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WiP Amnesty - Teen Wolf/NCIS Crossover Outline

2014-05-22T21:04:17Z

For svmadelyn's WiP Amnesty drive, have ~3k of an outline for a Teen Wolf/NCIS crossover that will never be written. Never. Or at least not be written by me - if anyone else wants to take this and run with it, you have my blessing.

Fandom: Teen Wolf
Pairing: Sheriff Stilinski/Melissa McCall
Status: UNFINISHED, will never be finished, this is basically just an outline/fic idea but it's been sitting in the bottom of my drafts folder for a year or so now and I'd like to get rid of it.

Sheriff Stilinski’s sister was Gibb's first ex-wife. Anyway, Gibbs is really busy and the two of them live on opposite coasts, but he tries to come out at least once a year, usually around Stiles’ birthday, and visit. And of course if he needs an extra perspective on a case he calls the Sheriff, and if the Sheriff is really stumped on something he calls Gibbs, and sometimes they offer valuable insight and sometimes just talking through the case lets something jump out at them, but anyway they have a very comfortable, familiar relationship.

I can’t quite decide if the Sheriff has been telling Gibbs about all the craziness that’s been going down in Beacon Hills recently or not - is that the sort of thing he might bring up with his brother-in-law? Or is the first thing that Gibbs hears about it when John calls him up in the middle of the night and says, “Jethro, I was just rehired as Sheriff but someone or something has killed all my deputies,” after that whole mess, and Gibbs is like, “I’m coming over there, I’ll help you out until you can get back on your feet, get some new deputies hired,” and then he goes into the bullpen and is like, “Pack a bag, DiNozzo, we’re going to California,” and Tony says “Yes, Boss,” and then “Why, Boss?” as he’s packing, because I decided that Gibbs would bring Tony along to help with the investigation and the hiring of new deputies and the doing of paperwork, because more people is better than less as far as that goes. So then Gibbs would get all gruff about it and explain that they’re going out to lend a hand because his brother-in-law’s sheriff’s department was all killed by person or persons unknown, and they’re going to stick around and work on the investigation and whatever else needs doing until he’s gotten his feet back under him. And Tony backs off for a while because he knows how Gibbs gets about family.

So then they get out to Beacon Hills and Stiles is really excited to see his Uncle Jethro even though it’s not near the usual time he comes out until he hears that Uncle Jethro and Tony have come to help his dad with the investigation into what killed all the deputies, and then he just clams right up, which Tony finds extremely suspicious. Gibbs starts to laugh it off, but the Sheriff is like, “He has been acting extremely suspicious lately,” so Gibbs has to take the whole thing seriously even though he doesn’t want to - he really loves his nephew, OK? - and his gut feeling is that even if Stiles is involved, it’s not his fault.

So meanwhile Stiles has run off to tell Scott that his Uncle Jethro is in town and he brought another NCIS guy with him and so there’s going to be even more people that they’re going to have to try and protect from the kanima while keeping them from figuring out what’s going on (I don’t understand why they didn’t just tell Stiles’s dad at that point, Scott’s mom is great but she’s not exactly combat trained the way I suspect the Sheriff is), and Gibbs and Tony are both very smart and very snoopy so this is going to be difficult and they need a plan. Scott points out that they aren’t very good at plans, they might just have to wing it.

So Tony and Gibbs start helping with the investigation, and Tony is still super suspicious of Stiles so he’s been snooping around and while Stiles has gotten away with lying to his dad because his dad doesn’t want to push him, Tony doesn’t have to worry about that, so he can push him and get little bits and pieces - I know fandom likes to paint Stiles as smarter than everyone else, but I think that Tony as a trained investigator would be able to get more from a distracted, stressed 16 year old than Stiles would probably intend to give up. So then they have little bits and pieces - enough to know that the Hales are involved, and that this whole thing is a continuation of the previous string of murders that had been labeled “animal attacks” even though it’s a different killer, different motive, all the weirdness is connected. So they haul Derek in for questioning, and Gibbs sees Peter lurking and gets a REALLY bad gut feeling about him, even though he doesn’t know who he is. Derek is uncooperative as usual with the police, they have to let him go because of lack of evidence.

Gibbs calls up the team in DC and they have a massive conference call to go over the evidence that they have, and Gibbs has sent a number of samples back for Abby to test in her lab, because no one had been able to positively ID the “wild animal” that killed all those people and he wants her to try. And while they’re looking at all of this evidence, Tony happens to notice that one of the murders was on the night of the full moon, and he says, “Hey, Boss, maybe it’s werewolves.” And McGee and Ziva both kind of scoff at him, because seriously, werewolves? But Abby is like, “Gibbs, we’ve never really seen anything like this before- it’s like a wolf, but not,” and Gibbs gets all quiet and thoughtful and Tony is like, “. . . Boss, I was just kidding,” and either Ziva or McGee makes a crack about silver bullets and Abby totally corrects them, like, “Guys, don’t you know anything? Silver doesn’t do anything to them, it has to be wolfsbane,” and then Ziva and McGee are like, “. . . . how do you know that?” and before Abby can really get started explaining it to them, Gibbs is like, “Send me what you know about wolfsbane, then, and how we can get some,” and then hangs up on them after Abby promises to do so but before Ziva and McGee can get started with the “you’re not serious” business.

So then Gibbs sends Tony out to acquire some wolfsbane. And he couldn’t find any in any of the shops in town, and he went to the vet because someone told him that he should probably ask Dr. Deaton (I get the feeling Dr. Deaton gets these sorts of referrals a lot) and Dr. Deaton was totally enigmatic about the whole thing and Tony left feeling really confused and also like that guy knows WAAAAAYYYYY more than he’s telling about all of the things. And he keeps seeing things - he’s sure someone’s following him, but he can’t tell who or where they are (I’m thinking Isaac? Or Scott? Probably Isaac, b/c Derek asked him to keep an eye on these new people, and also look out for the Jackson while he’s out and about - they know Jackson has to be around somewhere because he’s going to be playing in the lacrosse game that night but they don’t know where he is exactly). Anyway, Tony runs into Chris Argent while he’s out trying to find wolfsbane, and for reasons ends up asking Chris whether he knows anything about this stuff, which freaks Chris out a lot because, law enforcement! But civilian -not a hunter, not trained in dealing with werewolves, obviously fairly clueless about what’s really going on but savvy enough to be asking about wolfsbane? Something is clearly going on. I don’t know whether or not he should say something to Gerard - I haven’t watched the back end of season 2 of teen wolf recently enough to tell you when that relationship actually began deteriorating enough that Chris would be keeping potentially big things from Gerard - but he definitely does not tell Allison, who’s still doing the meltdown thing at this point. Tony notices that something was up with that guy and mentions it to Gibbs. I think eventually he does find some wolfsbane - maybe that plant that was used to bury Laura in the first season?

So then there’s the lacrosse game and Stiles ends up getting kidnapped, and Gibbs and the Sheriff are both freaking out and so is Tony except less so because he only kind of knows this kid? So he’s upset but not like, devastated.

They manage to find Stiles and rescue him and then they’re stuck with arresting Gerard and Chris. I’m pretty sure that between the three of them they could do it, too, even if Gerard tried to put up a fight - with Jackson in the kanima suspended state, he’s much less likely to be able to overpower three people, especially since Chris has probably worked out he’s the bad guy by this point and won’t help him, and may in fact aid the authorities in arresting his father. This also includes the rescue of Erica and Boyd and by that token the great werewolf reveal, because I’m pretty sure the electricity they were hooked up to kept their eyes yellow? And they were at least partially wolfed out. But then we have the problem that if Gerard is under arrest, is he still going to be able to carry out his threats (killing Melissa, etc)? Because as far as everyone but Derek and Peter know, Jackson is dead, right? I just don’t know how Scott would react, because I don’t remember when Derek overheard him helping Gerard, so I don’t know whether or not Derek and Peter would have told Scott/Stiles/Isaac that the kanima is going to emerge from its suspended animation to be a thing with wings. If Scott knows that the kanima is just in suspended animation he may try to break Gerard out of jail - that would be messy, and would probably end up revealing the whole werewolf thing. But if he doesn’t know that the kanima is just in suspended animation he may be like, so we didn’t need my master plan after all! and just let the Sheriff deal with the whole thing. Because I think that at this point Chris Argent at least may start talking to Gibbs, because I think he would like Gibbs. I don’t think Gibbs would be too keen on him, but he might warm up to him at least a little after he figures out that most of the terrible things that have happened are Gerard’s fault and not Chris’s. (No idea what to do about Allison - she’s already stormed the Sheriff’s station with an army to get at the kanima, does she try and do that again to rescue her father and grandfather???)

I think Stiles and the Sheriff would go home, because Gibbs and Tony would be like, we’ve got them arrested, we can do the paperwork to formally charge them and the questioning, you guys go home and get some rest/go to the hospital and get checked out, so the Sheriff wants to go to the hospital but Stiles just really wants to go home so the Sheriff calls Melissa and she comes over and looks at him and says he looks banged up but not hospital worthy, take some Tylenol and sleep on it, that’s the best way to handle it, and then they get home and Lydia is there? Was Lydia there already or did she come over? And they’re talking - the Sheriff is getting Stiles to explain the whole thing, because there just wasn’t time before to do more than, “So, dad, werewolves are real and I know some,” and, “Stiles, you are explaining this whole thing later.” So now it’s later and instead of sleeping and doing the whole nightmare route, Stiles is sitting in the kitchen with both hands wrapped around a mug of hot chocolate, telling his dad and Lydia all about werewolves and how they explain the last year or so in Beacon Hills.

And then they get a call from the station, Tony says that they’d better come quickly, some weird hissing thing just broke down the cell door where they were keeping Gerard and now he’s gone, and so the three of them (because Lydia refuses to be left behind, that’s Jackson, after all, he’s somehow still alive) run down to the station and Stiles tries to call Scott but he’s not picking up, and the Sheriff tries to call Mrs. McCall, but she’s not picking up, so Stiles does his little phone-tracking trick that Peter made him do - there is a derisive chorus of, “His username and password are both Allison?!” from Lydia and Gibbs (and also possibly McGee, who I’m considering conferencing in for this because I’m willing to bet the NCIS satellites are better than the commercial ones, at least as far as narrowing down a specific address) - so then there’s 5 of them in two cars and Tony is loading his and Gibbs’s and the Sheriff’s guns with bullets they soaked in wolfsbane solution like Abby suggested.

They show up at the address and it’s a freaking abandoned warehouse and Tony makes a crack about it being a horror movie set and Stiles laughs because his whole life has been a horror movie for the last several months. So they split into 3 groups, and every group has a law enforcement officer with a wolfsbane loaded gun. They split up and start spreading through the warehouse, looking for Scott and Melissa and Gerard and Jackson. Tony finds Derek, and doesn’t shoot him. Gibbs and Lydia find Peter, and do shoot him. Stiles and his dad find Gerard and Scott and Melissa and Jackson, and begin shouting a lot at each other. Lydia hears the shouting and runs toward it, as do Derek, Tony, and Gibbs. Derek gets there first and attacks the kanima in his usual fliptastic style while the rest of the humans pause around the periphery of the room. The kanima’s even stronger than Derek at this point - he made his Betas stay home because he is in fact a decent being and didn’t want them getting in the middle of this and getting killed - so it throws him across the room and winds him eventually, and at that point Lydia does her thing with the key and the kanima freezes and turns into Jackson just enough that when Derek comes flying back across the floor and attacks he kills him (ala the finale). At this point, some of the humans remember that Gerard is a thing and are looking around for him, only to realize that Gibbs totally used the fight as a distraction and has handcuffed Gerard already. Jackson does his magical raised from the dead to become blue-eyed werewolf act at this point, hooray!!!

Soo. . . . . then comes the wrap up, and I am totally the worst at those, preferring when possible to leave the story at a point that comes before the usual wrap ups. But to clarify - Peter is dead, and they have to deal with that fact. The Alpha Pack is coming, but they’ll meet a pack that is actually fairly well constructed - Scott and Derek talk out their issues and agree to a truce, even if Scott refuses to actually join Derek’s pack. Derek thinks he’s nuts but is going to go with it as long as he’ll keep his phone on and actually answer if someone calls him - Stiles has been complaining about that time in the pool when Scott hung up on him a lot, OK, and all the other times Scott has never answered his phone when someone was trying to get ahold of him - and Lydia and Jackson have joined Derek’s pack (because Peter’s dead, Lydia’s OK with Derek, actually) and are going to help him with the Alpha Pack, who won’t know what hit them (Lydia is terrifyingly awesome OK). Gerard is going to jail for kidnapping, and Chris. . . . I really kind of want Chris to become one of the Sheriff’s new deputies, because he already knows about werewolves and weapons and all that jazz, but was he definitely involved in the kidnapping? We’re going to go with not for the purposes of allowing him to go free as long as he becomes a deputy as like, his parole. Chris starts training Allison to actually follow their code, and they start dealing with their grief over Victoria.

Installing Chris as a deputy also allows Gibbs and Tony to go back to DC, which is good, because the Director started calling Gibbs a couple of days ago and making noises about wanting him back in DC yesterday, where he could be doing his job instead of wandering around the Northern California wilderness and distracting his team from doing their actual jobs with his ridiculousness.

Post-Sunshine Book Club Chalice Discussion

2014-03-08T21:13:18Z

Remember how I said I was going to do a post after Sunshine Book Club was over, where those of us who have read it could scream about Chalice and also bees? This is that post.

Sunshine Book Club Week 8

2014-03-01T23:48:23Z

And so we have reached the end! What are your thoughts? How did you like the book?

I think one of my favorite parts of Sunshine, besides, like, everything, is Rae's reaction to getting out alive - her shock and the choices she makes in the end there, when they survive after she was sure they couldn't are so in-character and perfect. I love the whole book, like I said, but it's that blank shock at the end there, and her having to cope with this whole impossible situation, that really cemented her place as one of my top 5 favorite heroines.

ALSO CAN WE TALK ABOUT CON PASSING AS A HUMAN, I THINK THIS NEEDS TO BE DISCUSSED.

Sunshine Book Club Week 7

2014-02-22T22:33:10Z

Okay, so we're coming up on the end! Next week will be the last one of these, and then the week after that we'll talk about Chalice, which I'm super excited about, just fyi. But before we do that, we need to talk about what happened this week.

This section of the book contains one of my favorite lines in all of Sunshine, that bit about vampires not registering on insect radar. It's so entertaining and yet so strange, which is like, the epitome of this book. But a lot of other things happen too, including Rae's speculation about Mel and his tattoos (where is my Mel backstory, Robin McKinley, where), Yolande and the fetch (she makes an excellent point about corruption in large organizations, well, several excellent points), and Rae planning her last two days of existence (I love the fact that she buys all the roses - McKinley loves her roses, they show up in most, if not all, of her books).

What would you do in the last two days of your existence? I would definitely call up my extended family and talk to them (we do this every so often, it wouldn't be incredibly strange) and my friends. I would probably go skiing one more time (assuming that my last two days happened sometime in the winter, otherwise this won't work). Take a day and go to the beach with some of my favorite books. Treat myself to dinner out at a really nice restaurant, the kind that you can only afford on special occasions. I might even take a page out of Rae's book and buy myself some roses.

Hockey Fic - first star of the (k)night

2014-02-22T22:17:24Z

Title: first star of the (k)night
Rating: NC-17
Beta:biggersandwich
Pairing: Julie Chu/Hilary Knight
Summary: Once they’ve finished their after-game workouts, Hilary wanders over. “What’s up, Chuey?” she says, and Julie smiles at her, all teeth, from her relaxed sprawl on the bench.

It’s always loud in the locker room after a win, but there’s an extra something in the air tonight, the atmosphere just slightly manic. It’s only to be expected, really - they’re at the Olympics, and they just won their first game, the first game of the tournament. Really, Julie thinks, looking around at all the flushed, grinning faces, it was a good game. Her gaze catches on the sharp edge of Hilary’s smile and she focuses in on the younger woman. Hilary’s laugh is just a little too loud, her movements just a little bit off, and Julie’s eyes narrow. It’s going to be one of those nights, then.

Sure enough, once they’ve finished their after-game workouts, Hilary wanders over. “What’s up, Chuey?” she says, and Julie smiles at her, all teeth, from her relaxed sprawl on the bench.

“Good game, Knighter,” she says, and Hilary straightens almost imperceptibly. “That breakaway goal in the first was gorgeous.”

“Yeah?” Hilary preens ever so slightly, and Julie presses her lips together to stifle a grin at that. “It was pretty sick. First goal of the Olympics.”

“Huh,” Julie says, pretending like this is new information. “That’s pretty cool.” When she doesn’t say anything else at first Hilary starts to fidget, shifting from one foot to the other. Julie lets her stew for a moment before reaching out and grabbing her around the wrist. Hilary stills instantly and Julie smiles, slow. “I think that might deserve a reward, hmm?”

“Yes please,” Hilary says, her eyes going dark. Julie squeezes her wrist, just once, before letting go.

0o0o0o0o0

Hilary’s roommates have already gone out to celebrate their victory when Julie drops her bag on the bed and turns to Hilary, whose eyes are fixed on her. “Strip,” she says, and Hilary does with alacrity. Julie sits down on the bed and unzips her bag, remembering the smirks on Bree and Molly’s faces when she’d packed it up. Hilary breathes in sharply when she pulls out a dildo, and Julie takes her time pulling out the harness and laying it out, but she doesn’t put it on yet. She looks back to see that Hilary is standing next to the bed, naked. Her nipples have already hardened to stiff points and a flush is spreading across her face and chest.

“Good,” Julie says, and pulls out the last thing in the bag, a pair of padded cuffs. “On the bed, on your back.”

Hilary climbs onto the bed and raises her arms above her head, arching her back to show off her frankly amazing abs. Julie takes a moment to just look at her before fastening the cuffs around her wrists. “How’s that?” she asks when she’s done, and Hilary pulls at them, testing.

“Left one’s a little loose,” she says, and Julie tightens it. “That’s good.”

Julie sits back on her heels, giving her another once over. Quiet command in her voice, she says, “Keep them up there,” and Hilary nods, swallowing. “Good girl,” Julie says, and leans down to take a nipple into her mouth.

Hilary bucks up into her, whining - her breasts are so sensitive - and Julie puts a hand on her chest, holding her still while she licks and sucks at her nipple. Hilary’s quiet in bed, her only noises occasional whine spilling from the back of her throat and the gasping breaths she takes whenever Julie hits a particularly sensitive spot. This is supposed to be Hilary’s reward, so Julie reaches up and tweaks her nipple just as she scrapes her teeth lightly over the other one. That gets her a muffled gasp and when she looks up, Hilary’s lower lip is caught between her teeth and her eyes are closed, brow furrowed.

“Hey,” she says, tweaking Hilary’s nipple again. “Look at me.”

Hilary opens her eyes slowly: she looks dazed. Julie ducks back down to suck a mark onto the top of her left breast while she slides one hand between Hilary’s legs. Hilary whines a little and spreads her legs wider, shifting her hips to try and get Julie’s hand where she wants it. Julie smirks into Hilary’s breast and strokes, feather-light, all around the edges of Hilary’s cunt except where she wants it, until Hilary’s letting out choked noises of frustration.

“You want something?” Julie asks, raising her head from where she’s been busily mapping out the edges of a bruise Hilary got from slamming into the boards in the second period. Hilary jerks her head in frustration.

“Jesus, Chuey, c’mon. Fuck me already,” she says, and Julie finally takes pity on her and slides two fingers up into her. Hilary thrashes and bites at her lip to keep quiet, so Julie leans up to help her by taking her lower lip into her mouth and biting at it gently. Hilary sighs into the kiss and hisses when Julie moves her fingers slowly, thrusting them in and out.

Julie loves fingering Hilary, taking her to the very edge and watching her lose it, making her beg for it. Hilary doesn’t disappoint, taking two and then three fingers and writhing on them. Julie leans back on her heels and watches, mesmerized, as Hilary’s flush spreads all the way across her torso. “Can you take four?” Julie asks, and Hilary whines and shakes her head at first but Julie leans down to suck a mark onto her thigh and says, “I think you can,” and then she nods, a little shakily. Hilary whimpers, a little, when Julie slides four fingers into her, and Julie has to clench her thighs together at the sight.

