Rating:

Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

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

Relationships:

Troy Barrett/Harris Drover, Troy Barrett & Ilya Rozanov, Troy Barrett & Ottawa Centaurs Team Ensemble

Characters:

Troy Barrett, Harris Drover, Adrian Dela Cruz, Ilya Rozanov, Ottawa Centaurs Team Ensemble (Game Changers)

Additional Tags:

Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Past Relationship(s)

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-03-03 Words: 3,324 Chapters: 1/1

offside

Summary

The guys settled around the TV, plates in hand, and Wyatt hit play on something called Hell Risen. They were five minutes into it, after some kind of flashback prologue Troy hadn’t really followed but which had made Wyatt gasp with excitement, when Adrian Dela Cruz’s face popped up on the screen.

Or: The Centaurs watch Adrian's latest show. Troy tries to suffer in silence.

Notes

Troy missed Harris. The Centaurs were one game into a four game road trip and it already wasn’t going well. They’d lost to Buffalo. Buffalo. And Troy hadn’t helped by fanning on a perfect set up pass from Bood.

It’s okay, babe. You’ll get the next one 🥰 had been waiting on Troy’s phone after the third period ended and he’d sent back a row of hearts.

“Are we going out to get wasted and wipe this from our memory?” Dykstra asked as they climbed onto the bus.

“No,” Ilya said. “We will wallow in hotel and get room service. Team bonding.”

Ugh, Troy thought. Not that he didn’t mostly enjoy the team bonding now that he was on a team with guys he actually liked but he was rooming with Ilya which meant their room was going to be the central space and he couldn’t easily escape if he wanted to.

At the hotel, everyone ditched their bags in their own rooms and made their way to Troy and Ilya’s where they commenced fighting over the room service menu and calling down a horrific order that the kitchen was probably going to hate them for.

“Do you think they’d let me grill our stuff myself?” Bood had asked and then been pelted with practically every pillow in the room.

Wyatt signed into his Netflix account on the room TV and by the time a parade of dinner carts were pushed in, the traditional spirited yelling session about what they were going to watch was over. Troy hadn’t participated because he 1000% did not care but he had dug out his wallet so he could add an extra hundred to the waitstaff tip Ilya was managing.

The guys settled around the TV, plates in hand, and Wyatt hit play on something called Hell Risen. They were five minutes into it, after some kind of flashback prologue Troy hadn’t really followed but which had made Wyatt gasp with excitement, when Adrian Dela Cruz’s face popped up on the screen.

It hit Troy like a puck to the gut. Fuck, was this Adrian’s new show?

Surreptitiously, he fished his phone out of his pocket and searched for Hell Risen. Okay, yeah, Adrian had top billing. He was the main character and credited in every episode. Fuck. The only good news was that it was a limited series, just six episodes. Troy very much did not want to look at Adrian and remember the way he’d ended their relationship over FaceTime, lukewarm, like two years together had barely mattered, but he could deal with it for six episodes. The team might lose interest before the end anyway. This would be fine.

It was fine. For one and a half episodes, during which Adrian’s character heroically decimated some kind of demonic creatures with a massive, glowing sword. Then the action slowed, gave way to a cliched but tender rescue turned romance. Troy watched as Adrian took the arm of a dark-haired man with a delicate silver crown on his head. He turned them until they were face to face and then Adrian moved his hands so one was settled behind the man’s neck, the other at the small of his back with the middle finger tapping lightly and rhythmically, an extra point of sensation.

Troy felt his eyes burn. Adrian had held him exactly like that, was re-using a move that Troy had once found romantic, had believed was just for him. He got up, carefully, and walked into the bathroom. No way was he watching the rest of this bullshit, Troy thought, as he flushed the toilet for effect and splashed water on his face.

When he was mostly recomposed, he made his way back into the room. They’d paused the show for him.

“You good, man?” Holmberg asked because Troy probably did not look good.

“Feel kind of shit, honestly,” Troy said, which was true, but he had no intention of explaining the actual reason why. “I’m going to lay down. Keep going without me.” He stripped off his sweatshirt and grabbed his headphones before climbing into bed and pulling the covers up just past his head. Troy scrolled through his music app and selected a playlist Harris had made for him: For Troy <3 (Not EDM!!).

It was mostly soft, emotional music—a lot of Fabian Salah—and Troy listened to it, eyes wet, repeating Harris loves me, Harris loves me, Harris loves me in his head until he fell asleep.

