#originally from chicago

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

FELLOW MOUNTAIN TIMER!!! i obviously don't know how northern you are but if you Do happen to be in alberta/the northwest states.... the royal tyrell museum is rlly rlly fun + the badlands hiking rules. there's prickly pears there

Alas I'm literally on the other end of the continent, I live in southern New Mexico :')

[offside-the-lines]

tell me who i run to (if not you) | anthony beauvillier

"The first sip is joy, the second is gladness, the third is serenity, the fourth is madness, the fifth is ecstasy." - Jack Kerouac

Summary In July of 2023, Evie looked at a list of cities in North America and rolled a die. Just like that, she packed up her life and moved to Chicago, a fresh start. The 2023-24 NHL season started well for Tito; he did not expect the call on November 28th telling him that he was being traded. To the worst team in the league. And just like that. 10 months after being ripped from his home, he had to pack up and move again. To an unfamiliar city, and to unfamiliar faces. Which is why, when Tito and Evie ran into each other, quite literally, on Christmas morning, they both latched on to a familiar face. Over the next few months, they became close friends. They didn’t talk about the nights shared in Chicago clubs.  They didn’t need to. Because they're just friends.  Right?

This is a completed fic split into episodes for easier reading. It was written for @bqstqnbruin as part of the Winter Fic Exchange 2k24 hosted by @wyattjohnston.

Episode 1. Blue Christmas (4.9k) Episode 2. I. Winter (4.4k) Episode 3. Pal-entine's Day (4.8k) Episode 4. Four-leaf Clover (5.5k) Episode 5. Evie's Birthday 🌶️ (5.6k) Episode 6. II. Spring (4.8k) Episode 7. Not Goodbye 🌶️🌶️ (5.4k) Episode 8. III. Summer (4.8k) Episode 9. Tito's Birthday (4.2k)

Read it in full (44.5k)

🎵 Series Playlist 🎶

Requests (open) | Masterlist & Who I Write For | Join My Taglist

Under the cut: author's notes, tropes, warnings & disclaimer, fun tidbits, chapter summaries

Author's Notes: This fic was written for @bqstqnbruin as part of the Winter Fic Exchange 2k24 hosted by @wyattjohnston. It got so out of control long so quickly. I genuinely had so much fun writing this, it's basically my magnum opus; if you look closely, I think you can probably see my soul in there somewhere. I would like to thank @devilssacrament, @wyattjohnston, and @forgottenflowers for being my editors, holding my hand and keeping me sane in this. Also, thanks to @swissboyhisch, and @imperatorrrrr for being a sounding board for ideas . All of your help and support has meant so much to me. You are all just the fucking best, I am sorry this has been my entire personality for the past month, I will probably return to normal soon. Probably...

Tropes: a gut-wrenching mix of angst and fluff with a happy ending, slow burn friends to lover (tbh, idiots to lovers let's be real), alternating POVs

Warnings: alcohol (one instance of alcohol poisoning by side character), mature content bordering on smut (mostly occurring in clubs/public), references to a toxic past relationship. Disclaimer: This series is set in Chicago but does not mention the name of the team based there. Only other Chicago players mentioned by name are: Nick Foligno, Jason Dickinson and Connor Bedard. Other notes: NHL players featured Mat Barzal (a heavily featured supporting character/bestie) and brief mentions of Zach Hyman and Matt Martin. Assume that Tito and Evie are always speaking in French with each other.

Face claim for Evie (if you want one, but you can imagine whoever you like): Adeline Rudolph

Fun Tidbits: Original Character (she/her) called Genevieve Gignac or Evie (pronounced eh-vee) is the oldest sibling of Tito's juniors teammate and friend Brandon Gignac. Along with their other sibling Wiliam, they grew up in Montreal. Evie had been living in Toronto for six years, before moving to Chicago in the summer before the fic starts. I did way too much research so a lot of the little facts are true. Nicknames: (ma) chouette (shoo-wet): owl (mon) chou/chouchou (shoo): in practice, honey, sugar, baby, sweetheart // by definition, my cabbage or my profiterole/cream puff (depends who you ask) Solours (soul-oars): the Québécois name for the yellow Care Bear with the smiling sun on its belly Solou’ (soul-oo): a diminutive Evie decides to use

Cook, Cook, drink your tea, But save some in the pot for me. We'll watch the tea leaves in our cup When our drink is all sipped up. Happiness or fortune great, What will our future be? -- "Afternoon Tea at Pittock Mansion" by R.Z. Berry

Episode Synopses:

Blue Christmas Evie and Tito are both starting life anew in Chicago. It's an unfamiliar city with unfamiliar faces. They're both alone on Christmas. Maybe it's fate that brings them together. Jason and Alandra Dickinson are already smelling smoke from this fire.

I. Winter Tito injures his wrist in the first game of 2024, he’s out for 6-8 weeks and then his car breaks down. He thinks maybe he’s cursed. Evie becomes a shoulder to lean on. Barzy gets suspicious.