Hilary’s hips are canting up as she balls her hands into fists and tugs at the cuffs so she can feel them restraining her. “Chuey,” she says breathlessly. “Chuey c’mon.”

“What do you want?” Julie asks her, stilling her fingers inside Hilary. Hilary groans and rocks her hips up, but Julie puts her other hand on Hilary’s hip and she subsides, quivering.

“Touch my clit, make me come,” Hilary says, still breathless, and whines when Julie pulls her fingers out completely, wiping them on the sheets.

“Not yet,” she says. Hilary groans in frustration but Julie just smiles and starts stripping. Hilary watches with hot eyes as Julie picks up the harness and fastens it on, slowly, drawing out the anticipation. Julie reaches up and squeezes her breast, shivering a little at the dart of heat that sends through her, and Hilary licks her lips. Julie grins, kneeling between Hilary’s legs and guiding the dildo into her. Hilary’s eyes flutter shut and her mouth drops open when Julie bottoms out. “You good?” Julie checks, just making sure, and Hilary nods, eyes still closed.

Julie sets an easy rhythm, leaning down to lick into Hilary’s mouth as she thrusts, the base of the dildo rubbing up against Julie’s clit just right with each thrust. It doesn’t take very long at all for Hilary to be straining up against Julie, sucking on her tongue and whining. Julie stills for a moment and Hilary’s eyes fly open as she groans in protest.

“You did so good tonight,” Julie says, when she’s sure she has Hilary’s full attention. “So hot out there, throwing your weight around, making sure everyone knew it. So good,” she says, and punctuates her words with a deep thrust, finally getting her fingers on Hilary’s clit. Hilary’s eyes roll back in her head and she lets out a high-pitched moan as her hips buck into the pleasure. Julie doesn’t let up, keeping her fingers rubbing Hilary’s clit as she reestablishes her rhythm from earlier, and it’s not long at all before Hilary is shaking apart underneath her, low groans caught in her throat. She’s grabbed fistfuls of the covers by her head to keep her hands still, Julie notices, and catches her breath a little at how hot that is.

Hilary doesn’t like getting fucked after she’s come, so Julie pulls out and unstraps herself from the harness, feeling the low-grade restless buzz of arousal under her skin. She gets back on the bed and straddles Hilary, one hand going to her breast, the other to Hilary’s mouth.

“Suck,” she says, and Hilary opens her mouth obediently and sucks Julie’s fingers into it. Julie tweaks at her nipples, teasing herself, as Hilary licks and sucks around her fingers, getting them wet. “So good, Hil,” she says, and Hilary moans around her fingers, tilting her head to try and get more. Julie slides her wet hand between her legs and Hilary opens her eyes to watch, avid, as Julie gets herself off, lower lip caught between her teeth again. Julie comes with a high-pitched sigh, slumping down against Hilary, who kisses her messily. Julie stays there for a moment before rolling off of Hilary and reaching up to unfasten the cuffs.

“All good?” she asks, checking her wrists, and Hilary looks up at her with a dreamy smile.

“So good,” she says, stretching and breathing out in a satisfied sigh. Julie leans down and brushes a quick kiss across her forehead before standing up and stretching out herself. She goes to the bathroom and wets a warm washcloth, bringin it out to Hilary before going back in and cleaning off the harness. When she comes back out, Hilary has changed into her Team USA pajamas and is curled up under the covers, yawning. Julie shakes her head as she gets dressed and repacks her bag.

“Lazy,” she says, and Hilary’s eyes slit open and she grins.

“You love it,” she says, and Julie presses her lips together to hold in a smile. “See you tomorrow, Chuey.”

“Night, Hil,” Julie says, leaning down for one last kiss before she slings her bag back over her shoulder and heading back to her own room, humming as she goes.

Sunshine Book Club Week 6

2014-02-15T23:43:04Z

In which there is a visit with a vampire and we meet the goddess of pain. Okay, so there's a lot of other things that happen in this part, and you are absolutely welcome to discuss any part of them, but those are the two things that stick out to me the most in this part (I keep wanting to say chapter, which, NO, self, this book is not divided up into convenient chapters, so sad).

I REALLY want all the backstory on Con's master! And how exactly he's connected with the Blaises, and does anyone think that that connection set up the fact that Con and Rae are able to form a partnership without too many hitches? Because, let's be real, a partnership between a human and a vampire is a momentous occasion and I can't really see it going well, but these two make it work! Well, sort of.

Also, the goddess of pain freaks me out. Who is she? Why is she so creepy? What is her motivation? I WANT TO KNOW.

Sunshine Book Club Week 5

2014-02-08T21:33:12Z

A lot of things happen in this section, although it still feels like the calm before the storm to me. Rae's dark vision is endlessly fascinating to me - I've never been entirely sure of what all she's seeing, but it's cool to think about, especially since she's noticing a lot of secret things (or is she just imagining them?). And then more SOF - this time with bonus Aimil! I like Aimil a lot, she handles Rae's "out-of-body" experience a lot better than I would have in her shoes.

Speaking of Rae's "out-of-body" experience, can we talk about her vampire sensitivity? And why this particular vampire sensitivity is so strong? Also Yolande, who is a wardskeeper. Yolande is one of my favorite characters in this novel - she's so cool! And the fact that she's so matter-of-fact about everything is seriously amazing to me.

I'm aware that this section ends in kind of a weird place, but there really isn't a better place to put the end point in this section. And it kind of puts a point to this feeling Rae's been having, that something's wrong with Con (and isn't that a weird thought, something wrong with a vampire).

Let's close with a quote in from this section that I really like: when Maude says that "The insides of our own minds are the scariest things there are."

Sunshine Book Club Week 4

2014-02-01T16:11:19Z

So this week we get to talk about MORE SOF, the trip to the lake, and Con. Can I just say how much I appreciate Rae's reactions to things? She's great.

Pat and Jesse and the trip to the lake! Puppy stories! "I'm not going to tell you"! Calling on vampires! Poisoned wounds! Really, really creepy healing processes!

Yeah, no, I can't be coherent at this point in the novel, and it may only get worse from here. I welcome other people's coherent thoughts, because mine are just. . . all over the place right now.

Sunshine Book Club Week 3

2014-01-25T20:46:21Z

Now that we're into Part Two, can we talk about SOF?

I mean obviously let's talk about what Rae did to the vampire (because that was kind of amazing and theories on how/why it happened are always welcome) but I find SOF - and especially Pat and Jesse and Theo - really, really fascinating. The idea that SOF - at least at the lower level - is rotten with partbloods who are determined to tackle the world's vampire problem to improve their chances of ending discrimination is one that I really like! And I like how political this book gets right around this section. There are lots of layers there, and there's something new to think about every time.

Poll time: Who thinks Rae does have some demon in her? Why?

Sunshine Book Club Week 2

2014-01-19T05:21:38Z

So in this section, we have . . . a lot of walking. Seriously, that is a lot of walking. I consider myself a pretty good hiker, but there is just no way I would have been able to do anything remotely like what Sunshine and Constantine do in this section. Anyone else have some good hiking stories to share? Or do we just want to talk about the book? We can do that too.

I hope everyone is enjoying themselves! What do you think of Sunshine so far? How excited are you for what's coming next? Any predictions as to what that is going to be (for those of us rereading the book, do any of you remember what you thought after you'd made it this far)?

Hockey Fic - Deadlines

2014-01-18T03:59:15Z

Title: Deadlines
Rating: R
Beta:nebulia,
Pairing: Mario Lemieux/Nathalie Lemieux/Jaromir Jagr
Summary: Every year around the trade deadline, Mario wanders into Ray's office to make a request.

Right Around the 2015 Trade Deadline

Every year since 2011, Mario has wandered into Ray’s office a week or so before the trade deadline to make a request. Ray is a good man and a good friend, so every year he copies Mario on the email. He is also a shrewd businessman, and so every year he gets back a politely worded refusal. He isn’t offering anything that they want.

“You could call him, you know,” Ray says this year, wearing an understanding expression. Mario is not avoiding his gaze, he is scanning over the draft of the terms they’re offering Buffalo. “You don’t have to keep doing this.” Mario finishes scanning the terms and pushes them back across the desk.

“These look good,” he says, getting up and leaving Ray’s office. He hears a sigh from behind him as he leaves, but there’s an email waiting in his inbox when he gets back to his office. A different team, a different set of terms. He scans them before closing out of the email and burying himself in work.

“Just call him,” Nathalie sighs, rolling over in bed and turning off the light. Mario looks at her, betrayed. He thought she, at least, understood. “Honestly, dear, you get like this every year at this time. Just call him.” She pulls the covers up to her chin and settles into her pillow, yawning. “I miss him too.” The admission is quiet, but Mario is suddenly achingly aware of the cold spot on his other side, where another body used to rest.

As the trade deadline approaches, Mario catches himself pulling out his phone and staring at it more and more often. He always puts it away after a few minutes, a mixture of regret and shame brewing in his gut, but he cannot bring himself to make the first move. He had tried, once, only to be viciously ignored. He does not want to open himself up to being hurt again.

He is, in fact, staring at his phone, trying to work up the courage to call, when it rings the night before the trade deadline. He almost drops it in shock before checking the number on the caller ID. He feels a brief spike of disappointment when it’s just Ray before pulling on his professionalism and answering the call. “Hello?”

“We got him.” Ray sounds surprised, but also brisk and business-like. “They faxed over the paperwork just now. He’s coming back.”

Mario is glad that he was already sitting down, because he doesn’t think his legs would hold him if he tried to stand just now. “When?” he asks, and it comes out as more of a croak, because his throat has gone dry. He clears his throat and tries again. “When?”

“He’ll be here in two days,” Ray says, still brisk and business-like. “Will you be alright?”

And that sounds more like his friend than his frighteningly competent general manager. “Yes,” he says, managing to sound solid and sure even as his mind is awash in turmoil. “Thank you, Ray.”

“Anytime,” Ray replies, returning to brisk and business-like. “I’ll forward you a copy of the contract so you can look it over.” He hangs up, leaving Mario sitting in his home office, stunned, until Nathalie comes to see why he hasn’t come to bed yet.

“Well, now you have to call him,” she says, sounding nervous and excited but also sure. She plucks the phone from Mario’s hands and brings up the number, pushing the call button before handing the phone back. Mario takes it with fingers that are shaking a little and he frowns at them, bringing the phone up to his ear. It rings a few time before it connects.

“Hello?” His voice is thick with sleep, as though he’s just been woken up, and Mario swallows hard.

“Hello, Jaromir.”

0o0o0o0o0

Mario tries to invite Jaromir over for dinner several times, but Jaromir refuses every time, coming up with less and less believable excuses. When Mario pours out his frustration to Nathalie after the fifth or sixth attempt, her eyes narrow and she nods. “I’ll talk to him,” she promises.

The next night, the doorbell rings just before dinnertime, and when Mario goes to open it Jaromir’s standing on the doorstep, holding a bottle of wine and looking constipated. The sight punches him right in the throat and he has to swallow, hard, to shake off the feeling of deja vu. “You came,” he says, and Jaromir gives him a mocking look.

“Very hard to say no to Nathalie,” he says, before looking pointedly at where Mario is blocking the doorway. “You let me in?”

Mario steps aside and takes the bottle of wine from him, glancing down at it. It’s a good wine, of course - Jaromir spent enough time with the two of them over the years to develop excellent taste in wine. “Thank you,” he says, a little belatedly, as Jaromir wipes his feet on the welcome mat.

“Welcome,” Jaromir says absently, sniffing at the air. “Dinner smells good.”

“Nathalie’s in the kitchen,” Mario says after a moment, and Jaromir nods jerkily at him before moving farther into the house. When Mario follows him, he sees Austin and Alexa at the top of the stairs, looking down with huge round eyes. He motions for them to come down and help in the kitchen.

Conversation over dinner is stilted at best - Mario is trying, but Jaromir shuts him down at every turn, and Austin and Alexa are too intimidated by the obvious awkwardness between the adults to be their usual boisterous selves. The two of them escape to the backyard as soon as they can after dinner, leaving the adults inside. After a few moments of increasingly uncomfortable silence, Nathalie leans over and puts a hand on Jaromir’s arm. He flinches away, and then looks unhappy at Nathalie’s hurt expression.

“Jaro,” she says, and he pushes away from the table as fast as he can, getting to his feet.

“Good to see you, Nathalie, Mario,” he says, and Mario is on his feet and reaching for Jaromir before he thinks about it.

“Please,” he says, and Jaromir freezes, his face turned away. “Don’t rush out. Stay for dessert, at least.” Only their long familiarity allows Mario to read that Jaromir’s thinking about it. “Nathalie made your favorite,” he offers, and Jaromir blows out a heavy breath but sits back down.

“How have you been?” Mario asks, tentatively, once the dessert has been brought out. Jaromir shrugs one shoulder.

“Not bad,” he says. “No Cups. Almost, with Boston,” and Mario’s mouth tightens at the reminder of that disastrous series. “But not since then.” He clears his throat and looks down at the table. “I had something to tell you,” he says, and it sounds rehearsed. Mario’s throat goes dry. “I am retiring, at the end of this year.”

“What?” Mario doesn’t recognize his own voice, but it makes Jaromir look up sharply, a frown creasing his face.

“I am retiring. You should know what that means,” and Jaromir’s voice sounds cruel. “Of course, maybe not - you came back, after all.”

Mario tries to keep his voice steady. “I didn’t mean. . . “

“You didn’t mean,” Jaromir laughs, and it sounds a little wild. “You didn’t mean! Of course you didn’t mean, but you didn’t even think.” He stops and takes a deep breath. It’s been 12 years, and somewhere in there he learned that screaming doesn’t solve anything. Mario wants him to scream, though - he wants to know that Jaromir felt something, still feels something, because he does.

“You didn’t think,” he says, putting as much venom into it as he can. “You just ran away. How’d that work out for you? Oh wait - it didn’t.”

Jaromir’s face goes white, and then red, and he opens his mouth to say something equally cutting and nasty but Nathalie steps between them, face pale, and the back door bangs open to admit Austin and Alexa, who have decided they want dessert. Jaromir thanks Nathalie in a monotone for the invitation and then leaves, giving Mario a poisonous glare as he goes. Mario waits until he hears the front door close and then buries his face in his hands. Austin and Alexa take their desserts up to their room, giving him worried looks as they go, and when they’ve gone Nathalie comes over and drops into the seat next to him.

“That went about as well as we could have expected,” she says, and Mario lets out a pained groan but doesn’t disagree with her.

0o0o0o0o0

Jaromir is careful to avoid Mario for the next several weeks. The tension between the two of them is palpable, when they’re together, so Mario has abandoned his usual habit of watching practices when he’s free. Sid has started shooting him worried looks when he comes over for dinner, but he hasn’t brought up the subject yet. Unfortunately, Nathalie refuses to let it drop.

“Why do we have to talk about it!” Mario finally explodes, tired of the subject. She thins her lips and puts her hands on her hips.

“Because he was a huge part of our life for over a decade,” she says flatly. “Because he tore us to pieces when he left and he took some of us with him. Because neither of us ever actually got over him.” Mario refuses to look up at her.

“It was easier, when he was on another team,” he says, haltingly. “Because then - he wasn’t here, because he couldn’t be. No matter that we hadn’t talked in years. Now. . . “ he trails off helplessly, and Nathalie puts her hand on his shoulder.

“Now he’s not here because he doesn’t want to be,” she murmurs, and Mario remembers the blinding, furious rage he’d felt when he’d discovered Jaromir had been traded. The fact that, in hindsight, it had been written on the wall, didn’t help. That rage had fueled him for months, until he had woken up one night to Nathalie quietly weeping, and been confronted all over again with the way that the bed just didn’t feel right anymore, with only two of them there. The regret and sorrow had hit him, then, but it was too late - pride, his and Jaro’s both, had demanded apologies that pride refused to give. And so it went for years - only the deeply ingrained habit of not calling Jaro had prevented Mario from cursing him out when he went to Philadelphia instead. Although in retrospect, that had been the best “Fuck You, Mario” Jaro could possibly have come up with.

“You have to talk to him again,” Nathalie says, running her fingers through his hair. Mario twitches away from her, grimacing.

“We have nothing productive to say to each other,” he says shortly, and Nathalie lets out a sigh.

“How about, ‘I’m sorry’?” she suggests. “Lead with that, maybe, see where it gets you.” When he is reluctant, she pulls out the big guns. “Please? For me.”

And he cannot resist that, not when he knows that it’s his fault - his and Jaro’s fault both. Nathalie had loved them both, but she had married him, and that had made her choice for her. She never said a word to blame him, but Mario worries sometimes that it was only for the children that she had stayed, that she would have gone after Jaro otherwise. They never talk about it.

“I’ll try,” he tells her, and her smile is bright enough to light the room.

0o0o0o0o0

When Mario shows up to skate the next day he can almost feel the sigh of relief from the team. He watches from the stands, and every one of his players shoots him a grin or a salute during practice. Except Jaromir. Jaromir is studiously ignoring him.

“Can I talk to you?” he asks, in the locker room after practice is over. Jaromir shrugs and throws on his coat, already finished changing.

“Talk,” he says curtly once they’re out of the locker room, away from the curious eyes and ears of the team. Mario’s tongue feels heavy in his mouth for some reason and he struggles to find the words he needs. Jaromir’s eyes narrow and he turns on his heel, about to stride away.

“I’m sorry,” Mario blurts out, unwilling to let him just walk away, to go back to Nathalie and tell her that he hadn’t at least tried. Jaromir turns around slowly, an unreadable look on his face.

“Sorry,” he says, tasting the word slowly, as though it is unfamiliar to him. “Sorry for what?”

“For everything,” Mario says helplessly, a little overwhelmed. Jaromir’s eyes narrow and he shakes his head.

“Not good enough. Tell me, what you sorry for?”

Mario growls in frustration. “For making you feel pushed out,” he says. “For not realizing what it meant to you. For not talking about it, ever. For not trying to call you after the trade. For everything, Jaro.”

Jaromir’s eyes got bigger and bigger as Mario kept going. He is silent for a moment, stunned, after Mario finishes, before clearing his throat.

“I am sorry, too,” he says roughly. “For everything.” He turns and walks away.

Stung, Mario calls after him. “What, you can’t say it? You made me say it.”

Jaromir whirls around. “Fine! I am sorry for - picking stupid fights. Not talking. Not explaining. For not calling, after trade. Was not my fault only - but. I am still sorry.” He shakes his head, jerkily, before turning back around and walking away, vanishing around a corner and out the door before Mario can pull himself together enough to give chase.

0o0o0o0o0

They avoid each other again in the aftermath of the apologies. Mario is pretty sure that Nathalie is humoring him for the moment, and will eventually force him to go and talk to Jaromir again, so he uses his time wisely. If that means watching Jaromir’s interview clips in his office, well, no one has to know.

As it turns out, Nathalie doesn’t have to force Mario to go and talk to Jaromir again. The Peguins PR department takes care of that for her.

“We want you to be present at the press conference when he announces his retirement,” Ginger says. She’s in charge of the PR department for the Penguins, and everyone is terrified of her, even Mario. Even Jaromir.

“Me?” Mario asks, a little surprised. “Why me?”

“Look,” Ginger says, looking up from her tablet and fixing him with her intense gaze. “There’s a really great narrative here. The prodigal son returns, trying for one last Cup in the city where he won his first. He won his first with you,” she points out, and Mario doesn’t actually need the reminder, thanks. He was there. “And like it or not, the two of you are linked together in people’s minds. We’re just going to sell that. People will eat it up with a spoon.” She taps at her tablet for a moment and then gives Mario her best smile, the one with all of the teeth in it. He represses a shudder. “Alright, good talk. It’s on your calendar,” she says, and sweeps out of his office before he can say anything. Not that there’s really anything to say, after that.

