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malk1ns · 2 months ago

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HI HELLO I’ve been thinking about your barbie girl sid for a hot minute….if you could please imagine the man trying to do a diy/home improvement/“wood working project….like maybe sid wants to make a bird house or bird feeding station so he can do some more bird watching, and he’s struggling a little trying to figure out which tools are best to use in what order….sid out in the backyard all sweaty and pink cheeked and pouting behind his safety glasses trying to figure out why his angles are off…..asking geno with his big old 🥺 eyes to hold his wood still for him while he works his saw……

Sid loves having hobbies.

Evgeni's watched him pick up and discard new ones practically every offseason since they've been together. The only ones that have stood the test of time are scrapbooking and baking; Sid spends hours in his craft room putting together memory books that Evgeni will absolutely not admit to crying over when he's feeling sentimental, and after over a decade Sid's perfected his banana bread recipe.

Everything else, though, Sid gets really into for a few weeks over the summer, then loses interest a few weeks into the new season. They have half a shelf's worth of books on birdwatching from the Covid pause, and Evgeni things there's a bin of yarn somewhere in the garage still.

So, he's used to Sid watching something on YouTube and getting all excited about trying something new. They take trips to stores to buy stuff because Sid doesn't trust Amazon after they delivered a sensitive package to their neighbor's house, and Evgeni watches Sid wander the aisles, offering opinions when asked but otherwise letting Sid pick out whatever little bits and bobs he likes best.

It keeps Sid occupied, usually. Evgeni does most of his intensive paper-writing in the offseasons, and Sid having something of his own to work on, even if he gives up after a month, keeps him from getting bored when Evgeni loses track of time.

He's not so sure about this summer's choice though.

Sid's been talking about wanting to redo the basement at his house all season, setting up Pinterest boards and drowning Evgeni's Instagram messages with links to renovation jobs. Evgeni figured they were in for a summer of dealing with construction and mess and contractors who lie right to Sid's face because they know a mark when they see one.

Turns out, Sid wants to do some of it himself. Evgeni thinks he'd rather deal with the contractors.

Neither of them are all that comfortable in Home Depot, but Sid insists on going in person instead of ordering, and Evgeni spends his first real off-day of the summer eyeing the endless, inscrutable tools and hardware fixtures as Sid frowns at his list and gets them lost at least three times.

It's when they get to the circular saws that Evgeni finally says something.

"Sid..." he says, frowning at the sawhorse set up to demo one of the units. "Not sure this is safe, like, you're use a saw before?"

Sid's crouched down to inspect the saw blades. Evgeni takes a minute to admire the way his ass and thighs strain at his jeans.

"It's fine," Sid says, distracted and poking at the packages. "People use these all the time. And I watched a video on YouTube." He glances up at Evgeni, eyes big and imploring. "I really want to make this table, G."

Evgeni caves. He usually does. Sighing, he crouches down next to Sid, who beams at him and shoves his phone under Evgeni's nose. "Can you help me figure out which of these I need to get?"

Sid takes over Evgeni's concrete shooting pad in the backyard. There are piles of wood and buckets of bolts and screws and fasteners all over the place, and Sid spends every afternoon puttering around out there, measuring planks and drawing designs on the big sheets of paper he had stashed away from some other project.

Sid's shorts are all very short, and his t-shirts are getting tighter as he bulks back up after the season. It's a nice view. Evgeni's not getting much done on this summer's paper.

It doesn't seem like Sid is making progress either, though. So far, every time Evgeni glances out the window, he's only succeeded in moving around the pieces of wood.

He looks awfully cute in his safety glasses, though.

One day, the weather is nice enough that Evgeni gives up on his paper and wanders downstairs, stepping out onto the patio.

"G!" Sid beams at him, pushing his glasses up his nose. His hair is getting long, curling with sweat against his temples, and he's wearing the tightest white t-shirt he owns. Evgeni licks his lips. "Are you done with your story? Do you want to see what I'm working on?"