Pal-entine’s Day Tito returns her kindness by being a shoulder Evie can lean on when she is having a hard time after all-star break. She tells him it’s anxiety about work. He brings her a box of pastries and they cuddle on the couch all day; he doesn’t realize it’s Valentine’s Day. Later, a hook-up goes very wrong.

Four-leaf Clover Tito’s been playing again, and during his first stretch of away games begins to miss home. Well, Evie’s home anyway. When he sees her in the bar, he can’t help but show it. Barzy calls him out on his lies.

Evie’s Birthday Sometimes the music moves you. Sometimes the bass pounding in your chest makes you do things you wouldn’t do. Fuck it, it’s your birthday. That’s what Evie tells herself anyway. There are gifts given, but there are also secrets kept. 

II. Spring Tito tries to tell her— he does— It’s just he needs to find the right time, and something keeps coming up. Evie’s honest with herself. But does that even matter? Mat decides maybe it is his time to intervene.

Not Goodbye Evie realizes that her time is running out. To do what? She doesn’t know. But she has one last night to find out. That is until— Well. It’s too late now. Tito flies home and wonders if that will be the worst mistake of his life.

III. Summer They try to get on with their summers as if nothing is wrong, convincing no one. How long will it take them to realize they can’t keep pretending like everything’s fine? And who will finally take the leap of faith?

Tito’s Birthday Tito receives the best birthday present he has ever gotten: the girl he loves standing at his parent’s front door. It was never destiny or fate; it can only be by choice. And they’ll choose each other every time. Eventually, anyway.

Requests (open) | Masterlist & Who I Write For | Join My Taglist

[chronicsheepdrawing]

It's July 1st. I didn't do anything for Pride Month. I don't do Art Fight.

[duck-n-clover]

ghost hunters, on a scale to 1 to 10 how likely are they to be Blair Witch'd...?

new* ocs for the Whorror Movie universe! we have Chicago and Diana, a duo of sisters seeking out answers from the paranormal! accompanying them are Landon and Takeshi, they are hobbyist documentarians so this is a good opportunity to go on a roadtrip and see all the weird stuff small towns have to offer.

Diana is a believer and the rest are leaning more on the skeptic side but they're coming along for the ride anyway. good luck guys!

[equallyshaw]

i hope whoever started those corey perry rumors...get hit with some large defamation lawsuits because wtf

[graycard]

Evening commute #chicago

.⁣

I used to shoot with the hipstamatic app all the time but haven’t used it years… until today.

#streetphotography #blackandwhite #blackandwhitephotography #hipstamatic #shootfromthehip #photo #city #urbanphotography #photography #photooftheday

[sarah-cam]

have you seen the chicago fire spoilers? 🙄

yep and i'm just gonna leave this here

[mariocki]

Inspector Morley, Late of Scotland Yard, Investigates: The Case of the Scarlet Letters (1.3, WGN-TV, 1952)

"Mr. Mullins, I have in my possession sixty-eight letters, none of which has begun to outlive its usefulness. I'm quite prepared to admit that blackmail is risky, but then murder has its disadvantages too - that is why I gave up murder."

[gregorygerwitz]

Everything had moved a little fast, maybe that should have been the first sign. After Jay got home to Chicago, four years spent in a combat zone and fighting to make it home in one piece, he didn’t even stay very long. There was a relationship he had to focus on, and a rapidly unfolding future, and then another move. This time, when he left the city, with his girlfriend by his side, the plan was for it to be permanent, a dream of living in the mountains with their own ski lodge coming to fruition...

And then, with only one holiday season under their belts, Erin left for a different future in New York, one that didn’t have him in it.

Suddenly, their future was his future, something he had to shoulder alone. That was something he failed at before he even had the chance to try. Two savings accounts had gone into starting things off, and the meager cash flow wasn’t enough to keep it running the way he’d envisioned. So, he made some calls to some mutual friends back in Chicago, pulled a few strings, made some arrangements, and... having Kim and Adam at the lodge to provide a helping hand kept things moving. He had enough to focus on that he could get out of his head, between running a business and occasionally watching Makayla for date nights, and the broken edges of the dreams he’d set out to build were something he was able to ignore, for years.

But even having friends to help him year after year, the funds were drying up. The mortgage for the property needed to be paid, and the few employees they actually had needed to be compensated, and reservations were slowing down. Even with the business conference being held in town the same week as Christmas, they were the only place not completely booked, more than half of the rooms empty and waiting for people who happened upon the mountain and needed something last minute. It was a bad business plan, the waiting game, and he had to take matters into his own hands.

Jay marched himself down to the conference, pitched the idea of a short term loan to as many people would listen, and felt himself losing hope. It was just a loan, something to help them make upgrades and repairs over the off season so that everything could be running smoothly by the time another wave of tourists came through the next winter, but there was no one who was willing to take a chance on him or his fracturing dreams. After name dropping a few people who he hoped were still high enough to pull strings in the police department back in Chicago, he was still turned down by the one person from home who might give him a little wiggle room on when he paid the loan back.

