Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

"Okay Dana, I'm getting a little concerned. Why have you been standing in front of the wardrobe for thirty minutes?" asked Dana's housemate, Kit, standing with her arms crossed in her doorway.

"It has not been thirty minutes," said Dana, who turned and held up two shirts for Kit to see. "Which one is most suitable for drinks with the hot agent of the grown man you both manage?"

"Shit Dana-delion, you finally asked her out? Congratu-fucking-lations bro!" Kit extended her hand for a fist bump. Dana looked down at her two full hands.

"It's not a date, it's for work," Dana sighed, putting one of the shirts back. The purple thing's neckline was far too short for what was technically still a business meeting.

"Work that you're doing after-" Kit checked her watch. "After six thirty?"

"Okay, maybe it doesn't really count as work because I'll lose my job if Montreal finds out. But it's still business related!"

"The fuck are you doing Dana, you selling insider secrets or something?"

"Ugh, I wish." Dana groaned. Kit was so out of touch with the hockey world- Dana had tried to find housemates that were not hockey fans, after the last debacle when she'd briefly done some secretarial work for Toronto's PR team and had to move back in with her parents and get her contract shortened because the people she lived with kept hassling her and going through her stuff to get insider information on the team. "A video of one of our guys- Hollander- and a player from Ottawa kissing got posted on twitter last night."

"Shit," said Kit, leaning against the wall. "I think I heard Sam talking about that. So you're doing damage control with Hollander's agent? Why not during work hours?" she frowned, "Shit, are they getting punished?"

Dana shrugged, "Can't disclose anything yet. Even if you don't know the difference between icing and high-sticking, my NDA will sue me into the next century if I tell you anything."

"Whatever, keep your secrets," Kit grinned, walking out of the room. She called over her shoulder, voice echoing down the hallway, "The red shirt is the one to go for! Your breasts look divine!"

────────

Dana's breath fogged in the cold evening air as she stood outside the swanky bar Farah had picked in downtown Montreal. If she peered inside and squinted she could see Farah's curly dark hair at a booth in the corner. Dana wiped her boots on the doormat and shook her hands out. Okay, here goes.

Inside, the bar was warmly lit and smelt very strongly of incence and liquor. A smooth jazz song was playing quietly over the speakers. Farah looked up and smiled as Dana crossed the bar to her booth, boots clinking on the wooden floor.

"Hey Dana," she smiled, and Dana was viscerally reminded of everything that had fueled her incredibly embarrasing unrequited crush on Shane's agent.

"Hey Farah," Dana smiled back, settling down next to her in the booth. "This place is nice."

"Yeah, I used to come here all the time as a kid."

Farah must've seen Dana's mildly concerned facial response to the knowledge that she'd been barhopping as a child, because she giggled a little.

"No, no, not like kid kid, when I was seventeen, eighteen, I mean. Bad phrasing!"

"So you grew up in the city?" Dana asked, curious to know a little more about Farah. Yes, she had had a stupid little crush on the woman since they'd first met a couple years ago at a charity event the Voyageurs management had thrown to pretend they cared about disadvanteged youth. It had been just after CokePlateGate and because she was under direct orders to ensure there were no more scandals, Dana was individually briefing all of the players

"Mhm, in Westmount, but I live Downtown now." Farah sipped her drink, something purple and sweet smelling. "You?"

Dana shook her head. "Nah, out in Ottawa," she gestured to herself. "Cents fans, remember?"

Farah smiled. "Hey we should probably get started on this statement soon- but first, can I buy you a drink? I heard they pay like crap at Montreal."

"Really? I thought 70k was decent enough?"

"They're paying you that badly!?" Farah looked genuinely horrified, eyes wide. "I'm friends with the SM guy at Ottawa and he's on 105 grand a year. Also I'm pretty sure he was doing a lot less than you do, on account of the whole avoiding—doing-work-and-watching-your-hockey-player-boyfriend thing."

Dana dropped her head into her hands. "I shoulda picked San Jose," she groaned, but it came out slightly muffled against her sleeve. "They have actual sunshine in San Jose."

Farah laughed, "Why didn't you?"

"I don't know! I was like twenty two and very stupid. Not like me now, twenty five and wise as shit."

Farah laughed again, a light and airy laugh that Dana desperately wanted to hear again.

