Chapter Text
Canadiens face the Bruins on home ice in the first game of the season. Can star scorer Eddie “The Freak” Munson slip one past “Shutout” Steve Harrington, or will old rivalries cause problems like they did last year in the lead up to the playoffs?
Eddie pushed his mouthguard half out of his mouth as he skated in a circle, waving up at the crowded stands as the sound of the announcer filled the arena. He drowned most of it out, pulling his head into the zone.
There was always a rush to an away game, the relief from the pressure of skating at home and knowing that everyone there was watching for him to make any mistakes, no matter how small. Sure, skating at home had its advantages—the energy in the arena, the cheers for every goal. But there was something about the fact that nobody was here for him, this wasn’t his turf, that made things feel a bit less scary.
It was always good to be feared.
And on top of that, and the arena was filled with the loud sound of booing and fuck you, Munson as his number got called, and the most unimaginative chant of 58 Can’t Skate filling the air.
There were a lot of things you could say about Eddie Munson’s hockey career. Hot headed was one he’d heard a lot. Too quick on the trigger. Bit of a weak backhand. Hogs the puck, even though with two wings he trusted on his line now that one was becoming less and less common.
But… can’t skate?
Eddie waved and grinned at the crowd as he heard it and pushed harder on the ice, throwing himself into an ill-advised double axel. Hard without toe picks, inelegant and a little shaky, but he landed it clean and dipped into a half bow as a smattering of applause filled the air.
He’d always been a bit of a show off, but no one seemed to complain much about that, especially as he racked up goal after goal after goal for his good old Boston boys.
“Get it together, Munson,” came a gruff voice in his ear as one of his teammates, a large redhead they all called Neck, cuffed the back of his head. “We gotta game to win.”
Eddie only laughed as he spun back to Neck, and saluted him with his own gloved hand. “Please,” he smirked out, wiggling his eyebrows. “You think the Habs can beat this?” and then he thrust his hips towards the larger man, earning an eye roll and a laugh, as Eddie skated himself towards center ice.
The Canadiens forward joined him not much later, anger already clear on his face.
“Hagan, buddy, pal, how’s it hangin’?” Eddie joked, as he sucked his mouthguard in to get it back into place. “Long time no see, old friend. When was the last time? Oh, when we wiped the floor with you guys in the pre-season, huh? How’s that wounded pride goin’, Tommy baby? You get your mommy to kiss it better for you?”
“Shut up, Freak,” Tommy growled, and Eddie flashed him a wink as the ref skated over with the puck.
“Aww,” he cooed, around his mouthguard. “Teabag can’t take a lil joke. Maybe your mom’ll be free to kiss the winner tonight then, if you don’t want to suck my balls,” he added, and just as Tommy looked like he was about to snap the ref dropped the puck and they were off.
Eddie won the face off easily, leaving a spluttering Hagan in his wake as he carved down the ice towards Montreal’s net. He could still hear the fans booing in his ears, could see Tommy’s anger, and then it was all gone for a split second as his eyes landed for the first time that night on the Montreal goalie.
Steve Harrington, also known as The King or The Hair or for a short period of time in their rookie year The Babysitter (due to the gaggle of pre-teen fans who followed him around like baby ducklings), was waiting for him in the net. Eddie and Steve had been playing against each other for years, since they were kids at Hawkin’s hockey camp, and they’d hated each other almost as long. They’d launched into the NHL together as fresh faced rookies–with Eddie a year older but still starting at the same time–who’d quickly built a reputation for constantly chirping each other on ice and getting into fights in the parking lot after games, earning them the coveted status of rivals of the year.
They’d been playing against each other now for long enough that Eddie didn’t tend to rile Steve up in the same way he used to. The goaltender was all business, stoic and powerful. Steve was one of, if not the best goalie in the league, known for a series of seriously impressive shutouts and impossible saves that even Eddie had to admit were pretty cool. But, it made him frustrating to play against. Steve was all about team loyalty and always being there to support the guys. He never took credit for a good game, even the time he managed an assist from the crease on a long shot goal against the Sabres.
It drove Eddie nuts.
It didn’t help that Harrington’s dad had been one of the most aggressive players in his years at the NHL. He was known for his brutal hits, for sending more than one player off the ice on a stretcher, and even now if he ever came to one of their games (which wasn’t often), for screaming at the boys to fucking get into it.
And yet, there was Steve. “Just here to support my guys,” he’d said in an interview once. “Can’t do that from the bench, can I?”
And then he’d repeated it all in fucking French—with this accent that sounded terrible, rough and raspy and kind of wet, and Eddie hated it.
Fuck, Eddie hated him. He would hate him less, he thought, if Steve would just snap.
Still, Eddie didn’t have time for chit chat just yet, too focused on flicking the puck over to Archie on his left, catching it back and then taking a shot on net that he knew immediately wouldn’t go in.