The press conference is a total zoo, as Mario expected. He stands half-tucked away in a corner after his own remarks, watching as Jaromir laughs and jokes with the reporters, smiling so hard his face is all crinkled up.

They end the press conference with a video, and Mario feels a little like he’s just been taken into the boards. It’s a highlight reel, showing all of the truly amazing things Jaromir has accomplished over his years in the NHL, but shown in reverse chronological order. The last shot, that lingers on the screen, is that terrible picture of them standing back to back with the Cup, and Mario fights back the rush of memories it evokes.

When they get away from the press conference, Mario takes a deep breath and turns to Jaromir, who has a faraway look in his eyes. “Want to go for a drink?” he asks, carefully neutral, and Jaromir visibly hesitates before shrugging.

“Sure,” he says, giving Mario a half-smile. Mario very carefully doesn’t think about other occasions when he’s seen that same reckless half-smile and instead gestures for Jaromir to get into his car.

0o0o0o0o0

They stop avoiding each other after that, and Jaromir starts accepting invitations over for dinner. Austin and Alexa have relaxed around him, peppering him with questions. Jaromir is endlessly delighted by this, and takes every opportunity to tell terrible stories about Mario and Nathalie “back in the day.” Mario protests them half-heartedly, but then Jaromir will shoot him that smile, the one that takes up his entire face and makes his eyes light up. Mario has never been able to resist that smile.

“The kids like him,” Nathalie says, coming up behind him in the kitchen where he’s doing the dishes and wrapping her arms around his waist. He hums thoughtfully and cranes his neck to peer into the dining room, where Jaromir is telling some story and illustrating it with broad sweeps of his hands.

“He likes them too, I think,” Mario says, and Nathalie’s arms tighten around his waist. He turns to look at her and she looks excited and terrified in equal measure. He knows how she feels - he feels the same way.

The three of them have been talking, albeit in a very roundabout way, about their past. Mario thinks that they’re all on the same page, now, but he’s still hesitant to take that final step. Nathalie and Jaromir haven’t brought it up either, so he thinks maybe he’s not alone. What they have now - it works. He doesn’t want to risk losing it again.

After all of the dishes have been cleared away, Austin and Alexa head up to their rooms. The three adults are sitting around the table, relaxing with a glass of wine, when Jaromir clears his throat.

“This is nice,” he says, and Mario looks over at him, bemused.

“It is a good wine,” he says, and Jaromir gestures impatiently.

“Not the wine - that is nice too, but. I mean this. Here, with you both.” He clears his throat again, blushing slightly, and Mario’s mouth goes dry. “I know we have been. . . talking,” Jaromir says haltingly. “About the past. And I thought, maybe. . . “ his voice trails off, and he looks down at his hands.

Nathalie stands, abruptly, and circles the table so that she is standing directly in front of Jaromir. He tips his face up to look at her, squinting a little in the light, and she leans down to press a soft kiss to his lips.

“Yes,” Mario says, his voice a little hoarse, when they break apart. “The answer is yes.” Jaromir’s smile in response is blinding.

0o0o0o0o0

As they head up to the bedroom, Mario spares a moment to be grateful that Sid has finally managed to move out. Once Austin and Alexa are in their rooms for the evening they rarely come out - Sid would pop back down every so often with a question for Mario. Thoughts of Sid are quickly driven from his head when Jaromir shoots him a sly smile and presses him up against the wall, kissing him. Mario’s hands land on Jaromir’s hips, drawing him in as he deepens the kiss, relearning old territory. Jaromir kisses exactly the same way he had 14 years ago, eager and demanding. Mario brings one hand up and squeezes the nape of Jaromir’s neck gently and he gasps, breaking the kiss to lean his forehead against Mario’s shoulder. After a moment he straightens up and heads towards the bedroom, tossing a wink over his shoulder at Mario and Nathalie. Mario’s doubts choose that moment to roar back into existence and he stands frozen against the wall. Nathalie, who has always been able to read his mind, comes up to him and presses a gentle kiss to his lips.

“We’re older and wiser now,” she whispers. “We won’t let it happen again.” Mario’s fears don’t recede fully, but he is able to push himself off of the wall and follow Jaromir and Nathalie into the bedroom.

“Second thoughts?” Jaromir inquires from where he’s sitting in the middle of the bed. His tone is light and off-hand, but there is tension in the way he’s holding himself. Mario shakes his head.

“No,” he says, crossing the room to cup Jaromir’s cheek in his hand. Jaromir’s eyes slip shut as he leans into the touch briefly, before opening again with a wicked gleam.

“Good,” he says. “Clothes off, now.” Mario laughs and takes his hand back, starting in on the buttons of his dress shirt. Jaromir winks roguishly at Nathalie as he begins wriggling out of his own clothes, and she laughs delightedly at him as she slips her shirt off over her head and steps out of her pants.

Mario focuses his attention on getting out of his clothes as fast as possible. He glances up only when he hears Jaromir let out a startled sound, and sees that Nathalie has all of her clothes off already and has straddled him on the bed. As he watches, Jaromir reaches up and cups Nathalie’s breasts. Her hands move to Jaromir’s shoulders as he bends his head and takes one nipple into his mouth, and Mario trips his way out of his pants in his haste to join them on the bed.

It takes some negotiation, but eventually Jaromir ends up on his back, propped up on some pillows as Nathalie straddles his shoulders. Mario watches as she slowly lowers herself onto his face and shudders at the sounds of pleasure that come from both of them as he traces aimless patterns over Jaromir’s stomach and thighs.

He just watches them for a while, mesmerized. Jaromir’s always been good with his mouth, and he soon has Nathalie rocking up against him, letting out quiet gasps. Nathalie turns to frown at him teasingly after a moment. “Are you just going to sit there and watch?” she asks, punctuated by a groan as Jaromir brings his hand up and slips two fingers inside of her. Mario shakes himself out of his stupor and bends down to take Jaromir into his mouth.

It’s been a while since he’s done this - 14 years, give or take a few months - and he’s a little too ambitious at first, going down too far and choking. He pulls off, coughing, and Jaromir takes his mouth off of Nathalie for long enough to laugh at him. “Need practice,” he says, and Mario narrows his eyes.

He’s more careful this time, and slowly he gets back into the rhythm of it. He catches Jaromir with his teeth once, accidentally, and Jaromir’s hips buck unexpectedly. Mario pulls off, surprised, and looks up the bed. “Really?”

“Shut up,” Jaromir gasps. Mario smirks as he goes back down, hollowing his cheeks and pressing one hand to Jaromir’s hip to hold him still. Above him, Nathalie’s gasps go abruptly high pitched as she comes before she lets out a satisfied sigh and slumps off to the side, watching them with slitted eyes. Mario looks up and meets Jaromir’s eyes as he goes down as far as he can, humming around Jaromir’s dick as he brings his other hand down to play with Jaromir’s balls. He slips his hand back and brushes against Jaromir’s hole, teasing, and Jaromir’s hands land in his hair, tugging at him insistently.

“Mario - Mario, I’m. . .” Jaromir’s voice is hoarse and Mario pulls off and crawls up the bed to kiss him, because he can, because Jaromir is finally back where he belongs. He kisses him triumphantly as he jerks Jaromir off, and Jaromir comes with a shout and bites Mario’s lip viciously. Mario works him through his orgasm until he twitches, oversensitive, before pulling back and stroking at his own achingly hard cock.

“Let me get that for you,” Nathalie says, pressing up against his back and taking him in her hands. Mario can hardly believe that this is real, Nathalie’s hands on him and Jaromir under him stretching lazily. He gasps as Jaromir leans up on his elbows to bite at his chest, murmuring in his ear.

“Go on, come on me, all over,” he says, and Mario does with a low groan. He feels an intense satisfaction at the sight of Jaromir spread out on the bed, utterly fucked out, covered in their come. Nathalie kisses his shoulder and tightens her arms around his waist before getting up off the bed and going into the bathroom. A few seconds later there’s the sound of running water and she leans back into the room and tosses a damp washcloth at them.

“Clean up,” she says, wrinkling her nose at them, so they do, Mario with some reluctance. When they’ve cleaned up Nathalie comes back out of the bathroom and snuggles up to Jaromir, reaching out to rest a hand on Mario’s chest as well. They stay like that for a moment, and then Jaromir lets out a deep sigh.

“I should go,” he says regretfully. Mario knows he’s right, but that doesn’t stop his instinctive reaction, which is to tighten his grip on Jaromir’s wrist. He releases Jaromir with a murmured apology and stands, stretching, as Jaromir gets up from the bed and begins hunting for his clothes.

“Come over tomorrow,” Nathalie says, as Jaromir finishes dressing and Mario pulls on a pair of sleep pants so he can walk Jaromir to the door. “After practice.”

“Yes,” Jaromir says, stopping by the bed to kiss her, lingeringly. “I will come.”

“Good,” she says, patting him on the cheek. Mario and Jaromir walk to the front door in silence, broken only when Mario pulls Jaromir into a long kiss at the door.

“We missed you,” he says roughly when it ends, and Jaromir looks startled but pleased.

“I missed you both as well,” he says, leaning back in to give Mario a brief peck. “I will see you tomorrow.” Mario watches as he gets into his car and heads down the driveway, then head back up to the bedroom. Nathalie curls up against him when he gets into bed and presses a sleepy kiss to his arm. He puts his arm around her and closes his eyes, feeling more at peace than he has in years.

0o0o0o0o0

Epilogue

This isn’t the first time Sid’s been over to the Lemieuxs for dinner since Jagr came back to the team, but it is the first time that Jagr’s been there. He’s wary at first - everyone felt the awkwardness between Mario and Jagr when Jagr first came back, even though Sid’s not entirely sure what all that was about. But there doesn’t seem to be any tension there now, and Jagr is laughing with Alexa about something while Mario smiles on indulgently.

He relaxes cautiously as dinner progresses, laughing and talking with the Lemieuxs and Jagr about the season and their hopes for the playoffs. He’s feeling pretty content with the world when he walks into the kitchen after dinner and pulls up short.

Mario has Jagr pushed up against the refrigerator, laughing into his mouth, while Nathalie flicks soapsuds at both of them from the sink. They haven’t noticed him, so he backs out of the kitchen quickly and flees, calling a quick goodbye to Austin and Alexa, who wave at him absently. He drives over to Geno’s, looking pleadingly at Geno when he opens the door, startled.

“Sid? Thought you have dinner with Mario, tonight.”

“I did,” he says, covering his eyes. “And Jagr was there, and I saw Mario kissing Jagr, and I need you to get me drunk now so I can forget I ever saw that.”

Geno laughs and opens his door wider, letting Sid in. “Good thing day off tomorrow,” he says. “Come in, sit down. I will get vodka.”

Sunshine Book Club Week 1

2014-01-11T20:58:02Z

Hi, everyone! So this marks Week One of the Sunshine Book Club, which means that we are all scheduled to have read through at least page 51. Did everyone make it? Do I need to change up the schedule?

Since this is Week One, and some of y'all are reading Sunshine for the first time, tell me about your first impressions! What did you like? What surprised you? Did anything happen that you weren't expecting? What are you excited about? People who are reading Sunshine for not the first time, answer these too! I'm very curious about how everyone reacted when they first picked this book up. The first time I read Sunshine, I wasn't actually expecting vampires (I picked it up because I had loved everything by Robin McKinley previously and didn't even bother reading the back until I'd gotten to the part where the vampires showed up) and was very surprised when all of the sudden there were vampires.

Also, I require the recipe for Bitter Chocolate Death, like, immediately. I don't know exactly what it is, but I want it. Give me all the chocolate, please!

. . . And that's all from me. Go forth and discuss!

ETA: There's not a time limit on these discussions, feel free to keep talking about Sunshine for as long as you want - or at least until next weekend, when I post the next one. :D

Hockey Ficlet - Mario/Jaromir/Nathalie

2013-11-18T23:17:57Z

This is entirely puckling's fault, as she went on a Jaromir Jagr binge last night when I was feeling susceptible to plot bunnies. The following is the result.

Every year since 2011, Mario has wandered into Ray’s office a week or so before the trade deadline to make a request. Ray is a good man and a good friend, so every year he copies Mario on the email. He is also a shrewd businessman, and so every year he gets back a politely worded refusal. He isn’t offering anything that they want.

“We got him.” Ray sounds surprised, but also brisk and business-like. “They faxed over the paperwork just now. He’s coming back.”

“He’ll be here in two days,” Ray says, still brisk and business-like. “Will you be alright?”

And that sounded more like his friend than his frighteningly competent general manager. “Yes,” he said, managing to sound solid and sure even as his mind was awash in turmoil. “Thank you, Ray.”

“Anytime,” Ray replied, returning to brisk and business-like. “I’ll forward you a copy of the contract so you can look it over.” He hangs up, leaving Mario sitting in his home office, stunned, until Nathalie comes to see why he hasn’t come to bed yet.

“Hello?” His voice is thick with sleep, as though he’s just been woken up, and Mario swallows hard.

“Hello, Jaromir.”

And I'll include my tags from Tumblr just because I think they do add something to the story: #okay so headcanon time #jagr comes back to pittsburgh at the trade deadline because he’s going to be retiring #and he wants to retire in a pittsburgh uniform #for symmetry purposes #he and mario and nathalie have any number of really awkward conversations #where all three of them are trying not to bring up the fact that they all broke each others hearts once upon a time #and eventually they get it back together #sid kind of narrows his eyes the first time he comes over for dinner and jagr’s there #because he is not really all that great with people but even HE picked up that something was wrong #but everyone is smiling and there isn’t a lot of tension in the air at dinner so he lets it slide #he walks in on mario and jagr making out in the kitchen while nathalie flicks suds at them and has to run away #he goes over to geno’s and complains about needing brain bleach #geno just laughs at him and asks him sly questions #these tags may have gotten away from me

My Top 5 Recipes (from Tumblr)

2013-11-18T03:54:56Z

I got asked about my top 5 favorite recipes on Tumblr, and then I got asked for the recipes. So I'm posting them here, for better archival purposes. :D They are as follows:

Spicy Shrimp and Asparagus Pasta

1 cup bowtie or penne pasta

2 tbsp olive oil

2 cloves garlic, minced

¼ cup onion, chopped

½ cup white wine

¼ tsp crushed red pepper flakes

1 tbsp butter

10 spears asparagus, cut into 1 inch pieces

18 peeled and deveined large shrimp

1 tbsp lemon juice

Salt and pepper to taste

2 tbsp chopped fresh parsley

¼ cup grated parmesan cheese

Directions:

Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Add pasta and cook until al dente, 8 to 10 minutes; drain.

Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Stir in the garlic and onion, and cook until the onion has softened and turned translucent, about 5 minutes.

Pour in the white wine, and simmer for 2 minutes. Stir in the red pepper flakes, butter and asparagus; cook until the asparagus is just tender, about 3 minutes. Add the shrimp and lemon juice, continue cooking until the shrimp have turned pink and are no longer translucent in the center. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Toss the cooked pasta with the shrimp and asparagus mixture. Sprinkle with parsley and parmesan cheese to garnish.

(This recipe only makes enough for 2 or 3 people, I usually end up doubling it to feed 4 or 5)

Wine and Balsamic Glazed Steak

2 tsp vegetable oil

4 or 5 boneless beef top loin or top sirloin steaks

3 cloves minced garlic

1/8 tsp crushed red pepper

3/4 cup red wine

2 c sliced fresh mushrooms

3 tbsp balsamic vinegar

2 tbsp soy sauce

4 tsp honey

2 tbsp butter

Directions:

In a large skillet, heat oil over medium-high heat. Add steaks, reduce heat to medium. Cook for 10-13 minutes, depending on steak thickness/desired doneness, turning occasionally. If the meat browns too quickly, reduce heat to medium-low. Transfer meat to serving platter, cover and keep warm.

Add garlic and crushed red pepper to skillet, cook for 10 seconds. REMOVE SKILLET FROM HEAT, and CAREFULLY add the wine and return to the heat. Boil gently, uncovered, of about 5 min or until most of the liquid is evaporated, add mushrooms, vinegar, soy sauce and honey, return to simmering. Cook + stir for about 4 min or until mushrooms are tender. Add butter, stirring until melted. Spoon over steaks and serve.

Chicken with Balsamic Caper Sauce:

4 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves

5 tbsp cold butter

2/3 cup dry white wine

1/2 cup chicken broth

1/4 cup finely chopped shallot or onion

2 tbsp whipping cream

2 tsp balsamic vinegar

2 tsp capers

Salt & pepper to taste

Directions:

Pound chicken halves to approx 1/4 inch thick. Sprinkle chicken with salt and pepper.

Melt butter in large skillet over medium high heat. Reduce heat to medium and add chicken. Cook chicken for 6 to 8 min or until no longer pink, turning once. Remove skillet from heat, transfer chicken to serving platter and keep warm.

Add wine, broth and shallot to the hot skillet. Return to heat. Cook and stir to scrape up the browned bits on the bottom of the skillet. Bring to boiling and boil gently, uncovered, for about 10 minutes (until liquid is reduced to around 1/4 cup). Reduce heat to medium.

Stir in cream, balsamic vinegar and capers. Add remaining 4 tbsp butter, 1 tbsp at a time, stirring until butter melts after each addition. Sauce should be slightly thickened. Season to taste with salt and pepper, spoon over chicken and serve.

(As a side note, this is good over pasta as well.)

Baked Salmon

1 lb salmon fillet

1/3 cup butter

½ tsp salt

¼ tsp paprika

1 tsp Worcestershire sauce

Minced onion (to taste)

Directions:

Melt the butter, stir in salt, paprika and Worcestershire sauce.

Brush over the salmon, sprinkle with minced onion.

Bake at 350 °F for 25-30 min

(Goes really well with rice.)

Rosemary Grilled Pork Tenderloin (or Chicken)

1 garlic clove, pressed

1 tbsp olive oil

2 tbsp Dijon mustard

2 tbsp honey

1 tsp salt

1 tsp chopped fresh rosemary

½ tsp pepper

1 ½ lb skinned and boned chicken thighs (or 2 lb pork tenderloin, or 1 ½ lb chicken breasts)

Directions

Combine first six ingredients in a large heavy-duty Ziploc bag, squeezing bag to combine ingredients. Add chicken (or pork) and seal bag. Allow to chill 1 to 24 hours.

Grill chicken 5-7 minutes on each side or until done (for pork 8 to 10 minutes).

Sunshine Book Club FAQ

2013-11-07T05:39:49Z

This is just a repost from tumblr, but in case anyone was unaware - in two months I'm going to be hosting a fannish book club reading of Robin McKinley's Sunshine! There will be lots and lots of feelings and fun and anyone who wants to should spread the word and come and ~join us~

How is this going to work/How do I participate:

Starting Saturday, January 11, I will make a post on my LJ once a week. I’ll post a link to my tumblr., and I’ll make sure to tag it with “sunshine book club.” So if you aren’t following me/friends with me on LJ and want to participate, you can just track the tag and go to the weekly post using that link.

ANONYMOUS COMMENTING WILL BE ENABLED. I want to stress that if you don’t have a tumblr? Don’t have an LJ? Still want to participate? Go for it! Just don’t be a dick, or I’ll have to turn off the anonymous commenting, and that would make me sad.

The only problem with “Sunshine” (not that this is an actual problem, this is just me whining about logistics) is that it isn’t broken down conveniently into chapters, which meant I made this face when trying to figure out how best to space it out >:(. I eventually threw up my hands and was like, okay fine, we’ll do this by page numbers. I own the mass market paperback version of Sunshine, so that is where the page numbers will be coming from. If you have another version and want to know what the heck I’m talking about, shoot me a message and I’ll tell you. I’m thinking a total of 8 weeks, which averages out in my copy to about 50 pages a week**. If anyone thinks that to be an unreasonable pace, lemme know soon (like, in the next couple of weeks) so that I can make the necessary adjustments.

IF ANYONE IS UNABLE TO GET THEIR HANDS ON A COPY OF SUNSHINE BUT WISHES TO PARTICIPATE, theprokaryotekid has a PDF copy and has kindly offered to email copies to persons who cannot find a copy by January.