"I'm probably gonna to quit my job once the season's over and my contracts up, if they don't fire me first." Dana said, acknowledging to herself for real now that she was most likely going to leave. "Almost all of my coworkers are genuinely evil and most of the players piss me off a little. Pike's a good guy and all, but he's done shit like this before. Like, dude, rewatch your TikToks before you post them- I shit you not Farah, that man has accidentally shown his address in the background of a post thrice, at this point I'm starting to wonder if he wants to have a brick through his window- sorry, ignore me, I'm rambling."

"I don't mind at all, Dana," Farah smiled again, looking like the sun. Ugh, Dana was sooooo down bad for this woman. "I could never work SM without throttling someone." Dana looked down at Farah's hands around her cocktail and briefly hoped that she would get to piss her off and have those hands round her-

Dana cleared her throat to snap her out of that train of thought. "I want to, most days, but I do like my job, just not the people."

"You could always switch fields and come work as an agent, if you wanted a change of pace," Farah thought for a moment, brow furrowing, "Oh, I just remembered something! You know Ottawa?"

"I'm aware of them, yes." smirked Dana.

"Hush. Their current social media guy, Harris, is getting a promotion next season and they're about to open up applications for SM manager- maybe you should apply? I think you've got a decent chance."

"Oh, yeah?" Dana thought about it for a moment. It would be nice to be back in Ottawa, near her parents, working with her actual hockey team instead of fucking Montreal.

"Well, you're very good at your job, and on top of that I'll of course threaten him with major bodily harm if they don't hire you."

"Aww, I'm touched," Dana grinned "We really should get started on this statement though, but text me through the details later, please."

"Of course," said Farah, whipping her laptop out of the bag at her feet. Dana took her little notebook out of her jacket pocket and and opened it up to the relevant pages, suddenly a little conscious of the fact she'd also scrawled some potential ship names for the pairing for use in hashtags. In the cold light of reality, #raspuhortons didn't really sound like a good idea.

────────

They had just finished finalising the text of the statement when an email notification sound pinged harshly from Farah's computer.

Farah opened Gmail and clicked on the latest item in her inbox, both women leaning forwards and frowing at the title and person it was from.

SUBJECT: EMERGENCY MEETING

TO: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

FROM: [email protected]

The attendance of Shane Hollander (MTL) and Ilya Rozanov (OTT) is required for an emergency meeting at the NHL headquarters tomorrow at 1:00pm, EST.

- the office of Roger Crowell, NHL Commissioner

It was very short and to the point, refreshingly different to the emails Dana typically encountered at work from the likes of Bitchy Debrah and co. However, this email was probably a little bit more horrible than those. They both stared at it for a minute.

"So," Dana sighed "I suppose he's going to try to bully them out of telling the truth.

Farah sighed too. Then closed her laptop. Then she took her phone out and quickly send a message to Hollander and Rozanov. A responding chime came through within second, which Farah thumbsed-up, before turning to back to Dana.

"This whole thing is really messed up. I offered to come to the meeting to make sure it all stays above board, but Shane said they'd be okay." Farah winced to herself, "I really hope Crowell doesn't try to screw them over too bad."

Dana sighed again. Sure, Dana hadn't exactly been a standout athlete when she played back in high school, but the locker-room homophobia and general social ostracisation she experienced at the hands of her team had played a huge part in her quitting the sport. Shane and Ilya coming out would mean a lot to a whole bunch of people.

"This is gonna be really important for people who maybe don't really see themselves in hockey," Dana finally said, testing the waters a little. "I know it would've meant a lot to me back when I was playing."

"So you're…?" Farah asked, letting the implication fill the space where she trailed off.

"Yeah, I am."

"Cool! Cool. It's gonna ruffle a whole lot of feathers, but it's important. I hope they go through with it."

"I need a drink." said Dana, trying (and failing) to not think about the fact that their legs had been touching for the past seven minutes. "I've been needing a drink since I read those texts Roz sent back in January."

"Are you hungry? I'm starving and if we get food we should go somewhere else, because all they serve here is salad and it is not good salad." Farah finished the dregs of her drink.

"Sure," responded Dana, who hadn't eaten yet. "Where do you wanna go?"

"There's a good Spanish place a short walk away, their mulled wine is to die for."