Evgeni shakes his head. Every summer, Sid thinks he's going to be done with his paper right away. He's stopped explaining the number of drafts he has to go through before it can even be sent to his editor. "I'm take break, it's nice out. Yes, you show. It's not look much like table though, Sid."

Sid pouts at him. "It takes time," he whines, gathering up the papers he's got scattered over the sawhorse. "Look, I have to measure out the legs, and make sure that all the pieces fit together..."

Evgeni dutifully looks over the designs. Sid's handwriting is terrible, but he's clearly put work into the numbers; there are erasemarks all over where he's corrected the measurements.

Numbers have never been Evgeni's strong suit, so he doesn't spend any time checking the figures. Either they'll work or they won't. "Looks good, Sid, I can't wait to see." He glances to the side, eyeing Sid up. "You take break too, maybe?"

Sid frowns at him. "I was just about to start cutting..." he starts, but trails off when Evgeni drops the papers and gets his hand on Sid's ass. "Oh, a break. Yeah, okay."

He makes for the door, but Evgeni catches him around the waist before he can go back inside, pulls him over to the chaise lounges next to the grill. When he knocks one of the seat cushions onto the ground and drops to his knees, Sid squeaks.

Sid's spent a lot of time outside this summer, and he's already got color, stark tan lines on his belly and thighs from his shorts. Evgeni licks over his hipbone, setting his teeth into the soft flesh there and biting down just enough to leave a mark, just enough to make Sid whine and cant his hips forward.

Getting Sid's shorts off is always a battle, but eventually Evgeni peels them down his thighs, letting them pool on the ground as he leans forward to bury his face in Sid's groin. He's warm, and he's been sweating in the afternoon heat; when Evgeni inhales, it's salty and pungent, twisting something in Evgeni's stomach and making him groan with want.

Sid twists Evgeni's hair in his fingers and tugs, not too hard, but urgently enough that Evgeni redirects his attention to Sid's dick, already hard and beading precome.

Evgeni doesn't tease. They're outside, after all, and the chair cushions are only comfortable for so long. He opens his mouth and lets Sid feed him his dick, closing his eyes to savor the taste and the heft of Sid in his mouth, listening to Sid pant and groan and whimper above him as he thrusts.

Sid's noisy when he comes, practically shouting as he spills over Evgeni's tongue, and Evgeni clenches his thighs. He's hard, he wants to come so badly, but he holds Sid's dick in his mouth, licking and sucking gently until Sid pulls away with a gasp.

"Wow," Sid says, blinking down at him. Evgeni's mouth feels swollen and used, and his dick is hard in his gym shorts.

He gets to his feet with a groan, wincing as his knees crack. He's barely gotten his balance when Sid is pushing at him, shoving him towards the door and inside the house.

Neither of them get anything done that afternoon.

The table turns out terribly. The legs are all the same length, but they don't fit into the top correctly, so it wobbles. The stain isn't even, too thin in some parts and textured and thick in others. One side of the top is cut at a slant.

Sid pouts over it, wants to throw it away, but Evgeni puts it in his office, on one side of his desk. A couple of folded-up index cards stops it from wobbling, and with a few blankets on top it's a perfect nest for Maverick to curl up in and nap. Sid smiles whenever he comes in and sees it, and Evgeni's caught him doodling; he thinks Sid's trying to figure out how to make a bird house.

He does make Sid take the circular saw back, though.

#barbie girl #sidgeno #hockey rpf #my writing #my fic #thank you for the prompt :)

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fallinallincurls · 1 year ago

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all’s well that ends well to end up with you

here is my entry for @wyattjohnston’s summer fic exchange 2k23!! this fic is for @ya-pucking-nerd !! i had so much fun writing this and i hope you love it just as much! writing cale has always been a favorite of mine and this one was no exception. and shutout to @tonyspep as always for brainstorming so much of this idea with me!

i ALSO made a playlist for this fic which you can listen to here!

