beggingwolf

[beggingwolf]

“Teeth of Wolf. Natural size.” British animals extinct within historic times: with some account of British wild white cattle. James Edmund Harting. 1880. 

[beggingwolf]

march 23 @ panthers, 4-3 S/O loss

the way they absolutely collapse in the third period needs to be studied. yucky.

“Oh, wow,” Sid says from behind Zhenya as they step into the condo. “Look at that chandelier.”

Zhenya scowls, stomping through the entryway toward the bedrooms. “This way,” he says, easing the master bedroom door open and dropping his bag on the ground, surveying the room.

It looks fine. The air is a little stale with disuse, but opening the windows will clear that out in minutes. 

“Is this where we’re sleeping?” Sid says, squeezing past Zhenya into the room. “Holy shit, this is fuckin’ nice, bud. And look at that view! I can’t believe you’ve never invited me here.”

Zhenya sighs, watching as Sid acquaints himself with Zhenya’s life in Miami. Sid’s nosy as hell, and he doesn’t even bother asking before he starts opening drawers and poking through the closet. 

He’s not entirely sure why he’s never asked Sid to come. At first it’s because they weren’t serious, and Zhenya bought this condo with serious things in mind: a wife, a family, a place for his parents to stay and rest their bones in the Miami sun. Ill-advised hookups that neither of them were quite able to quit didn’t belong in the hazy, idyllic picture he painted for himself.

The wife never materialized, though. There was Oksana, and Anna, and a parade of girls he took out and charmed into his bed, but between all of them (and, to Zhenya’s shame, sometimes concurrently with them) there was Sid, wound into Zhenya’s life and his lifeblood just as thoroughly as the city of Pittsburgh itself was.

Zhenya resisted it as long as he could. He hurt them both in the process, although Sid was no innocent. Fear and denial do a lot of damage. Luckily, they worked their way out of it. It took time and effort and a lot of screaming fights, but they figured it out.

Their parents know. Their teammates know. At this point, Zhenya wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the reporters know too.

And yet, he still hadn’t ever invited Sid down here.

It’s not like Zhenya spends all that much time here. It’s like Sid’s lake house in Halifax—it’s a nice retreat, a place that’s just his to go to for a break from the pressure cooker that is life in the NHL. He’ll come during bye week, or for a few weeks to bookend the offseason, but the bulk of his summers are spent in Russia or travelling to meet Sid somewhere in Europe. There’s nothing special in this condo, nothing secret or hidden that he doesn’t want Sid to see.

The condo represents something, though, a dream Zhenya once had that he set aside. He has new dreams now, and a life that he never could have imagined but wouldn’t trade for anything, but watching Sid pulling out his toiletries, carving a space for himself here, gives Zhenya a sense of vertigo.

He clears his throat. “Think maybe we grill,” he says. If he can act normally, he’ll feel that way soon too. “I get delivery, like, fresh fish is in fridge, some nice wine. Okay?”

Sid pauses in zipping his Dopp kit back up. “You gonna cook for me?” he says, a little smile tugging at his mouth. “Finally I’ll get to experience the famous grilled fish for myself, eh?”

Zhenya doesn’t cook much, but when he does he takes pride in it. Sid’s gotten several thousand pictures of freshly-caught fish and a rainbow of vegetable sides over the years.

“Best for you,” Zhenya says, swallowing as he pictures Sid eating off the fancy cutlery he picked out when he was 24. “You tell Legend, like, most tasty fish you’re ever have.”

Sid trails after him into the kitchen, pausing to comment on pieces of Zhenya’s decor. He’s figured out that Zhenya’s not in the mood to be even gently teased about his taste, and when Zhenya puts him to work chopping up veggies Sid leans up to kiss his cheek, an uncharacteristically gentle gesture from a guy that usually expresses his affection through wrestling, bad chirps, and terrible come-ons.

Zhenya swallows around the lump in his throat and wraps the seasoned tuna, freshly-caught that morning, in tinfoil for the grill.

They eat out on the balcony. Sid’s quiet, sipping at his wine and gazing out at the water. Zhenya points out the ferry chugging slowly between the island and the mainland, but otherwise he lets the silence settle comfortably over them.

The more time Sid spends here, the more right it seems. Sid belongs on this balcony, lit up by the setting sun. He belongs in this condo. He belongs everywhere Zhenya is.

“Hey,” Sid finally says, just as Zhenya’s tossing back the last mouthful of wine. “Thanks for bringing me. I know it…this place, I get why. I understand what you meant it for.” He sighs and reaches over, taking Zhenya’s hand and curling their fingers together. “I saw the third bedroom.”

Zhenya bites his lip. The third bedroom was always meant to be a child’s room, painted in cheerful colors and the walls lined with shelves for toys and books. The shelves are empty, and there’s no furniture in there. Zhenya never could bring himself to furnish it for another purpose, even as that particular dream slipped further away.