Twenty minutes later, Dana was starting to realise that Farah had a very different definition of what counts as a 'short walk'.

"Jesus," she wheezed, "Remind me to never go on a hike with you."

"Why would Jesus be going on a hike with you?" Farah teased, "We're almost there!"

They rounded the corner and continued down a little side alley, and Dana became somewhat concerned with the possibility of Farah murdering her in some dingy side street.

"Oh my god," Dana said, stopping in her tracks once they rounded the corner and hit the hole-in-the-wall shop. "Is that… Spanish poutine?"

"You bet!" Farah said, entering the shop. The dim lights flickered warily above them, She called out to the owner - and then proceeded to converse with him in rapid Spanish, gesturing wildly, completely unaware of Dana's completely shocked dimeanour. "Hola tío, dos vinos calientes y dos poutines españoles para nosotros, por favor. Oh, ¿está Michaela aquí? ¿No? Dile que tengo que posponer la clase de mañana para el día siguiente."

"Y-You speak Spanish?"

"Yeah, but I'm not native-level fluent. Yet" Farah corrected, handing over some cash to the shopowner, not at all phased Dana's protests. "Geez, let me buy the dang food Dana, Montreal is gonna starve you with that salary."

The man behind the counter filled two tall mugs with a strong smelling warm and red beverage. Farah picked them up and led Dana over to a booth in the far corner. The two women sat down. Dana noted with an emotion that wasn't joy that the seats and table were sticky.

"So you speak three languages then? English, Spanish, and presumably French, given, you know-" here Dana gestured to the glowing lights of Montreal, barely visible out the grimy window.

"Well, I'm fluent in English and Quebecois, obviously, Arabic too, and also I'm C1 in Spanish, B2 for German."

"I've got no idea what those letters means but congratulations, that's like nuts!" Dana shot Farah an enthusiastic thumbs up. "How on earth do you do that?"

"I went to a specialist languages school from pre-k to graduation, and I was actually going to do language stuff in college, but I just couldn't deal with all the different words and grammar and stuff bouncing around in there-" she gestured to her head "Then I had a bit of a breakdown, typical teenager stuff, and realised that by forcing myself to study foreign languages I was losing my love for it, so I went from teaching to casual tutoring and did athlete management at college instead."

Dana picked up her glass of mulled wine. "Cheers to managing the lives of grown adults who would be completely lost without us."

Farah smiled, then clinked Dana's mug with her own. "Cheers," she said, and drank deeply from her cup.

Dana took a sip of her drink. Fuck. That drink was strong, warm, and earthy, warming her up to the tips of her toes.

"Fuck, that's good. Strong though."

────────

A half hour later, both girls emerged from the restaurant mildly inebriated and with satisfied appetites.

"Food poisoning's the way to go, I swear Debrah won't know what hit her!" they were debating the best way to get revenge on Dana's colleagues, both women laughing at nothing and everything, gasping for air against the brick wall of the alleyway.

"I fucking hate Bitchy Debrah. Farah can you please please please come to work with me every day and give her one of your dirty looks whenever she says something that doesn't align with our anti-discrimination policy?" Dana sighed heavily again.

"Why don't you just quit your job and come live in my apartment and write statements and sigh at me?" Farah smiled up at her through her dark lashes, half-lit up by the amber glow of a street light. Dana had been pleased to discover that she had a couple inches on Farah.

"I'm considering it," Dana grinned. She noticed Farah's eye drift down to her lips. Her heart was beating really quite fast.

There was a beat of silence where they both just looked at one another.

And then- okay, holy shit -their mouths were crashing hard against each other, a dull warm heat and the taste of mulled wine, Farah's hands, body, skin, an island of warmth in the cold, cold, night.

It was like the world stood still, gravity pulling them together. Farah's lips were soft and gentle and her manicure was sharp where it dug into Dana's bicep. The world was so cold and Farah was just so warm.

The angle shifted, Farah pushing Dana against the brick wall, Dana kissing back with enthusiasm. A hand came up to hold her's waist and she was momentarily convinced she'd died and gone to heaven. Farah slid a thigh between Dana's parted legs, and the two women stopped acting like they had any other intentions. Tentatively, Dana reached a hand up to the hem of the other woman's jumper, and when Farah made an encouraging noise against her lips, she put one hand up her shirt to cup Farah's waist, and then with the other she reached higher, god she was so soft.