What do I do/say in comments on the LJ post?

Anything. Seriously, want to do serious literary analysis? Do it. Squee about your favorite character? Please do! Swap recipes? I personally will be all over this.

If you don’t think you have anything to say you’re welcome to just read through the comments, but I promise stuff like this is more fun if you participate in the discussion.

Question? Comments? Concerns? Thoughts? My askbox is here, or you can comment below.

**It might be 45 one week and 65 the next, depending on how the chips fall. I’m going to do my best to keep it around 50 pages a week, but the way the book is organized is against me, here.

Ala svmadelyn -

2013-11-01T00:40:41Z

In honor of All Hallow's Eve, I'm inviting trick-or-treaters to my 'door.' Comment "trick-or-treat" to this post and...well, you know the drill. Treats can be anything that strikes my fancy (pics of fave actors or pairings, one sentence fics, graphics, a few words why I'm glad to have you on my flist, etc. etc.).

The more "houses" to visit the more fun it'll be, so go ahead, open your journal and help spread the fun!

Hockey Ficlets

2013-10-21T05:03:24Z

So I did a thing on my tumblr where I asked for prompts and promised to write 100(+) word ficlets for each of the prompts I received. I'm archiving them here b/c tumblr is a terrible archiving tool (also I like having things all in one place). :D

“What are they doing in there?” Sid asks Pat, horrified fascination in his voice. Pat leans across him and looks into the other room.

“Doing each other’s hair and talking about boys, probably,” Pat says, leaning back in his chair. “Or girls, or whatever. Talking about crushes, anyway.”

“Taylor doesn’t get crushes,” Sid says, firmly, eyes wide. “She’s too young for them.”

Pat gives him a sympathetic look and pats him on the shoulder. “You just keep telling yourself that, buddy,” he says. “I’m going to get a beer and go play NHL 14, you wanna come?”

“Yes, please,” Sid says. “I need to not be thinking anymore.”

0o0o0o0o0

“Um,” Pat says, looking up at Geno Malkin, who is carrying a bunch of grocery bags and wearing a determined expression. “Come in, I guess?”

“Thank-you,” Malkin says, shouldering his way past Pat and into the kitchen. Pat did something to his shoulder on the last game and isn’t with the team on a road trip and Malkin is supposed to be out with an “upper-body injury.” “You have pan I can use?”

“All my pots and pans are under the stove,” Pat says, trailing Malkin into the kitchen and wondering how this happened. “You don’t have to cook for me, you know.”

“I know,” Malkin says. “But have been getting calls from Sid and Toews all week, decided just come up and cook for you. We keep each other company, can remind about meds, maybe they stop worry.”

“Not gonna happen,” Pat says, and Malkin makes a face like he knows. “But if you wanna cook, I’m not going to say no. What’s for dinner?”

“Pelmeni,” Malkin says, staring to unload the grocery bags. “You help.”

0o0o0o0o0

Sort of a continuation of the above:

When Pat hears that Geno’s out for a couple of months with a knee injury and the Pens are leaving on a roadtrip, he packs up and heads down to Pittsburgh for a couple of days. He’s not as good a cook as Geno, but he figures Geno can sit there and tell him what to do if he wants something besides take out.

Pat vaguely knew that Geno had a dog, but he didn’t really know, because the massive animal that greets him at the door isn’t a dog. “Dude, why is there a small horse in your house?” Pat calls, and Geno laughs at him from the living room.

“Jeffrey best,” he croons when Pat and the dog come in to check on him, calling the dog over and scratching behind his ears. “You not have to come,” he tells Pat, and Pat just kind of laughs at him as he drops his bags on the floor and flops down in a chair.

“We’ve got a couple of days off, and I figured I owed you one,” he says, and pretends not to notice the look of gratitude on Geno’s face.

0o0o0o0o0

Kris doesn’t hate his job – he loves it, actually, being an investigative reporter is awesome – but he does hate some of the things that come with it.

For example, when he’s taken hostage by a group of zealots who took exception to his expose on their violent habits towards the LGBTQA community. He really could have done without that.

“We demand a retraction and an apology,” one of them is snarling into the phone with his editor on the other end of the line. “Or we kill him.”

“You know,” Kris says, testing the knots around his wrists and frowning at them, “this isn’t helping your cause, really. It’s just more proof that I was right.”

One of them snarls and cocks a gun in his face, and Kris has a moment to think oh shit before someone comes flying out of nowhere and knocks the guy with the gun out of his face.

Kris doesn’t see much of what happens next because it happens too fast, but he gets the impression of ginger hair and tall as what looks like a vaguely human-shaped whirlwind takes out the entire group of kidnappers. “Huh,” he says. “I didn’t know I merited Superman’s personal attention.”

0o0o0o0o0

Corey’s not sure who’s house they’re at, really, or who all is there. But he thinks it starts like this:

At some point – he thinks it’s been two days? Maybe? – during the massive party that happens after the Blackhawks become the first team to win the Stanley Cup twice in the salary cap era, they end up at someone’s house. And Kaner ends up next to him on the couch, and is slurring in his ear.

“I mean,” he says. “You totally deserve a blowjob for those saves. You know? And Bolly, where’s Bolly,” Bolly lifts his head somewhere across the room and waves drunkenly. “Bolly deserves a blowjob, too, and Bicks, and Shawzy, and everyone.”

Corey thinks about that for a while, and then offers, “That sounds like a lot of blowjobs.”

“Well, yeah,” Kaner says. “Blowjobs for everyone!” he shouts, and slides off the couch and onto his knees in front of Corey. Tazer wanders over and frowns at them, confused.

“What are you doing?”

“Corey totally deserves a blowjob for the playoffs,” Kaner says. “And everyone. Everyone deserves blowjobs.” Tazer nods, like this makes sense, and then frowns at Kaner.

“Are you gonna do them all yourself? That’s not buddies, making you do all the work. Guys!” he calls, and everyone turns to look at them. “Blowjobs for everyone!” A cheer goes up.

0o0o0o0o0

“So if you’re just as good as they are, why didn’t you stay a forward?” Kris asks, leaning over in bed and hooking his chin over Marc’s shoulder. Marc shrugs, unconcerned.

“They’re a bunch of freaks,” he says. “Also, Eric pitched a huge hissy fit the first time I beat him in shootout drills, so. It was just easier to play defense. And I was good at it, which none of them were. That was a bonus.”

Kris chuckles at that and Marc twists around so that he can grin at him. “It also drives them nuts,” he says, eyes bright with humor. “And I live to make their lives difficult in any way I can.”

“Yes, I have seen this,” Kris agrees, before leaning in for a kiss.

0o0o0o0o0

“You what,” Sid says flatly, and Pat blushes.

“I may or may not have tried to measure it,” he says. He can feel Sid giving him a judgmental look, he doesn’t need to meet Sid’s eyes. “I was drunk, okay, and everyone knows it’s one of the best-“

“One of the best?” Sid’s head is tilted on one side when Pat risks a glance over, and his eyes are narrowed. “Not the best? Bet Jonny wasn’t happy about that.”

“Well, no,” Pat admits. “But that was part of why the measuring, okay, because how is he supposed to prove it’s the best without evidence?”

“Who was he competing with?” Pat gives Sid a “duh” look.

“You,” he says, and Sid turns bright red but feels oddly proud. One of the best. And hey…

“You can measure it if you want,” he says graciously, and Kaner looks like he’s about to die, but in a good way.

0o0o0o0o0o0

Beau is getting ready for his first day of high school when all of the sudden there’s a tearing sensation and he’s not in his own body anymore. He looks around wildly and oh shit - that’s Mario Lemieux, and Sergei Gonchar, and Sidney Crosby, and none of this makes sense because he didn’t touch anyone, so why is he in the middle of soulmate swap?

“Uh,” he says, and Sidney Crosby blinks up at him before saying something in Russian. Mario Lemieux and Sergei Gonchar look startled, then start to smile.

“Sid?” Mario asks, turning to Beau, and Beau freezes.

“Uh,” he says again. “No?”

0o0o0o0o0

When Jonny opens the door to his condo he’s expecting Pat with some takeout, not a grinning Alexander Ovechkin with a bottle of vodka.

“What are you doing here,” Jonny says warily, blocking his doorway instinctively. Ovechkin just grins more.

“You not invite me in? Is bad manners, Toews,” he says, clicking his tongue, and Jonny stands aside automatically and curses his Canadian upbringing when Ovechkin bulls his way into his apartment. “I hear you selected as Captain of Canada!”

“You what?” Jonny is confused. “Why?”

Ovechkin rolls his eyes. “You Captain Canada, I Captain Russia. Now we have drinking contest, see who win gold in Sochi.”

Jonny knows better. He really, really does. But the honor of Canada and another gold medal is at stake, so he gets out the glasses and prepares to do battle.

0o0o0o0o0

“I don’t get it,” Beau said. Paulie sighed.

“You know how Sid gets about traditions,” he said grimly. “C’mon, kid, you’re up next.” Beau balked.

“I’m not going up there!” he hissed. Paul gave him a sympathetic look even as he put one hand between his shoulder blades and propelled him forward.

“You’re going up there, you’re going to perform, and you’re going to do it now, Sunshine,” he said. “C’mon, everyone has to take a turn.”

“Karaoke with costumes,” Beau moaned, but let himself be dragged away by Duper, who was already looking gleeful. James flopped down next to Paul, wearing a cowboy hat he’d brought with him from his time in Dallas and a truly heinous belt buckle. Paul sighed.

“You’re singing Save A Horse, Ride A Cowboy, aren’t you,” he said, resigned, and James smirked and threw his arm around Paul.

“You betcha,” he said, doing his best imitation of Paul’s accent, which made Paul elbow him in disgust. “Ow, Paulie, c’mon. It’ll be great.”

"Your definition of great and my definition of great are not the same," Paul muttered, but just then Sunshine was pushed onto the stage wearing a pair of loose sweatpants, a purple vest with no shirt and a miserable expression, so he ignored James in favor of watching Sunshine’s unenthusiastic rendition of One Jump Ahead.

0o0o0o0o0

Beau is woken out of a sound sleep by an air horn being set off right next to his head.

“What?” he says, sitting up and looking around, still not entirely awake and pretty sure he’s dreaming. There’s no way that a bunch of guys in ski masks are standing around his bed, setting off air horns next to his face. That stuff just doesn’t happen, right?

“SURPRISE!!” They all scream, and the next thing Beau knows he and his bed are absolutely covered in silly string. Beau yelps and tries to duck back underneath the covers, but someone he didn’t notice was standing there at the foot of his bed and yanks them back down.

“What the hell?” he asks. He’s definitely not awake enough to handle whatever this is.

“We’re kidnapping you,” one of the guys informs him. “Go on, get dressed, and make sure to wear this.” He hands Beau a t-shirt as someone standing near the door flicks on the lights.

“What,” Beau says, still absolutely lost, because his parents are standing right there and seem to be stifling laughter. Which, kidnapping? What the hell? Why would his parents be laughing?

“C’mon, fishy,” another one of the guys says cheerfully. “Get dressed, let’s go.” Beau is still blinking up at them but he gets out of bed and starts getting dressed because he doesn’t know what else to do at this point.

“So I’m Nealsy, and this is Geno and Paulie,” says one of the guys once they’ve all gotten into the car. Beau’s carrying his trumpet case and wearing a shirt that says “This fish is the property of James Neal - if lost please return to Paul Martin or Evgeni Malkin” and feeling incredibly bemused by the whole thing. “We’re your big brothers. Welcome to the Penguin Marching Band, bro.”

0o0o0o0o0

“So no offense,” Pat Kane says when Sidney comes down out of the guest bedroom that he’s appropriated. “But why are you here?”

Sidney sighs. “I thought Jon told you,” he says.

Pat shrugs. “Jonny said you needed a place to stay and lay low for a little while, and I have more room than I know what to do with here so I said sure. He didn’t say why you needed to lay low.”

“I don’t really want to talk about it,” Sidney says, although he’s bracing himself to have to because no one just has accepted that yet. But Pat just nods.

“Fair enough. Grab some plates and set the table, would you? I’m making stir fry.”

0o0o0o0o0

It doesn’t take long for Seth to figure out that something’s up.

Shea doesn’t ever smile, really – he’s not cold, exactly, but he definitely doesn’t open up to anyone. He’s a good captain, but it seems like it’s out of reflex, not something he’s thinking about. He’ll go out with the guys, but he stays in the booth instead of going out and picking up. He looks sad all the time.

Seth heard about Suter and Parise going to Minnesota to play together (everyone heard about that) but he hadn’t realized, at the time, what that had meant to Shea. Now he watches Shea play, and sees the distance that Shea keeps between them, and hates Ryan Suter, just a little for teaching Shea to expect everyone to abandon him.

Hockey Fic - 5 Meals Brandy Bollig Made For Andrew Shaw +1 He Tried To Make For Her

2013-10-15T07:35:40Z

Title: 5 Meals Brandy Bollig Made For Andrew Shaw +1 He Tried To Make For Her
Rating: T
Beta:puckling
Pairing: Brandon Bollig/Andrew Shaw
Summary: Basically what it says in the title.

Clam Chowder

Brandy isn’t really surprised when Andy follows her to her car after morning skate - they’d been talking about video games, chirping a little, and Andy’s competitive streak is worse than Tazer’s, almost. It makes perfect sense that Andy would feel the need to back up his talk, and Brandy’s already made it clear that she has no intention of going over to his and Leddy’s place, like, ever. Neither of those two dumbasses actually knows how to clean.

As soon as they walk through the door to her apartment, Andy starts sniffing at the air, and Brandy grins. “Smell something, Mutt?” she asks, and Andy scowls at her.

“Fuck off,” he says, glaring. “What is that smell?” Her apartment does smell good - the warm, hearty scent of homemade clam chowder. Brandy takes a deep breath and holds it, smiling.

“I made chowder this morning,” she says, shrugging. The weather’s been getting to her, recently - St. Louis gets cold in the winter, but they don’t call Chicago the Windy City for nothing - and she felt like making comfort food. Andy’s face immediately goes slack with longing, and he turns the big pleading eyes on her.

“Can I have some?” he asks, and Brandy laughs at him, because his pleading eyes are the most ridiculous thing she’s ever seen, and she’s seen Kaner’s playoff mullet.

“If you can beat me at MarioKart,” she says, smirking at him, and Andy basically runs into the living room to get the game set up.

Andy doesn’t win, but he whines so much that Brandy gives him a bowl of chowder just to shut him up. “This is the best thing I have ever tasted,” he says, spooning more chowder into his mouth. Brandy goes pink with pleasure - she knows she’s a good cook, but she hasn’t had a chance to cook for someone else in a while. It’s always nice to be appreciated.

Meatloaf

“Are you cooking tonight?”

Brandy turns and gives Andy a raised eyebrow. “No,” she says. His face actually, literally falls, his mouth turning down at the corners as he heaves out a massive sigh. It’s simultaneously one of the best things she’s ever seen and one of the saddest, so she sighs and props her hip against her car. “I’m too tired to cook tonight, Mutt. I’m cooking tomorrow.” His face lights up, and Brandy mock scowls at him. “Did I say you could come over and eat my food?”

“No, but please?” He pulls out the pleading eyes again, and Brandy gives in to the urge and reaches out to ruffle his hair.

“Because you asked so nicely,” she says, sighing at him, and Andy actually punches the air in celebration. It’s one of the dorkiest things she’s seen him do and it’s kind of stupidly adorable.

That’s a terrifying thought, so she shoves it very, very far away and goes home to crash. When she wakes up the next morning she doesn’t think about it as she surveys her cabinets for ingredients. She doesn’t think about it when she finally decides on meatloaf and starts writing up a grocery list. She definitely doesn’t think about it while she’s making dinner.

Andy shows up early, which is basically unheard of, and he’s brought beer. Brandy squashes the warm fuzzy feeling that wants to take root in her stomach at the hopeful look on his face and chases him out of the kitchen.

“Dinner will be ready in 20 minutes, now get out,” she says, putting her hands on his shoulders and steering him towards the living room while he pouts and tries to snag a roll. “No,” she says, smacking his hand away. “Bad dog.” He glares balefully at her but doesn’t say anything, probably because he’s worried she’ll chase him out of her apartment without feeding him.

Andy basically doesn’t even breathe, he’s eating so fast. “Slow down, buddy,” she says, concerned. “My Heimlich’s a little rusty.” Andy snorts but slows down anyway, looking blissed out.

“So good,” he basically moans, and Brandy knows she’s smiling like an idiot but she doesn’t really care. It really is nice to be appreciated.

Lasagna

Brandy isn’t sure whose idea it was to have a potluck dinner, although her money is on the BlackhawksTV guys, since while most of the team isn’t terrible in the kitchen, there aren’t that many who enjoy cooking. She does, though, and she knows Hoss and Oduya aren’t bad, but Kaner’s a disaster and not even Tazer supervising can prevent her from burning things. Brandy suspects that most of them will be getting their significant other to cook for them, although in some cases they’ll probably just bring take-out and try to pass it off as their own cooking. Kaner and Seabs are the most likely culprits - Seabs and Dayna are both awful cooks, and Brandy has long suspected that Duncs and Seabs got houses so close together to prevent Seabs and Dayna from starving to death.

Brandy hasn’t had to cook for more than one hockey player in a while (or two, because Andy’s been hovering recently trying to score more dinner invites, and she’s a total sucker for his sad face), but she decides pretty quickly that lasagna is the way to go. She’s sure that there’ll be plenty of food at the potluck but she makes a couple just in case, because she’s been known to put away half of one on her own.

There is plenty of food at the potluck, although Brandy is kind of proud when she sees that her lasagna is one of the first things to go. Andy sits next to her at the table carrying a plate with a healthy portion of lasagna and wearing a smug expression.

“What’s that look for, mutt?” she asks, digging into the stew Hoss brought. It’s delicious - she’ll have to ask him for the recipe. Andy’s smug look intensifies as Leddy sits with them and sighs at Andy’s plate.

“No fair,” he complains. “You got a ton of lasagna and I didn’t even get any.” Brandy starts laughing at that but Leddy just pouts harder, while Andy takes a huge bite of lasagna and chews it obnoxiously. Brandy stops laughing and looks at them incredulously. It’s just food, after all - why all the fuss?

“Seriously?” she asks, and Leddy gives her a huge sigh and turns to face her, pushing out his lower lip in an attempt to look more tragic.

“Everyone’s going on and on about how good the lasagna is,” he says, mournful. “And I went up to try some, but there wasn’t any left. He probably took it all,” he says, glaring at Andrew, who smirks. Brandy rolls her eyes.

“I’ll make some more for you sometime,” she says absently, going back to her stew. When she looks back up, Andy and Leddy are both staring at her. Which, huh, apparently Andy hasn’t told anyone about her skills in the kitchen. She isn’t hiding them, per say - no, who is she kidding, she’s totally hiding them. She works hard enough to feed herself and Andy when he’s over, she doesn’t want to have to deal with a horde of hungry Blackhawks descending on her kitchen.

“You made the lasagna?” Leddy asks, while Andy says, “Like fuck you will!”

“Yes, I made the lasagna,” she tells Leddy, before turning to Andy. “And like fuck you’ll tell me who I can and can’t make food for,” she says, glaring at him dangerously. “I’ll make lasagna for Leddy if I want, and you are not invited.” She stands and picks up her plate, going off to find Hossa and get the recipe for the stew. Andy follows her, because he’s a persistent little fucker.

“Don’t do it,” he demands, and Brandy turns to face him.

“Don’t do what, Andrew? Don’t cook for my friend and teammate?” Her voice is soft and dangerous, but Andy isn’t picking up on it.

“Don’t cook for Leddy,” he says, and Brandy would take him by the shoulders and shake him except she’s still carrying her plate.

“I’ll cook for Leddy if I want to cook for Leddy, you arrogant jackass,” she says, and she’s only not yelling at him because the whole team is around. “What, you think I should only cook for you?”