hope you enjoy!! feedback is always appreciated! xx

word count: 5.3k

~~~~~

Cale’s offseason has hardly started, yet his phone is already lighting up with a call from you to no doubt make summer plans before he heads back to Calgary to enjoy time with his family and to start his summer training.

It’s not unusual for his best friend to call him and the soft, giddy smile on his lips at just the sight of your name on his phone display is nothing new either, but when the call connects and words are practically spewing from your lips, he knows something must be wrong.

“Woah, woah, woah. Slow down. I can’t understand a word you’re saying.” Cale cuts you off, trying to figure out what’s going on.

“I said,” You emphasize, taking a deep breath to ensure you speak slower this time, “you got invited to Ryan’s wedding right? The one that’s in a few weeks in Montana?”

“Yeah, I did. What about it?”

“Well, uh, I kinda realized that showing up by myself would be lame right? Like this guy used to be insanely in love with me, but now he’s getting married and I’m, well, not even close to being in a relationship let alone a serious one.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that. You and Ryan are still friends so it won’t be awkward and I’ll be there so you won’t be bored at any point.” Cale replies, still confused as to what you’re getting at.

“We are still friends, but I have to prove that I’m doing just as well as he is, you know? So I have a plan. Well, more of a question before a plan.” You explain, feeling the nerves creep in as the moment about revealing what you’ve been thinking of asking Cale nears with each passing second.

“Okay…”

“What do you think about going as a fake couple? Like we’re dating but it’s obviously not real? Just to prove to Ryan that I’ve moved on and am doing better! He already knows we’re friends and I don’t think it’d be that hard for us to come up with a story and act all lovey dovey together for a few days.”

Cale is silent on the other line and you have a sick feeling in your stomach that you’ve really messed up. It was a stupid idea anyway. Why would he agree to it? He might be your best friend, but asking him to fake date you? It wasn’t that smart.

“So what’s our story?” Cale asks after a moment, trying to hide the smile growing on his lips that you can’t see anyway.

“Our story?”

“Yeah, if we’re going to make this convincing we have to be on the same page about how we met, the first time we said ‘I love you,’ some funny moments that have happened since we got together. Stuff like that.”

Before you can even begin to think about everything Cale just mentioned, your heart begins racing and a grin is on full display across your face.

“So you’re in?” The question is full of excitement and Cale can’t help but chuckle in response.

“Of course I’m in. I’d do anything for you Y/N. Plus, I think it would be fun to finally get back at Ryan for what he did to you.” Cale replies, trying desperately to ignore the butterflies erupting in his stomach. You squeal on the other end of the line and jump right into ironing out the details so there isn’t anything missed that can foil the plan.

Cale pays attention because he has to, but he knows he’s in trouble. He just agreed to be your fake boyfriend for a whole weekend. Cale’s already hiding how he really feels about you and he has a feeling getting a taste of what he wants so badly will only make him fall even harder.

“Okay,” You say, clicking your seatbelt back into place as the plane begins its descent and turning your gaze to the blue eyed, rosy cheek boy next to you. “Remember our story?”

Cale playfully rolls his eyes at the question you’ve asked about a hundred times since you both boarded the short flight to Montana. “Yes, I do. We met in one of the business classes we were both taking together at the University of Denver when I was working towards finishing my degree in my free time. You had no idea I played hockey and after I asked for a pen that day in class, we started hanging out together. The rest is history.” He recites the story of how you actually met with a smile. “Our anniversary is April 29th, we’ve already met each other’s families and we couldn’t be any happier together.”

“Good job!”

“Most of our fake relationship is based off of how we really met so it isn’t that hard to remember, Y/N.” Cale teases, earning a small chuckle from you in response.

“I know and that will only make it more convincing, don’t you think? Being best friends and having history together already gives us an advantage. I just hope it works.”

“It will.” Cale murmurs, intertwining his fingers with yours and giving your hand a squeeze. You give him a sweet smile in return, before you begin talking about how excited you are about all the plans that are in place for the moment you land. He has to try and remember none of what happens between the two of you this weekend will be real, but that won’t stop him from taking it all in as if this was his real life even if just for a short amount of time.

