Rating:

Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

Gen

Fandom:

Game Changers | Heated Rivalry - All Media Types

Characters:

Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau, Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander, Zane Boodram, Wyatt Hayes

Additional Tags:

POV Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau, PhD Student Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau, Smart Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau, Crack Treated Seriously, Character Study, Introspection, Stereotypes, Hockey Culture Sucks, Toxic Masculinity Comes For Us All, Fuck AI, Not Beta Read

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-09-19 Words: 3,661 Chapters: 1/1

I'd Be Man Enough (In A Softer Life)

Summary

Cliff Marleau knows how he's perceived.

Publicly, he's Cliff Marleau, #7, Captain of the Boston Raiders. On ice, he's imposing. Never dirty, but aggressive. Off the ice, he's your typical hockey himbo: big, loud, funny, maybe not the brightest.

Privately, to his teammates and friends, his reputation is a bit more rounded, more filled out. A good friend, a loving son. Serious when he needs to be. Reliable, trustworthy.

But he knows, he knows, the picture his reputation paints.

And he knows what it leaves out.

Notes

I'm not really sure what this fic is 😅

It started as something entirely silly, and somewhere along the line became kind of serious.

Is it a crack fic? 🤷 ...kind of? Probably. It's a silly take on a character whose personality is more fanon than canon anyways.

The inspiration for this was a Thread joking about Cliff and Ilya secretly making a ton of money because they bought into Crypto super early and then just forgot about it. My brain immediately went, "What if the fun hockey himbo was really smart?" And that's what this was supposed to be.

But somewhere along the way, it morphed into something in between crack and a think piece about locker room culture, and secret-keeping as an act of self-preservation, and the confusing, conflicting, and often contradictory versions of ourselves we present to the world.

So, here is a barely edited, non-beta-read, crack-treated seriously one-shot. Enjoy? 🤣

And, as always, fuck AI. No AI was used in making this.

“Your what?!” Roz yells, jolting up from where he’s slouched back in the loveseat so quickly that Cliff is surprised his beer doesn’t spill.

Next to Roz, Shane Hollander has become a statue; ginger ale hovering, eyes wide.

To his right, Wyatt Hayes is choking on his beer, while Zane Boodram stares slack-jawed.

And, really, the reaction shouldn’t surprise him.

Because Cliff Marleau knows how he’s perceived.

Publicly, he’s Cliff Marleau, #7, Captain of the Boston Raiders. On ice, he’s imposing. Never dirty, but aggressive. Off the ice, he’s your typical hockey himbo: big, loud, funny, maybe not the brightest. Kind and hardworking, but not as serious as a captain should be. An aging party boy holding onto his youth.

Privately, to his teammates and friends, his reputation isn’t inherently different, just a bit more rounded, more filled out. A good friend, a loving son. Serious when he needs to be. Reliable, trustworthy. Surprisingly emotionally perceptive (Cliff sometimes thinks he should be offended by that, but hockey players aren’t exactly known for their emotional depth). The perpetual big brother.

And while Cliff does sometimes wish the media would calm down about his younger self’s propensity to have fun, his reputation has never bothered him. The one he has among friends in particular is one he’s actually quite proud of.

But he knows, he knows, the picture that paints.

And he knows what it leaves out.

It leaves out the Cliff Marleau that grew up wearing too-small sneakers until his feet wore through to pavement. Who begged and borrowed, and occasionally stole, any used hockey gear he could get his hands on. The one teachers called brilliant but unfocused (in his defence, it’s hard to care about algebra when your stomach hurts because you haven’t eaten since yesterday). The one who, at 18, with more zeros in his bank account than he ever imagined possible, still couldn’t quite let go of the dread of “what happens after”. The Cliff Marleau who refused to be another young hotshot who blew it all by the time he was 25. Or worse, blew it all at 40 because he didn’t know who he was outside of the rink. He would make sure he had something else. And, well, his teachers had always called him brilliant. So while his friends were partying and chasing girls, he got to work.