“Yes,” he says, shameless, and Brandy just - can’t. Because she wants to, is the thing - she wants to cook just for him but for him it’s just food and for her it’s something else and she’s so very tired of the status quo.

“Fuck you, Shawzy,” she says, tiredly, before turning her back on him and walking away.

Apple and Fennel Roasted Pork Tenderloin

Lately Andy has been acting even more obnoxious than usual, and it’s pissing Brandy off. It probably has to do with how she basically ignored him for a week after the potluck. Ridiculous as it was, it got under her skin, and instead of just having it out with him like she normally would when he does stupid shit, she avoided and ignored him. By the time she got over her hurt feelings or whatever the fuck, Andy’d started being even louder and more obnoxious, chirps acquiring a vicious edge they’d lacked before. He’s been bouncing around the locker room, getting up in everyone’s face but hers. He’s been pointedly ignoring her.

The team is starting to give the two of them sidelong looks, and Brandy would really like to know when she got designated Official Andy Wrangler, because, no. Just no. But Kaner is starting to look like she’s about to kick his ass, Tazer’s got the crazy eyes on even more than normal, and even Saader is starting to look like she’s about to strangle Andy with her skate laces, so. Brandy sucks it up and gets Andy in a headlock after practice.

“I’m making dinner tonight,” she says, ignoring his angry shouting as he tries to get free (which, good luck, dude - she’s got three inches and thirty pounds on him and she fights people for a living). “You can come over and eat some of it, if you want.”

“Is Leddy coming too?” Andy asks, and Brandy pushes him away so that she doesn’t give in to the urge to punch him in the face at his snotty tone.

“He can come if he wants,” she says evenly, once she’s got her temper back under control. “I wasn’t going to invite him, though, so that’s on you.” She turns around and stalks off before she can rescind the invitation, even though she kind of wants to.

She’s in a slow, simmering temper all the way through making dinner - apple and fennel roasted pork tenderloin with broccoli and wild rice - that comes to a boil when she hears her doorbell ring. She stomps over to open the door and finds Andy standing on her porch, looking about as sheepish as it’s possible for him to get and holding a bottle of wine. Her temper boils off just that fast, and she holds the door open wider as he shuffles in.

“Leddy not coming?” she asks, because she might not be about to punch him in the face anymore but she’s still kind of upset. Andy ducks his head and mumbles something into her kitchen counter. “What was that?”

“I said, he said I needed to apologize,” he says, peeking up at her. “I’ve been kind of a dick, lately.”

“You’re always a dick, Shawzer,” she says, before reaching out and giving him a noogie. “It’s okay, though. You’re our dick, and that’s what counts.” He perks up after that, and starts sniffing at the air.

“So, what’s for dinner?” he asks, and Brandy laughs and shoves him out of her kitchen.

Coq au Vin

After they’ve made up from their weird fight things go pretty much back to normal, with Andy kind of hanging around and angling for dinner invitations as often as he can get them. Brandy’s given up on stressing about it in favor of focusing on playing her heart out as they come down on the end of the season She doesn’t give out the dinner invitations nearly as often as she used to, though, because while she’s paid to get punched in the face for a living she’s actually not a masochist, thanks.

Andy’s been acting a little weird, too - he and Leddy have been having whispered conversations that always stop whenever she gets near. She asked Saader about it but Saader just kind of patted her on the shoulder and took her out to get margaritas. Which, Saader’s not even legal yet, so Brandy had to buy the margaritas, so she’s not sure how that was fair. Saader’s just an evil genius, she guesses.

She calls home, eventually, and her mom listens to the whole thing before humming thoughtfully. Brandy hates that sound - it means her mom is going to say exactly what she needs to hear, and she’s going to hate hearing it.

“Oh, honey,” her mom says, and yep - Brandy already hates it. “Have you tried telling him how you feel?”

Brandy scowls at the phone. “We’re hockey players, Mom,” she says. “Half the point is that we don’t talk about feelings. It’s written into our contracts somewhere.”

Her mom sounds amused. “You’ll never know if you don’t ask,” she says, and then changes the subject. “Brittany wants to know if you mind making Lisa’s birthday cake when you’re home for the summer.”

“Nope, not at all,” Brandy says, spinning her hat around her finger idly. “What’s Lisa into these days?”

“Mermaids,” her mom sighs. “I swear we’ve been to the pool every day this week.” Brandy grins.

“I can make a kickass mermaid cake,” she promises, and they talk a little more about news from home and how the season’s going and how well the Hawks are going to do in the playoffs before hanging up.

The thing is, Brandy keeps thinking about it and eventually decides that not talking about it is actually worse than talking about it would be. Andy’s still hovering and fishing for dinner invites but he’s stopped doing it quite so often and to be honest she misses him. So she nuts up and invites him over for dinner - like, an actual invitation and not one that he had to fish for. He accepts, but spends the rest of practice giving her the side-eye, like he’s not quite sure what’s going on. Brandy rolls her eyes at him but spends the afternoon at home cooking and trying not to psych herself out.

Andy shows up at her door promptly on time with a bottle of wine, wearing clothes that don’t actually look awful on him. Brandy eyes him suspiciously as she takes the wine, and then doubletakes, because this is a good bottle of wine. Andy looks like he’s about to bolt, though, so she pushes him into the living room and goes back to determinedly not freaking out in the kitchen instead of giving him crap about it.

The meal is ready before she is, but she goes out and sets it up anyway before calling Andy in. Which is also suspicious - normally he hovers around the entrance of the kitchen even after she’s shoved him out the first time, trying to sneak bites of everything, but this time he actually went into the living room and turned on the TV. He turns it off and comes when she calls him, though, sniffing the air with his trademark hopeful face on, only to stop dead when he reaches her dining room.

Brandy’s face feels like it’s on fire, because she got out the nice plates and the wine glasses. She almost got out the candles, too, but put them back at the last moment because she didn’t want to freak him out too much. She was kind of counting on him not noticing, but apparently he’s more observant than she’d given him credit for, and he raises his eyebrows at her, nodding towards the table. She ignores it, sitting down at her usual spot and gesturing at him impatiently.

“C’mon, Mutt, let’s eat before it gets cold.”

Andy sits down, rolling his eyes back into his head and groaning after the first bite. “Fuck, Brandy, what is this?” he asks, and she keeps her eyes on her plate.

“It’s called Coq au Vin,” she mutters. “It’s French, means Chicken with Wine.”

“This is the best thing I’ve ever tasted,” he says, digging in fervently. “Oh, my god. It tastes like sex on a plate.”

They both freeze after he says that, staring at each other with identical wide-eyed expressions. Brandy wasn’t aware that her face could get any redder and yet it does. Andy’s equally red, and it belatedly occurs to Brandy that Andy probably wouldn’t have gotten awkward about it unless. . .

“This is a date,” she says, less of a question and more of a statement, and Andy grins at her, still bright red.

“Knew you’d figure it out eventually,” he says, and Brandy narrows her eyes at him.

“Just for that,” she says, pointing at him with her fork, “you get to do the dishes.” Andy squawks in protest but she gives him a dirty smile. “If you do them well enough, well,” she shrugs. “I might even put out.”

Andy chokes on the mouthful of Coq au Vin he’d just taken and starts swearing at her, while Brandy gives him her best shit-eating grin and keeps eating. Yeah, they’re both a little slow, but they got there eventually.

+1. Scrambled Eggs and Toast

Brandy wakes up to the sound of Andy cursing at her stove and the smell of something burning. Tempted as she is to ignore it, roll over and go back to sleep, she doesn’t want to be the asshole who wakes up everyone in the building by setting the fire alarm off. She pads out into the kitchen and opens the window, yawning.

Andy is standing at the stove, poking at something that she’s pretty sure used to be eggs. There’s a thin curl of smoke coming from the toaster and Brandy’s betting that her favorite frying pan is never going to be the same.

“It’s too early for this,” she mutters, hip-checking Andy out of the way as she unplugs the toaster and turns off the stove. He starts to protest but Brandy just carries the frying pan over to the sink and scrapes off as much as she can into the garbage disposal before filling the sink with soapy water and leaving it there to soak. When she turns around, Andy’s using a knife to try and pry the toast out of the toaster, and she rolls her eyes at him. “Don’t do that, you idiot.”

“You unplugged it,” he says, mulishly, as Brandy carries the toaster over to the trash can and upends it.

“Menace,” she says, surveying her kitchen. Luckily, he’d managed to confine his mess to the stove and the toaster, but she doesn’t feel like dealing with it right now so she leans over to kiss him into silence. It works surprisingly well..

“You’re buying me breakfast,” she says, once he’s quiet enough. “C’mon, Mutt. And afterwards, we’re coming back and you’re cleaning this up.” When he starts to protest, Brandy just laughs at him. “Next time,” she says, padding back into the bedroom to pull on some clothes, “leave the cooking to me.”

Hockey Fic - Raised By Wolves

2013-10-11T04:36:17Z

Title: Raised By Wolves
Rating: R
Beta:biggersandwich
Pairing: Cam Atkinson/Matt Calvert/Artem Anisimov
Summary: People are always telling Cam that he and Matt “just need an Alpha.” He would like to take this opportunity to tell all of them to fuck right off. The two of them are fine - they’re better than fine, they’re pack - and they don’t need anyone else.

"That doesn’t mean we can’t want anybody else,” Matt says, all logic, whenever Cam brings it up. Cam would argue, but well. Artem.

People are always telling Cam that he and Matt “just need an Alpha.” He would like to take this opportunity to tell all of them to fuck right off. The two of them are fine - they’re better than fine, they’re pack - and they don’t need anyone else.

"That doesn’t mean we can’t want anybody else,” Matt says, all logic, whenever Cam brings it up. Cam would argue, but well. Artem.

0o0o0o0o0

Artem is not a werewolf. Artem was not raised by wolves. Artem, as far as either of them can tell, is not aware that werewolves exist. This would not normally be a problem (plenty of people both aren’t werewolves and don’t know that werewolves exist, it’s fine), but Artem has been hanging around with them so much that he’s begun to smell like pack, and it’s starting to have an effect on them.

The two of them have always worked well on a line together - being pack means having an awareness of exactly where they are in relation to each other at all times, which comes in handy on the ice. They’ve cycled through a couple of different centers, clicked more with some than others, but they’ve never had anyone that fit, not until Artem. He plays like he belongs with the two of them, and they’ve started to treat him like he does, folding him into the two of them without even thinking about it.

“We’re hanging out at Cam’s tonight,” Matt informs Artem in the locker room after practice. He blinks quizzically at Matt but nods. Vinny starts ragging on Matt about not being invited to their “super secret club,” but Matt just laughs and chirps Vinny back about being old. Jack watches them thoughtfully, indulgently (he’s young to be a veteran but their team is so young, still, so much potential that they just haven’t caught up to yet) and waylays Cam on his way to the shower.

“Hosting movie night tonight, Biebs?” he asks, and Cam rolls his eyes like he always does at the nickname.

“I guess,” he says, laughing a little.

“Do I get to come?”

“If you want.” Jack can’t possibly miss the way Cam is utterly unenthusiastic about the prospect, and he just grins.

“So codependent,” he sighs, and what. He definitely does not have any room to talk, what with all of the stories the team has heard about he and Crosby in high school, and Cam tells him so. Jack turns an interesting shade of pink (Cam files that away gleefully for future reference, becausegold) and lets it drop, for now.

0o0o0o0o0

There’s a lot of talking in the media about Gaborik taking the “young ones” on the team under his wing, which, whatever, there’s always a lot of talking in the media and about 85% of it is totally bogus. Matt is willing to admit that there might be a tiny bit more truth to this than there normally is, though, because Gaborik is also a wolf, and he and Cam may have been hanging around him adoringly. It’s hard, sometimes, being the only wolves on the team. None of the other guys even know. Gabby’s not pack, though - not even close, he has his own pack and whatever else people might say, Matt and Cam don’t actually need an alpha. They’ve been doing just fine on their own.

Gabby’s been really good to them, telling them stories about being a wolf in the NHL, giving advice. He’s also been watching the way they circle around Artem, eyes sharp and not missing anything, but after the first time he didn’t say anything they figured he wasn’t going to say anything at all and relaxed. It’s a shock, then, when he has the two of them hang back in the locker room when everyone’s heading out after practice (Artem’s looking over his shoulder in confusion, because the team has dropped all pretence of not treating the three of them like a single unit) and gives them a serious look once they’re alone.

“Are you ever going to bite him?”

Cam and Matt exchange glances but don’t say anything else, just fidget uncomfortably. Gabby frowns.

“You haven’t even told him yet,” he deduces. Cam is very interested in counting the ceiling tiles in the locker room while Matt finds a spot on his arm that he didn’t clean well enough and rubs at it. “This is stupid. Either tell him - and bite him - or stop it with him. You are putting all of us at risk,” he says, flatly, and they both flush but remain defiant.

“You can’t tell us what to do,” Cam says, and Gabby just looks at him.

“You will either do these things, or I will tell him,” he says. “It is not fair to him, to you, or to me, and it has gone on long enough. Choose.” He grabs his stuff and leaves, while the two of them to stare at his back as he exits the locker room.

0o0o0o0o0

They talk about it but they haven’t actually decided anything when Artem shows up at Matt’s place with a six-pack and some snacks on a full moon night and they both freeze awkwardly, because shockingly, it hasn’t ever come up before. Full moon nights have been right before or after games, or around travel days, and it’s just been easy up until now to make their excuses and not hang out, but they’d forgotten, and now Artem is standing in Matt’s doorway giving them confused looks.

Worse than that, they actually had plans for tonight - made mostly on autopilot a few days ago while they were both preoccupied with thinking about how they’re going to handle their situation (Gabby didn’t give them a time limit but they both know that he meant soon), and they were so distracted that they forgot that it was the night of the full moon. What kind of werewolves even do that, Matt wonders despairingly, as Artem goes from confused to hurt at their awkward silence.

“I can go,” he says, haltingly, “if you want be alone-” but that’s the absolute last thing either of them wants and Matt is reaching out a hand to grab Artem and reel him in without even thinking about it.

“Stay,” he says, and he can feel Cam nodding behind him. “Anyway, we. . . have something to tell you.”

0o0o0o0o0

Artem is huge as a wolf, black as midnight and sleek, utterly silent on his feet when he runs. Matt and Cam, to their chagrin, are just as much smaller than him when they’re wolves as they are when they’re human, and can only overpower him during wrestling when they work together (and plan it out in advance). Gabby gives them looks that are approving and mildly pained during their next practice, because they all fell asleep tangled together as wolves and woke up as a tangle of naked, aroused humans, and . . . well. Gabby can certainly smell it. Not to mention, all three of them showed up to practice together with matching smug grins and they’re playing like they can read each other’s minds, so they’ve been getting suspicious looks from everybody..

The rest of the team will just have to get used to it.

Epilogue:

Cam comes home from practice to find Matt and Artem making out on the couch. He grins, giddily for a moment because this is his life now before composing his face into an irritated expression and clearing his throat. Matt pulls back and gives him a look.

“See something you like?” he says, smiling sleezily. Artem has buried his face in Matt’s neck and is sucking a mark there, and he must find a sensitive spot (or Matt is just a tease) because Matt throws his head back and moans. Cam’s mouth goes a little dry at the sight.

“Bedroom,” he says, insistent, and Matt gives him an utterly filthy look but gets up off of Artem’s lap. Artem looks debauched, lips bright red, cheeks flushed, and hair disarray from where Matt’s been running his hands through it. He stays seated for a moment, dazed, and Matt comes over to cup Cam’s face and lean down to kiss him.

Cam sways into the kiss eagerly, humming with pleasure when Matt licks his way into his mouth. Artem lets out a groan from close by - he’s come right up next to them and is watching them with hot eyes when Matt finally breaks the kiss to smirk at both of them.

“Bedroom?” Matt asks, innocently, and Artem growls and picks him up, carrying him down the hallway to throw him on the bed. Cam trails after them, torn between laughing at Matt and wide-eyed wonder at how hot that was.

Matt is sprawled across their bed, grinning lazily at them - it’s a total lie, Cam can see how flushed he is, how fast he’s breathing. But he’s trying to pass himself off as unmoved, so Cam turns to Artem and goes up on his toes for a kiss, ignoring Matt completely. Artem is nothing if not obliging.

“Oh, c’mon,” Matt complains, after a few moments, and Cam and Artem break apart to look at him. He’s nearly naked and is lounging on the bed, slowly stroking himself through his boxers. Cam would really like to be able to roll his eyes at him, but he’s too busy watching. “You going to join me?” he asks, and Cam and Artem can’t get their clothes off fast enough, falling onto the bed as Matt laughs at them and kicks his way out of his underwear.

From there it’s kind of a tangle of limbs as they all try to touch and kiss each other all at once, but eventually Artem separates them out and says, simply, “Like this.” He arranges Matt in his lap and gestures until Cam is kneeling between their legs. Matt’s eyes are looking a little glazed but he still manages to smirk down at Cam.

“It’s a good view, huh?” he says, and Cam really does roll his eyes this time.

“Shut up,” he says, before taking Matt into his mouth. Matt makes a choked noise and Cam looks up through his eyelashes to see that Artem is using one hand to play with Matt’s nipples. Matt’s eyes are closed and his hips are starting to shift restlessly. Cam puts one hand firmly on his hips to discourage that and wraps the other around the base of his cock, stroking firmly as he sucks Matt off.

It doesn’t take long to reduce Matt to a whimpering mess, which Cam is feeling kind of smug about until Matt’s whimpering takes on a higher pitch and he comes in Cam’s mouth without any warning. Cam swallows (because it’s that or choke, at this point) before pulling off, coughing, and punching Matt in the thigh.

“Not cool, dude.” Matt’s too blissed out to care, although he manages to look vaguely apologetic for about half a second before it rolls over into blissed out again. Cam looks up at Artem appealingly, and Artem shoots him a grin over Matt’s shoulder.

“Turnabout is fair play, Matt,” he says, before moving Matt off his lap and pulling Cam up into a kiss. Cam goes easily - Artem likes the way come tastes in their mouths. They’re grinding against each other kind of lazily when Matt pipes up from Cam’s right.

“Hot as this is, guys, you said something about turnabout.” Artem pulls off and gives them both a slow smile.

“You like that? You want his mouth?” he says, that low filthy voice Cam always associates with sex and Cam’s hips jerk involuntarily. He nods, and Artem moves him around so that Matt can get between his legs. Cam chokes off a whine at the feeling of being manhandled - he may be small for a hockey player, but he’s not small, and he likes knowing Artem can just pick him up and put him wherever he wants him. Matt gives him a look that Cam’s pretty sure is supposed to be sultry but instead is just ridiculous, and Cam is still laughing when Matt swallows him down.

They get a rhythm going after a few false starts. Cam would be embarrassed about how fast he’s going to get off on this, but Matt’s moved on to deepthroating him (he’s the only one of them without a gag reflex and he’s merciless about exploiting that fact) and Artem is rubbing off against his ass, muttering absolute filth in his ear about how good they look, and look at him, how well he takes it, he loves it, so basically Cam is feeling no pain, here. He does grab Matt’s head in warning when he’s about to come - he’s not inconsiderate, thanks - but Matt just takes him deep again and hums, and Cam comes down his throat with a groan. Artem says something that sounds blasphemous in Russian and keeps moving against Cam before coming all over his ass and back with a shout. The three of them collapse across the bed, breathing heavily, before Cam pushes himself up on his elbows and makes a face.

“I’m going to go take a shower,” he announces. Matt and Artem just wave their hands at him lazily so he sighs and drags himself out of bed and into the shower, muttering about their lack of consideration. When he comes out of the bathroom, he finds Matt and Artem draped across each other, making out.

“Oh my god, you guys,” he says, even as he crosses the floor to the bed and flops down next to them. “You couldn’t wait for me? Rude.”

Matt leans over and presses a sloppy kiss to his cheek. “Naptime,” he declares, rolling off of Artem and curling up on his side. Cam catches Artem giving them both fond looks before he reaches down and pulls the covers up over them.

