Work Text:
June was so sick of this goddamn job. She'd thought it was her dream. After four years studying journalism at Northwestern, she'd imagined covering all the human stories within hockey—the pain, the triumphs, the losses. She'd worked to get hired at an actual sports publication for years, and she was finally there, and she felt like a literal puppet on strings.
Her editor, Melika, barely let her take the training wheels off. She'd been sent to cover the post-game press conference after the Cens game, but she wasn't even being allowed to ask actual questions. She was just writing copy about what the other journalists asked. June was "too inexperienced", and the Centaurs newsroom was notoriously strict. If an organization asked a question that was too personal, too prying, or too disrespectful, the PR team would simply revoke their pass.
Had it been any other day, she could've at least had faith that she'd get a good scoop. The Centaurs' captain, Ilya Rozanov, rarely did post-game interviews. The second-line center slash alternate captain Shane Hollander usually had that honor. It was in the best interest of all parties. Hollander was polite and gave every question the most charitable interpretation he could. Some of June's more experienced colleagues said that Rozanov had been the same as a younger player, but now that he was established, he openly disregarded questions he didn't like. Even for the ones he didn't mind, his answers were short and dry.
But Hollander wasn't playing today. He was resting a sprained ligament in his shoulder. Rozanov would be the one giving the conference.
So, yeah. June was going to cover this post-game conference where she couldn't even ask a question to get an interesting answer, this conference that would almost certainly be total fluff, and then she was going to go home and drink a lot of red wine. At least the camera guy that had been sent with her, Brandon, was half-decent at his job. He could even be funny sometimes, too.
Things continued to look up: Rozanov was being slightly more chatty than normal. Maybe the Centaurs' win had him in good spirits. He was up front already, discussing what had happened during the game. He was talking, and June was listening, but she got momentarily distracted. The door behind the table Rozanov was sitting at opened, which wasn't really supposed to happen during a press conference, and nobody even came in or out.
That was weird.
Someone asked Rozanov a question that June missed because of her wandering eye. She chastized herself. What was the point of a journalist who didn't actually take note of what was being said? She made damn sure to clue into his answer.
"Our strategy has been to focus on fundamentals. Without Hollander on the second line, it—oh, hi, Sonya."
June's ears perked up. Sonya? Rozanov leaned down behind the table as if he'd dropped something, and when he came back up, it was with a little girl June recognized as Sofia Hollander-Rozanov. Rozanov got her settled in his lap, kissed her cheek, and looked out to the room.
"This is my daughter, Sofia. I call her Sonya, Shane does not. Shane says we gave her a name for a reason. Shane is wrong. He was supposed to be watching her, I do not know where he is."
Oh, right: Rozanov and Hollander were married. It wasn't a secret or anything, but it was so irrelevant and came up so infrequently that June didn't think about it very often. They didn't act very couple-y in public, and while they occasionally made Instagram posts about their home life or offhandedly mentioned each other in interviews, that was basically the extent of it.
It was then that Hollander burst through the door after his daughter, his left arm in a sling, and rushed over to where Rozanov was sitting. He wasn't anywhere near the microphone, but his voice was loud enough for June to hear. "Sofia, oh my god, you cannot run off like that, you scared me. And you can't bother your father when he's—"
Hollander shook his head, cutting himself off, then bent to pick Sofia up with his good arm. "Ilya, I am so sorry, she burst out of my grip while I was trying to find Mom."
Rozanov just smiled at his husband. "Is okay. I think she just wanted to see what we do for work."
June could see Hollander's mouth moving, but he'd quieted down. June couldn't hear it. Rozanov turned away from the microphone and said something back, and then Hollander looked out at the room, shifting back and forth on his feet.
Rozanov turned back to the room, facing the microphone again. "Just for a minute. It will be okay."
June realized something. There they were: Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov, the two greatest hockey players of a generation and undoubtedly so much more than that to each other. It was rare to see them behaving like a married couple,not coworkers, but that's what they were in that moment. And that was their daughter, who they almost never talked about. Who never got posted. Who was basically never seen, except occasionally in her grandparents' arms at home games while her parents played.