And don’t get him wrong, Cliff did his fair share of drinking and hooking up. He went out, he drank, he partied. Hard. He met beautiful women and took them home. But he also spent every plane ride watching lectures when his teammates thought he was watching movies. Would switch his rum and Coke to just Coke two drinks in, leave the club a few hours in, and spend a few more hours at home poring over notes, and assigned readings, and statistical models. Would spend his off-season in libraries and lecture halls instead of on beaches and yachts.

And he never told a soul. Never cared to correct the assumptions made about where he spent his free nights, or what took up all his attention.

So, he really shouldn’t be surprised by the reaction he’s caused.

Cliff was sitting on a couch in the living room of Shane Hollander’s cottage.

He had flown into Ottawa yesterday, landing a few days early at the request of his best friend to help with last-minute wedding prep.

Not that there was much prep going on.

Roz and Hollander (Shane, he reminds himself. Shane.) were being mind-blowingly nonchalant about the whole thing. Cliff suspects they’ve outsourced most of the wedding planning to Yuna Hollander. So while he expects to be put to work tomorrow when the Hollander matriarch shows up, right now, there’s nothing planned for the afternoon.

Which is how he’s found himself leaning into the corner of the sofa in Hollander’s, frankly, insane lakefront cottage. Roz, Shane, Zane Boodram, and Wyatt Hayes occupy the rest of the room, the four of them sitting around drinking, “watching” a baseball game on TV.

Cliff can’t help but think it’s nice, as he listens to the others laugh, to get to witness Roz like this. He doesn’t know Shane that well, at least not off the ice. And beyond a few formal introductions, he doesn’t know Bood or Wyatt at all. So it’s nice to get to know the men who make his best friend smile.

His phone buzzes in his pocket, pulling him out of his musings. Shuffling around to dig it out of his pocket, he’s greeted by an email notification from his advisor.

He takes a deep breath, knowing what the lengthy, detailed email is going to say, but needing to read it anyway.

Skimming the contents, he sighs as his worries are confirmed. Professor Jung’s notes are thorough, usually something Cliff appreciates, but this time they just highlight the gaping hole in his preliminary research. One he was well aware existed, and has been driving himself crazy trying to figure out how to close.

Sighing again, he locks his phone and drops it in his lap, reaching for his beer on the coffee table to take a swig.

In his periphery, he can see Roz clock his movements. And his frustration. Looking to his friend, Roz tilts his head slightly and quirks a brow. A silent “you good?” Cliff gives him a small nod and a tight smile, but it’s clearly reassuring enough because Roz turns his attention back to his soon-to-be husband (a phrase Cliff still can’t fully believe he’s saying).

Cliff rolls his eyes as he watches Roz drape himself over his fiancé’s shoulders, crowding into his space, but his smile softens into something more genuine at the way Shane instinctively shifts, making space for Roz to melt even further into the man’s side.

Something in Cliff’s brain snags. A tiny little flickering light next to a piece of information his brain had remembered, but filed away under “neat, but not exactly relevant.” Except, now it was relevant. It was very relevant.

“Hollander,” Cliff interrupts the bickering between Roz and Shane, and the quiet conversation between Bood and Wyatt. “Your dad works for the Treasury Board, right?”

“How the fuck do you know that?” Shane asks, dislodging Roz from his shoulders as he sits up in surprise.

The baseball game sounds deafening in the now quiet living room. Looking around the room, Cliff feels self-conscious under four sets of curious and slightly confused eyes.

“I, uh…” Cliff stalls as he rubs the back of his neck nervously. “I googled it?”

“Why are you googling my dad?” Shane asks, looking far more concerned than Cliff thinks is warranted.

“I wasn’t. I was googling you, and found…” Cliff goes to reply.

“Why are you googling my fiancé?” Roz cuts in, faux-possessive in a way Cliff knows is more teasing than anything else.

“Maybe because he’s your fiancé?” Cliff retorts with a huff. On the other side of the living room, Bood and Wyatt are stifling laughter into their drinks. “And I wanted to know more about him?”

Because, here’s the thing.

When the video of Ilya Rozanov making out with Shane Hollander had first surfaced, Cliff was, like most people, thoroughly shocked.

But after the initial surprise wore off, it made an absurd amount of sense. Of course Roz would be drawn to the one person who can not only keep up with him, but actually push him. The man took challenge as a personal affront, and drank up the thrill of competition like it was his lifeblood. They both did.