“Sleep,” Matt sighs, snuggling up to Cam throwing an arm around his waist. Cam rolls his eyes but he puts his own arms around Matt and gestures for Artem to get closer.

“Sleep tight,” he says, closing his eyes and drifting off.

Misc Bitching and Moaning

2013-10-04T23:43:14Z

So, I signed up for Avengersfest this year (the minimum word count was only 1k, I wasn't too worried about it) and I'm almost done!! I haven't written anything in Marvel's sandbox before, so it was kind of nice to break out of my comfort zone and try something else for a change It's due in two weeks, and I just have one more scene to finish up writing. The only problem is that this particular scene is the sex scene, and I just - I am kind of terrible at those. :( Writing porn is hard, especially good porn, and I'd kind of like for this to be good porn - it's supposed to be a gift, after all. So! If anyone has any suggestions for smut writing resources, I would greatly appreciate it.

Once I'm done with this, it'll be back to your regularly scheduled hockey programming. I have a couple of WIPs that I've put on hold to finish this before the deadline, so they should be coming soon (not too soon, I have midterms coming up, but probably after those).

Hockey Fic - Both Hands Tied Behind My Back, Part 3

2013-09-16T01:46:20Z

Part 2

“Turn on the TV.”

“Eric? It’s 1 A.M., why are you calling me?”

“Marc, I’m serious. Turn on your TV.”

“What the fuck,” Marc said, but he dragged himself out of his bedroom and into the living room to turn on the TV. “What channel?” He hadn’t been asleep anyway – Kris’s message had kept him awake, thinking over what it meant and whether or not he should respond.

“TSN,” Eric said, sounding tense and freaked out. Marc obediently flipped over to TSN and sat down on his couch in shock.

“Eric,” he said, dazed, staring at his TV.

“I know,” Eric agreed, equally dazed. The scrolling ticker at the bottom of the screen read: “NHL Commissioner dies in tragic car accident; Crosby and Letang hospitalized.”

“What the fuck,” Marc repeated. “No, seriously, what the hell?”

“I don’t know,” Eric said. “Marc, I have no idea.”

“I’ll call you back,” Marc said, hanging up the phone and calling Kris. He went straight to voicemail. “What the fuck? What did you do? How are you still alive? Call me.” He hung up, dazed, and continued staring at the TV, where the announcers were showing pictures of the crash and talking nervously about what effect it might have on the league. Marc turned the TV off when they started to repeat themselves and sat back on his couch, staring into space. “What the fuck,” he said plaintively, but there was no one in his apartment to answer him.

0o0o0o0o0

Marc watched the media frenzy that followed Bettman’s death and Kris and Crosby’s hospitalization with a weird sense of detachment. During the autopsy one of the coroners had discovered signs that Bettman had been a demon-shell for a while before he died, which just whipped the reporters into a greater froth. No one mentioned anything about Kris Letang being Sidney Crosby’s guardian, or Crosby’s deal, so Marc figured they must have hidden that successfully. It was the only thing on the news for a couple of days (one of the commentators said, sarcastically, that Bettman’s death did more to increase the visibility of the NHL than his entire tenure as commissioner, and speculated that he’d gotten the wrong end of a demon’s deal) and then it died down. There was a brief blurb when Crosby was released from the hospital, but it was like everyone had completely forgotten about Kris. Marc went and scanned a couple of news reports, there were no mentions of him at all besides that he’d “been there at the time,” and that he could not be reached for comment.

Kris never returned his phone call. Marc checked his phone obsessively for a day or so but after that he decided that Kris must have gotten his message by now and decided to ignore it or forgotten about it. So when the doorman called up to his apartment to say that he had a visitor, Marc certainly wasn’t expecting to open the door to find Kris standing in his hallway, looking sheepish.

“Kris?” Marc said blankly. “What are you doing here?”

“I just,” Kris said, looking uncomfortable. “Can I come in?”

Marc waved him into his apartment, too stunned to do anything else. Kris smiled at him tentatively as he came in and Marc smiled back automatically as they came into his living room and sat down. “So,” he said, once they had both settled down.

“Sorry I didn’t call you back,” Kris blurted. He made a hilarious face afterwards, like he hadn’t meant to lead with that, and Marc cracked half a smile looking at him. “Sorry,” Kris said. “I mean, I am sorry that I didn’t call you back, but I’m sorry about a lot of other things too, and I didn’t really mean to lead with that.”

“What did you mean to lead with?” Marc asked, curious.

“I’m sorry for what I said,” Kris said, meeting his eyes clearly. “I’m sorry that I gave up so easily. And I’m sorry for being a coward.”

“And I’m sorry,” Marc said, earnestly. “I’m sorry that I ignored you for so long.”

Kris gave him a wan smile. “You were justified, I think.”

“No,” Marc said. “That was a dick move, and I’m sorry.”

They sat there in awkward silence for a while before Marc cleared his throat loudly. “So what happened?”

Kris shut his eyes, tightly. “I figured out what the deal was. And I fixed it.” His voice was bleak and he clearly didn’t want to talk about it, so Marc changed the subject even though he was dying of curiosity.

“Did your wings. . . ?” he asked, and Kris opened his eyes and gave him a real smile.

“Yes,” he said, proudly. “They did. Look-“ he stood up and all of the sudden they were there, just like Marc remembered except that now they were clearly there in a way they hadn’t been before. “Go ahead,” Kris said, smirking, and Marc realized that his hand was halfway outstretched, again, just like the last time he’d seen Kris’s wings.

He didn’t need to be told twice – he reached out and buried his fingers in the feathers. Kris drew a startled breath, and Marc looked up at him quickly. “This okay?” he asked. Kris’s expression was a little dazed.

“That feels. . . “ He swallowed, hard, and Marc had a hunch and brought up his other hand and buried that in Kris’s wing as well. Kris shuddered and shut his eyes. “Don’t stop,” he said, and he sounded wrecked. Marc almost drew his hands back.

“I thought,” he said, confused. “But aren’t guardians-“

“Fuck the rules,” Kris said, eyes still closed. “They’re really more like guidelines anyway.”

“Did you just quote Pirates of the Caribbean at me,” Marc asked, disbelieving, but a crazy grin was overtaking his face. “Really?” he asked, quieter, and Kris looked up at him.

“Really,” he said, and Marc used the hold he had on Kris’s wing to draw him in closer and lean down for a kiss. Kris came willingly, pushing up into the kiss and moaning. That lasted several long minutes before Marc broke away.

“No, seriously, how did you do it?”

“You want to know this now?” Kris demanded, trying to chase his mouth. “It cannot wait?”

“If I don’t know I’ll just be distracted wondering,” Marc pointed out, ignoring the look that Kris gave him, which suggested that Kris was offended that he thought he could be distracted. Kris sighed heavily and sat down, folding his wings behind him. They slid right through the couch again, and Marc stared, trying to work out what was going on before snapping his eyes up to Kris’s face when he cleared his throat pointedly.

“I thought you wanted to hear my story,” Kris said snarkily, but one corner of his mouth was tipped up in a smile. Marc nodded vigorously and folded his hands in his lap. Kris rolled his eyes and began.

“It took me a while to work out the terms of the deal,” Kris said, a faraway look in his eyes. “Sid was avoiding me like the plague and still wouldn’t tell me anything. I was tired of it, and I was afraid for him, especially when they started taking blood more and more frequently, without even games as an excuse. So I stole his phone and called his sister.”

“You what?”

“Stole his phone and called his sister. They’re very close, and if there anyone was going to know what was going on with him it would be her.”

“So did she know?”

“No, but she did fly down and help me interrogate him. He folded pretty much immediately after that - wish I’d thought of it sooner.”

“So what was his deal?” Marc asked, and Kris closed his eyes wearily.

“It was all a bit complicated, especially since Sid didn’t understand what was going on, but I managed to work it out eventually. His father made a deal, once upon a time - his soul for a legacy. The problem with that is that is that you’re making deals with demons - they aren’t going to just grant your wish in return for what you promised them. So his father thought that the terms of the deal were voided by the fact that he never got to play in the NHL, but really the demon took his deal and fulfilled it by making sure that Sid got all the talent and the opportunities to really leave a mark on the NHL. That’s what a legacy is, if you’re being really specific - your children and grandchildren. But Sid’s dad didn’t know that when he was making the deal, and didn’t realize until it was too late.”

“But what did that have to do with Crosby?”

Kris made an irritated motion. “Sid is an idiot. The demon came calling to collect his father’s soul, Sid happened to overhear the conversation and tried to make a trade - himself for his father. The demon took the trade, and started having Sid drained. The thing was,” he said, looking exhausted, “is that you can’t make changes to an existing deal. And demons are not allowed to take something for nothing. It’s against their rules.”

“Demons have rules?”

“Demons do have rules - or rather, deals have rules, and demons can’t break them. They try - oh, do they ever try. They’re demons, after all. But if you catch a demon breaking the rules, any deals that demon has made can be revoked.” Kris smiled, grimly. “Not that they’ll let you do it without a fight, but.” He shrugged. “That is what guardians are for. So I summoned the demon and revoked his deals. It was not pretty.”

“But then the car crash?”

“It’s. . . harder for demons to access all of their powers when they’re in motion,” Kris said. “Harder for any supernatural creature, actually, no one’s really sure why. But obviously this was a powerful demon, so I thought it best to shackle him as I could. The car crashed because I finally managed to revoke his deals, and the backlash spun the car out of control.”

“How did you and Crosby survive?” Marc asked, because he had seen the pictures - the car had spun out right in front of an 18-wheeler and been utterly destroyed. It was hard to imagine how either of them could have survived that collision.

“That was me,” Kris said. “I used the backlash to throw Sid and I out of the car just before we got hit. We weren’t actually in the car when it crashed.”

Marc whistled. “Impressive,” he said, smirking, and Kris gave him a hot look.

“That’s not the only thing about me that’s impressive,” he said, and Marc’s throat went dry even as he scoffed.

“Big talker. Prove it.”

“Happy to,” Kris purred, coming over to straddle Marc’s lap. Marc’s hands settled themselves on Kris’s hips instinctively and he pulled him even closer.

“So now that you’ve finished your Crosby assignment-”

“It’s not over yet,” Kris interrupted him. “I don’t think it’ll be over until he retires, actually. And then I can pick my own next assignment.” He grinned down at Marc. “You’re stuck with me, Staal.”

“Oh the horror,” Marc said, and Kris cut him off with a kiss.

Hockey Fic - Both Hands Tied Behind My Back, Part 2

2013-09-16T01:44:13Z

Part 1

Crosby continued his weird trend of two games on, two games off the ice, so he was not in the lineup for the Rangers at the Penguins. After the game – a resounding win for the Rangers; the Penguins were beginning to show the strain of not having a consistent lineup – Marc met up with Kris outside of the visitor’s locker room.

“Hey,” he said. Kris nodded in greeting and started walking off, briskly. Marc followed along automatically. “Where are we going?”

“My car,” Kris said dryly. “And after that, to my house to have a drink and a discussion. Unless you’ve changed your mind.”

“No, sounds good,” Marc said, and they spent the rest of the trip to Kris’s house in silence, broken only by the radio in the car. When they got there, Kris walked straight into the kitchen and pulled out the whisky. He poured two glasses and handed one to Marc, who took it with a raised eyebrow.

“This is not a beer conversation,” Kris said, raising his glass to Marc, who clinked their glasses together with a muttered “Salut.” “So,” he said, after they had both taken a sip of their whisky. “You have questions for me.”

“What the hell is going on?” Marc asked, because Kris was right - he did have questions and that was the biggest and most pressing. Kris didn’t seem surprised, he just took another sip of his whisky before setting his glass down on the table and giving Marc a steady look.

“Someone or something is draining Sid,” he said, quietly. “I don’t know why, and I don’t know what’s doing it. I’m pretty sure Sid knows, but he won’t tell me, which worries me.” Marc blinked and sat back.

“When you say draining, do you mean blood? Or something else?”

“Right now it’s just blood,” Kris said, sighing. “They’re not getting anything else, that was the first thing I checked. But if he keeps letting them do this it’s going to kill him.”

Something cold and nasty took up residence in the pit of Marc’s stomach. Kris’s face was bleak and Marc resisted the urge to lean over and hug him. He wasn’t sure why he cared so much, except that Kris was willing to confide in him and that he seemed to need someone to confide in. He swallowed hard and offered Kris a small smile.

“But other than that,” Marc said. “How’ve you been?”

Kris looked over at him as though he’d just sprouted another head, but something in Marc’s face must have shown that he was serious and not just trying to change the subject, because he relaxed, slumping forward and resting his forehead on the table.

“It’s hard,” he said, quietly. “We’ve been playing like shit recently-“ Marc muffled a snort, because he’d noticed, and Kris turned his head just enough that he could glare up at Marc. “Not to mention Sid won’t tell me anything, and I hate that. I can’t do anything about it if he won’t tell me what’s wrong. Other than that, things haven’t been so bad.”

“Other than that,” Marc said dryly, and Kris’s mouth twitched like he was thinking about smiling. “What could you do anyway, if he did tell you what was going wrong?”

“I don’t know,” Kris said, banging his head on the table. “I could fix it, though. That’s what guardians are for, we’re supposed to fix things like this, and he won’t let me fix this, and it’s going to kill him.” Kris looked up and his face was miserable. “They won’t ever give me another assignment if I mess this one up too.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Guardians,” Kris sighed. “We’re given assignments, and we’re supposed to protect them.” Marc’s mouth twitched and Kris gave him a half-hearted glare. “Shut up.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Marc said, taking another sip of his whisky to keep from smiling. Kris gave him a suspicious look but leaned back in his chair.

“Your face said it all, Staal,” Kris said. “Anyway, we’re supposed to protect them, and I-“ his words choked off. Marc looked over at him in alarm. He had lowered his head to his chest and was taking deep, hitching breaths. A terrible suspicion crept over him.

“Bourdon,” he said quietly, and Kris let out something that might have been a sob. “He was your first assignment. But you weren’t even there when he died – how could you have prevented that?”

“By being there!” Kris shouted, looking up and meeting Marc’s eyes angrily. “I should have been there, I should have been able to stop it-“ he dropped his eyes to the floor again. “You cannot be an effective guardian if you are not close at hand,” he said, sounding like he was reciting something he’d been taught. “I should have found a way. And now Sid is locking me out.” He hunched over the table miserably and poured himself another glass of whisky.

Marc wasn’t sure what to say to that, so he held out his own glass and Kris poured some more in. They sat there and traded sips of whiskey for a while before Marc spoke up again, this time out of curiosity.

“So does everyone get a guardian?”

Kris gave him a dry look. “No. I’m not telling you if you or your brothers have one, either.” Marc laughed, busted, and looked away for a moment to try and think of another question. When he looked back, all of his questions were knocked clean out of his head.

“Kris,” he tried to say, but his throat had dried up. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Kris, your wings – “

“Hmm?” Kris looked up from his contemplation of his whisky glass and glanced behind him. “Oh. It is – tiresome, to hide them all the time. You don’t mind, do you?”

“No,” Marc said, his attention still caught by Kris’s wings. They were beautiful – the same dark brown as his hair, huge and shadowy and not-quite-there. They were strong and graceful – nothing like the dainty, useless wings seen in paintings of angels. Marc realized that his hand was outstretched, as though to try and see if he could touch them, and snatched it back. Kris looked over at him in bemusement before flicking one open a little.

“Go ahead,” he invited. Marc blushed at being caught out but couldn’t resist the temptation to run his fingers through the feathers. They were warm under his hands but not entirely substantial, and Marc gave Kris a questioning look.

“Can you fly?”

“Not yet,” Kris said, closing his eyes as Marc continued to stroke his hands through the feathers. “You can feel it, how it’s not quite real?” Marc nodded before he realized Kris’s eyes were still closed and felt silly.

“Yes,” he said, and Kris’s mouth ticked up in a half-smile.

“You have to complete an assignment before they come in all the way. Earn your wings. Until then, they just sort of – sit there.”

“Do they get in the way?” Marc asked, pulling his hand back reluctantly.

Kris snorted a little. “Only when they’re manifest,” he said, stretching them out a little before folding them back behind himself again. “Which they aren’t. See,” he said, and sat back in his chair. Marc made an aborted movement in protest before noticing that the wings just sort of slid through the chair as though they weren’t even there. Which, he supposed, they weren’t.

“So how do you complete an assignment?”

“You keep the person you’re supposed to be guarding alive,” Kris said matter-of-factly.

“Like, forever?”

“Not even I am that good,” Kris said, very dry, and Marc glared at him. “No, not forever. It varies – sometimes you only have to watch them for a few years, through a tumultuous part of their lives, sometimes for their whole lives. And sometimes,” he sighed, letting his head fall back to stare at the ceiling, “it’s an open-ended assignment. You’re never quite sure when it’s going to end.”

“Oh,” Marc said, abruptly feeling sorry for Kris. “So-“

“No, I don’t know how long I’m going to be with Sid,” Kris said. “But unless I can figure out what’s going on with him . . .“ he looked miserable. “You lose your wings,” he said quietly. “You get two chances, and then you lose your wings. And I have no idea what’s going on.”

There was nothing Marc could really say to that, so he simply at and kept Kris company while they finished the last of the whisky. When it was gone, Marc rose from the table a little unsteadily. “It’s getting late.” Kris blinked up at him owlishly.

“Where are you going?”

“Back to my hotel?” Marc said, although it sounded more like a question. “I was going to call a cab.”

“No need,” Kris said, waving a hand at him. “I have plenty of room, you can stay here. I owe you, anyway.”

“No you don’t,” Marc said, but it was late and he was tired and the thought of not having to get a cab back to the hotel was appealing. Kris could sense weakness, apparently, because he gave Marc a smile.

“Go on, stay. I will drive you back tomorrow morning before the bus leaves.”

“Twist my arm,” Marc said, but he was smiling. “Where should I sleep?”

“Guest bedroom’s this way,” Kris said, getting up and leading Marc down the hallway. “Do you need to borrow something to sleep in?”

“Nothing of yours would fit,” Marc said, and Kris scowled up at him.

“You are not that tall,” he informed Marc. “But just for that, I take back my offer.”

“Good night,” Marc said, smiling at Kris a little sleepily.

“Good night,” Kris said, smiling back at him before ducking into his own bedroom down the hall.

0o0o0o0o0

They texted each other frequently after that. Marc thought that it was probably a relief for Kris, having someone to finally talk things out with, someone to listen who knew at least as much as he did about what’s going on. Kris had been handling the entire situation alone, after all – he told Marc that he wanted to confide in another guardian, to ask for help, but the first one he approached simply told him that it was his job, and not someone else’s.

(Marc privately thought that was bullshit, that Kris was being unfairly judged for his inability to save Luc from the other side of the continent, and that the other guardian needed to pull the stick out of his/her ass – but Kris had taken the warning to heart, and wouldn’t talk to anyone else.)

Marc was almost certain Kris thought that he was imposing, that he was taking up too much of Marc’s time, but that wasn’t true at all. Marc liked Kris – he had a dry sense of humor that he didn’t let out nearly often enough, and he was good company. They could, Marc was discovering, talk for hours and never run out of things to say. Him being riculously good-looking and a great hockey player was just the icing on the cake.

Every time Marc got a text from Kris saying anything like thank you, he had to stop himself from texting back that he wished there was something more that he could do. Kris had told him, time and again, that being able to talk through the issue with someone else was the most helpful thing he could do, but Marc couldn’t help but feel that he should be able to contribute, to figure out the situation. In the meantime, however, he contented himself with sending encouraging texts when they seemed to be called for and other texts mocking the shit his dumbass teammates and brothers got up to when Kris needed to be distracted and cheered up.

He was in the process of figuring out how to describe the stupid thing DZ had done at practice when Cally dropped down in the seat next to him and cleared his throat. Marc looked up at him and raised his eyebrows.

“New girlfriend?” Cally inquired, gesturing at Marc’s phone, and Marc barked out a laugh.

“No, just Tanger,” he said, and Cally tilted his head.

“Kris. . . Letang?” he asked, and Marc nodded. “I didn’t realize you two knew each other.”

