#aleskander barkov

[marcandreyuri]

Storm for the ask game!

word challenge meme

continuation of the sashew werewolf au that someday i'll organize into something cohesive and put on ao3. part one and part two

(edit: i did kind of realize immediately after posting this that basically every installment of this has been the same story so.... whoops! i might rewrite this one when i put everything together for ao3)

The night before the full moon, a storm whips and lashes at the sea, winds blowing sand over Sasha’s deck, the waves crashing loudly against the shore.

“Gonna be hell,” Chucky says from his place on the couch, tv remote in hand, turning the volume up on the Senators game he's watching. They’re playing the Bruins in Boston, Brady getting knocked around by Marchand and giving it back just as hard.

“What?” Sasha asks. He’s standing in front of his windows watching the white-crested waves rise up in the storm’s surge, looping over themselves before hitting land. The moon is hidden behind the clouds, and with no light to illuminate the beach, Sasha has to focus to make out what’s happening. The wind rattles the house a little. 

They get storms in Finland, but he didn’t live next to the ocean there, and watching it respond to the downpour is strangely fascinating, in a way that makes Sasha feel small and powerless, an observer of nature instead of part of it.

“Shifting tomorrow,” Matthew clarifies. Sasha turns to look at him, and his eyes are still focused on the television, frowning a little as Brady whiffs on the puck and the Bruins pick it up and take it back towards the Senators’ zone. “I hate turning in the rain.”

“You could turn here instead,” Sasha says without thinking. Chucky’s turned around him a few times now, in hotel rooms on roadies and that one time in Finland, but it feels—too intimate to offer this, shifting in his home, like Sasha’s exposed his own nerve and is just waiting for Chucky to press down on it.

“Nah,” Matthew says and shooting pain goes through Sasha. “The wolf’s been—I don’t know, weird lately. I’m gonna lock the gate at home.”

“Weird like what?”

Chucky bites his lip and shrugs, humming nonchalantly. “Just weird,” he says, and Sasha knows he’s lying, knows Matthew knows exactly what’s going on with his wolf and won’t say. 

Sasha’s been researching wolves a lot lately, watching documentaries on the mythology of werewolves, the biology behind the change, the behavioral patterns. He thinks he could understand, if Matthew would let him.

The storm slows to a drizzle by morning, but comes roaring back by afternoon, parts of the roads flooding and practice getting cancelled. When he goes to sleep that night, the wind outside howls and it sounds so much like Chucky that he turns on all the lights, like he could give Matthew a beacon to follow, a guide to bring him home.

Sasha feels stupid for thinking it. Matthew has his own house and he even said he wasn’t coming tonight anyway. He turns the lights off and gets back in bed, turning on some white noise on his phone to drown out the storm.

His volume’s on full blast when he gets a call at six in the morning, sunlight just barely coming in through the curtains as it peeks over the horizon.

“Hei?” He says, blinking awake. His vision is still blurry, and his mind is clouded. English always take a minute to come online for him.

“Barky?” He hears. Matthew’s voice is tinny, like he’s calling from a place without very much reception. “Are you—”

“Chucky,” he interrupts, “are you okay?”

“I’m—” Matthew laughs before saying, “I guess. I have no idea where I am though.”

“Who’s phone do you have?”

“I just knocked on some random person’s door. Hold on—” He hears Matthew pull the phone away from his mouth and say something, a low murmur from the other person’s reply. He puts the phone back and rattles off an address, just a few minutes from Sasha’s.

“I’ll be there soon,” Sasha says, and just before he hangs up he hears Matthew asking for some clothes. 

He grabs his softest sweatpants and a sweater out of his closet, debates on bringing some boxers but Chucky freeballs it more often than not so he leaves them.

Besides, he flashes back to the last shift Chucky had on the road, the morning after when they fucked in the hotel bed before anyone else on the team even woke up, Chucky lazy and slow below him, opening up for Sasha so easily, so relaxed. He thinks he’d like to see if Matthew wants to repeat that today.

He pulls up to the mansion a dozen streets west of his and sees Chucky with a kitchen towel draped over his middle, sitting on the wet curb. The streets are still a little flooded, but the drains are clearing it out now that the rain has stopped.

Matthew practically jumps in the car and throws the towel out the door before he slams it shut. Sasha hands him the clothes he brought and they sit in silence as Matthew quickly dresses, Sasha driving slowly back towards his house.

“Thanks,” Chucky says after he pulls the sweater over his head, his fingers pulling at the neckline to draw it away from his throat.

“Thought you were locking the gate,” Sasha says as he turns east towards his street.

“Yeah, I did,” Matthew says. “Guess the wolf didn’t like it much. I have splitters everywhere, so he probably tore at the fence or something.”

Sasha thinks of Matthew’s wolf—huge, deadly, clawing and biting at the fence keeping him in, lightning crackling in the sky and thunder booming through his bones, his claws getting bloody as he worked. 

“I guess he got lost in the rain or something. Woke up on a lawn with some kids poking me in the ass with a stick.” Matthew laughs, like it’s funny. Sasha feels a pit in his stomach, growing heavier with every word. “I tore up their plastic flamingos though, so I guess I deserved it.”

“Change at my house next time,” Sasha says. “You always find me anyway.”

Chucky says, “Yeah, sorry. It thinks—I guess it thinks we’re mated or something. It’s—I mean, it’s an animal. It’s stupid.”

Werewolves' mates are as shrouded in myth as werewolves themselves—people that keep werewolves tethered to their humanity, give them purpose and something to protect. The science of it is still undetermined, why some people have wolves just drawn to them, whether it’s human emotions mixing in with wolf instincts or something scent-based or something else entirely, not able to be understood with the science they have right now.

Sasha thinks of Matthew’s wolf, the way it looks at Sasha, the way they can communicate without words, the way he feels when the wolf is laying in bed next to him. “It’s not stupid,” he says. 

“Sure it is,” Chucky says. “It doesn’t get that like—we fuck, but we’re not. You know.”

“We could be,” Sasha says, his eyes straight forward, focused on the road. There’s something about being in the car that makes this feel easy, like they both have a reason not to look at each other. “I think your wolf knows more than you think.”

Matthew’s quiet the rest of the ride back to Sasha’s, but when they pull into the driveway, the smell of wet concrete and mud and the salty ocean air coming in through the window Matthew’s opened, he says, “Next time I’ll change here.” Sasha looks over at Matthew, and they both smile at each other, a feeling of something beginning sparking through the air like lightning.

[erikkarlsson]

june 24, 2024 | FLORIDA PANTHERS CAPTAIN ALESKANDER 'SASHA' BARKOV IS A STANLEY CUP CHAMPION