-

When Troy woke up, he found that someone had taken off his headphones for him and set them neatly on the bedside table. No one from Toronto would have done that. They’d probably have drawn a dick on Troy’s face for falling asleep in a room with them. Thank god he’d gotten traded to the nicest team in the league.

The Centaurs won against Pittsburgh in the afternoon and Troy decided things were looking up. Then Wyatt said, “Next couple episodes of Hell Risen after dinner?”

Troy groaned internally, but nodded along with the rest of the guys. When your goalie got you a shutout game, you celebrated how ever the hell he wanted.

“Is everything okay?” Harris asked when Troy managed to call him from outside the weird, cheese-focused restaurant Chouinard had found them. “I thought you’d be happier after the win today.”

“It’s—yeah, it was great,” Troy said. He’d scored a nice backhand goal and assisted one for Ilya. On the ice, everything had been great. “There’s just this other thing.”

“Do you want to talk about this mysterious ‘other thing’?” Harris asked after it became clear that Troy wasn’t going to spontaneously elaborate.

Troy knew he could. He’d told Harris a little about Adrian and it wasn’t like Harris would judge him but, “I don’t want to put my baggage on you. Especially this kind of thing.”

Harris was quiet for a moment. “I get that, and it’s up to you, but I need you to know that I want to be here for you, Troy. I want to support you.”

Troy took a deep breath, eyes stinging. God, was he going to spend this entire road trip shoving back tears? “Thanks,” Troy said, his voice coming out hoarse. “I—okay, look, it’s really stupid. The team is watching this new show during down time and I didn’t realize until we’d started…it’s Adrian’s latest show.”

“Oh shit,” Harris said.

“Yeah. And it’s not like I still have feelings for him. I mean, I know I dodged a bullet there. I’m glad because I got to meet you and I love you, you’re a million times better than Adrian. It just hurts because…” Troy trailed off.

“Because he hurt you?” Harris offered.

Troy choked on a laugh. It sounded ridiculous but, “Yeah. It hurts because he hurt me I guess.”

“I’m sorry, babe. That sucks,” Harris said sympathetically. “You can’t get out of it? Tell everyone you need to go back to your room and call your handsome boyfriend?”

“I’m rooming with Ilya so everyone’s showing up in our room,” Troy said. “It’ll be fine. There’s only a few episodes left, it’s just throwing me off.”

“You could tell the team about Adrian being your jerk ex. They’d turn the show off in a second.”

Troy sighed. “I know. I don’t want to make a thing out of it though.”

“I’m sorry,” Harris said again. “Adrian is an asshole and he never deserved you. Hate-watch the fuck out of that show. Throw popcorn at the screen every time he shows up.”

Troy snorted with laughter. “Yeah, sure. Sounds like a plan.”

He did lowkey hate-watch the show that evening; mentally rolling his eyes at the moments of music-swelling melodrama, counting the number of times Adrian licked his lips—which Troy knew was a personal tic he was trying to train himself out of on-screen—and, eventually, crawling into bed early.

Troy pulled the covers up over his head, but he could still hear the low buzz of the television, the occasional sound effects of sword fighting. The mattress depressed down by his legs and someone patted Troy’s knee through the bedcovers. Ilya, Troy thought muzzily. It was the same three pats sequence he sometimes gave Troy in the locker room between periods when he’d been struggling on the ice.

It’s okay, Troy thought, as sleep stole over him. I’m fine.

-

“You are okay?” Ilya asked the next morning when he found Troy in the hotel gym.

“Yeah,” Troy said, adding an extra twenty pounds on the bench press now that he had a spotter.

Troy scored twice against Columbus that night and he’d almost convinced himself that the universe was going to give him a fucking break, one night without Adrian’s electronic ghost, before Wyatt smiled and said, “Final episode of Hell Risen tonight!”

A few of the other guys groaned but by nine everyone had shoved into Troy and Ilya’s room at the local Marriott and Wyatt had queued up the episode. “I get next video pick,” Young said while the recap played. “I never thought I’d say this, but I’m tired of swords. We need something with explosions.”

Beside Troy, Dykstra nodded in agreement.

On the screen, Adrian started giving a rousing inspirational speech, his face artistically streaked with dirt. Most of the rest of the episode was a long, clashing battle and, thankfully, filmed so darkly that Troy could barely tell Adrian apart from the other characters on screen. Eventually, the demonic army was defeated, the heroes got in their final quips and set out for their happily ever afters.

Troy breathed a sigh of relief as the credits rolled. He’d made it through. No more fucking Adrian.