“You know,” Sid says, and his voice sounds watery even though his gaze out over the ocean is steady, “we could still…if you want. We can look into that. Get some stuff for that room, you know.”

Zhenya stops breathing.

Sid’s never indicated much of an interest in having a kid. He loves children, is the first to snatch new babies away when they’re brought to team events and tote them around for as long as he’s allowed, but whenever Zhenya’s tried to bring up having one of his own, he’s deflected. Eventually, it reached a point that Zhenya decided that Sid was worth letting that possibility go.

“You want?” he manages.

“I never did, before,” Sid says, turning to look at Zhenya. The sun in his hair lights up his grays, gilding him like he’s wearing a halo. “Well, I never really thought about it enough to want it, and I figured if it was something I really wanted I’d know. But, you know, I’ve been thinking about…I’m not going to play forever, and you’re done after next season. And so many of the girls are expecting this year, it just…I thought about seeing you as a dad, and suddenly it felt like something I might want after all.” He shrugs. “I don’t even know where we’d start. It might not be possible if we’re not out. But…yeah, I think maybe.”

Zhenya doesn’t cry. Not then at least. But after Sid’s drifted to sleep in bed next to him, snoring open-mouthed and come they were too lazy to clean off drying tacky on his stomach, Zhenya allows himself a few private tears into his pillow.

You never really let go of your dreams, after all.

[beggingwolf]

I went to rpf island and could not help but notice some interesting dynamics between its inhabitants

[beggingwolf]

2010 - 2025 ^_^

[beggingwolf]

*trots over to you with a pinecone gift* do you wanna be friends…..

awoooooo!!!!! 🩶🩶🩶🩶

[beggingwolf]

Philip R. Goodwin (1881 – 1935). Wolf. Oil on canvasboard.

Coeur d’Alene Art Auction

[beggingwolf]

oh. well. I need this for brand recognition, right?

[beggingwolf]

before you write: THINK!

is it Tender?

is it Homoerotic?

is it Implicitly homosexual?

is it Noticeably repressed?

is it Kind of gay?

[beggingwolf]

they did her hair professionally for this shot you know she’s not treating those curls right

[beggingwolf]

march 15 v devils, 7-3 win

nice.

i really enjoyed geno's bizarro over-the-top penalty fugue state he went into for this one. almost like he was glitching out...

we can call this a homage to @sevenfists' wonderful tragic hockeybot geno, but not as good because like...duh.

this does contain a homophobic slur just fyi.

Evgeni has followed a fairly strict game-day protocol ever since he woke up in Pittsburgh almost 20 years ago. The details have changed, refinements and efficiencies added in as his software was upgraded, but the basics, the stuff that keeps him running at optimal performance and giving his all on the ice, have remained the same.

Most of his start-up process is automated now, thankfully. Those first couple of years he needed to be manually disconnected from his charging station and powered on every morning, and since the station was bulky and he had to charge upright all night he’d spend the first half-hour trying to loosen up his joints and walk without a hitch in his step. It also meant he had to stay at the rink—the unit was permanently installed in his maintenance room, and they only had one more extraordinarily bulky one that got lugged around for road trips. Evgeni spent a lot of mornings after Dana woke him up wandering the hallways until the rest of the guys started to trickle in.

He came back from the Olympics in Sochi with a new charging port, discreetly installed under his left armpit and USB-C compatible provided it’s connected to one of his new, portable power packs. The automated start-up patch came through shortly after, and all he had to do was program in a power-down and power-up time and he boots up all on his own.

Powering down in a comfortable position had been a revelation. Being able to do it wherever he wanted was another.

Evgeni considered buying his own house—the idea of his own space is appealing, even if he’s not quite sure what people do at home by themselves at night. He’d run a pro/con analysis, though, and asked someone to look over the results to verify the conclusion he came to: however unlikely it may be, the scenario of something going wrong when nobody is there to find Evgeni and perform emergency maintenance is an unacceptable trade-off for home ownership.

Sidney’s suggestion that Evgeni just move in with him was much more logical.

Something else that came with Evgeni’s 2014 upgrade was an unexpected, but not unwelcome, libido add-on. All part of the goal to make Evgeni and others like him more human, integrate them more into society at large. It took a few months for Evgeni to calibrate to his new desires; he’d expected a standard program, especially with his lab of origin located in Russia, but after a while he figured out he was gay.

He spent the off-season experimenting and arrived in Pittsburgh for the season with a list of likes and dislikes, and a type. Sidney almost exactly matched the latter, and based on Evgeni’s new experience he was confident that the first two items could be adjusted to suit.

He’d been right. 

Sidney has said he’s in love with Evgeni. Evgeni’s emotional response center has been upgraded on a regular basis over the years, but most of the time it seems like he’s a little…slow, maybe, or removed from how he should be feeling, such as it is.

Not about Sidney. He’s pretty sure he loves Sidney too.