But insane hockey skills and unrelenting competitiveness aside, the pairing made sense to Cliff on a deeper level too. Because beyond the on-ice demon that is Ilya Rozanov, there’s always been something about his best friend that has felt… unsettled.

His chase of the thrill, the drinking, the fast cars, the women…

It always felt, to Cliff at least, that Roz wasn’t just enjoying the privilege of being young, attractive, and wealthy (though he definitely was), but that underneath, he was frantically, almost desperately, trying to avoid a part of him that quietly screamed for steadiness. That craved stability. Craved a life that had quietness, and calmness, and ease. A certain quality to it that some may even call “boring”.

So, no, unlike much of the internet, once Cliff got over the “in love with a man” of it all, he was not at all surprised that “Russian Menace Playboy” Ilya Rozanov had fallen ass over teakettle for “Hockey’s Golden Boy” Shane Hollander.

Which is why, when Cliff realized he didn’t really know anything about Shane off the ice, he felt the need to fill in the blanks.

So he started where every respectable millennial does when curious about a friend’s new partner: internet stalking.

It proved almost entirely unhelpful in learning more about Shane Hollander the person, as opposed to Shane Hollander the hockey player. But it wasn’t entirely fruitless.

He learned Hollander never turns down a charitable opportunity. That he’s an only child. That he has a fascination with real estate and architecture.

But, most interesting to Cliff, and most relevant to this conversation, he learned that his dad works for the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat.

“Anyway, not the point.” Cliff interrupts Roz, who’s now dramatically complaining that Cliff could have just asked him about Shane if he wanted to know about him (which, Cliff would like the record to show, he later did, more than once).

“The point,” Cliff insists with a heatless glare at Roz, before returning his attention to Shane, “is your dad works for the Treasury Board, right?”

“Yeah,” Shane confirms, seemingly having accepted the new strange turn of the conversation. “Don’t ask me what he actually does, though. He’s tried to explain it so many times, but I have no idea.”

“No, no, that’s fair,” Cliff replies.

“He does research on government budgets.” Roz offers, shooting an exasperated look at his fiancé, as if this is the easiest info in the world to remember. “Helps figure out if money they spend actually does what they want it to.”

“Bingo!” Cliff thinks, resisting the urge to fist pump.

“Do you think he’d be willing to chat with me about it this week?” He asks the Hollander-Rozanov pair, not able to fully tamp down his excitement.

“Uh, sure?” Shane says, confusion taking over his face again, before he just shrugs. “Honestly, if you’re actually interested, I’m sure he’d love to talk to someone who pays attention to what he’s saying.”

Cliff snorts into his beer at that.

“Marley!” Roz cries, clutching a hand to his chest in faux-scandalization. “You will let Papa Hollander infect you with his boring?”

Cliff laughs as Hollander smacks Roz playfully in the arm.

“I’d love to ask him some questions,” Cliff says. “I’m stuck on one section of my research. I need more of an inside perspective. If he has some resources, or even a connection he could share...” he trails off, not quite sure how to finish his request.

“Research?” Wyatt Hayes asks curiously, and Cliff jolts a little as he looks to his right, having almost forgotten the two other men in the room. But Bood and Wyatt seem just as interested in this whole thing as Roz and Shane do.

“Uh, yeah…” Cliff falters, feeling suddenly vulnerable about this conversation he’s brought on himself.

He doesn’t mind people knowing. He’s not ashamed of it. God, far from it. Back when he was 18, and all of this started, he had never planned to hide it.

But he knew the scrutiny it would bring.

Hockey culture is unkind at the best of times. And for guys like Cliff, who make it onto a major league roster young and stay there, formal education is often seen as… unnecessary.

He’s heard the shit other guys get for going to school, or even just learning a new skill. The accusations of being a nerd, or lame, or boring.

Cliff thinks it’s stupid. Partly because it completely ignores the smarts needed to learn your opponent and read plays at the level every major league player can. Partly because the poor inner-city kid that lived inside Cliff could never be convinced that more education was ever a bad thing. Even after multiple seasons and multiple millions of dollars.