Steve caught it like it was an easy warm up drill, and Eddie groaned as he skated past.
And then he decided he needed to get back to his usual strategy, and shook his shoulders out as he cruised up.
“Well, Harrington? You gonna let me slip one to ya’ tonight?” Eddie leered with an exaggerated wink, as he paused by the net to pretend to readjust his skate. Harrington, as much as he was loath to admit it, was so goddamn pretty it was hard not to flirt a little. And hey, Eddie had a reputation for it amongst the boys. Sure, some of them raised their eyebrows, he’d heard a whispered faggot or two when he got a little too into it during a game. But nobody really knew. They all just thought it was another part of the game.
Another side to the freak.
He hated that they were right.
Steve mumbled something that sounded a little bit like “I’ll slip one to you, fucker-” but before Eddie could ask him to repeat it, Jeff–or Teef, as they had taken to calling him lately–had grabbed the back of Eddie’s jersey and tugged him away.
“Stop antagonizing him,” he chided and Eddie had the grace to blush a little–no one wants to be called out by their Captain. “You’re still fucking playing. And ref looked like he was going to bench you, so like, get it together. You can flirt with Harrington later.”
With Jeff’s words still ringing in his ears (and a faint flush creeping onto his cheeks from being called out for his flirting even if Jeff was saying it as a joke), Eddie took one last look at Steve (who was looking back at him, that asshole), shook his head and smacked it a few times with his glove, and got his ass in the game.
And thank fucking god for that.
Montreal had not come to fuck around, and they scored on Gareth late in the first period, the goal horn blaring and the chorus of Gimmie! Gimmie! Gimmie! blasting out through the arena. But Eddie managed his own lamplighter halfway through the second, and he let the death glare Steve sent his way as he snowed him on his skate by buoy him, even as he spent the first half of the third on the bench.
Just as it started to look like they were going to end up in overtime, their coach–an antagonistic Russian named Dmitri–switched their lines again and sent Eddie back in.
And Eddie thought about the night he had planned, and how much fucking better it would be if he could just score one more time and then–
Archie flipped him the puck and Eddie saw the shot open up for him like there was a golden fucking line from his stick into the net, and he backhanded the puck right into the top shelf, just over Steve’s shoulder.
The horn sounded and suddenly Eddie was surrounded, teammates piling on him, cheers in his ears drowning out the opening bars of Thunderstruck and the grumbled complaints of fans who’d shown up to watch their team–the previous season’s Stanley Cup winners–get trounced by Eddie Fucking Munson.
God, this shit never got old.
Eddie skated a victory lap, and swung by to blow the Habs an exaggerated kiss as he swept down into a low bow for the crowd, revelling in the scattered cheers from the few Bruins fans in the audience and the sounds of their song still blasting over the speakers.
Archie tugged Eddie up and off the ice and he went through the motions of winding down with his head still in the clouds. He barely even remembered shaking Steve’s hand in the lineup, and was only paying half attention to the interviews he had to sit through with TSN and ESPN after the game.
Usually he liked to ham it up a bit, but tonight he was in Montreal. And post game nights in Montreal were always the best of them all.
Finally Eddie managed to drag himself into the shower, washing off the sweat and grime of the game. The changeroom was half empty already, just Archie and Jeff waiting for him, and Eddie washed up as fast as he could before he tugged on his post-game sweats and followed them out of the arena.
The team bus had already left, but Jeff had rented his own car for the weekend so he could go and stay with his girlfriend who lived on the other side of the city. Sometimes some of the guys caught rides with him, and even though he complained about being a chauffeur Eddie knew he loved the freedom of zipping through town in his own ride. And Eddie sure enjoyed not having to load onto a bus with a bunch of smelly hockey players after a long evening game too.
“Hang on a minute, guys,” he mumbled, as he pulled a cigarette out of his pocket. Jeff rolled his eyes but he slowed down on his walk to the parking lot, though he didn’t stop to wait, and Eddie was glad their hotel wasn’t far from the arena in case he got left behind.
Taking a deep breath of the cold Quebec air, Eddie leaned back against the cool brick of the arena wall, and took a drag on his cigarette.
“That shit’ll kill you, you know,” came a voice from his right. Eddie forced himself not to jump as he turned, only to see Steve leaving the arena with his defense men, Jonathan and Argyle, chatting animatedly off to his side.
“Aw Stevie,” Eddie cooed, as he pushed off the wall and took a few steps closer to Steve. “Didn’t know you cared about lil ol’ me. How’s your head doing?”
Steve paused in his tracks, and Eddie could see the way his brows furrowed.
Fuck, he was cute.
“My head?”
Eddie usually knew the right buttons to push to get under Steve’s skin, and tonight was no exception. He wanted to piss him off. Wanted to make the cool-as-a-cucumber goalie mad. They used to have a reputation for parking lot fights, all that tension that Steve never spilled out on the ice coming to a boiling point as they snuck out of the arenas. Eddie was itching for it again, and he knew exactly what to say to do it.
