LBTE: Jared (175)
We did it, everyone! We made it to the end. I had no idea what I was getting into over six years(!)ago, and I probably would have balked if I had, so it’s for the best I didn’t.
This is — tough. These two have been constant companions for over half a decade, and in that time I thought about them, without exaggeration, every single day. It’s really difficult to leave that behind. But it’s the right place to leave them, and it’s time.
The LBTE answers some questions re: timeline and the like. I haven't tackled any asks yet since I didn't want to accidentally spoil anyone, and that worked out, because a lot of the asks are answered below.
Okay. Part 175.
Here's the series page one last time, for those following along. Scroll all the way to the end.
Brian’s the one who gives them the news.
Brian does not have to give them this news, frankly it should be Dave, but Brian finds out and he’s so excited(!) he calls Bryce right away. In case you’re wondering if Brian is still the best GM.
He doesn’t know what it takes to be untouchable, but he’s pretty sure trading a Conn Smythe winner with a sweetheart deal would get Brian run out of Vancouver.
The Cup win is a year before the epilogue takes place. Yes, Eastern teams are getting kind of pissed off about this run of Western Conference winners I have going on. Especially because the Scouts are still in the wings, being an annoying as hell dynasty.
Bryce signed an 8x8 in the summer following the end of IJ(aoe). 64 million dollars is obviously nothing to scoff at, but he could have made 9+ on the open market, easy.
Jared’s was 2.5x4. Which is MORE than he’d get open market, especially regarding term, but like, did you just see the hometown discount Marcus gave them? His husband being there is kind of a condition.
Okay, so maybe Jared isn’t exactly calm, because he doesn’t think running through negative scenarios is calm, exactly, but it does calm him just enough that he isn’t plastering himself to Bryce in an attempt to eavesdrop.
Maybe not plastering himself, but he is inching closer and closer as this conversation goes on.
“Yeah, he’s sitting right beside me,” Bryce says. “He hasn’t ripped the phone out of my hand yet, but he’s definitely considering it.”
And glaring. Oh, the glaring Bryce is on the receiving end of right now.
“I’m up for the King Clancy,” Bryce says.
A leadership and humanitarian award, though the Mark Messier Leadership Award (HAH) is defacto now more straight team leadership, and the King Clancy has mostly become charitable impact in local community. Though it does tend to go to players in leadership roles (captains, alternates), it isn’t exclusive to them.
"Wouldn’t I just be a distraction?” Jared asks.
Bruh. You think Bryce would go to the Awards without you? Like, for any award, but the one for starting a charity that he never would have been in the mental place to start were it not for his relationship with you?
If he’d thought for even a millisecond before opening his mouth he would not have said this. Some things have not changed in the Marcus Matheson household.
“Us doesn’t take things away from me,” Bryce says. “I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t met you.”
“I know, but—“
“No, seriously, J,” Bryce says. “That’s not — you think the guy you met would have done like, any of this? I couldn’t even think about shit without needing to climb out of my head.”
So like — if IJ(aoe) was the traditional storyline following a hero’s ups and downs, the hero pretty clearly would be Bryce. And when the hero’s struggling and lashing out and pretending to be someone he’s not, and hating both himself and the person he’s pretending to be, he gets assigned community service and he meets the most beautiful person he’s ever seen.
And now he has to face those parts of himself he’s trying to bury, because those parts are loudly telling him he needs to be around this person every single second of every single day.
And this person doesn’t like the persona the hero’s put on. He likes the person the hero is, which is sensitive, and empathetic, and emotional, all those things the hero’s been told he can’t be, shouldn’t be, that’s what the love interest wants him to be. Exactly who he is.
Bryce wouldn’t have had the guts to take off the mask if, every step of the way, Jared wasn’t letting him know, with word and deed, that guy under the mask was the person he was in love with.
And that’s not even getting into the fact that, from the beginning, Jared is much more comfortable with his sexuality, and people knowing about his sexuality, than Bryce is.
Bryce kisses him quiet, and Jared’s grateful, because he wanted to take the words back as soon as they left his mouth, stomach twisting just saying them. He suddenly felt this visceral, totally illogical anger toward someone who doesn’t actually exist, or like, exists somewhere, not knowing there’s this huge hole in his life because Bryce Marcus isn’t in it. Fuck that guy, though. Better him than Jared.
Jared doesn’t fight but he’ll make an exception for that guy.
“You’ll come?” Bryce asks.
“Yeah,” Jared says. “I’ll come. Of course I’ll come.”