“We played together at World Juniors,” Marc pointed out, and Cally shrugged at him.

“World Juniors was years ago,” he said. “I didn’t know you’d kept in touch.”

Marc opened his mouth to argue but had to concede the point – up until a few months ago he hadn’t kept in contact with him. He shrugged back at Cally and looked down at his phone to finish sending his text, hoping that Cally would go away.

He was still sitting there when Marc looked back up. “We started talking again a while ago,” he says, grudgingly truthful and hating it now more than ever. “He’s worried about Crosby.”

“That have something to do with the fact that Crosby’s spending less and less time on the ice this season?” Cally asked, and Marc gaped at him. Cally gave him a crooked grin. “You’re not the only one who’s noticed.”

“But media,” Marc sputtered. “Not even the media has picked up on that, what, you-“

“I see everything,” Cally said, stretching out his legs and getting up to go back to his own seat on the bus. “Crosby’s starting to look pretty bad,” he said. “If you and Letang are planning on doing something, it needs to be soon.”

Marc stared as Cally made his way back up the bus aisle to his own seat. That had sounded an awful lot like a partial confession. . . And more worryingly, Cally was right. Crosby was starting to look like a ghost. Marc stared out the window of the bus, lost in thought, and nodded off without realizing it. He jerked awake when he heard the rest of his teammates moving around, grabbing their things to get off the bus, heart pounding.

Hey I have an idea, he sent Kris before he got off the bus. He got a text back as he was getting into his car to drive home.

Yeah? Let’s hear it then.

0o0o0o0o0

The next time the Rangers played the Penguins, Marc and Kris took Crosby out. “How did you get him to say yes?” Marc asked Kris out of the corner of his mouth. Kris gave him a sideways glance and leaned over.

“I didn’t tell him where we were going until we were already here,” he murmured into Marc’s ear, and Marc tried to control the shiver that rolled through him at that. He looked over reluctantly when someone cleared their throat. Crosby had chosen that moment to return with their drinks.

“Am I interrupting something?” he asked crabbily. Kris looked up at him but didn’t move from where he was basically draped over Marc.

“No,” he said. “Sit down, Sid, we’re not going to bite.”

Crosby made a face but sat down and handed them their drinks. Kris moved around to sit next to Crosby in the booth, trapping him between the two of them, and Crosby looked at them warily. Kris didn’t say anything, though, just took a long sip of his drink and started chirping Marc about the game, and eventually Crosby relaxed and joined in. Marc gave as good as he got and the three of them spent a long while cheerfully trash-talking each other and drinking.

Crosby’s always been a bit of a lightweight, Kris had told Marc when they were planning this, but the draining had made it even worse. It wasn’t long before his cheeks were flushed and he was giggling at everything. Kris and Marc exchanged glances over his head the third time Crosby reached for his glass and missed it, laughing, and Marc nodded imperceptibly.

“So, Crosby,” Marc says, rolling his beer bottle between his hands and shifting over to make sure he was pressed up against Crosby. “You think you’ll be ready to play next game?”

“Probably not,” Crosby said, sounding regretful and picking at the surface of their table. “I don’t think I’m supposed to.”

“Why not?” Kris asked, leaning back in his seat and doing his best to look disinterested. Marc rolled his eyes at him – Crosby wasn’t paying attention to either of them.

“That’s the way the deal works,” he said, sighing and pouting at the table. Kris jolted in his seat and Marc fought the urge to lean over Crosby and put a soothing hand on him.

“Deal? Who did you make a deal with, Sid?”

“No one!” Crosby’s head jerked up and he looked offended. “I wouldn’t. It’s not my deal.”

“But you’re fulfilling its terms,” Kris said, confused. “If it’s not your deal, why would you fulfill the terms?”

“So no one else has to,” Crosby said, blinking up at Kris like it made perfect sense. Marc could see Kris visibly restrain himself from banging his head on the table.

“Whose deal is it, Sid?”

“I’m not supposed to tell you that,” Crosby said, frowning, and Kris looked like he was about to strangle him.

“You’re fulfilling the terms of a deal so that no one else has to, and it is killing you,” he hissed. “Who told you not to tell?”

“Bettman,” Crosby said, looking at Kris in confusion. Marc didn’t move, was barely breathing – he didn’t want to distract either of them.

“Why doesn’t Bettman want you telling people about your deal?”

“I think it was his idea,” Crosby said, looking away from Kris and blinking sleepily.

“The deal?” Kris looked confused. Under other circumstances, Marc might have found that expression hilarious.

“Hmm,” Crosby hummed in agreement, leaning forward and resting his head on his folded arms at the table. Kris said something that sounded foul in French and reached down to wave his hand in front of Crosby’s slack face.

“He’s asleep,” Kris said, disgusted. “Unbelievable.”

Marc let out a deep, heartfelt sigh and flagged down a passing waitress to ask for the check.

0o0o0o0o0

“He’s not nearly as heavy as he should be,” Marc said, helping Kris heave Crosby out of the cab. Kris scowled at the reminder.

“He has not been eating properly,” he said tightly, digging through Crosby’s pockets for his keys. “I do not think he has been sleeping well either, which has not been helping him at all.” He found Crosby’s keys and Marc propped up Crosby’s dead weight while Kris opened the door.

Between the two of them they managed to get Crosby installed in his bedroom without running him into too many walls. Every time they bumped him into something Kris made a terribly guilty face that Marc found utterly hysterical, so the trip to the bedroom was punctuated by Marc’s sniggers and Kris swearing at him quietly in French.

“What are you going to do now?” Marc asked Kris as they lingered in the hallway outside of Crosby’s bedroom awkwardly. Kris shrugged.

“I will stay here, I think,” he said. “In case he needs me. What about you?”

“I should get back to the hotel,” Marc said regretfully. Kris caught him yawning and frowned at him.

“You will fall asleep in the cab,” he said disapprovingly. “You could stay here.”

“With you?” Marc said, aiming for a joke and missing it by a mile. Kris looked confused.

“Or not,” he said. “Sid has several bedrooms.”

“Oh,” Marc said. He wasn’t sure exactly what face he was making, but he was sure it was something he’d rather wasn’t there, and Kris was looking at him. “Okay.”

He made a move to head down the hallway at the same time Kris moved in the opposite direction and they were really close, Marc thought dizzily, looking down into Kris’s upturned face. Something in his brain abruptly shorted out, and he was leaning down to kiss Kris before he thought about it.

Kris made a shocked noise in the back of his throat, his eyes wide, but he wasn’t pushing Marc away, he was kissing Marc back – until he wasn’t, he was at the other end of the hallway, wings suddenly visible and outspread behind him.

“Fuck, Kris, I’m sorry,” Marc said, wondering how he’d messed that up. Kris had been kissing him back, hadn’t he? Or had he completely misread the situation?

“No, Marc,” Kris said, folding his wings and walking back down the hallway. “That was my fault, and I am sorry.”

“Your fault?” Marc asked, incredulous. “I kissed you.”

“I let you,” Kris said, looking down before looking back up at Marc through his eyelashes, apologetic. “I let you, and I shouldn’t have, but fuck if I didn’t want to.”

“You – you want me?” Marc felt a little off balance, and wasn’t sure if it was the situation or the alcohol. Kris ducked his head.

“I should not,” he said, staring down at the ground. “Guardians are supposed to avoid emotional entanglements.”

“With – everyone?” Marc asked tentatively, disbelieving, and Kris nodded. “But that’s such bullshit,” he said, angry now. “Why?”

Kris looked miserable. “It interferes with our work,” he said. “And we live so much longer than humans – it’s just not a good idea,” he finished weakly, and Marc was abruptly furious.

“So you won’t even take the chance,” he said, and the look on Kris’s face said it all. “Well, that’s just spectacular,” he said, letting out a bitter laugh. “Good night.”

“Wait, Marc,” Kris said, following after him as he stalked down the hallway, yanking his phone out of his pocked. “Where are you going?”

“Where do you think I’m going, Letang?” Marc snapped. “Back to my hotel.”

Kris’s head snapped back and the front door slammed shut between them.

Marc fumed on Crosby’s front porch for 20 minutes, waiting for his cab. He was sure that Kris was watching him from inside the house, but he didn’t come out to try and say anything. He was savagely glad that that was the case, and remained that way for the entire cab ride back to the hotel until he collapsed into bed and fell asleep.

0o0o0o0o0

Marc was very pointedly not responding to Kris’s texts, which had started out determinedly normal after that night in Pittsburgh and had segued into apologetic and then angry when he continued to receive no response. The rest of the team had definitely noticed that something was up – Marc’s face was uncharacteristically set and he was ignoring his phone, which had been buzzing every 20 minutes – but they had wisely not mentioned anything. Most of them had come up to him at one point or another over the course of the morning to bump into his shoulder supportively, though, so that he knew they had his back.

Cally came over to hover over his shoulder when they were at the airport. Marc tried to ignore him, too, but Cally was a very persistent hoverer, and Marc finally caved. “What,” he said, monotone.

“You were out late last night,” Cally said, and Marc tipped his head back to give him an unimpressed look.

“Went out with some friends after the game,” he said. “Didn’t realize what time it was, sorry, it won’t happen again.” He buried his face in his magazine again, trying to signal that the conversation was over.

“Friends in Pittsburgh?” Cally asked, sounding idly curious, and Marc gritted his teeth. “That’s funny. I didn’t realize you had friends in Pittsburgh. Unless you meant the Penguins?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he tried, and Cally lifted an eyebrow.

“I couldn’t tell,” he said, deadpan. “If you decide you do want to talk about it, though. . . “ he let the sentence trail off.

“I won’t,” Marc said firmly, and brought the magazine up to bury his face in it again.

0o0o0o0o0

It took a couple of days of Marc deleting texts from Kris without even reading them, but they eventually stopped coming. Marc was aware that he was being overdramatic, but he didn’t know if he could only be Kris’s sounding board for the supernatural. In his more rational moments, he was sure that they had been friends, but he was hurt and angry and not inclined to be rational.

He and Kris might not be speaking anymore, but Marc still found himself tracking the Penguins, and whether or not Crosby had been on the ice. He was starting to miss more games than he played, Marc noticed, the gap between his appearances getting longer and longer. When he was visible, he looked terrible – paler and paler with each successive appearance, dark shadows under his eyes, visibly losing weight now. Kris appeared in the background of some of the shots, looking grimmer and grimmer as time passed. Apparently he wasn’t having any luck fixing the problem, even now that he had a better idea what it was.

Marc wasn’t sure whether it was morbid curiosity or a previously well-hidden tendency towards masochism that had him keeping an eye on Bettman, too. Outwardly, nothing had changed since Crosby’s reveal that the commissioner was something other than human, but Marc was convinced that he could see actual evil on Bettman’s face. Of course, so was most of the league and also most of the fans, so Marc had to admit that he was probably imagining things.

He was getting ready for bed one night, almost a month after that night in Pittsburgh when he got a text message. He glanced at his phone and saw that it was from Kris. It simply read sorry.

Part 3

Hockey Fic - Both Hands Tied Behind My Back, Part 1

2013-09-16T01:40:54Z

Title: Both Hands Tied Behind My Back
Rating: Teen
Beta:biggersandwich
Pairing: Marc Staal/Kris Letang
Summary: In the five years since the supernatural community had finally revealed itself to humanity, athletes had been undergoing a series of ever more rigorous screenings, designed to catch those who had supernatural abilities that could be considered “cheating.”

In the five years since the supernatural community had finally revealed itself to humanity, athletes had been undergoing a series of ever more rigorous screenings, designed to catch those who had supernatural abilities that could be considered “cheating.” Marc was quietly thankful that he wasn’t more famous in the NHL – Crosby had been tested enough times that he and his brothers had discussed the idea that someone out there (Eric said Bettman, Jordy said Pierre McGuire) was trying to clone him, what with all of the blood they’d taken. It wasn’t like Marc’s ability helped him play hockey at all. Not that it mattered – if he was discovered, he’d be out on his ass within seconds.

He was on his way out of MSG after a humiliating loss to the Pens when he bumped into Kris Letang. Literally, in fact – Letang was staring blackly at the door to the testing clinic and didn’t notice when Marc turned the corner.

“Sorry,” Marc said, and Letang waved him off dismissively. “Are you waiting to be tested?”

“Me?” Letang asked, startled. “Oh, no. Sid is being tested again,” he said darkly. “Someone needs to walk him back to the bus after the testing, they take a lot of blood.”

Marc winced. On the one hand, Crosby had played a truly spectacular game (much as it galled him to admit it). Hat trick, two assists. He could see why someone would demand he be tested, after that – but Crosby had been tested so many times before, it was hard to believe that they could demand it of him again. He said as much to Letang, whose scowl deepened.

“You would think,” he agreed. “But no – it is not as though he is going to spontaneously develop supernatural powers!” he said in frustration. “But every time someone invents a new test, they use it on him. Plus all the old ones, in case they missed something the last 50 or so times.”

Marc made a face in agreement as the door to the testing clinic opened and Crosby stumbled out. “Tanger?” he slurred, and Letang cursed in French as he grabbed Crosby and steadied him.

“How much did they take this time, Sid?” he asked, and Crosby shrugged wearily.

“Not enough to kill me,” he said. “I’m not going to be able to practice tomorrow though.”

Letang looked like he was about to march in there and set fire to everyone in the clinic. Marc stepped in. “I’ll help you get him out to the bus.”

“Thank you, but I have him,” Letang said curtly, slinging Crosby’s arm over his shoulders and starting off. “Come on, Sid – let’s go.”

Marc wasn’t sure why he trailed after them – Letang clearly had experience wrangling a woozy Crosby, and didn’t really need his help – but he was grateful that he had when they reached the parking lot and saw that the bus had left.

“I don’t believe it,” Letang said flatly, and Marc agreed with him wholeheartedly. Team buses didn’t just up and leave without all of their players- not unless those players had specifically made other plans.

“I can give you a ride back to the hotel, if you want,” he offered, rubbing his hands together to keep them warm. Letang looked for a moment as though he would refuse, but then Crosby slumped heavily against him and he let out a sigh.

“If you wouldn’t mind,” he said.

“Not at all,” Marc said. “D’you want to wait here while I go and get my car, or do you want to come with me?”

“I don’t think he’s up to much more walking,” Letang said, gesturing at Crosby. “We’ll wait here.”

“Be right back,” Marc promised, digging his keys out of his pocket as he jogged off. He’d been early enough to the rink that day that he’d been able to park pretty close, so he returned with the car shortly. He got out to help Letang wrangle Crosby – who seemed to be asleep on his feet – into the backseat. “So which hotel is it?”

“The Marriott, on 46th and Broadway,” Letang said, twisting around in his seat to check on Crosby, who was slumped against the door. Marc hesitated a moment- he really should get both of them back before curfew, but the bus had just left them there, so clearly something was up- and then asked,

“My place is a couple blocks closer. Would you like to stay with me? I can drive you back to the hotel tomorrow morning before you have to leave.”

Letang looked at him curiously. “Why?” he asked, and Marc shrugged uncomfortably.

He wasn’t quite sure, but he had offered, so he said, “He looks like he could use someone keeping an eye on him, is all.”

“That is true,” Letang agreed thoughtfully. “If it is not a trouble?” Marc shook his head.

“No trouble,” he said firmly, putting the car in drive and pulling out of the parking lot.

0o0o0o0o0

“Thank you for your hospitality,” Letang said formally when they arrived at Marc’s apartment, which startled him into a laugh.

“You’re welcome,” he said. “Let’s get him inside, eh?”

“Yes,” Letang agreed, and between the two of them they managed to extract the sleeping Crosby from the car and maneuver him up the elevator and into Marc’s apartment. “He needs to eat and drink something,” Letang said, looking down at Crosby’s pale face, and Marc agreed.

“I’ll go grab him some water while I make something to eat, do you want anything?”

“I wouldn’t say no to some water either,” Letang said, bending over Crosby and shaking his shoulder. “Sid. Sid, you need to wake up.”

Crosby mumbled something that sounded like “Tanger?” as Marc headed into the kitchen and grabbed two water bottles out of his refrigerator. He surveyed its contents while he was in there and decided that his best bet was omelets.

“Spinach omelets coming up in about ten minutes,” he said, coming back out into the living room and tossing Letang the water. “Think he can stay awake that long?”

“I will make sure of it,” Letang said, over Crosby’s groaning complaint. “Thank you, again, for what you are doing.”

Marc waved off his thanks and headed back into the kitchen. “Do you want anything to eat?” he called into the living room. There was a moment of silence before Letang answered.

“If you’re going to be making omelets anyway I will take one, too.” Marc grinned to himself and got out his biggest pan, cracking eggs into it and chopping up the spinach.

“How’s he doing?” he asked in an undertone as he brought out the food a few minutes later. Letang looked up at him and made a face.

“I have never seen him so weak,” he said quietly, taking two of the plates and handing one to Crosby. Crosby made a face at the omelet but Letang gave him a stern look and he began to eat it sulkily. He perked up a little after the first taste and began eating with more enthusiasm. “I don’t know what they did to him.”

“Same thing they always do,” Crosby said through a mouthful of omelet. “Except more, this time. I don’t even know what they’re testing for,” he said plaintively. “They never tell me what they’re testing for.”

Marc looked over at him, startled. “They don’t tell you?” Crosby shook his head.

“I’ve asked,” he said, still shoveling omelet into his mouth. “Nobody ever says a word to me about it – they don’t even talk to me, really.” Marc and Letang exchanged a dark look and Crosby looked up at them curiously. “What?”

“You should always be able to get them to tell you what they want your blood for, Sid,” Letang said. “I’ll have a word with Coach.”

“Don’t!” Crosby said, frantically, and Letang gave him a quizzical look. “I mean, please don’t,” Crosby said, a little quieter. “They never find anything anyway,” he said. “And Bet. . . Someone might make it so that I can’t play if I protest.”

Letang’s face was thunderous, but he backed down in the face of Crosby’s pleading. Marc kept his own opinions to himself, but he made a mental note to call Eric and tell him that it was entirely possible Gary Bettman was trying to clone Crosby.

They finished their omelets in silence, and Marc collected the plates and forks and dumped them in the dishwasher. “I’ve only got the one guest bedroom,” he said apologetically, “but the couch folds out, and I’ll go get some sheets and blankets for you.” Crosby started to say something about taking the couch, but Letang cut him off firmly.

“I will take the couch, thank you, Staal,” he said, and Marc grinned a little at him.

“You can call me Marc, you know,” he said, bending to help Letang haul Crosby up and into his guest bedroom. Letang snorted.

“Call me Kris, then,” he said.

“Kris,” Marc said. “I have some clothes you two can sleep in, if you want.”

“None of your pants will fit him,” Kris said, wearily. “But I will take you up on that, although all of your clothing will be too big for me.”

Marc grinned down at him. “I’ll go and get some, then,” he said, as they dropped Crosby off onto the guest bed and Kris bent down to remove his shoes and belt.

“Thank you, again,” Kris said as Marc made to leave. Marc turned and looked him square in the eye.

“You’re welcome,” he said, firmly. “You can stop thanking me, now.”

“I do not know about that,” Kris said, smiling crookedly. “But I will at least stop thanking you tonight, because I know how Sid will be in the morning.”

“Speaking of morning, what time do you need to be back at your hotel?” Marc asked when he came back into the living room with the bedding. Kris took them from him and made a face.

“The bus leaves at 11,” he said. “We should probably try and be back by 10 so that we can pack up our rooms.”

“I’ll set an alarm for nine, then,” Marc said. Kris looked at him like he was about to say “Thank you” again, but laughed at Marc’s stern look instead.

“Very well. I will see you in the morning,” he said. “Good night, Marc.”

“Good night, Kris,” Marc said, going into his own bedroom. He set the alarm on his phone and was asleep within moments.

0o0o0o0o0

Marc’s alarm went off far too early the next morning. He had optional afternoon skate today, and had been thinking about going, but he didn’t need to be up for at least another hour for that. He laid back in his bed after turning his alarm off and tried to think back – and groaned as what had happened after the game came flooding back to him.