“Yeah, you know. With that little brain rattling around inside your big empty skull, figure it’s gotta hurt, huh? Aw, I know there’s nothing going on in there, handsome. Don’t hurt yourself trying to figure out how I beat you. There’s just a new King in town.”
And that was it.
Steve dropped his gear bag with a thud and launched, and Eddie’s back hit the bricks as Steve smashed into him, shoving him against the wall.
“Munson,” he growled, loud enough that his teammates could hear it. This close, Eddie could hear the hint of Steve’s accent, the Quebecois from his mother’s side slipping through, and he wanted to lick it. “I’ll show you a head injury.”
“Hey!” came a shout from a few feet away, and Eddie knew it was Jeff, coming back to break up the fight. “Fucking knock it off, you two! This isn’t the fucking beer leagues.”
Eddie twitched his brow up at Steve, an invitation. Come on, then, hit me, he wanted to say.
Instead, he licked his lips. God, he could smell Steve’s shampoo from here, could see a droplet of water still clinging to the side of his neck.
He was in dangerous territory and he knew it.
Steve grunted and gave Eddie one more shove, and as he did it he leaned in, and let his breath ghost over Eddie’s ear.
“Twelve sixteen,” he whispered, and before Eddie could react Steve was gone, shaking out his hands and his head and walking back to his teammates and his gear bag.
Eddie couldn’t stop the thrill that rushed through him, but he shook it off too, rolled out his shoulders, and caught up to his boys. The game had started, and that meant he had to play it cool for at least as long as it took to get back to the hotel.
“Why do you always gotta rile him up like that, Blue?” Archie asked, with a rather long-suffering sigh. There was this look in his eyes though, that if Eddie knew any better he might classify as fondness. Which made sense, he supposed. His rivalry with Steve went back longer than Archie had been playing for the Bruins—so maybe the parking lot tussles held the same nostalgia for Archie as they did for Eddie.
Or at least… kind of the same.
“Don’t you think he’s so pretty when he’s angry?” Eddie joked, pulling his voice into a falsetto and fanning himself with one hand to drive the point home. And then he stopped, because he knew there was a line to every joke he pulled. A line where, if anyone ever found out his secret, they could point to it and say ‘he came on to me, one time, I knew he wasn’t just joking’. It was a line he never ever wanted to cross.
“I just fuckin’ hate that guy, Riverdale.” Eddie admitted, with a shrug. “Always have, always will. I just want to make him lose his shit for once, you know? I’m so sick of the ‘better than everybody, I’m a little rich boy with a hockey playing daddy’ shtick, y’know?”
Archie shook his head, and the three piled into Jeff’s car and headed back to the hotel.
It took Eddie a good half hour to get ready, in his own hotel room. His hair was always a disaster after a game, and he never remembered to put his good products in his locker bag so he always had to rewash his hair, after his locker room rinse off.
But still. He showered again, fixed his hair, and pulled on his tightest pair of black jeans and a plain t-shirt. He didn’t need to dress up for this shit, but…
He wanted to look good.
Eddie had to shake himself out again before he headed down the hall to the elevator, and when he got in every drop of confidence slid out of his body and he hit down instead of up.
It was fine.
He could wait.
Eddie followed the noise in the lobby towards the hotel bar, where his teammates were crowded around two hightops, laughing and tossing back shots, cheering as Gareth sputtered when one went down wrong.
“Watch out, Four Eyes,” Eddie laughed, as he smacked Gareth on the back a few times. “If you die we gotta put Neck in net and then we’re fucked.”
Neck spun his head to Eddie with a blinding grin.
“I can stop pucks,” he promised, and Eddie only laughed and clapped him on the back as Archie slid him a shot.
Eddie did three. Tequila, all straight down, though he took Andy’s proffered lime slice on the third one and bit into it with a wince.
“Ooh, check out the ladies over there,” Gareth muttered, and nudged Eddie’s shoulder as he gestured to a group of puck bunnies standing at the other end of the bar. Eddie forced himself to look, to drag his eyes over their bodies. They were… fine. Totally fine.
Nothing to write home about.
“I’m actually crashing hard, man,” Eddie muttered, as he grabbed Gareth’s beer and took a long swig. “Gonna hit the sack.”
It was Neck who grabbed his shoulder and shook him. “Man, you are no fun! There are-hic-hot French girls! Look!” Neck physically spun Eddie to look at said girls and shook him again, as if that would do it.
If only it were that easy.
“More for you, big buddy,” Eddie said with a little smile. That did seem to cheer Neck up, and Eddie seized his opportunity to duck out from the large man’s hand and beeline to the elevators.
He hated how quickly he jammed his finger into the twelve.