An echo of all of one part ago! Of course. Jared’s answer to Bryce’s question is of course. Even if it’s a ride in an obnoxiously showy convertible or a trip to Las Vegas in June.
Or any other month, he supposes, though the league’s getting pretty deep into talks to make it an expansion team, so that may change.
I still haven’t decided vis a vis expansion teams (and certainly haven't decided when that would take effect) but I’ve realised I can yoink players from other teams and then put them on one team TOGETHER, like one big summer camp, and that sounds chaotic and fun.
Bryce squeezes his knee, like he knows he’s thinking angry thoughts. Probably not hard to guess. They pass a building’s display flipping from the time to the temperature. 106. That’s a life-threatening fever. They’re in a life-threatening fever.
I checked the temperature in late June over the course of four years so this would be accurate, and accuracy is a high grade fever. If it’s 106 inside, go to the hospital. Outside, you’re in Vegas in late June.
“Did you know it’s forty-one degrees out?” Jared demands.
Bryce squeezes his knee again.
“I know,” Jared mutters.
Look at Bryce handling him without a word.
snapping a picture of the view from their window for the group chat, captioning it with Man’s hubris, then changing for dinner.
Jared Matheson, everyone.
He’s halfway through a reply when the elevator doors open, which means he doesn’t realise he’s sharing the elevator with Brandon Simcoe until the doors have already closed behind him, and now he’s trapped with him for the next 23 floors. Unless he hits the button for the next floor, but that’s showing weakness, right? Jared’s pretty sure that’s the opposite of what you’re supposed to do when faced with an apex predator. What’s he supposed to do, though, ignore him? Play dead?
He’s such a drama queen. Shithead’s harmless.
(This is not true even a little; it’s fun that the first real view anyone got of Shithead was Joey’s, because Shithead IS harmless to Joey. He loves Joey! Then you’ve got Holden getting cross-checked black and blue by him even though Shithead likes him in COTT. Bryce? Not his friend. Not harmless.
“Yeah,” Jared says. What’s he going to do, disavow his own husband to save his skin? It clearly wouldn’t even work. “That’s — yeah, I am.”
Got to love Jared’s moral calculus does take into account whether going ‘Bryce Marcus who?’ would save his skin, and only rejecting that option because Shithead clearly wouldn’t believe him.
“Cool,” Simcoe says. “You know, my best buddy back on the Scouts is gay. Fucking love that guy.”
Joey: Bud you gotta stop telling everybody that.
Shithead: That you’re gay?
Joey: That I’m your best buddy.
“What, that I love him?” Simcoe says. “Oh man, I didn’t mean that way, he’s got a fiancé. And I’m not gay. Not that there’s anything wrong with it. Obviously. You know.”
;-; Brandon
Anyway, no ScratchnMoney marriage yet. We haven't gotten THAT far into the future.
“We’re not like—“ Jared says. “You know we don’t all like…talk, right? We don’t have a gay player group chat or anything.”
“You should, it’d be sick,” Simcoe says.
I’m with Shithead on this. Get on it, Marc.
The elevator doors open, and Simcoe claps him on the back so hard Jared has to put a foot forward so he doesn’t careen right into the elevator wall, says, “Love is love, man, love is love,” then walks away.
Your periodic reminder that Shithead is the Bruins’ YCP rep.
He sums things up to the group chat while he waits for his heart rate to slow, his knees to cooperate again. He’s just finished when Bryce walks out of the restaurant across the lobby, beelining for him like he’s got a Jared-dar.
I spelled that so many ways before I settled on Jared-dar. Jaredar. Jared-Dar. Jare-dar. Nothing feels right.
Anyway, Bryce definitely has one of those installed.
“You’re sure you’re good?” Bryce asks, fingers in Jared’s hair now, like he’s feeling for bumps and bruises.
Jared laughs. “Oh my god, the most violent thing he did was pat me on the back a little too hard.”
Bryce starts patting down Jared’s back.
Both of them reacting like Jared just got out of a tiger enclosure is great.
Summers, thankfully, doesn’t take Bryce ditching him over an elevator conversation as an insult. He thinks it’s hilarious, in fact, and it ends up being the nicest dinner Jared’s had with both of them. Which isn’t saying much, really, but it is something.
‘My husband was stuck in an elevator with a dude I’ve punched in the face like half a dozen different times’ is delightful to Dave. Emergency accepted.
Anyway, Bryce and Dave aren’t suddenly David and Dave, they still tend to get under each other’s skin, sometimes accidentally, sometimes not, but they’re both getting better.
Elaine and her boyfriend arrive from Vancouver not long after they wrap it up, and Bryce shakes his hand and says his name without scowling once, which is also a first.