Sidney also understands the value of a routine. He has his own, more rigidly engrained than anything Evgeni does on gameday, and he’s more than happy to leave Evgeni alone to boot up and run his diagnostics in peace. It’s unsettling to watch, Evgeni’s been told—his eyes go disconcertingly blank, and for a solid five minutes he’s utterly unresponsive. People get weird about it, even if they’ve seen it before. He prefers to be alone.

Mid-March in a season like this one is a grind. Evgeni’s been in for repairs more this season than the last two combined, and they might not be officially eliminated from playoff contention yet but it’s just a matter of time; motivation is hard to come by, even for Evgeni. It’s reassuring to fall into his programming and run through each system one by one, making sure he’s primed for optimal performance.

There’s a spark in the corner of his vision.

Evgeni pauses, scrolls back through lines of code, reviews. Nothing. He must have imagined it.

When he pulls himself out, he’s running a few minutes late; Sidney will be almost done with his breakfast.

Evgeni heaves himself to his feet and heads downstairs. Sidney drives on game days, so Evgeni downloads the Devils’ five most recent games to review in the car.

—

He shouldn’t need to, but Evgeni likes to top-up his charge while Sidney takes his pre-game nap. Sidney likes it too, says it feels like they’re falling asleep together; it also helps that once Evgeni’s powered down he doesn’t move, so once they’re arranged to maximize Sidney’s comfort there’s no mid-sleep jostling.

When Evgeni boots back up, he feels…weird. Wrong, lying in bed with Sidney wrapped around him like normal.

He unplugs his charger and extracts himself as carefully as he can, putting on his suit and making his way downstairs to wait until Sidney is awake and ready to drive them to the rink for the game.

Sidney frowns at him when he finally comes down, but Evgeni turns his head, and Sidney lets him be.

They make small talk in the car like usual, but Evgeni’s distracted, and eventually Sidney goes quiet. To distract himself Evgeni runs back to his source code, a well-worn self-soothing mechanism when he’s feeling jumpy or off.

The code itself is simple but effective, wrapped inside a descriptor of the reason Evgeni was made in the first place.

The modern sport of ice hockey was developed in Canada…

By the time the game starts Evgeni’s restless, shifting from foot to foot during the anthem and eyeing the opposing team with more hostility than he’s used to experiencing. 

Evgeni’s never pretended to be the cleanest player in the league. He’s sneaky with his stick, takes risky penalties because when guys hit back he doesn’t feel pain like humans do, and sometimes it works. Even for him, though, this game is tough sledding.

When his reckless double minor results in a goal against and lets the Devils draw within one, Evgeni shatters his stick in the box, then glides back to the bench with his mouth twisted in a frown. He feels—he wants to hit something, or maybe someone.

His higher processing is on alert at this aberration in behavior, but all Evgeni can do is sit on the bench, accept his new stick, and wait.

“G,” comes Sidney’s voice in his ear, and Evgeni flinches away violently—what is Sidney doing, sitting so close? Why is he pressing their legs together like that? Why is he reaching for Evgeni’s hand where it’s resting on his thigh? “Hey, you okay? You seem a little rattled; do you need a breather, maybe someone to check you out?”

“Fuck off, what you do,” Evgeni hisses, snatching his hand away. “Don’t touch me, like, what are you, a faggot? Back off.”

Crosby freezes, and Letang peers around from his other side, eyes narrowed. “What the fuck did you just say to him?”

“You fuck off too,” Evgeni snaps, half-rising with his fists clenching in his gloves, and suddenly the bot maintenance guy has an iron grip on his arm.

“Cool it, or I’m taking you back and decommissioning you here and now instead of letting you get through this game and get examined,” Freddy snaps in his ear.

Evgeni shakes his head. There’s an odd echo in his ears, metallic and hollow, and snippets from his source code keep floating into his brain—Hockey Canada announced a plan to address "systemic issues" in the culture of hockey; the early history of hockey encouraged physical intimidation and control; oh, the good old hockey game....

The rest of the game is a blur. Evgeni doesn’t cause any more goals against, even manages to put up a primary assist on the power play, but he spends his time on the bench spacing out, shrinking away from anyone who tries to talk to him as he scrolls through his coding.

The diagnostics are all still fine. Something’s wrong, though.

Evgeni spent a year in stasis while his system was flooded with hockey history and hockey culture. He doesn’t remember it very well, but those first few years had aligned pretty well with what he’d learned—hockey was rough, hockey was physical, hockey was insular and conservative and macho.

Times change. So did Evgeni, through programming and his own conclusions drawn from observing the world around him.

He seesaws between past and present, software upgrades and personality patches warring in his motherboard until he thinks he might short out. He doesn’t, obviously; there are enough redundancies built into him to keep the ISS in orbit, let alone one android on an ice rink, but that doesn’t stop him from feeling overheated and dazed by the time they troop off the ice.

Instead of walking to the locker room he turns left, toward the bot maintenance room.