Best friends, nothing more. Best friends, nothing more.

The words repeat in his head when the plane lands, as you both gather your luggage from baggage claim and throughout the entire cab ride to the resort where the wedding is being held. And just when Cale thinks the reminder is concrete and that nothing will sway him, he opens the door to your assigned hotel room and he stops breathing as he freezes in the threshold.

“Cale? What’s wrong?” You ask from behind him, unable to see around his broad shoulders into the luxurious room. He doesn’t say anything at first, just shuffles through the door and you’re about to tease him until you see the single king size bed in the middle of the room. “Oh.”

“Uh, there’s only one bed.” Cale states the obvious as if both of you aren’t already staring at the bed. “I swear I booked a room with two separate queens, but there must have been a mixup or something. I can check with the front desk to see if we can be moved and if not, I can just sleep on the floor. You can have the bed. That’s fine. It’ll work if-”

“Cale.” You say his name firmly, holding his wrist in an attempt to get him to look at you. He has flipped into rational thinking mode because of the issue at hand, but you know calming him down is the first step in telling him it’s all okay. “You will not be sleeping on the floor. I won’t allow it. That will kill your back and you know it.” “But-”

“No buts. We’re only here for two nights. Sleeping in the same bed won’t be the end of the world for us. How many times have we fallen asleep on the couch together? Or taken a pregame nap? This is no different. I promise.” Your words are soft and visibly make Cale relax. He knows you’re right, but a large part of him knows he won’t be able to handle being that close to you in such an intimate setting even if it’s under the guise of a fake relationship.

“You’re right.” Cale sighs, calming himself down and realizing the situation isn’t as bad as he thought it is. “We can do this.”

You offer him a sweet smile before walking further into the room and dropping your suitcase to the ground. “Do you want to explore the town today since we’re here a day early? I looked up the usual touristy things and places to eat just in case.” Cale looks at his watch and shrugs, feeling happiness surge through him at the thought of wandering through a new place with you.

“That sounds perfect. I’ve never been to Montana before so getting to spend a little time in the town would be really nice.” Cale doesn’t mention how spending all that extra time with you is really what he’s looking forward to most. He would go anywhere in the world if it meant being by your side.

“Then what are we waiting for?” You say excitedly, grabbing his hand and pulling him towards the door. And if your heart races a little faster than usual when Cale chuckles and follows behind, no one has to know.

Cale wasn’t kidding when he said he’s never been to Montana before, but he has to admit the little town not far from the resort is the cutest place he’s ever seen. Little storefronts line the streets and both locals and tourists take their time enjoying the cozy town. The scenery is gorgeous too, snow capped mountains extending high into the bright blue sky, but there’s nothing quite like the joy on clear display across your face at every new experience you and Cale do while exploring.

So far, you’ve stopped in various antique shops, a bookstore, two art galleries and took a tour of the local distillery. You haven’t stopped smiling at all and Cale can practically feel his heart swell every time you turn to him with nothing but excitement and adoration.

You’re walking down the busy street next to Cale, still trying to take in the entire scene when your stomach growls. The lighthearted laugh that you love so much slips past Cale’s lips and you can’t help but smile at the beautiful sound.

“Sorry,” You giggle. “I guess we should find somewhere to go for dinner, huh? I didn’t even realize how late it was.”

“Want to try that restaurant we passed before that looked good?” Cale suggests and you nod in agreement. As you both turn in the opposite direction to head back to the establishment, Cale takes a subtle leap of faith and intertwines his fingers with yours. He argues it’s just to get used to faking a relationship especially around other people, but when you smile up at him and squeeze his hand in response, he can’t help but think maybe, just maybe, you feel the same way about him.

That would be crazy though. Cale knows that.

He pushes those thoughts out of his head and focuses on dinner with you. The meal is full of laughter and recounting shared memories which fill both of your hearts to the brim. By the time you’ve both finished eating and had a few glasses of wine, the sun has fully set and the road is calmer than it was earlier.