Never mind the reams of paper I could have written about the road to the Cup, and the Cup, and Raf’s wedding, and Chaz’s wedding — this right here could have been an arc in itself.
He’s definitely had help. From Elaine, of course, but Jared suspects Ash’s involvement too, along with possibly Erin’s — ‘my beloved sister’ certainly sounds like her doing. He wouldn’t even be surprised if PR Grace took a swipe at it — some of it has that PR gloss to it, though not so much that it feels over-polished.
All have had a hand in this speech, yes. Also Stephen and Gabe. (Bryce used Stephen as a stand-in for Jared in the ‘make sure this isn’t too cheesy’ aspect.)
“Really,” Jared says. “You can probably cut the stuff about me by half, though. Possibly three quarters. Just leave it at, I don’t know, ‘shoutout to my husband Jared’ and move right on?”
It’s cute you think that’s even worth the effort of saying.
Jared’s in a custom tailored suit made with ‘summer fabric’, whatever that is, other than cooler than the usual suit fabric, thank fuck.
It’s just linen. Jared tends to tune out immediately where any of this is involved because he knows Bryce has it handled.
He’d originally protested that he could just wear the suit he wore at Raf’s wedding, because Bryce was practically obsessed with him in it at the time
That suit was tailored to perfection. Bryce wants to know the name of Raf’s guy.
Anyway, not so subtle implication minimum two years have passed since the end of IJ(aoe) as Raf’s wedding was a year out from the end, and Jared isn’t talking about Raf’s wedding like it was a week ago.
Also summer fabric’s not a bad thing, considering he’s got four weddings to go to in the next three months, including Gabe and Stephen’s. Canucks just can’t stop proposing. It’s frankly gotten ridiculous.
Okay, another ask I got: was the Stanley Cup recent or older. The epilogue is a year after they win the Cup — most of those proposals took place in the weeks following the Cup, and now, a year later, the weddings are happening.
Including Gabe and Stephen’s, and yes: the original just city hall with immediate family ceremony is no longer canon because the sad eyes Gabe would get from his entire team. Why does he not want them there. etc. (Gabe’s mom is so happy I changed this.)
Right now he’s grateful for his suit, because as hot as he is — and he is disgustingly hot — at least he isn’t wearing wool like the poor kid in front of him. He looks miserable. Also about twelve years old, but then, he’s there for the Calder. He isn’t going to win it — there’s a very clear front runner and it’s not him — and Jared feels kind of bad that he’s not only a loser, but a loser in a hot as fuck suit, who’s too young to legally do anything Vegas was built for.
Have been asked a few times who this is. No one who’s been established in the ‘verse, but I fucking feel for this dude. Him and the Calder winner should totally hook up later. For tradition’s sake.
Jared may as well go over to the group, sign some autographs and take a few selfies while he waits for Bryce and Elaine to catch up. He plans on taking his time, but one of the girls asks Jared to marry her, and then asks him to sign her chest.
Jared misses anonymity.
“I said no,” Bryce assures him.
“I wasn’t worried,” Jared says. “You being gay is kind of why we’re here.”
“It was a guy,” Bryce says.
“Still not worried,” Jared says.
“You don’t ever have to be,” Bryce says, very seriously, and thankfully Elaine pats Bryce’s arm so Jared doesn’t have to. Like he said: not worried.
Jared has absolutely zero concerns about Bryce straying. Less than zero.
Jared would protest that it’s just a nervous habit, but that would directly contradict him telling Bryce he wasn’t nervous right before the red carpet, and Bryce clearly knows it.
Why must you call Jared on his lies, Bryce?
“I feel like I’m at the draft again,” Jared says, wiping his palms on his slacks, even though the AC is so high he’s actually a little chilly. They must have it cranked to the max in a war with the swelter outside.
It's fun to send Jared to Vegas in June after he bitched so much about Tampa in June. Boy does not handle heat with grace.
"I've mentioned that I'm proud of you, right?" Jared asks.
"I know you are," Bryce says, which is a very nice way of saying no.
Another call back to last part! Because Jared is his father’s son whether he likes it or not.
"I know, babe," Bryce says. "You telling Ash and Grace and Erin their partners are losers who've never even been nominated for anything was kind of a sign. Which like, you remember Julius won the Calder, right? Because Erin definitely does."