He half-hears a whispered argument behind him, and shortly after it cuts off someone hurries to catch up.

“Hey,” Sidney says, and Evgeni cringes, his words from earlier rattling in his skull like they were said by someone else.

“Sorry,” he grits out. He wants to reach out and take Sidney’s hand, but the thought of someone seeing him holding hands with a man fills him with nausea. “Not sure…”

“Yeah,” Sidney says. His voice is even, flat and unsettling, but Evgeni doesn’t have room to work through that and find a fix.

Freddy’s waiting outside the room with his arms crossed. He relaxes when Evgeni rounds into view, raising his eyebrows but not commenting when Sidney follows them into the room.

“Alright, let’s get you opened up and see what’s going on,” Freddy says, gesturing to the maintenance station.

It looks like a torture chamber, a metal chair surrounded by needles and machinery and a large, ominous machine with a screen and dozens of blinking lights. Evgeni gingerly lowers himself into the seat and closes his eyes, flinching a little when the chair lifts and tilts him forward, giving Freddy access to his control panel.

It doesn’t hurt to have his panel opened, but it feels wrong, invasive and intrusive. Evgeni used to need to get strapped into the chair to stop from fighting, but now he squeezes his eyes closed and bites on his tongue and takes some of the big, soothing breaths that do nothing for the functioning of his shell but seem to settle his mind anyway.

“Fuck,” Freddy murmurs, and Evgeni’s eyes fly open. Before he can say a word, Sidney’s at his side.

“What is it?” Sidney demands, resting a hand on Evgeni’s shoulder and rubbing his thumb soothingly as he leans over to peer into the panel. “Oh, shit.”

“What!” Evgeni demands, clenching his fists. He hates this, hates feeling helpless and paralyzed while people bend over his back and stare down into his innards.

“Not sure what happened in here, bud, but you’ve got some seriously fucked-up wires. Something in here burnt out, and a few of the metal casings are fried.” Freddy touches something inside Evgeni that sends his left knee straight out in a kick. “Yeah, damn, that’s no good. You were maybe a few days from catching on fire.”

Sidney’s hand spasms on Evgeni’s shoulder. “Can you fix him?” he asks, voice low and worried.

“Oh, sure,” Freddy says, and the easy confidence in his voice is reassuring. Freddy never sounds overwhelmed, never sounds like there’s something he can’t make work. “Might take a while, I think I’ll have to boot him into safety mode for a few hours to make sure everything’s connected okay, but he should be ready to go by Tuesday’s game.”

Sidney’s exhale is shaky with relief. Evgeni wants to reach up and touch his hand. “We start now?” he says instead, keeping his eyes on the ground.

“Sure thing. When was your last backup?” Freddy asks, rummaging through his toolkit. “Sid, when you head back can you let Sully know what’s going on, tell him I’ll get everyone a full rundown once I can pull the readout?”

“Sure. And he backed up last night, so you can probably just—”

Evgeni interrupts him. “No,” he says firmly, finally gathering the courage to crane his neck and look up at Sidney’s face. “Back up now, please. Want to remember what I say.”

“Good man,” Freddy says, clapping Evgeni on his other shoulder.

Sidney crouches down so he can look Evgeni in the eye. “You didn’t mean it,” he says quietly. His eyebrows are furrowed, and there’s a frown tugging at his mouth. He’s sad, Evgeni concludes, and hurt, and he’s trying to hide it. “I mean, it’s like…you’re hurt, you pulled something out from your coding, it’s not—”

“Sid,” Evgeni interrupts, and Sidney startles. A quirk in Evgeni’s programming is that he doesn’t use nicknames unless he really makes an effort. “Doesn’t matter why, I still say. Can’t forget I do, it’s not…” He thinks, running through the relationships course he downloaded back in 2015 when the team was struggling and Sidney seemed like he was on the verge of ending things. “It’s reason, not excuse. I still need, like, accountability.”

He mangles the word, but Sidney’s small smile is worth it.

—

Evgeni doesn’t dream, exactly. When he’s powered down there’s still a flicker of awareness as long as he has battery, enough to pull himself to wakefulness if there’s a threat, but extended downtime for repairs is like floating in a thick black cloud. There’s a very distance perception of voices, of movement and hands on his shell and wires being replaced, but nothing that Evgeni can actually truly call a memory as opposed to a superimposed expectation of what happened.

The grogginess when he’s powered back on is very real, though, as is the stiffness in his knees. He hopes he’ll have enough time to loosen up before he has to play.

“Welcome back,” Freddy’s cheerful voice booms, and Evgeni winces. “You should be set. Had you walk and sit and do a few jumping jacks yesterday in safety mode, nothing else loosened up or shorted. Okay—hands?”

He walks Evgeni through the post-repairs protocol, checking his reactivity, his senses, the last things he remembers to check his backup loaded correctly. Check, check, check.

