easily the most believable thing about them.

“We love you, Shane,” David said, a smile lighting up his face, and Marly could see where Hollander got his pretty because Yuna had given Hollander only the sharp angles, “you panicked so very much when I accidentally saw you two, you probably didn’t say it first.” What had David caught them doing?

“What, did you see Roz’s hand on Hollander’s ass?” Hammer sniggered, as did the rest of their table, but David only seemed surprised. Why was he surprised?

“I did actually see that. How did you know?” Maybe it wasn’t a good time to tell David his son had a good ass?

Seb didn’t share Marly’s reservations. “Your son has a fantastic ass, David!”

“Fucking yes, Sebby,” Roz laughed with the rest of the room as Hollander buried his face in his hands, “my husband has the best ass in the world.”

Rose Landry had guessed the year right, but she had gone with Hollander again, which led to Hollander thanking her for thinking it was him. Landry clearly knew Hollander well, but she knew next to nothing about Roz. The Pikes and the Centaurs, on the other hand, had guessed Roz right, but 2018 was wrong. Was that when the Pikes had found out?

“Pike is idiot, but why did you all guess 2018?” Roz asked the Centaurs after sticking an immature tongue out at Pike, “What happened in 2018?” Fair question, because Roz had apparently already loved Hollander, and probably still been with Jane, before moving to Canada, though Marly was questioning Jane more by the second.

“I mean, you moved to Ottawa in 2018, so we figured you’d said it earlier that year or something,” Barrett explained. Not a terrible way of thinking about it, but the team was missing information and couldn’t have known otherwise.

“Rozanov could only have moved after his contract ended,” the sour-faced dude reasoned, “but they would have been in love before even considering moving to such a shitty team, as much of a fan as I am and as good as you are now.” They’d written ‘Rozanov, 2017’, and for people who’d said they knew nothing, they were doing pretty well.

𓅢 𓅢 𓅢

𓅢 𓅢 𓅢

“No double points this turn, but here comes question three!” The emcee continued when his assistant finished tallying the scores, “What was the first thing one of the grooms ever cooked for the other?”

Roz choked on the egg he’d shoved into his mouth, and Hollander patted at Roz’s back as he wrapped an arm around Roz and whispered rapidly into his ear. What was that about?

“I heard Hollander only eats bird food, and he wouldn’t be crazy enough to feed Roz that, right?” Carmy’s thousandth cup of coffee must have woken him up, because he was thinking again.

“Yeah, so Roz must’ve made the comfort thing first,” Seb said, and Hammer agreed with Seb, which he usually did when he didn’t have an opinion of his own, or when his face was stuffed with food, but Marly did agree with them.

“Dude only knows how to make tuna melts,” Marly said, “he’s not going to try to make something else for the first time.” Every hangout and watch party for the Bears involved tuna melts until Marly started ordering a catering service to Roz’s house instead, but some of their rookies actually enjoyed the tuna melts, so Roz kept making them.

“It’s a wonder Hollander kisses him with fish breath,” Arya wrinkled her nose, “but Roz does make a good tuna melt.” Marly wouldn’t kiss someone with fish breath either, but to each their own.

Viggy snorted. “Like Hollander wouldn’t make Roz brush his teeth like a million times before he came within a foot of him.” Oh, right, that made more sense.

Hammer wasn’t so sure after swallowing his pancakes. “Would Hollander even eat a tuna melt on his diet?” That made sense too, but they didn’t have much time left as the emcee had started his countdown, so Arya said fuck it and wrote down ‘Tuna Melts’.

“And we’re ready for Rozanov and Hollander,” the emcee cheered, “take it away, guys!”

“Tuna melts!” Roz shouted before Hollander could show their board, and the Bears cheered with Roz, as did Sasha and Svetlana. Rose Landry was right for once, and, surprisingly, so were the little Pikes, so basically everyone except the Centaurs and the McGill crowd, which Marly knew was a good university, so it was probably how they knew David, and the two tables looked around like they were the only ones who hadn’t gotten a peek at the answers before the exam.

“How did you know?” JJ asked the little Pikes, and it made Marly curious, as it did everyone else, because they fell silent to hear the answer.

“Uncle Ilya said it was the only thing he knew how to make,” one of the twins said, and a laugh bubbled up in Marly’s throat.