When the waiter comes back with the check, you thank him before Cale insists on paying and you don’t object because you know he won’t budge. You try to stifle a yawn as he signs the receipt, but he somehow notices everything so it’s no surprise he asks the obvious question.

“Sleepy?” Cale chuckles, putting all his attention on you again. You feel your cheeks heating under his attentive, but soft gaze.

“A little. It’s been such a good day, just a little long.” You reply with honesty and Cale nods along in agreement.

“Well, we can’t have you falling asleep during the ceremony tomorrow so we should probably head back.”

“I guess so.” You smile at Cale before following closely behind to exit the restaurant. “Although having you there will already make the whole wedding more bearable. Thank you again for this.”

“It was an easy decision to come along with you. Plus, I can’t wait to see Ryan’s face tomorrow when he sees us together as a couple. Besides getting to spend time with you in this beautiful place, that will make the whole trip worth it.”

You giggle because the mental image is hilarious. Although the walk back to the resort isn’t long, you lean into Cale, who wraps his arm around you, and take in the serene moment. Any worries or anxieties about spending a whole day tomorrow fake dating your best friend have seemingly disappeared which you couldn’t be more grateful for. You’re determined to just enjoy the day with him and not let your feelings get tangled with whatever may happen to convince everyone at the wedding that you’re actually together.

It can’t be that hard.

But when you return back to the hotel room ready to watch a movie and call it a night, Cale seems nervous and jumpy again. It must still be the one bed situation even though you reassured him earlier that it’s fine.

“Um,” Cale starts, his voice quiet and shy. He meets your gaze for a few seconds before looking away. “Is it okay if I take the bathroom first?”

“Yeah, of course! Go ahead. I’ll just get changed real quick while you’re in there. My nighttime routine isn’t anything crazy anyway.” You chuckle, hoping to ease some of the obvious tension Cale seems to be experiencing. With a nod and a gentle smile, Cale disappears into the en suite bathroom which leaves you scourging through your suitcase for the pajamas you packed. “Where in the world are they?” You mutter to yourself before finding the set buried all the way at the bottom.

With a silent celebration, you quickly switch out your jeans for the comfy shorts and right as you’re pulling the shirt you’ve been wearing all day off, the bathroom door creaks open. Before he can catch a glimpse of anything, you face away from him and call out, “Cale! Just turn around a minute, please?”

He does as you ask, he wouldn’t ever overstep like that. But Cale’s breath was already stolen away from those brief, accidental seconds when he got to see the smooth expanse of your back, the gentle curve of your breast and your hair spilling over your shoulders.

His mind is going a million miles a minute, trying to remind him that that’s his best friend he’s thinking about this way. You’ve always been gorgeous and he’s known that since you met, but something about this moment is striking him in an entirely new way. Maybe it’s the small proximity of the hotel room. Maybe it’s that his feelings for you continue to get stronger and stronger with each passing minute.

Cale has no idea, but he’s in big trouble either way.

“Okay!” Your voice interrupts his thoughts, “I’m all good. You can turn back around.” Cale lets out a sigh when he sees your bright smile and how cozy you look in the matching blue pajama set. “All good?” You double check while trying not to make it obvious that you’re taking in just how adorable Cale looks right now.

“All good. Want me to pick the movie? And do you, uh, prefer a certain side of the bed?”

“Yes, pick the movie. Whatever you want! And nope, I’m not picky.” With that, you disappear into the bathroom for a few moments as Cale settles in. By the time you reemerge only a few minutes later, you see he picked a movie you’ve both watched a thousand times and claimed the right side of the bed. He looks so soft and cuddly which makes your heart skip a beat just at the sight of him.

Cale pats your side of the bed and gives you that sweet smile you adore so much. After slipping under the covers and plugging your phone in, he starts the movie. Despite how weird sharing a bed felt hours ago, now there’s nothing but comfort evident in this moment. You don’t know how much of the movie you actually watch before you start drifting off, head resting against Cale’s shoulder. But the last thing you remember before sleep takes over is Cale whispering a quiet “Goodnight, Y/N.”

The warm sunlight shines through the hotel room curtains, pulling you out of the peaceful dream currently unfolding in your mind. You slowly blink your eyes open and get reacquainted with where you are, in Montana with Cale for the wedding, when you realize that you’re wrapped up in a strong embrace and your head is resting against your best friend’s chest.