When Evgeni stumbles out of the room, blinking against the harsh overhead lights in the hall, Sidney’s waiting for him.

“Hey,” Sidney says, eyes flickering over Evgeni’s face.

“I’m so sorry,” Evgeni says immediately. The shame that rolls through him is new and unexpectedly powerful—he rarely feels embarrassed, his programming doesn’t allow for him to make choices that lead to that. When it’s working correctly, of course. “God, Sidney, you know I don’t mean.”

“I know,” Sidney says, and the caution in his voice makes Evgeni’s chest ache. “I told Kris what happened, he said he won’t kick your ass unless it happens again.”

“I let him,” Evgeni says earnestly, which makes Sidney laugh. “Promise, I stand there, he kick and scratch and do whatever, I just let.”

He reaches forward tentatively, touching his fingers to the back of Sidney’s hand. The flood of relief when Sidney turns his hand up and laces their fingers together is nearly enough to make him lose his balance.

Emotions are tricky things, Evgeni thinks, but he wouldn’t wipe them for the world.

[beggingwolf]

Kriemhilde, german shepherd, published 1922

[beggingwolf]

i'm not into real people Fiction i'm into real people Facts. speculating about real people is parasocial and weird and invasive. however some things just happened. and my source is that i feel like it

[beggingwolf]

[beggingwolf]

wowie zowie.

[beggingwolf]

march 13 v blues, 5-3 win

this team is so silly.

so geno sure had himself some moments last night, huh? babe are you good?

thank you to everyone who sent me asks with ideas, you guys helped so much <3 i'm not posting any of the asks because i want to keep them for potential future inspo, but i read them all (along with the lovely compliments) and i really appreciate it!!

The proximity curse can’t have come at a worse time, really.

Neither of them noticed at first. Over the years Zhenya and Sid’s pre-game rituals have twined together; they get to the rink in the afternoon and don’t really separate until Sid skates out for the anthems. Even when Sid is out taping his sticks on the bench, Zhenya’s usually fussing with the stick rack back in the tunnel, arranging and re-arranging everything until he’s satisfied with where his extras are.

They’ve been adding to their warmup routines over the years too; between passing the puck back and forth and Zhenya doing his best to distract Sid when he’s at the net practicing tip-ins, they spend most of the time within a few feet of each other. So when Zhenya feels the need to follow Sid around the ice more than normal, to slap at his shins and handle a puck between his skates a few extra times, it’s not really something worth dwelling on.

When the anthems end and Sid skates for center ice and Zhenya feels like there’s a sharp hook in his stomach tugging him along, he starts to pay more attention.

“What the fuck,” he grunts, gripping his stick to stop himself from vaulting over the boards until the ripping ache in his belly eases. 

He manages to stay in place, but it’s a close thing. He shrugs off the coaches who come to check on him, white-knuckling his way through the first period until the horn sounds and he can bodily drag a protesting Sid off the ice and tow him to the practitioner’s office, just down the hall from the locker room.

He doesn’t think about the relief so powerful it’s almost nauseating when he gets his hands on Sid’s jersey.

“Dude,” Sid complains, but Zhenya barges into Mage Novik’s office without so much as a knock.

“We cursed,” he announces, shoving Sid into a chair and dropping into the other one. His hands start stinging the second he lets Sid go. “Not sure when it happens, but it hurts when I’m too far from Sid. You can fix?”

Mage Novik looks at them over their glasses, eyebrows raising. 

Some of the guys don’t like the Mage. Spooky, Karl called them, and Kris gives their office a wide berth unless he’s frog-marched in for his mandated quarterly hex-check. Zhenya likes them, though—they’ve been around since long before Zhenya came to North America, and he’s always found their ambiguously Slavic accent comforting, especially in the early days when he barely understood English and only had Seryozha to talk to.

He spent a lot of time with the Mage getting checked and double-checked for lingering curses and evil eyes from Magnitogorsk. There was one that took almost a full week to untangle embedded in his left heel; the doctors thought it was shin splints at first.

The Mage normally doesn’t tolerate interruptions, or unscheduled visits. Zhenya’s an exception.

“When did you first notice?” they ask, rising and circling their desk to peer down at first Zhenya, then Sid. Zhenya catches Sid tensing up and rolls his eyes. “There’s definitely something here, not on Sidney but on you, Zhenechka.”

Zhenya sighs explosively. “Notice when game starts and Sid goes to center ice. Before that, not sure. I’m at my house for a nap in afternoon, no problems.”

The Mage rests their hand on the top of Zhenya’s head. He holds his breath and stays as still as possible until they slide their palm off, patting his cheek once before returning behind their desk.