This didn’t make it into the final bit, but Jared receives this immediately after Bryce wins the King Clancy:
"Okay phew Bryce won so I can send this:
I WOULD LIKE TO REMIND YOU THAT UNLIKE SOME PEOPLE (your wonderful husband that you do not deserve) JULIUS HALLA WON AN AWARD IN THE VERY 1ST YEAR OF HIS NHL CAREER AND MOREOVER WAS NOMINATED…"
She would have sent it anyway, Jared's pretty sure, she just would have waited until tomorrow.
"Fuck," Jared repeats. He wasn't one of the top finalists, because the Oilers sucked hard even with all he did for them, but still, he was. "Erin's going to be on me about this forever."
Deservedly. How dare you forget Julius’ Calder.
“If they don’t give you the award I don’t know what I’ll do,” Jared says. Maybe burn the theatre down, though he’d probably die of heat stroke before he pulled it off.
Jared turns to arson quicker and quicker as this series goes on.
“Hey man, good to see you again,” Simcoe says, then looks at Bryce, mouth flattening. Bryce looks back, mouth just as flat as Simcoe’s. They hold eye contact for long enough that Simcoe’s date coughs, giving Jared an awkward smile.
I knew what the people needed: more Shithead.
“I can’t see past his head,” Bryce complains.
“Not my fault you’re short, bro,” Simcoe says, without turning around.
Shithead’s a monster. Like, physically, as well as everything else.
“Be the bigger man than him,” Jared murmurs to him. “Proverbially, if not literally.”
Bryce scowls, foot coming up in position dangerously close to seat kicking.
I think repeatedly kicking the seat in front of you may lose some points on the leadership aspect of the award, but also, the committee might make an exception because it’s Shithead.
“Do not,” Jared says.
“Or what,” Bryce says.
“I’ll switch spots with Elaine,” Jared says. “Hang out with her boyfriend for the rest of the show. Do some nice bonding.”
Bryce makes a furious noise, but lowers his foot to the ground from its current ‘in preparation to kick’ position, so Jared considers it a win.
As you can see here, Bryce is taking Elaine dating with tremendous maturity and dignity.
The show itself is excruciating, a mix of bad jokes, a rock-ish country-ish band Jared’s pretty sure he’s obligated to like as a born and raised Albertan, but refuses to due to the fact they suck, and a distribution of all the awards everyone already knew the winner of.
I’m not vagueblogging about Nickelback or anything, just describing a significant number of bands from Alberta.
Bryce mutely holds out his hand, and Jared takes it, squeezing when Bryce gives him a slightly sickly smile. He looks nervous as hell now, and any other time Jared would point that out, but not right now, not today.
The smile Jared gives Bryce is just as sickly, for the record.
but when Bryce stands up, he does too. Has to, considering how tightly he’s holding his hand.
Literally one unit.
“Can I kiss you right now,” Bryce says. They may be out, but they haven’t, not in public. Even when they won the Cup they settled for hugs until the cameras were put away.
Bryce wholly intended to just hug Jared this time too (or else they would have discussed this before like, that second) but he just — really wants to kiss Jared right now.
“Please,” Bryce says, and Jared’s barely nodded before Bryce is hauling him in.
Needs to, really.
And objectively, it’s a shitty kiss. Has to be one of the worst they’ve ever shared, and neither of them can stop smiling long enough to fix it even a little. But with Bryce’s hands cradling his head, Bryce’s grin splitting his face it’s so fucking wide, Jared can’t bring himself to mind.
And like their engagement, and their wedding, and Bryce doing all the machinations to get himself to Vancouver, the kiss fucking sucks. Because, once again, they’re both grinning too hard to kiss each other properly, but they can’t stop smiling long enough kiss each other properly, and they refuse to stop kissing.
And yeah. In the traditional story, the hero goes from the talented but angry, terrified, self-hating player walking into a hockey camp for community service because it’s that or probation. And then, around decade later, he’s kissing his husband on a nationally televised show, after accepting an award for working with LGBTQ youth athletes, with the frankly too hot for him love interest supporting and pushing him the whole way.
If you’d have told a 20 year old Bryce that was coming, he’d have probably punched you (Oilers fan was a time traveller: confirmed). But he’s done so much growing up — not just from who I thought he was, or Jared thought he was (neither of us gave him nearly enough credit at the start), but from who he thought he was, or had the potential to be.
I wrote the as sort of a summary of the final part about a year ago, an encapsulation of the entire series in one sentence, to keep in mind as I finished the series.
The biggest goal for Bryce, along the way, is being seen and accepted for who he actually is. Bryce wants that for others too. Jared just wants it for Bryce.
The hero of the story doesn’t narrate this one, but the narrator is, without a doubt, his biggest fan.
(He is aware he shares this title with Elaine.)
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