And before you even have time to realize you’re both practically snuggled up together which somehow must’ve happened during the night, you notice Cale’s beautiful blue eyes are focused on you and there’s a lazy, but adorable smiling donning his lips. His hair is messy from sleep and his cheeks are already rosy. He looks like a dream.

A part of you thinks that you could get used to this, but that reality still seems so far away and unlikely to happen. So you might as well enjoy the moment when it’s here.

You match his grin, lean up a little to get a better view of him and start absentmindedly playing with the loose collar of the old t-shirt he’s wearing. He watches you, waiting with patience for you to say something.

“You drool in your sleep, Makar.”

“Hm, do I?” Cale laughs softly, rubbing a hand up and down your back while the other brushes some loose hair behind your ear. “Well, I guess I should make it up to you by letting you shower first, huh?”

“That would be the gentlemanly thing to do.”

“Bathroom’s all yours then. Just let me get in there at some point before we have to leave, please. I can’t show up with my hair looking like this.”

“Your bedhead is so cute though! I don’t think anyone would mind.” You tease him back, the happiest laugh escaping past your lips as you untangle yourself from the blankets to head towards the bathroom. The moment the door closes behind you and the sound of the shower running can be heard, Cale lets out a sigh while scrubbing his hands over his face.

That felt a little too real for Cale’s liking if he’s going to try and keep all his feelings under the guise of pretending. But he’d be lying if he said he didn’t enjoy the banter and soft moment of waking up next to you.

As he listens to you sing a Taylor Swift song while getting ready, Cale goes through his usual routine before beginning to get dressed in his favorite suit. He happens to know it’s also your favorite suit of his so maybe, just maybe, he picked it for that reason too. He’s just fixing the navy blue tie you told him to wear so he’d match your dress when you step out of the bathroom and Cale has another moment where it feels like he can’t breathe.

You hadn’t told him anything about the dress minus its color prior to this very moment. The beautiful navy blue fabric hugs your body in all the right places and stops mid calf to showcase the pretty heels you picked to match. Cale also can’t help but notice the slit that shows off your left leg too. The straps are tied in bows at your shoulders and the dress is perfect, yet simple and you look absolutely stunning.

But Cale’s gaze catches on the glittering bracelet on your right arm. The one he gifted you as a graduation gift. The one you’ve told him you only wear for special occasions. It almost shocks Cale to his core that you’re wearing it now, but his heart couldn’t be happier.

“Wow. Y/N, you look gorgeous. So pretty.” Cale manages to get out, eyes still taking the sight of you. The bright smile that takes over your face rivals the sun which makes him practically melt on the spot. Cale knows then, more than ever, that he’s hopelessly in love with you.

“Thank you,” You say, voice shy and gentle. “You look really handsome yourself, Cale.” And he does. He’s wearing your favorite suit of his and looks incredible as always. Your heart swells just looking at him.

“Thanks,” He replies with a sweet smile before you close the space between the two of you to readjust his tie. That same surging emotion from last night rushes through his veins at the close proximity to you and when you pat his chest, signaling your work is done, he meets your gaze and takes a few seconds to remember every detail of this moment. “All ready to go?” Cale asks simply, trying to make sure he looks unaffected by what just happened.

“Mhm. Remember our story for when people ask because you know they will and we both know each other’s boundaries with PDA, so we’ll stick to what’s appropriate there, yeah?” Your best friend nods in response as he slips his fingers between yours again like it’s something that happens all the time.

“Sounds like a plan. We have to leave now so we aren’t late, sweetheart.” Cale ties the pet name out while guiding you towards the door and as your heart is racing, you can’t stop smiling knowing that today is going to be amazing with this incredible man by your side even if he’s only your fake boyfriend for the day.

And you aren’t wrong. The ceremony goes by without any hiccups. Cale keeps his hand in yours the whole time and presses the softest kisses to the side of your head throughout. You introduced Cale to a bunch of your friends as your boyfriend which only earned you more sweet smiles and gentle touches from the boy at your side. It felt like living in a blissful bubble where nothing could disrupt your fantasy even though you knew deep down this was all still pretend. There was no way Cale had real feelings for you.