“Glad he hasn’t learned anything else in twenty years,” Sasha snorted loudly, and Svetlana joined him. “Ilya used to make us those tuna melts every week after school when there was no one else home.”

The other twin bobbed her head in sync with her sister, “Uncle Shane’s food is gross, so we eat lots of tuna melts with Uncle Ilya after school.” Hollander had a smile tugging at his mouth even as he tried his best to look annoyed. Marly figured Roz spent a lot of time with Pike’s kids if he was making them after-school snacks and shit.

The little Pike boy blinked awake at the mention of Roz and toddled over to scramble up into Ilya’s lap. “Tuna melt, Uncle Ilya?” Oh my god, Marly wanted some cute little kids to spoil too! Even Seb and Hammer’s kids would do, and all he had to do was convince them to finally get together and adopt, which would be way easier than Marly finding a girl for himself and having kids.

𓅢 𓅢 𓅢

𓅢 𓅢 𓅢

“Fourth question!” the emcee announced, his voice less grating than it had been at the beginning, but maybe that was just Marly, “What drink is their go-to? It’s a point for each of the groom’s choices.”

“Cherry Coke for Roz, but what does Hollander like?” Viggy asked, and Arya tapped the little marker against her palm. Roz could drink a six-pack of Cherry Cokes and sleep just as well as Carmy after coffee, but he usually worked it off dancing or in bed.

The Centaurs whooped as they wrote something down, and Marly wondered if they knew something the Bears didn’t. None of them wanted to lose.

Hammer straightened. “Didn’t we see a carton of ginger ale in Roz’s refrigerator back when he was with Jane?” Ah, that was somewhat true, but then Jane had broken up with Roz, and he’d moped so much over the ginger ale that they’d had a pizza party with no alcohol just to finish that carton.

“I drank so much ginger ale that night I burped for a week after.” Seb demonstrated with a burp after a gulp of the disgusting mix in his glass. He insisted that a 3 to 2 to 1 ratio of orange, grape and apple juices from a hotel breakfast bar was the perfect morning drink, but no one except Hammer drank that combination, and even Hammer drank it mostly because Seb always got them two glasses of the concoction.

No one had a better idea, so they went with ginger ale as the emcee started to count down. ‘Cherry Coke - Roz. Ginger ale - Hollander.’ “And to the grooms we go!”

Hollander grinned widely, and everyone smiled in response because, as rare as it seemed to be that Hollander smiled a real smile and not his practised media one, he was infectious when he did. ‘Ginger ale ♡ Coke’. Roz must’ve written that, and fucking fuck if the Bears weren’t good at this game, even if their answers were for Jane. Just how similar were Jane and Hollander, and how had Roz found a carbon copy of the same person? The lucky asshole.

“You are all the best, I love you!” Roz smiled a thousand-watt smile at his in-laws, and then at everybody one at a time, because they had all got the answer right.

“Yo Rozy, we love you too!” It was disgusting how much Coke the man consumed, and Marly hoped Hollander would rid Roz of the habit now that they were going to live together full-time.

How had the Pikes known? “Rozanov’s infected my kids with Cherry Coke, and now it’s all Ruby and Jade ever want to drink.” Pike looked resigned to the fact, like he’d tried a million times to bribe them with another drink, literally any other drink, but had not succeeded. “But at least they’re not addicted to ginger ale, eh, Shane? We’ve stocked cartons of it in our house for the last decade.” One of the twins was holding up their board, which said ‘UNCLE ILYA - COKE. UNCLE SHANE - GINGER ALE’ in bold letters, surrounded by an overwhelming number of hearts.

The Hollanders had written ‘Coke/ Ginger Ale’, and so had those McGill dudes, starting to look smug. Sasha had scribbled a ‘Coke’ on their board, not knowing what Hollander drank. Svetlana’s handwriting had been much better, and she was so fucking hot, but also so out of Marly’s league. Marly could look and admire her at least, but from a distance, because if a hockey player got within a foot of her, she gave them a game critique brutal enough to make grown men cry.

Landry had ‘Ginger Ale’ written with stars drawn over the board, and Marly figured that was from wasting the rest of her minute while she thought about what Roz would drink. She also had ‘Coke’ written hastily on the bottom of her board, so her last-second guess had been right, and she squealed in excitement.