“It’s a proximity curse,” they say, drawing out a sheet of paper. Sid swears colorfully, and the Mage quirks a tiny smile. “Indeed. It was cast just a few hours ago, either on your way to the arena or right when you arrived. The signature is unfamiliar to me.” They bend down and begin to scribble. “I do not have a solution for you right now. It’s still new enough that you won’t feel the worst of it for a while, but no more than two more hours. Hopefully by then I will be able to dismantle it, but if not, be prepared to spend the evening as close as possible in order to avoid unnecessary distress.” They lean forward and yank a strand of hair from first Zhenya, then Sid. “Go now. You may play as long as it doesn’t hurt too badly. Return after the game.”

Sid scowls, rubbing at his scalp. “Is there anything you can give him so he’s not in pain?” he asks, glancing over at Zhenya. “He said it hurts already.”

Mage Novik glances up from their paper, now covered in arcane symbols. Zhenya and Sid’s strands of hair have been woven together into a circle, centered on the parchment. “I am not a doctor, Sidney,” they say, with the patient tone of someone who’s explained the same thing many, many times. “I can unwind curses and provide protection. For pain relief, I believe the staff has a full stock of Toradol.” They turn back to their work.

Sid looks inclined to argue, but Zhenya knows when he’s been dismissed from a practitioner’s presence, so he hauls Sid to his feet and out the door, letting go and forcing himself to step a few inches away once they’re back in the hall.

“What the hell??” Sid demands, crossing his arms. “We haven’t gotten hit with anything all season, who did you piss off?”

“Me?” Zhenya says, outraged. “Who say I do something? Maybe someone misses, like, they aim for you, bad shot.” He and Sid had arrived at the same time, after all, and walked in from the garage together. “Nobody cares enough to curse me, you’re big shot with fancy record soon.” He manages to mostly keep his sulky resentment out of his voice; he’s Sid’s biggest supporter, always has been, and he thinks he’s doing a remarkably good job of tamping down his own competitive spirit to cheer Sid on even as his own play starts to flag.

Sid huffs as they round the corner to the locker room. “It doesn’t matter,” he says, which is how Zhenya knows Sid thinks he might be right. “We need to figure out how we’re going to get through this game. I think you should sit.”

“What!” Zhenya cries, throwing out his arm to stop Sid from barrelling into the room. “I sit, like, stay even further away, hurt worse? No. If I sit, you do too.”

“I need to get a point this game,” Sid says evenly, shoving at Zhenya’s arm until he moves out of the way. “And the trainers could give you something, some of the strong stuff. Then we’ll go see the Mage after the game and I’ll drive you home and everything will be fine.”

“Who’s getting the good stuff?” Rusty asks from where he’s digging through the tape bin at the front of the room, sounding far too interested. “G, you hurt?”

“No,” Zhenya snaps, at the same time Sid says “He’s cursed.” They glare at each other.

Rusty looks between them, then grabs a tape roll at random and retreats back to his stall.

“A curse?” Sully says, casually inserting himself between them. “Have you been to the Mage?”

“We just go,” Zhenya jumps to answer before Sid can try and pretend his stupid idea came from the Mage. “They say, I play as long as it’s not too bad, think I have a few hours before it pulls me too close and I can’t. They’re work on something and we go back after the game.”

Sully eyes him, and Zhenya does his best to look earnest and trustworthy and exactly like a guy who would never, ever minimize the extent of an injury in order to stay in a game.

Sid hastily covers a laugh with a cough, so Zhenya thinks he’s probably not doing a great job.

“Fine,” Sully says, shaking his head and looking upward. “Christ, it’s been one thing after another this season. G, the second you feel like it’s too bad you get yourself off the ice, understand? I don’t want you fucking around with this, it’s not something you can grit your teeth and force your way through. No matter what happens, you’re off the ice for practice tomorrow.”

Zhenya’s a grown man who’s far too mature to stick his tongue out at Sid for getting his way. He does it anyway as soon as Sully’s turned back to address the rest of the team.

Sid rolls his eyes. “You’re a moron,” he mutters, but he sounds fond—he’s never able to stay upset with Zhenya for too long, even when he deserves it. “I’m gonna be watching you, and I’ll pull you out myself if I think you’re pushing it. So, don’t.”

“Yes, Captain,” Zhenya simpers, and Sid aims a kick at him before waddling back to his stall.

Zhenya does take a detour to beg a shot of Toradol off the staff. The pain had been more unexpected than anything else, but it’s better to be prepared. If the Mage is right, he’ll be feeling a lot worse by the end of the game.

—

It’s worse than Zhenya could ever have imagined. He spent the last two periods totally distracted, gritting his teeth against the urge to trail after Sid like a dog on a leash and instead limiting himself to shoving guys out of the way to sit pressed against Sid’s side when they’re both on the bench. By the time the final buzzer sounds Zhenya’s sweating and he’s getting a headache, and he can’t get off the ice fast enough.

Sid hustles down the tunnel after him, and Zhenya can practically feel the worry radiating off him.

It’s a relief when they get to the Mage’s office and Zhenya can scoot their chairs as close as possible. It would probably be even better if they were out of their gear, but neither of them wanted to wait.