This was gonna make a great article. She turned to Brandon to make sure he was still taking video.
Brandon had set his camera down. For fuck's sake.
"What the fuck are you doing?" June asked.
Brandon shrugged. "They weren't asking questions, so I thought it would be better to not the waste the battery—"
June elbowed him in the side. "Are you actually fucking kidding me right now? Do you know how rare it is to get film of these three together? They don't even post pictures of that kid."
"Okay, oh my god, chill." Brandon picked the camera back up and started filming again.
With a roll of her eyes, June went back to typing her notes furiously. "You're lucky they send you out with me. They'd have fired your ass months ago."
"Yeah, yeah, whatever."
"You have no journalistic instinct."
June turned her attention away from her coworker and back to, y'know, her job. Rozanov smoothed his daughter's hair back—it was curly, like his, but a fiery red color instead of Rozanov's dirty blonde. "Do you want to say anything, Sofia?"
"Like what?"
"Whatever you would like. Maybe just 'hi'."
Sofia leaned down into the microphone and (with perfect pronunciation) said a single word: "Bonjour!"
Behind them, Hollander smiled proudly, although he still seemed nervous about this entire situation—his temperament wasn't entirely dissimilar to a stressed rabbit. Rozanov, for his part, was still grinning like a madman.
"Sweetheart, we have talked about this. Russian is cooler than French."
The little girl frowned. "But daddy is super cool! He cuts up all my fruit slices. What do you do?"
June had to suppress a giggle. The girl was barely six and already sassy enough to shut up Ilya Rozanov.
Hollander laughed behind one hand, and flicked Rozanov's head with the other. He said something, but he wasn't close enough to the mic for it to be picked up. Rozanov's shoulders were shaking; he was laughing too.
"You are right, malyshka. I'm sorry. French is cool. Do you still want to say something to all the nice people? In Russian?"
Sofia leaned into the microphone again. "Privet!"
Rozanov finally looked up from her face to glance around the room. Evidently, he decided he didn't care about the reporters, because he immediately turned back to his daughter. "Anything else?"
Sofia squirmed, almost as if she was trying to get out of her father's lap. Maybe she was feeling shy after realizing how many people were around. She shook her head.
"Okay." Rozanov kissed her head. "That is okay. Here, go with daddy. Papa will be done very soon." He held Sofia up to his husband, and Hollander took her in his good arm.
"Shane? Do you have anything to add?" Rozanov was holding up the microphone to his husband's mouth. June could hear cameras clicking from every inch of the room.
Hollander smiled slyly at his husband. "Sofia was right. French is better than Russian." He turned to go, but Rozanov grabbed his shirt, tugged him down, and kissed his cheek in a frankly obnoxious manner.
In response to the kiss, Hollander's entire face went red. "Ilya, that—"
"Since we are doing the whole family thing in front of cameras now." Rozanov's smile was almost devious.
"We are not."
"I think we are. You are the one who sent Sonya here to distract me while I am working."
Hollander rolled his eyes and walked away, Rozanov watching him go with an openly adoring smile. June took mental note to raise her goddamn standards, because she never wanted to date a guy who didn't look at her like that, but she also kept writing. She needed to bang this thing out ASAP—her fingers were flying. She wanted to get this copy sent to the proofreader as soon as she could. Articles like this had to be posted as quickly as possible.
Once Hollander was gone, Rozanov turned back to the room. "Alright. I would apologize for the interruption, but I am not sorry. Who had the next question?"
June didn't know who was lined up for the next question, and frankly, she didn't care. Ilya Rozanov's boring answers to sports questions were June's absolute last priority, now. Rozanov and Hollander were notoriously buttoned up about their personal life, so people were starving for even a glimpse of what they were like as a couple or as parents. This article was going to do fucking numbers, she had no doubt. And it would be June's name on the byline.
Melika was going to lose her shit.