Wyatt glanced at his phone. “It’s only ten. Does anyone want to watch something else?”

People made considering noises. There was no game tomorrow, only a long bus ride to Detroit where they could fall asleep against the seatrests.

“Die Hard,” Young suggested as Wyatt spun aimlessly through the Netflix carousel of titles.

There was a row of algorithm selected movies under ‘Since You Watched Hell Risen’ and Troy watched with the feeling of an unavoidable oncoming check into the boards as Wyatt paused on Tectonic Dreams—the film Adrian had done with Justin Green, before he’d decided to leave Troy for him. Adrian’s face was on the title card, aviator sunglasses over his eyes, a cocky smirk on his lips.

“Fuck no. Anything but that,” Troy said, feelingly, and knew immediately that he’d made a mistake when a dozen heads swivelled toward him. Troy didn’t usually offer opinions. Honestly, he didn’t usually have a lot of them, or not strong ones at least. Ilya had once asked him what kind of stick tape he used and Troy had shrugged and said, “Whatever the equipment managers have on hand,” which had made Ilya and the rest of the locker room stare at him like he was insane.

The way they were staring at him now was more playfully predatory and Troy braced himself for the chirps. With Adrian’s smirking face right there, the only indication of what the film was about, it was easy to make the basic connection to why Troy didn’t want to watch it.

“You do not like to see more Adrian Dela Cruz?” Ilya asked. “He is too handsome?”

Troy felt a humiliated flush rise on his cheeks, externally indistinguishable from a blush.

“This is important information,” Chouinard said with a fake shocked look on his face. “Does Harris know?” he asked, provoking a chorus of ‘oooooh’s from the group.

“Is Adrian Dela Cruz your hall pass?” Dykstra laughed, teasing.

It wasn’t even mean-spirited. They’d all given Dillon the same kind of dumb heckling over Rose Landry after she’d shown up unexpectedly at a game. When Dillon had seen her he’d looked like he’d been slapped in the face.

Troy swallowed thickly, trying to come up with something non-incriminating to say, some easy redirect, but his mind was blank except for the memory of Adrian saying, carelessly, hey, I think we should talk, right before he ripped Troy’s heart out.

He could see the moment Ilya got it, that this wasn’t a ‘haha funny chirp’ exchange for Troy. “You’re kind of a hard read, babe,” Harris had told Troy once and Bood, who’d been sitting beside them, had snorted and said, “That’s a nice way of saying you have severe resting bitchface. Sorry, man.”

Ilya never seemed to have much of an issue interpreting it though. Troy could see him resetting now that he’d caught it, ready to deflect and defuse the awkward emotion. He was good at that. But Troy shoved things down hard and when they finally boiled over on him, they boiled over fast.

“He’s a cheating asshole and I never want to see his fucking face ever again,” Troy snapped. His throat had gone tight and painful and oh fuck, Troy thought, feeling heat build behind his eyes. He dove into the bathroom and slammed the door behind him, sliding down to the floor with his back against it.

Troy fumbled his phone out of his pocket and jabbed the FaceTime icon for Harris. That was bad etiquette he recognized distantly. He should have texted first or at least just audio called in case Harris was busy or out or not feeling camera-ready. But Troy wanted to see him.

The line rang once, twice, and then Harris answered, smiling happily, his cheeks bunched up and showing his dimples. “Hi!”

Troy burst into tears. Horrible, ugly, throat-gulping tears which could probably be heard through the door. Fuck.

“Troy, what’s wrong?” Harris asked worriedly over the phone. He wasn’t smiling anymore. Troy hated that he’d done that; taken the smile off Harris’s face.

“I’m sorry. I’m okay,” Troy choked, trying to get himself back under control.

“Just breathe with me, okay?” Harris said and then he started counting. In on one, out on two.

Troy listened to his voice and breathed in parallel until it felt like he could manage it on his own.

Harris was looking at him patiently, warm beneath the worry. “What happened?”

“Just accidentally outed my old relationship drama with Adrian to the whole fucking team,” Troy said. “And then locked myself in the bathroom.” Which had been a hugely dumb idea. Now he was basically trapped. And eventually someone was going to need to pee.

Harris frowned sympathetically. “I’m sorry, buddy. I know you wanted to keep that under wraps. The guys weren’t dicks about it, were they?” He looked concerned, which was fair considering Troy had just had a messy breakdown over it.

“I don’t know,” Troy admitted. “The whole locking myself in the bathroom happened pretty immediately afterwards.”