Mage Novik has a line between their eyebrows. “Unfortunately,” they start, and Zhenya’s heart sinks.

He barely registers the rest—Sid’s there, he’ll remember everything important. Instead, Zhenya closes his eyes and lets himself indulge in a moment of self-pity.

First his wrist, then his knee, now this. What an absolute clusterfuck of a season.

He zones out until he feels Sid’s hand on his arm, then gets to his feet, smiles wanly at the Mage, and follows Sid out of the office.

“Okay,” Sid says, taking a deep breath. “They said that they need more time. Something about the intent of the curse? I didn’t really understand, they got really technical, but they said that there was something about the why they needed to look into. They said we both should stay home tomorrow because you’re only gonna get worse…and, we probably are going to have to share a bed tonight. They’ll have someone come get us when they’re ready to break it.”

Zhenya shrugs. “Okay,” he says. What else is there to say?

“So, I guess we should just…shower and go home. Do you want to go to yours, or…” Sid trails off, looking unsure. 

“Alexei in town,” Zhenya says. “Don’t think it’s good idea, share bed when he’s here. Even if we say it’s curse, he’s maybe…” Zhenya’s mouth twists. It’s so hard to explain the backwards way many of his Russian friends think about things, and it feels doubly shameful to try and do so tonight, when the arena was decked out in rainbows and half the signs at warmups were about Pride.

Zhenya likes to think he’s more enlightened these days, far more sophisticated than the knee-jerk defensive idiocy of his youth, but he has the benefit of living in the West most of the time. His childhood friends are still steeped in traditional media. And, right or wrong, Zhenya doesn’t want the boys he used to play pond hockey with looking at him differently.

“Then we’ll stay at mine,” Sid says, seizing onto the beginnings of a plan with the desperate gratitude of a drowning man. “We’ll eat, we’ll go to bed, and hopefully the Mage will call us right away in the morning and all of this will be over.”

The shower is weird. Zhenya is intensely aware of how close Sid is, taking the shower next to him instead of leaving the courtesy space. He’s seen Sid naked thousands of times, but it feels different now; the curse makes Zhenya want to touch, and Sid’s skin looks smooth and warm as he scrubs himself off.

He’d mostly trained himself out of looking at his teammates like this. The last thing he needs is for this curse to bring back confused teenaged desires he’s long outgrown.

Zhenya shakes his head and tilts back into the spray, letting his shampoo rinse out. He keeps his eyes on the wall in front of him and showers as quickly as he can, drying himself so roughly his skin stings and tripping into his clothes once they’re in the change room.

Sid sticks close to his side as they walk to the garage, an awful parody of the way they’d bumped into each other companionably on the way in this afternoon. As they walk, Zhenya keeps turning his head, looking for where someone might have been hiding away, ready to aim a curse at them and fuck up his entire night.

He doesn’t even put up a token protest when Sid guides them to his Range Rover. He’s in no state to drive; he spends the entire ride back to Sid’s house focusing on keeping his hands in his lap.

Every single light is on in Sid’s house when they pull up, and Zhenya shakes his head—Sid is the worst at turning lights off, can’t stand a room being even a little dim. Zhenya’s parents are always appalled when they come over, murmuring about the waste of electricity.

“Don’t start,” Sid warns, and Zhenya has to admit that it’s nice to walk into a kitchen that’s well-lit  and warm-feeling, even though the entire house is empty. Sid doesn’t like having company like Zhenya, doesn’t host his hometown friends for weeks on end to stave off the loneliness, but there’s a difference between a quiet house and a quiet, dark house.

They eat pressed together at Sid’s island. Zhenya picks at his food, and for once Sid doesn’t push it, although he does insist Zhenya finish the horrifying green shake Sid forces on him.

Normally they’d watch a late game, or maybe review some tape if either of them had something they wanted to review before video tomorrow, but Zhenya can barely remember anything that happened in tonight’s game, and neither of them are really in the mood to watch a West Coast game, so they head upstairs.

Sid produces a pair of basketball shorts that Zhenya has to tighten an absurd amount to keep from falling off his waist, and they take turns in the bathroom. Sid waits just outside the door as Zhenya brushes his teeth, but even that’s starting to feel like too much, and by the time they slide into bed Zhenya’s practically frantic until he can pull Sid flush to him.

“Sorry,” he mutters, flushed and miserable with shame, but Sid shakes his head and burrows into Zhenya’s arms. 

“Not your fault,” he says, voice muffled by Zhenya’s chest. “Not like I’m gonna let you sleep somewhere else if you’re hurtin’, bud. You’d do the same for me.”

Zhenya’s chest swells with fondness. Sid is annoying, sure, and stubborn and sometimes selfish and a know-it-all, but he’s the best person Zhenya’s ever known.

It’s strange, falling asleep with someone in his arms. It’s been a very long time. Still, Zhenya manages to drift off to the sound of Sid’s quiet, whuffling snores.