He dragged himself into the kitchen and started a pot of coffee, staring hopefully at it until it finished brewing and then pouring himself a cup. The scent of coffee filling his apartment must have woken Kris up, because he came stumbling hopefully into the kitchen a moment later.

“Coffee?” Marc asked. Kris grunted something that sounded affirmative, so Marc poured him a cup as well. “Sleep well last night?”

Kris took a long sip of his coffee and sighed in gratitude before he opened his eyes properly. “Yes, thank you,” he said belatedly. He looked around the kitchen. “Where is Sid?”

“Haven’t seen him yet,” Marc said, drinking his own coffee and thinking idly about breakfast. “Is he going to be alright, do you think?”

Kris shrugged one shoulder. “He has been fine so far,” he said, although he sounded doubtful. “I do not like that they will not tell him what the blood is for.”

“That does sound a little fishy,” Marc agreed. “I’ll go and wake him up – do you want breakfast?”

Kris tilted his head to one side. “By breakfast, you mean. . . “

“Scrambled eggs, probably,” Marc said. “Or there’s bread to make toast in the pantry.”

“Toast sounds good,” Kris said, slumping down against Marc’s counter and drinking deeply from his mug. Marc smiled at the sight and went off to wake Crosby up.

“Crosby,” he said, standing in the doorway of his guest room. Crosby grunted and rolled over, so Marc raised his voice. “Crosby. Sid!”

“Hmm, what?” came Crosby’s voice, sleepy and a little cross.

“Time to get up,” Marc said. Crosby rolled over again and squinted at him.

“Jordy?” he said suspiciously, and Marc rolled his eyes.

“No, Marc,” he said. “C’mon, you need to get up so that we can get you back to your hotel before the bus leaves.”

“Marc,” Crosby said, not sounding awake yet. “Wait, what happened?”

“You got pulled in for testing after the game,” Marc said. “Kris and I brought you back here after to feed you.”

“Kris – wait, Tanger? Tanger’s here?”

“Yes,” Marc said patiently. “Come out to the kitchen, there’s coffee.” He turned and headed back to the kitchen to get started on breakfast before he could be questioned some more.

Kris wasn’t in the kitchen anymore, so Marc poked his head out into the living room to see if he was there and ask if there was anything he particularly wanted on his toast. The sight made his breath catch.

Kris was standing bare-chested in the middle of his living room, clearly in the middle of changing back into his clothes. But while Kris’s bare chest was a sight to behold (and one that Marc was probably going to be revisiting at some length later), Marc’s attention was caught by the ghostly outline of a pair of wings stretching out behind Kris. Kris must have heard something, because he turned around and gave Marc an amused look.

“It is rude to stare,” he said, and Marc choked.

“Wings,” he said, brain to mouth filter not completely engaged. “What-“

Kris had him shoved up against the wall faster than he could blink. “What did you say?”

“Nothing,” Marc said, hurriedly. “I mean, I’m not going to say anything, I wouldn’t-“

“And how do I know that you are not lying?” Kris said, still menacing, and Marc choked out a laugh.

“I can’t,” he said. “Neither can anyone else who’s touching me, go on, try it.”

Kris opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He frowned at Marc. “You are telling the truth,” he said, slowly.

“Can’t help it, really,” Marc said. “My brothers hated it, growing up. Mom and Dad loved it, though, most of the time.”

“I can only imagine,” Kris said, finally letting him go. Marc sagged against the wall, hoping that Kris wouldn’t notice his reaction to being pinned against a wall by a hot, half-naked guy.

“You didn’t expect me to be able to see them,” he said, and Kris shrugged one shoulder uncomfortably.

“I keep them hidden, most of the time,” he said. “And even when I don’t, most people cannot see them anyway. I did not expect you to be able to. Your brother couldn’t.”

“Jordy’s clueless at the best of times, though,” Marc said, half-jokingly, and Kris gave him a fleeting smile.

“I’d noticed,” he said. Just then Crosby stumbled into the living room, looking half-asleep but better than he had the previous night.

“Coffee?” he asked, looking around at them, and Marc straightened himself up and pushed off the wall.

“I’ll get you some. Scrambled eggs or toast?”

“Toast please,” Crosby said, following Marc back into the kitchen and sitting down at one of the stools along the counter. Marc poured him a cup of coffee and pulled the bread out of the pantry, popping it into the toaster. Kris came into the kitchen while they were waiting and sat down next to Crosby.

“How much of last night do you remember?” he asked.

“Not that much,” Crosby sighed. “I remember the game, and being called in for testing. After that it’s kind of a blur,” he admitted. “I think I remember running into you in the hallway? And then we had omelets.”

Kris looked grim. “We really should tell coach,” he said. “I think it’s getting worse, Sid.”

“No,” Crosby snapped. “No, we can’t.”

Kris looked like he wanted to argue the point further, but the toast popped up and Marc slid it across the counter to the two of them. “Butter? Honey? Jam?”

“Oh, honey,” Crosby said, perking up, while Kris asked for the jam. They ate their breakfast in silence, and the Marc pushed himself away from the counter.

“I’m going to go and grab my keys, and then we can go,” he said, looking between the two of them. “Do either of you need anything else?”

“I have everything,” Kris said, and Crosby made a sound of agreement. Marc nodded and headed out into the hallway to grab his keys and his wallet. He came back into the kitchen to the sound of a hissed argument finishing up and cleared his throat.

“Ready to go?”

“Yes, thank you,” Crosby said, standing up and stretching. “Thank you for everything, really, you didn’t have to do that.”

“It wasn’t a problem,” Marc said mildly. “You don’t have to thank me, really.”

“I really do,” Crosby said, and Kris nodded from behind him. “I really appreciate it.”

“You’re welcome, then,” Marc said. “Shall we?”

0o0o0o0o0

Marc started paying a little more attention after that. Crosby still looked a little pale the next time he saw him on the ice, in the Pens game against the Islanders, but he seemed to be playing fine. He seemed totally back to normal in their next game, against the Hurricanes, but after that didn’t play in the back-to-back in Florida. The official word was “upper-body injury,” but Marc was a little suspicious. Crosby had had another multi-point game in Carolina, after all, and was smiling and talking happily in the after game interviews. If he was injured, Marc certainly couldn’t see it – and he hadn’t heard anything about Crosby being walloped at practice, either. He was back for their next two home games, still looking a little pale, and then he was out again for the game against Detroit.

Marc spent a day or so debating with himself, but eventually called up Jordy and asked him for Kris’s number.

“Why do you want it?” Jordy asked suspiciously. Marc sighed into the phone.

“I have a question for him,” he said, patiently. “And no, I’m not telling you what it is.”

“Then you’re not getting his number,” Jordy said. Marc groaned.

“It’s important,” he tried, and Jordy was quiet for a moment.

“I’ll text it to you,” he said, finally. Marc closed his eyes and breathed out in relief. Jordy wouldn’t have believed his explanation, not without details he wasn’t allowed to give.

0o0o0o0o0

Kris, this is Marc Staal. How’s Crosby?

He still won’t let me talk to anybody.

Marc frowned down at his phone. They still won’t tell him what it’s for?

His phone rang. “He will not talk to me about it, anymore,” Kris said sounding frustrated. “He has been trying to avoid me. It’s becoming more frequent.”

“Have you tried talking to the other guys on the team?” Marc asked. Kris huffed out a laugh.

“It would not do any good,” he said. “None of them can see that anything is wrong.”

“Wait, what?” Marc was confused. “They can’t see that anything’s wrong? Are they blind?”

“Blinded, I think,” Kris said.

“Blinded by what?” Marc asked, frustrated. “And if they’re blinded, why aren’t you blinded? What’s going on?”

“Blinded by whatever is doing this to Sid. I am not blinded because I am his guardian, and I do not know what is going on. It is starting,” Kris said, “to piss me off.”

“You’re his guardian? What does that mean?”

“It is not something that is discussed over the phone,” Kris said, after a short pause. Marc got the impression that he hadn’t meant to tell him that much. “When are you in Pittsburgh next?”

“Next week,” Marc said. “We play you on the 14th.”

“I will meet you after the game, if Sid doesn’t play,” Kris said.

“And if he does?”

Kris sounded grim. “I will meet you after I have finished dealing with him.”

Part 2

Pacific Rim Fic - On The Line

2013-09-05T05:46:14Z

Title: On The Line
Beta: rewindthat6
Rating: Gen
Summary: A series of phone calls between Stacker Pentecost and Hercules Hansen.

May 2015

“So you did what?”

“Offered them a place in the program,” Stacker says, kicking off his boots with a grunt. “And before you tell me I’m crazy, take a look at the video I just sent you.”

There is a brief silence from the other end of the phone, punctuated by Herc’s frustrated grunts as he tries to access the video without hanging up. Stacker waits patiently until he hears the sudden inhale that means Herc has managed to bring up the video. “Shit,” he says, eventually. “The R&D guys are going to tear your head off.”

“Maybe,” Stacker allows. “But I don’t think so. The boys gave me a copy of some plans that I’m going to run by R&D, but I think they’re solid.”

Herc’s startled laugh makes Stacker smile as he leans back until he’s up against the wall. “They’re that in sync as street fighters, and they’re good at engineering? How has the PPDC missed them?”

Stacker closes his eyes and makes a face. “They applied way back at the beginning, never got a call back,” he says. Herc’s silence speaks volumes about the amount of judgment he’s leveling against the PPDC’s origins, which were exclusionary at best until the world had finally figured out that all the money in the world couldn’t buy you Drift compatibility with someone. The recruiting drives had opened up considerably after that.

“To be fair, they probably wouldn’t have gotten a call back anyway,” Stacker says frankly, although he knows exactly what Herc is thinking because they have had this conversation multiple times. “There’s never been triplets in the program before.”

Herc snorts his opinion of that but changes the subject. “How’s Mako doing?”

Stacker grins involuntarily, proud. “She’s doing great. Picking up Chinese at a rate that shocks everyone else. She corrected my pronunciation yesterday. She’s also been hanging around the K-Science division, pestering Geiszler and Gottlieb – well. They say she’s no trouble, and I think Geiszler has been using her as a lab assistant. Gottlieb’s tutoring her in calculus.”

Herc groans at the thought. “Better her than me,” he says fervently, having been on the receiving side of Gottlieb’s temper on a number of occasions.

“Amen,” Stacker says solemnly, shuddering a little at the thought of spending so much time in the lab. He understands the importance of the K-Science division, but the thought of voluntarily spending the majority of his time down there makes his skin crawl. “How’s Chuck?”

“Still not talking to me,” Herc says, tonelessly. Stacker winces sympathetically. “I get progress reports back from his teachers, sometimes. He’s failing a couple classes. I don’t know what to do – I try talking to him about it, but he just ignores me and locks me out.” Stacker hums a little in sympathy, but stays silent. After a few moments, Herc sighs and changes the subject again. “So your triplets – what are their names again?”

“The Wei brothers,” Stacker says. “Hu, Cheung and Jin.”

“Right. So they said yes when you offered them a place?”

“There was a little bit of posturing,” Stacker admits. “I don’t think they were impressed by the PPDC after their first experience with it. But they came around.”

“Well, that’s good. It’s getting late, I should get some sleep. I have a meeting with Chuck’s teachers early tomorrow.”

“Good luck,” Stacker says, and Herc lets out a half-hearted chuckle. “Good night, Hansen.”

“Night, Pentecost.”

0o0o0o0o0

One Week Later

“Did you ever read Ender’s Game?”

Stacker squints at the clock. “Herc? We’re in the same time zone. It’s two A.M.”

“Did you?”

Stacker rolls over onto his back and sighs into the phone. “I think I did,” he says. “Wasn’t there a movie about it? And some sort of controversy?”

Herc snorts in agreement. “That’s the one. Controversy was about the author, not the book. The book is great. The author is a dick.”

“Oh right,” Stacker says as the details start filtering back into his sleep-addled brain. “It was about kids fighting aliens, right?”

“Right,” Herc says. “Kids went off to space to learn how to fight aliens, and the adults sat back and manipulated them the entire time.”

“Um,” Stacker says. “Herc?”

“It reminds me a little of us,” Herc says, sounding weary. “International threat, so the whole world bands together to fight. And then the kids get taken away from their parents and trained, and trained and trained – and you never heard about any of them ever going back, starting families, being normal again.”

“Herc,” Stacker tries to interrupt again, but Herc is on a roll.

“And then after it’s done, after the threat is over, the whole world falls apart. Nothing keeping them together anymore, everyone starts trying to seize power-“

“Hansen!” Stacker roars down the phone, cutting him off. “It’s fiction. That means it’s not real. We don’t pull kids, anyway – they have to be 18 to enlist. And they can leave whenever they want to.”

“None of them do.”

“But they can. Who’s going to stop them? Sure as hell isn’t going to be me. What brought this on, Herc?”

There is silence down the phone for a few minutes before Herc sighs. “Chuck enrolled in the Ranger Academy last week. Told me about it today. Well, yesterday, I guess.”

“Ah.” Stacker considers this information, then asks, cautiously, “Who’s he Drifting with?”

Herc lets out a choked laugh. “Me, Stacker. Who else?”

“Oh.” Stacker settles back against his pillows and thinks about that. “So is he talking to you again?”

“Not any more than usual.” Herc sounds bitter and clearly doesn’t want to talk about it anymore, so Stacker changes the subject.

“The Wei triplets did their first simulation drop today.”

“Yeah, that’s right, I heard that was happening. How’d it go?”

“Fastest kill on record,” Stacker says, proudly. He’d been sticking his neck out for the Wei brothers because he believed in them, even if no one else in the PPDC seemed to, and he’d been vindicated. The simulated Drift wasn’t nearly as all-encompassing as the real one, but it was a fairly accurate benchmark. Candidates who did well in simulated Drift most often did well in a real Drift, and the Wei’s success had silenced a number of their most vocal doubters. Not all of them, but enough that Stacker was confident that he would be able to push the start of construction of their Jaeger through so that it would be ready when they graduated the program. The PPDC’s lack of confidence in the Wei brothers had been obvious in how slow progress had been on that Jaeger.

“How fast?” Herc demands, and Stacker grins at his tone.

“They got it in just under five minutes.”

Herc whistles. “Damn. I knew they were good, but that is impressive. It shut anyone up?”

“Most people. Maybe I can get some real progress made on their Jaeger now.”

“Here’s hoping.”

“What about you? You ready to get back in the simulator?” His tone is joking, but he really is curious. Herc is silent for a moment, and his own tone straddles the line between joking and serious when he replies.

“Nah, yeah. I’ve got a new record to smash.”

“In your dreams, Hansen.”

“I’ll let you get back to yours. Night, Pentecost.”

“Night.”

0o0o0o0o0

May 2023

“She blew the Wei’s record out of the water.”

“I know, Stacker, I heard. Congratulations, she’s going to be a hell of a pilot. Any idea who she’ll be Drifting with?”

“Not yet.” Stacker leans back in his chair and stretches, twisting his back and wincing as his muscles protest his recent inactivity. “There’ve been rumors that the U.N.’s planning on shutting down our funding, so a lot of the less motivated candidates have been packing up and heading home.”

“I’d heard those rumors,” Herc says, deceptively casual. “Any truth to them, Marshal?”

Stacker scowls. “Unfortunately,” he says. “Building Jaegers to replace the ones we’ve been losing recently takes money that no one really has, and the fact that we’ve lost so many means that the U.N. has been making noises about finding a new strategy to cope with the Kaiju. There’ve been inspectors here looking over the candidates, making noises about switching up the curriculum.”

Herc laughs incredulously. “Switching up the curriculum? Has any of these inspectors ever been in a Jaeger?”

Stacker’s mouth twitches. “Not a one of them,” he says, solemnly. “I had some pipsqueak in shiny shoes come up to me and try to give me pointers on the fighting style I should be teaching my Rangers. You could tell he’d never been in a fight in his life.”

“What’d you do with him?” Herc sounds amused, because he knows Stacker far too well.

“I sent him off to talk to the Kaidonovskys,” Stacker confesses. “From what I heard, they spent the whole time pretending they didn’t speak any English and laughing at him. You should have seen the look on his face,” he says, snickering a little at the memory. “When he first got a good look at them. He only came up to Sasha’s shoulders, Aleksis could have snapped him like a toothpick.”

“Did he?”

“Don’t think so, although they may have beaten some sense into him. He was stammering unintelligibly when he left, and I haven’t had a chance to ask Sasha what they did.”

“You’ll have to let me know when you find out, so I can use it when they come talk to me and Chuck. You know they will.”

“I don’t know that it’ll work for you,” Stacker says, thoughtfully. “You’re not as imposing as the Kaidonovskys, and you clearly speak English.”

“Nah, but I speak Australian, mate,” Herc says, thickening his accent to the point where even Stacker has a problem understanding him.

“If they’re from your area that won’t work,” he warns, then sighs. “It might, though, all the ones that were here were from the States.”

“Good,” Herc says grimly, then changes the subject. “Did I tell you Chuck adopted a dog?”

“He what now?” Stacker frowns at the phone as though Herc can see him. “A dog?”

“Yeah, he found a stray puppy hanging around after we’d just fought Narwhal. Brought it home with him. Cute little thing.”

“You let him keep it?”

“He housebroke it himself,” Herc says, sounding impressed and proud and confused all at once. “Takes it everywhere with him. Named it Max.”

“Is there room for a dog on base?” Stacker asks, feeling bewildered. Herc hums noncommittally.

“It’s not a big dog,” he says. “You should come visit, bring Mako.”

“I might,” Stacker says. “I was planning on heading over to that side of the ocean shortly anyway, I wanted to check up on the Wei brothers.”

“They’re doing well, your boys,” Herc says, and Stacker resists the urge to protest that they’re not his boys. They are in a way – he’d championed them all through their training and getting them their Jaeger, but after their first kill they hadn’t needed his help. He still likes to check up on them every now and then, but then he likes to check up on every active Jaeger crew now and then, to make sure that all of his Rangers are functioning at full capacity. He jots a note in his calendar to swing by the Australia dome to visit Herc and Chuck while he’s out there.

“I should be over your way in two weeks,” he says, glancing over his itinerary to double check. “Mako wasn’t going to come with me, but I bet she’ll come out if I tell her Chuck has a dog. She was going to stay and look over Gipsy’s shoulder while she’s being rebuilt.”

“How’s that little project coming along?”

“About as well as can be expected,” Stacker sighs. “Mako’s already had three fights with the project leader, who keeps treating her like she’s too young to know what she’s talking about.”

“To be fair, she is young to be heading up the designs for that project. Not that she’s not the best person for the job.” Herc sounds contemplative. “Have you said anything?”

“Not yet. I won’t, either, if I can help it – she is young, but she’d old enough to do this. Which means that she needs to fight her own battles. And I don’t think she’d take too kindly to me stepping in on this.”

“I bet she wouldn’t.” Herc sounds indulgent, every bit Mako’s favorite adopted uncle. “Two weeks, huh. Well, we’ll be here unless something new pops up and they need Striker.”

“Gottlieb says that the odds are against it. He’s been mostly right so far.”

“Math,” Herc says dismissively. “Never did like it. But I’ll see you in two weeks, then.”

“See you,” Stacker says, hanging up the phone and shoving away from his desk. He needs to go get Mako and tell her about the dog, so she’ll have plenty of time to make up her mind if she wants to go with him.

New People, Hi!

2013-08-30T23:30:30Z

So there was a friending meme over at home_ice, and I added a bunch of people. If I missed anyone, please comment and let me know?

A little bit about myself: you can call me Tina, I'm a 22 year old graduate student in engineering. I live in L.A. but I grew up in Houston and did my undergraduate in Fort Worth, so even though I live in California now I'm still and always will be a Texan. I like reading, storytelling, and music, I can't draw anything more than stick figures, I guess I write okay.

Speaking of writing, I have *looks over at drafts folder and winces* three separate Hockey AUs I'm writing and a fic for Avengersfest. I need to learn to stay away from AUs, except I keep coming up with new ones that would be so awesome and wanting to write them! It's a problem. Anyone else have these issues?