Harris shrieked with the rest of the Centaurs when they saw they had been right about the ginger ale. Hayes danced a little dance in his seat and pointed at Hollander. “We wondered if that was why Roz always had the carton of it in his fridge, and we were right!”

“We’ll stock it too for the season,” said a dude in a backwards cap, looking like he’d come from the backwoods of nowhere. Marly knew him from playing against him, but couldn’t remember the man’s name for the life of him. Must be a good dude, however, if he planned on stocking ginger ale for Hollander.

𓅢 𓅢 𓅢

𓅢 𓅢 𓅢

“Looks like the Bears are in the lead, but anyone can still win!” Marly was starting to like the emcee’s enthusiasm now that they were winning. “What pet names do the couple use for each other?” Ah, Marly had celebrated too early, because they were fucked with this one. “I was going to ask what game they get weirdly competitive about, but I think we all know that one.” Marly had to give it to the guy, he was a little funny, but only a little.

Marly saw Roz’s smarmy grin out of the corner of his eye and sighed. “It’s probably some weird Russian nickname we don’t know about.”

How was Carmy still fucking drinking coffee? “Hollander probably calls Roz by his first name, because it’s such a beautiful name or some shit.”

Arya wrote ‘Ilya' on the board. “I think Marly’s right about the weird Russian nickname.”

“Rozy probably calls Hollander a puck in Russian,” Hammer raised an eyebrow, “Hollander would be into that, right?” Hammer could be a genius sometimes, but only sometimes.

The emcee was already counting down from seven, so Arya noted Seb and Viggy’s shrugs as not having any suggestions and wrote down ‘Puck but in Russian’.

“I call Hollander many things,” Roz said, murmuring something teasingly to Hollander that made him blush like an overripe tomato and made Svetlana and Sasha burst into giggles.

Svetlana held her board up, excited. “We got it right!” Their board had something written in Cyrillic, and Marly only recognised the slash in between what he assumed were the two nicknames.

“Um, Mr Rozanov,” the emcee interjected in between Roz’s air-blown kisses to his Russian friends, “if you could confirm what the right answers are and whether they got both right?”

“I call him Ilya, no specific, uh, nicknames,” Hollander said, rubbing at his cheeks to tone the blush down, but all it did was make him redder in the face. When Roz continued to look at his husband like Hollander hung the moon in the sky, Hollander continued, “and Ilya calls me weird things in Russian, like tomato or lawn mower or whatever else, but I’m not sure what they wrote on the board.”

“мой помидор,” Roz snickered, looking hungry like he was very close to licking at Hollander’s tomato-red face, “Sveta and Sasha wrote tomato, and my name in Russian, so it is correct.”

The Hollanders also got both right, and Roz must call Hollander quite often, because they had written ‘Ilya/Tomato’.

Arya held up the Bears board, and Hollander groaned when he saw puck written. “I should call Shane this,” Roz said, looking delighted, “I don’t know why I did not think of this, good idea.” Marly was glad they’d at least got one right, and were tied for the lead again with the Hollanders and the Russians. The Centaurs had also got Roz’s nickname right, but they’d just gone with both of their first names, as did the old men. ‘Ilya/Shane’ was a good guess, and Roz agreed. “I call him Shane, but only during sex sometimes.”

“You just called me Shane a minute ago!” Hollander retorted, but he had a lovesick smile on his face, and the couple kissed for a long second. Sweet.

“You complain so much about being called tomato,” Landry said, interrupting their kiss, “but I think you like it, Shane.” It warmed Roz up to her because Roz sent her a conspiratory smile, and they would totally gang up on Hollander later. Rose Landry’s answer had been `Ilya and Tomato'.

The Pikes also knew about the tomato thing because there was ‘Uncle Ilya' and what Marly assumed was a drawing of a tomato on their board. “It’s a tomato,” Pike clarified for everyone, and Marly thought Pike could have claimed it was anything depending on the answer, but sure, for the kids.

JJ was winning points through no effort on his own, and Marly thought meanly that it was what the Voyageurs had done when Hollander was on their team, winning cups with their obviously mediocre hockey skills. Only Pike and JJ had shown up for Hollander, and wasn’t that a sad turnout, after all the years Hollander had put into Montreal? The Centaurs might be doing this game badly, but at the very fucking least, they were loyal to Roz and, hopefully, would be as loyal to Hollander.