But he knows how deeply hockey culture is entrenched in its stereotypes. The sideways implications that the guys who get degrees feel like they’re better than everyone else. The internalized belief that hockey players don’t need to be, or worse, shouldn’t be smart, only good at hockey. The idiot hockey player stereotype was self-inflicted just as much as it was pushed onto them.

And of all the other horrendous opinions to fight in a locker room, the idiot hockey player stereotype felt like a comparatively harmless one. Pick your battles, and all that.

Which is all a long-winded way of saying that while he wasn’t keeping his post-secondary education a secret, he had definitely been holding it close to his chest.

“Research,” Cliff confirms, deciding to just rip the Band-Aid off. “I’m doing the preliminary research for my dissertation, and I’m stuck on some stuff. I think Hollander’s dad might be able to help.”

There’s a small flicker of mischievous satisfaction inside him at the stunned faces around him. Roz is doing that “you’ve been hiding something” glare of his. Shane and Bood are quietly contemplative. Wyatt looks like he’s trying to solve a math problem.

“Wait. Dissertation?” Bood asks, the first to recover.

“Yeah,” Cliff shrugs, trying and failing to be nonchalant. “For my Ph.D.”

“Your what?!” Roz practically screams, jostling Shane as he jerks upright in surprise.

He’s not the only one shocked either. To Cliff’s right, Wyatt is choking on his beer, Bood leaning over, trying to slap him on the back, but so slack-jawed himself it doesn’t really help.

Shane has turned into a statue, paused with his ginger ale halfway to his lips, staring at Cliff with wide eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Bood chokes out. “Did you say you’re doing a PhD?”

Cliff chuckles awkwardly before taking a sip of his beer.

“Uh, yeah,” he confirms once he swallows, eyes darting between the stunned faces. “Yeah, I’m about two years in. Done all my coursework; now I just need to write my dissertation.”

“Marley, what the fuck?” Roz asks, drawing Cliff’s eyes to his stunned voice. He looks like you just told him the sky is green. Or that Shane Hollander voluntarily quit hockey. Like some fundamental truth of the universe was changed.

Something in Cliff’s gut twists ever so slightly. He expected this kind of reaction, but it hurts a bit to think even his best friend would be so surprised by this.

He knows it’s kind of his own fault because of how he leans into his reputation. But… Roz is his best friend. And while they’ve distanced over the last few years since Roz moved to Ottawa, he’s still one of the people who knows Cliff best.

Cliff is suddenly, deeply ashamed. Ashamed at how people see him. At how he’s let himself be seen. How deeply he’s downplayed his own abilities and interests for the sake of fitting in.

“What, you don’t think I’m smart enough?” Cliff retorts, trying to sound sarcastic. He can tell the teasing remark is too transparent, though, and he doesn’t succeed in hiding his twinge of hurt, because while a stiff smirk pulls at Cliff’s lips, the light one of Roz’s falls.

“Of course not,” Roz rushes to counter, but Cliff just shakes his head.

“I know what my reputation makes people think,” Cliff replies. “I know how people see me.”

“Marley,” Roz tries to interject, dislodging himself from his fiancé’s side as he puts his drink down, then leaning forward, elbows on his knees.

In his periphery, Cliff can see Wyatt and Bood shuffling as the surprise of the revelation turns into something a bit more serious. It makes him feel even more ashamed as he becomes hyper-aware there’s an audience for whatever moment of vulnerability he’s brought on himself.

Cliff keeps rambling, though, suddenly feeling like, since he unlocked the door to his secret, all his feelings are spilling out too.

“I know the guys would laugh their heads off,” Cliff says, unaware if he’s interrupting anyone, but unable to stop himself. “Big dumb jock Cliff going to university. Silly, right?”

“Marley…” Roz interrupts again, voice sad.

“But I’m not actually an idiot,” Cliff rasps, voice rough, staring into his lap. “I’m not. I know I’m not.”

“Cliff!” Roz snaps.

Cliff jerks his head up at the angry tone and meets Roz’s eyes. But it’s not just his best friend looking back at him; it’s his captain. Roz’s face has melted into a soft earnestness usually exclusively reserved for nervous, starstruck children or homesick rookies. Cliff suddenly understands why it’s so effective when he immediately feels stinging at the corners of his eyes.