—

Zhenya’s torn out of a warm, very pleasant dream by a voice calling his name, louder and more urgent with each repetition. As he swims back to wakefulness, he’s aware of a body in his arms, skin under his hands, and his morning wood pressing against…

Sid. Oh fuck.

“G,” Sid says, voice strangled. “Are you awake? Are you…” Zhenya can hear him swallow. He’s hard too, dick nestled up against Zhenya’s thigh where Zhenya must have tangled them together and started rutting forward in his sleep.

“Oh god,” Zhenya groans, which transitions into a moan when he shifts and drags his dick over Sid’s torso. “Sorry, Sid, I’m not mean…”

“Yeah,” Sid says, half-laughing. “I mean, I figured. Been a while, huh? It’s not like you could have mistaken me for one of your girls, I’m not exactly…you know.”

Zhenya’s silence goes on for far too long to be anything but damning.

Sid feels good in his arms, feels right. His skin is somehow just as soft as it looked in the showers last night, and he’s warm, and he’s really making no effort to get out of Zhenya’s embrace.

Zhenya hesitantly moves his hips, gasping when Sid rubs back against him.

“Take the edge off,” Sid pants in his ear, and Zhenya throws away his good sense and holds Sid even closer, rutting them together until they’ve both come in their shorts, sweaty and out of breath.

Zhenya’s content to lie there and pretend the world doesn’t exist as long as possible, but Sid wiggles back far sooner than he’d like, forcing eye contact.

“Are you okay?” he asks, keeping one hand on Zhenya’s bicep and their feet tangled together. “I didn’t…you were awake, right?” He looks genuinely worried, as if he’s somehow pushed Zhenya into doing something he didn’t want to do.

It’s sweet. It’s thoughtful. It’s very Sid.

“Very awake,” Zhenya says, looking down between them and then back at Sid, waggling his eyebrows. He supposes he should be freaking out more—it turns out Alexei would have been right about what they’d be getting up to while sharing a bed—but Sid’s touch is still enough of a soporific against the curse that Zhenya just feels giddy, like he’s gotten away with something.

That will probably wear off once the curse is lifted. Sue him for enjoying it while it lasts.

“Okay, fine,” Sid says impatiently, flushing pink. “Just, I didn’t think that would be something you’d be into. Like, ever. I mean, I’ve met your friends, and I know that things are…”

Zhenya cuts him off. “Calm down,” he orders, reeling Sid back in and squeezing him until he squeaks. “It’s not big deal, like, we friends, it’s curse, things weird for now. Doesn’t have to mean anything.” Even as he says it, his chest hurts a little.

He loves Sid. Of course he does, Sid is his best friend. Zhenya’s ruthlessly crushed anything non-platonic for a man for 25 years, but Sid’s always been special.

Sid doesn’t answer for a bit. “Do you want it to not mean anything?” he finally asks, and Zhenya’s heart stops.

“Sid, I’m cursed,” he says, in lieu of actually providing a real answer. He doesn’t know what to say.

His digs his fingers into Sid’s back, though, and ducks down to press his lips to the top of Sid’s head.

“Okay,” Sid says soothingly. His fingers feel like they’re leaving sparks where they trail over Zhenya’s skin, and Zhenya’s not sure how much of that isthe curse pushing them together. “Alright, we’re just…it’s clearing out the pipes, yeah? Since you can’t be alone right now.” It’s practical, matter-of-fact. Nobody will ever know but them, but this is the sensible way to look at things. Trust Sid to come up with a neat solution they can both explain away and put behind them. Things are tidier this way.

Suddenly, Zhenya wants to make it messy. “Maybe…” he whispers, afraid to speak too loudly. “Maybe we try again. After curse.”

[beggingwolf]

would love something between geno and nate if the spirit moves you

the spirit moved me to about 4.5k words i don't know why i'm always so sure these are going to be short. ANYWAY!

favourite kind of night - nate/geno, rated e

"Yeah, okay," Nate says, walking over to take the joint out of Malkin's hands, brushing their fingers together in the process. Malkin's hands are surprisingly smooth, chilled by the water outside and the cool air coming in the window. It feels nice. Nate shivers, but brings the joint to his mouth quickly to hide the motion. The thing about Sid's Cup parties is that it's always hard for Nate to keep his head on straight. No pun intended. During the season it's easy enough for him to shut off the part of his brain that lights up around guys, around men, around that guy's shoulders and this man's thighs and that dude's hands because he's a professional and he's doing his job with the sort of still-minded focus he's famous for, but the off-season is — it's different. He's not at his job. He notices. His brain lights up. Malkin has nice hands. Nate notices. So what? It doesn't have to be a thing. He takes a hit off the joint and passes it back, totally normally. "Thanks," Nate says belatedly, because he's not rude, smoke escaping his mouth on the exhale. nate runs into geno at sid's 2017 cup party. geno sees an opportunity. nate sees the cup.

[beggingwolf]