And then he was stupid enough to literally run into the guy’s son afterwards, resulting in coffee spilled all over sheets of numbers and a very expensive tie.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry.” “You just spilled coffee on me...” “I was just coming around the corner, and I didn’t see you-” “You stained my tie.” “It doesn’t look that bad. I’ll even pay to have it cleaned for you.” “I’ll just get rid of it. It’s ruined. And now I’m late.”

Gregory Gerwitz, the fourth, was having the worst week of his life. There were no more ways to get out of the plan his parents had made for his life, and he couldn’t avoid the conference circuit anymore. When the new year came, he would be moved up in the family company, next in line to take over when his father was ready to retire, whenever that was. He had to smile for all the other businessmen at the conference, he had to ignore the fact that he’d rather be back home with his friends getting ready for the holidays, he had to learn the ins and outs of everything he never wanted anything to do with in the first place.

It should have been a nice vacation. They were in the mountains, where there was snow, and he had a few free hours to himself in the afternoons that he could use to take walks through the snow, and the scenery really was gorgeous. But it was hard to appreciate the views and the vague sense of privacy when he didn’t even want to be there. The last thing he wanted to do was sit in meeting rooms and listen to advice from people who didn’t know how to use half of the features on his cell phone. His schedule was so booked solid that he wasn’t even going to see his father for three days, and their rooms were right next to each other.

To add icing to the miserable cake, he missed two meetings to try to get a coffee stain out of his tie that was caused by some clumsy room service attendant, or whoever the fumbling man was. From the bathroom, he went back to his suite instead of the meeting he was late for, and took his coat so that he could walk along the trails to clear his head. It was the best part of his week - until his heel caught a patch of ice, and then...

The next thing he knew, he was waking up in a hospital bed, with no one around but a pair of grey eyes that were offering him a room just outside the small town while he recovered. It was temporary, just until he got his memory back and he could go back to whatever life his injury had shaken him out of. He could repay Jay by doing a few chores around the lodge, and he could borrow a name from one of his niece’s stuffed animals. There was nothing to worry about but where the ornaments went on the tree in the lobby, or what color gumdrops to put on Makayla’s gingerbread house while they waited for dinner to finish cooking.

It was exactly the peaceful thing that the holidays should be, and maybe a part of him didn’t want to remember his old life at all. It would just be so easy to stay in his new life forever instead.

[bright-and-burning]

also i’m realizing i should’ve made a diff priv twitter when i got Really into f1 bc now i am walking the fine line of being normal abt f1 to my . ~120 irls (including a few regular degular f1 fans) vs talking truly nonsense abt f1

in other news i saw a QT on a video of charles and his gf that was like. “i’m in bumfuck europe studying with greasy hair and she’s getting driven around monaco in a ferrari” and i burst out laughing bc my first thought was that they were calling all of europe bumfuck and my second thought was monaco… is in europe…

[i-used-to-wear-the-fedora]

Steddie Witness Protection Program AU

-Eddie Munson, 20 and still in highschool, is in the middle of a less than legal drug exchange when he witnesses the murder of Chrissy Cunningham by known serial Killer, Henry Creel.

-The man's still on the loose when Eddie's brought to the station and questioned about what he saw. To protect the young man who's currently their star witness and because of the scale of murders, jurisdiction falls to the US Marshall's Office and Eddie's put in the witness protection program.

-Steve Harrington is a trust fund baby. His father has been in the FBI for going on twenty years so it was rather easy to get his son a job position in the witness security program.

-It's usually an easy job all things considered but when he gets assigned as personal security for Eddie Munson in the middle of Bumfuck, Indiana, he's not happy.

-To be fair, the feeling's mutual as Eddie doesn't want to get stuck with Steve as his 24 hour round the clock babysitter. Separated from everything and everyone he knows, save his uncle Wayne, Eddie's pissed.

-Until Henry's caught, Eddie is now Joseph Ripley and his "dad" Robbie while Steve is his "cousin" as they attend the local highschool together.

-Steve's the type who peaked when he was in highschool and is actually really excited to do his senior year again. Sad to say though, as it turns out, Eddie's a total dork and keeps bringing Steve with him to do dorky things like join the highschool's DnD club populated by mostly freshmen.

-The threat of Henry Creel probably hunting Eddie down hangs over their heads, yet the two somehow find themselves growing closer, much to both their dismays.

[ginalinettiofficial]

my contribution to the food polls going around - choose with your heart and also your stomach!!! enjoy the yummy food!!! come visit chicago some time if u haven’t already we’ve got so much to eat!!! :-)

[youngncrazed]

Really liked this sketch from a few years ago so she gets her own post

[selfinflictedgunshotwound]

imo everyone on earth should be talking about Him (don't want this showing up in the tag even though it's not a diss) but everytime i go to the tag and there's only like 3 new posts i'm like. oh yeah almost no one cares except me and like 5 other ppl on here

i ran out of tags KFHSJENNXN i don't think that's literally ever happened to me before anyways don't read them because it's just me being insane as per usual

[nebulein]

Smile, Pat, it's your birthday! 🥳

[probayern]

oh watch me get stuck in chicago because i miss my connection