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“We’re at the last question of our game,” the emcee said, his tone starting to grate on Marly again as he read out everyone’s scores, “and it is, drumroll please,” he paused, waiting until they all tapped lightly at their tables, “When did they first exchange numbers?” Ooh. “Mrs Hollander informed me when I was compiling questions that only some of you know when the first husbands of hockey actually got together, so I hope this doesn’t tilt the game in anyone’s favour?”

Everyone shook their heads, as did Marly. Huh, this was going to be difficult. Were they still going with the Jane answers? If they were, Marly would really have to dissect his memory in less than a minute.

“When did we first see him text Jane?” asked Seb, squinting like it would pressure his brain into giving him the answers.

“Roz doesn’t waste time after getting a number, so it couldn’t have been much before they fucked the first time?” Carmy asked, rifling through his own memories and coming up blank.

Marly was the one who’d told Roz whoever she was in Montreal would get over the cancelled flights, and what year had that been again? “2011 was the first time they fucked, I think.”

“2011, maybe,” said Hammer at the same time as Marly.

Seb nodded, so it was the right year because Seb had a fucking great head for stats and dates and numbers. “February was when our flight to Montreal was cancelled, and he kept sighing like the snow had cheated him of a hookup.”

Svetlana seemed lost in a memory when Marly looked over at her briefly, and he wondered if Roz had ever called her Jane during sex. Sasha leaned in to whisper to Svetlana, and they wrote their answer down.

Viggy hadn’t been part of the Bears yet in 2011, and though Arya had been around, they hadn’t known her, so she dutifully wrote ‘2011’ down.

“Time to find out who wins,” the emcee said, a bit too close to his little microphone for Marly’s comfort, “and the answer is?”

Hollander looked as smug as can be, like a cat that caught the canary or some shit, and he held up the board with ‘2011’ on it. “I doubt anyone would get this one right.”

But Marly had, the Bears had gotten it right, and Arya stood up, stumbling over her husband in her excitement to reveal their answer, and Marly stood up too, whistling on their win. Svetlana and Sasha had also gotten to their feet, Svetlana high in the air as Sasha lifted her and twirled her around once, then twice. “We got it, we got it!”

Marly stopped cheering just enough to see what the rest of them had written. The Pikes had written ‘2010’, the board game dudes ‘2010’ as well, Rose Landry ‘2016’ because she thought, what, that Hollander had run away from Roz straight into her arms, but not like straight because Hollander was gay, and the Centaurs had gone with ‘2017’ like the couple had hooked up only a year before Roz moved to Ottawa for Jane? Marly was so confused, but he was too happy to have won to think about it.

Wait, what had Yuna and David written? They’d gone with ‘2010’ too, the same as the Pikes, and Marly wondered if Roz and Hollander had fooled around before, but didn’t have sex until the following year. It was possible that Hollander needed to plan getting fucked, so Roz had asked for his phone number instead of going the hookup route and showing up at a hotel naked in a trenchcoat.

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Marly watched the emcee’s assistant draw a trophy that looked remarkably like a Stanley Cup next to both the Bears’ and the Russians’ scores, and Roz sidled up to their table to congratulate them on their win. “I knew you would win, you beautiful fuckers, but how did you know the answers?” Roz was a fucking fortune teller, because he had totally predicted both the Bears and his Russian friends would win before they’d started playing.

Marly debated whether to tell Roz the truth, but Hollander wasn’t here, so maybe they could. Seb beat Marly to it. “We just answered with whatever we knew of Montreal Jane, Rozy.”

Roz’s eyes widened, like he couldn’t believe how much they’d noticed, and his eyes grew shiny. “Thank you for always being my friends.” Marly felt his eyes go a little wet too, and he hugged Roz. Before he knew it, he was in a group hug with the rest of his brothers. Seb and Hammer weren’t technically brothers, considering how much they fucked, but they were brothers to Marly, so it was okay, Marly reasoned.

It had been uncanny how the answers for Jane and Shane had been the same. Carmy looked around to make sure no one was listening to them after Roz walked away to his husband and asked, “Do we think Roz jumped between Montreal Jane and Hollander because Hollander is basically Jane, but also plays hockey?”

Marly shrugged because that actually made sense. Well, kind of. Marly made a mental note to ask Roz later, but they had a little brunch cup win to celebrate first.