It could've been minutes or it could've been hours by the time they finally separated.

"My apartment then?" Farah said, extending her hand to Dana.

Dana took her hand (warm) and let herself be lead away. "Only if you promise to let me write your statements and sigh at you,"

"I'm not sure if sighing is the noise you're gonna be making,"

────────

Farah had nice bedsheets.

That is what Dana first noticed when she woke up the next morning. The second thing was that the aforementioned Farah was sprawled out across said bed, naked. The third thing was that Dana herself was also naked.

Dana sat up, stretching her shoulders out. An uncontrollable smile burst out across her face- she had bagged the finest agent in Canada, no, the world. She let herself look properly at Farah, whose tanned skin glowed against white bedsheets. She really was beautiful, with a cascade of long dark curls on her head, soft curves, and a scattering of moles across her torso that Dana had kissed along the night before.

"You're staring at me, weirdo," croaked Farah, cracking an eye open.

Dana attempted a wry smirk but it came out looking a lot more like a grin. "Well, you are beautiful. But if it bothers you I can always look over there at that… diamond dots painting,"

"No, ignore the diamond dots. Look at me again."

Dana turned back to Farah. Shit, she really was beautiful.

"I can't think of any word in any of my many languages to describe you," said Farah, like the stereotypical lesbian she very much was.

And Dana just fell onto her, kissing into the other girl's mouth, because what else is there to do when a gorgeous and lovely woman who you previously thought unreachable is naked in the same bed as you is saying such lovely things?

She was just kissing across Farah's jaw and down her neck for round two (three? four?) when an unwelcome thought popped into her head.

"Fuck," she groaned, sitting up against Farah. "I think I'm supposed to be at work."

"Boo. Boring. Quit your job and come do that thing with your tongue again!"

Dana weighed up her options. She felt awfully impulsive.

She did really want to quit, after all.

"Okay," Dana said, crawling off the bed to grab her phone where it sat in the pocket of her coat, discarded in a bit of a hurry the night before.

Farah was sitting up against the headboard when Dana returned, phone in hand.

She braced herself to open her messages.

Farah giggled as she read those messages over her shoulder, then she helped pick out which emojis best represented the evening.

The Montreal PR team's groupchat's hang over her phone like a dark cloud. Dana took a breath and clicked on the chat.

"Did you just quit your job over text?"

"Yeah." Dana put her phone down. She should be sad, she did like her job, but at that moment all she felt was happy. "Now where were we?"

Farah span them around so she was straddling Dana's lap this time, and the pair resumed their heated making out.

Farah had just finished her assault on Dana's neck and was steadily making her way downwards when the shrill sound of a ringing phone cut through the midmorning air.

Farah pulled away for a moment, groaning, and glanced at her phone on the bedside table.

"Oh, it's the boys." she hazarded a glance at Dana. "I suppose we should pick up…"

Because it was a facetime request that came through, Dana picked up a shirt from the floor and threw it at Farah, who quickly shimmied into it before hitting the answer button.

"Hey Shane, Ilya," Farah said, yawning.

"Sorry, we did not mean to wake you up," said someone with a distinctively Russian accent, presumably Rozanov.

Dana pulled on a hoodie she found on the back of Farah's desk chair and returned to the bed, sitting next to Farah on the headboard.

"So how did the meeting go?" chimed in Dana, leaning into view of the boys on facetime.

Shane and Ilya paused for a moment, eyes widening. Rozanov turned to Shane, then said "Это менеджер по социальным сетям?"

"Yeah, that's her," Shane said, smirking. Ilya waved at Dana. She had learnt early on in her career that it was no good to be starstruck by the players, but by god was Ilya Rozanov waving at her exciting. "Good morning Dana. The meeting went interestingly. It'll be easier to just send you the copy of the recording I secretly took."

"You recorded it? Attaboy," said Farah. "So he's not punishing you?"

"Threatened to, but he will not after Shane yelled at him." Ilya said, practically beaming. "We should go now, yes? Let you ladies continue with whatever you were doing…?"

Farah hung up and threw her phone across the room.

Dana turned to her, smiling.

"So. Shall we get back to what we were doing?"

Farah hit her with a pillow.