Chapter Text
When people had used the term “I fell head over heels in love”, Blayne Stickner had always rolled his eyes. First of all, falling? No thank you. Head over heels? That sounds more like a tumble, but alright.
And then he quite literally lived through the experience when Luca Haas slammed into him on the ice during the family free skate.
Blayne, who had been minding his own business and chatting with Gen from social media thank you very much, had not seen the team's rookie coming. Had not turned his head to see the panicked, wide blue eyes clock his slow skating form seconds before disaster. All he knew was one second he was laughing over the funniest homemade team gifs he'd seen so far, and the next he was tumbling, head over skate on the ice.
The sounds of sharp gasps and a quick call for a medic were the first things to reach through to his ringing ears, the second sound was a mumbling, almost frantic, “Ach du Scheisse, are you ok? Please tell me you're ok. Fuck. I'm so sorry. Du warst einfach plötzlich da! I didn't see. Please open your eyes. Fuck.” and then Blayne was opening his eyes, mostly out of confusion over the mangled words, but when he caught a glimpse of his attacker, it was like the world stopped spinning.
Blue eyes, blond curly hair, lit from the back from the overhead lights, making Luca Haas look like an absolute angel. And with that, Blayne knew he was fucked.
Head over heels. It may have been the slight concussion speaking, but the phrase finally made sense.
And then the team medics, or perhaps more probably known as Blayne’s coworkers, were suddenly all there and Luca was pushed back so that they could work and Blayne may or may not have failed to answer any questions coherently because he was too busy staring at Luca Haas over the shoulder of whoever was prodding at the bruise forming on the back of his head. He could already tell it was really going to hurt. But it didn't matter, as long as Luca stayed right there, in his eyesight.
But then there were arms, pulling him up and off the ice, and Troy Barrett and Ilya Rozanov appeared to console their stunned rookie and their eye contact was broken. Blayne let his friends think the whimper he let out at that was because of pain. Which wasn't one hundred percent a lie. Now that he wasn't focusing on Luca, his head was actually really throbbing.
What followed was the standard concussion check out, which Blayne failed. Then threats of a hospital visit, which he protested against so venomously, finally managing to promise to spend the next couple of hours on one of their beds with one of his friends watching over him. And at last, a bit more peace and quiet so he could properly wallow in his self pity and yearn. Thankfully Annalena had offered to take the first watch and she had only fussed over him enough to get some painkillers in him before she pulled out her headphones and her switch and curled up on the couch across the room. This is why she was one of his favorites.
An unknown time passed, in which Blayne entertained himself in counting the ceiling tiles, having to stop every time he had to crane his head and the pain would spike. He had just settled into trying to come up with estimating the area of the room he couldn't see when the door creaked open.
The door, being too far to the left of his vision, was something he heard more than saw, but the shocked expression on Annalena’s face that was quickly tucked away intrigued him.
Before he could call out something stupid like, “Who's there?” familiar blond curls came back into view. And then, those beautiful blue eyes again, this time tinged with red and slightly swollen.
“Um. Hi.” And look, Luca Haas may be the youngest player on the team, but especially like this, towering over Blayne's bedside, he was massive. A hunk, Blayne's broken brain supplied helpfully. But his voice, gone the panic tones from earlier, had retained its squeakiness. “I just, well. Um. Are you ok? Which, like, absolutely not, I see that, um. But like, what, um…” and Blayne had to fight back a smile. There was maybe one complete sentence in there.
“Hi.” He echoes back, quietly. “I'm ok. Really. Just a bad bump, light concussion. Nothing I haven't gotten before fooling around on the ice.” He had the strangest urge to take Luca’s hand in his.
“A concussion? Fuck.” And there it was, the panic. Was it possibly another sign of the concussion that Blayne already found it endearing? “I'm so so sorry. I wasn't watching where I was going, and I suddenly had to swerve to avoid Nick's kids and fuck, then you were there and-” Luca's hands left their tempting spot next to Blayne's bedside to tear at his own hair, the curls only getting even messier.
“Hey, no. It's fine. I wasn't keeping a look out as well as I should have been either.” Blayne lost the battle and watched his own hand reach out to lightly tap Luca's side in a gesture he was sure meant to be comforting but given that it pulled a squeak out of Luca, he doubted it had that effect.
“Um, I'm still so terribly sorry. Fuck, should I drive you to the hospital or something?” Blayne was proud of those full sentences, even if he didn't fully agree with what was being said.
“Luca. Breathe. I'm fine. They've checked me out here, and I'll be surely spending the next couple hours getting poked and prodded here. But I'm fine.”
He didn't notice it at first, but at some point when he was talking, Luca had frozen, fixing Blayne a look with those baby blues that he would do just about anything for now. This was dangerous.
“What?”
He watched Luca swallow, twice, before, “How do you know my name?”
And he couldn't help his laugh at that, even if it did hurt his head. “Luca Haas, Ottawa Centaurs rookie player. It's kind of my job to keep up with who you are.” At Luca's blank stare, Blayne stuck out a hand. “Blayne Stickner. One of the Centaurs physical therapists. Nice to meet you.” And the feeling of Luca's hand in his was glorious. He'd much rather be touching him this way than being body slammed on the ice by him.
“Oh.” Was all Luca managed at first, still weakly shaking his hand. As the moment went long, Blayne got to have the utter delight of watching his blush spread when Luca finally seemed to come back to himself with a sharp jank of his hand. “I guess I hadn't seen you around yet.”
“You're probably with Avery.” Blayne supplied. The two of them had split the roster pretty randomly at the start of the season; a decision Blayne was regretting now.
“Oh. Yeah.” Luca was still so red in the face. But his gaze never left Blayne's. He had the half thought to wonder if he even knew he was blushing.
“It would have been nicer to meet under better circumstances.” Fuck. Blayne was flirting wasn't he. Two minutes with this boy and he couldn't control himself.
But the stuttered, “Yeah.” in response only edged him further on.
“How are you liking Ottawa?”
The question seemed to catch Luca off guard, the shock forcing the stress off his face for a second and fuck, he was beautiful. “Um. It's been great. The team's been really great.” A media appropriate answer he'd probably said a hundred times. Then, after a pause, “Not really seen much of Ottawa outside this rink though.”
It was said in such a tone that Blayne knew Luca was not aware, at least in the moment, how that sounded. But he couldn't help himself. “Well, I moved here a couple years back. I'm no local, but I do know a couple cool spots.”
Luca blinked at him for a moment. Then swallowed again. He was still blushing. “Um. Yeah. Cool. They say it's a nice city.” Before Blayne could figure out something else to say, to back track, Luca took a step back. “Fuck, concussion. Sorry, I'm probably really bothering you. I'm, uh, gonna go. I'm really sorry once again. Like, you have no idea.” And really, Blayne didn't. He wasn't sorry in the slightest.
But he was sorry to watch Luca walk away. There was a second, just as Luca was about to reach the door when Blayne saw him pause, a half turn and a quick mumbled, “I'll see you around?” And then the man of his dreams was gone.
“Well that was interesting.”
Well, fuck. Blayne had forgotten Annalena was in the room.