Harris hummed. “Well let me know if anyone is a jerk. I’ll post all the most unflattering pictures I have of them to the team social media.” Troy felt the breath go out of him in a short laugh. Harris probably had a ton of shitty pictures of everyone; faces caught in awkward stretched-out expressions, eyes closed. “Do you want to hear about my day before you go back out to face the music?”

“Please,” Troy said and listened to Harris tell him about making new gifs from the Pittsburgh game footage before segueing into a blow by blow recap of a Zoom call with the marketing team while Troy’s heart rate lowered down to normal resting and he scrubbed the gritty feeling out of his eyelashes.

“—and they’re releasing a new bobblehead of Luca, but don’t tell him, we’re going to surprise him with one on his birthday in a couple weeks,” Harris was saying.

Troy wouldn’t have minded listening to him forever but he felt mostly stable again now and it was probably for the best that he go brave the inevitable awkward conversation with the team. “I’m—I think I’m okay now, thanks,” Troy said when Harris took a breath.

Harris smiled on the screen. “Good, I’m glad. Call me later if you want to talk more?”

“I will,” Troy promised. “I love you.”

“Love you too, babe,” Harris said and blew him a kiss before closing the call.

Troy let himself thunk his head back against the door one more time and then he stood up and opened it. The room was mostly quiet. Low sound emanated from the television. The team was huddled around it watching what Troy recognized as The Mighty Ducks which Troy had once said was his favorite movie because he’d panicked during a Q&A and couldn’t think of anything else.

Ilya had obviously been keeping an eye on the bathroom door. He immediately turned around and said, with obvious contrition, “Troy, team is sorry for the chirping.”

Troy tugged at the sleeve of his hoodie. “It’s fine, you didn’t know.”

“We’ll never watch another Adrian Dela Cruz show again, man. Total boycott. He’s not even a good actor anyway,” Bood said while Luca nodded enthusiastically beside him.

“Absolutely. I am writing a scathing review of Hell Risen right now,” Wyatt said, and then dictated out loud, “Okay show ruined by Adrian Dela Cruz’s heavy-handed butchering of Damian Warren’s character.”

Troy snorted out a laugh. That was scathing for Wyatt at least. “He’s a fine actor, he’s just a shitty person.”

“He was your boyfriend?” Ilya said, prompting.

Troy flopped down across the foot of Ilya’s bed and stared up at the ceiling. “Yeah, for a couple years. He dumped me over FaceTime right before I got traded to Ottawa. And then he announced his engagement to someone else.”

There was a series of hissed breaths and “what an asshole” exclamations from around the room.

“It’s whatever,” Troy said. “I just don’t like to think about him anymore.”

“Okay,” Ilya said, decisive. “Come sit down. We are watching important hockey movie.”

Troy levered himself up off the bed and slotted himself into the space that Ilya and Holmberg had scooted over to open between them. Ilya nudged Troy with his shoulder and patted his knee three times, grounding, and Troy let himself relax.

-

When they finally got back to Ottawa, Harris was waiting in the rink parking lot. It was a Saturday so it wasn’t like he was there already for work. He’d come specifically to pick up Troy even though Troy could have taken the car service with some of the other guys who lived out near them. Troy dropped his bag on the pavement and fell into Harris’s arms.

“Welcome home,” Harris said, pressing a kiss to Troy’s temple.

“I missed you,” Troy said, his mouth seeking Harris’s. Harris kissed him slow and tender and Troy felt unexpected tears spring up behind his eyes. Stop, he told himself. Jesus, had he not cried enough this week?

“Damn. Okay, yeah, we get it,” Young said, off to the side. “You have the best boyfriend who picks you up and brings you your disgusting electrolyte soup.”

Troy broke away from Harris to roll his eyes at where Young and LaPointe were standing, shaking their heads in mock affront. “It’s not electrolyte soup,” Troy said, taking the blue water bottle Harris was offering out to him with a smile. It was two parts orange Gatorade, one part green tea, with a quarter cup of protein powder mixed in for heft, and it wasn’t Troy’s fault that Young had once mistaken Troy’s bottle for his own after a game and spit a mouthful all over the locker room floor.

“Uh huh. Whatever you say, Barrett. See you Monday,” Young said, piling into an Uber and yelling over at Dillon to hurry the fuck up or they were leaving him behind.

“You are the best though,” Troy told Harris because that was obviously true, no competition.

Harris smiled. “Glad to hear it. Let’s go home.”

Troy took his hand and thought, yeah, let’s.