“Marley,” Roz’s tone is devastatingly gentle. “How many years we are friends? I know you are smart. Much smarter than people think.”

Cliff swallows thickly, eyes still pricking with tears as he looks at his best friend with no idea what to say.

“I am surprised,” Roz clarifies, “not because I don’t think you can do it. I just… did not know school was something you were interested in.” He looks a little sad about the statement. “Marley, why… I wish…” Roz pauses, looks around hesitantly, like he’s assessing the men in the room before deciding to continue. “Why did you never tell me?”

Cliff sighs, dropping his eyes back to his lap. He runs his knuckles through the scruff on his jaw, stalling as he puts his thoughts together.

“It wasn’t a secret. At least, not at first.” Cliff starts, then, like earlier, the words just spill out. “But then… you know what people think of me. I’m big, and loud, and maybe not as serious as I should be sometimes. The media latched onto it so quickly, and so did the guys. And I know the guys knew there was more to me than that… but I don’t know. After a while, it just seemed easier to let them believe that’s all there was, I guess?”

“Okay, yes.” Roz prompts. “But, me, Marley? You could have told me. I mean… is maybe a bit, uh… what is word, hypocritical? For me to talk about keeping secrets, but…” he trails off, gesturing with a hand between himself and Shane.

“I don’t know, man.” Cliff shrugs. “You know how locker rooms are. You hear the shit people say. And I don’t really care what they say about me most of the time. Maybe because most of it’s true. But… I knew how people would react. ‘Party boy Marley,’ thinking he can get a degree.” He lets out a frustrated sigh. “Going to school was… it was for me. And it was, is, important to me. And, fuck, maybe that should mean I was even more willing to stand up for it, not less. But…”

“Is hard.” Roz picks up where Cliff ended. “To have things you want to tell the world, but know you need to hide. That need to be secret so you can keep it safe. Keep yourself safe.”

Cliff looks at Roz, whose usually guarded features are wide open and vulnerable. Next to him, Shane looks almost devastated by how he relates to the feeling. Cliff glances to his right, sees Bood and Wyatt nodding, their own eyes quietly far away in their own experiences.

“Yeah,” Cliff rasps, clearing his throat. “Not that this is anything like what you’ve experienced. But, yeah.”

And while a part of Cliff is horrified at the implication that his own struggle with fame and hockey culture is anything remotely close to what Roz and Shane have had to deal with as queer men, or Shane and Bood as men of colour, it’s comforting, in a way, to be able to admit openly that sometimes the sport they love doesn’t love them back.

The room is quiet for a minute, everyone thinking on their own experiences. Eventually, Shane meets Cliff’s eyes, a small smile on his face and questions in his eyes.

“A PhD is a long process,” Shane quietly says. “You must have been in school, what, your whole career?”

Cliff exhales slowly, trying to recenter himself, grateful for Hollander’s redirection into lighter territory.

“Uh, yeah, basically,” Cliff confirms with a small shrug. “Took my rookie season off, but started my undergrad my first off-season.”

Wyatt whistles softly, the rest of the room making small noises of agreement.

“That’s crazy.” Wyatt murmurs, and it almost sounds like he’s in awe.

“Eh, I mean it wasn’t that hard,” Cliff says. “Especially after the first two years.”

“You’d think uni would get harder the longer you’re in,” Bood scoffs in disagreement.

“Nah.” Cliff shakes his head, taking a small sip of his beer before continuing. “I mean, maybe? But the hardest part was just the logistics. It’s more about dedication and hard work than anything else. So, once I figured out a schedule that gave me enough time during the season…” He trails off, not really sure how to finish his thought.

The rest seem not to know what to say either, the room quiet again as they all take in the words.

“So,” Roz pipes up, trademark smirk back in place, “you want to commiserate with Papa Hollander about being boring.”

The teasing does the job of breaking the tension, and suddenly Cliff is laughing hard enough that he needs to put his beer down so he doesn’t spill. The rest of the men aren’t far behind, and the room devolves into loud amusement.

“Yeah,” he wheezes as the laughter subsides. “If you don’t think he’d mind.”

“Not at all,” Shane assures him.