The real test though is the reception. You can’t avoid Ryan forever and you have a feeling he’s going to make a point to come over and talk, but more importantly, ask about your date. Before the nerves can take over though, Cale puts all your worries away. As you both stand side by side in front of the seating chart in search of your names, he kisses your cheek and pulls you in closer to his side.

“How are you holding up?”

“Pretty good. There’s this awesome guy who is making the whole night a lot more fun than I thought it could’ve been.” You giggle, watching Cale’s cheeks brighten with the familiar pink color of blush.

“Really? Because I can’t get enough of the girl I’m here with either. Her smile is making it hard to breathe. And I’m glad she invited me along.” Cale responds with a smile on his lips and blue eyes full of nothing but adoration. His words pierce your heart in the most unexpected way because you know he means them. None of what he says is pretend to fit the show you’re both putting on.

But what could that possibly mean?

You don’t get a lot of time to think about it because Cale spots your names together under Table 8 and gives your hand a tiny squeeze before guiding you through the decorated ballroom. You take in all the beautiful sights and settle in next to Cale as you greet the other guests seated at your table. One of your college best friends is in the chair on your right which brings you even more comfort.

“Y/N!” She exclaims, giving you a hug while sporting a huge grin. “Last time we talked you didn’t mention that the handsome, but adorable professional hockey player who you always claimed to be your best friend is your boyfriend now!”

“Oh,” You chuckle, glancing at Cale who is in a conversation with one of the guests who are also sitting at your table. “We didn’t want to tell everyone just yet. But yeah, we’re together now and he’s the best.”

“I don’t know why you both waited all that time. It was obvious you two had feelings for each other the first time you met! I remember how you bursted into the campus coffeehouse with the happiest look on your face and I knew you met someone incredible.”

“It wasn’t that obvious to us for a while, I guess. But we’re making up for the lost time now.” You say softly, turning to look back at Cale as a million thoughts run through your head.

Since you met Cale, you’ve had feelings for him and for years, you never said anything because you couldn’t risk losing the best friendship you’ve ever had. But with your friend’s words echoing in your mind, you realize there is no time to waste. He didn’t even object when you asked him to be your fake boyfriend for the wedding. He has been noticeably more sweet and attentive the whole weekend and you’ve even noticed things he’s said or done that seem to be hinting at the fact he might want to be more than friends with you.

Ohmygod.

You’re in love with Cale and he most likely has feelings for you too.

Suddenly, nothing else matters except confessing the very thing you’ve tried to hide from him for years, but when you turn to ask Cale for a moment outside, the lights dim and the DJ’s voice booms through the speakers around the room.

“Everyone, please welcome the bride and groom!” Everyone stands and claps as the newlyweds enter the ballroom hand in hand with beaming smiles on their faces. The first dance song is introduced and even though you watch the couple dance together, you’re more focused on the boy next to you.

Cale’s arm is wrapped around you as a silent reminder he’s there because he probably thinks seeing your ex-boyfriend dance with his now wife at his wedding isn’t the greatest reminder that you’re single and here with a “fake” date. But you don’t even care about that right now. His touch grounds you and it’s what makes your mind up about telling Cale about how you feel.

Applause erupts again as the song finishes and almost drowns out the DJ’s next words. “The newlyweds would like to invite all couples to join them on the dance floor for this next dance.”

The familiar beginning notes of Taylor Swift’s “Lover” fill the air which makes you let out a little gasp in surprise. You love this song and Cale knows it. He can’t let this opportunity slip away from him, especially not with the plans he has.

“May I have this dance?” Cale asks softly, sporting an adorable smile while holding his hand out for you. A giggle slips past your lips as you nod and put your hand in his. He leads you out to an open spot on the crowded dance floor before pulling you into him. You wrap your arms around his neck as his hands settle on your hips, eliminating any space between your body and Cale’s.

For a moment, neither of you say anything. The music plays and you sing along under your breath all while never pulling your eyes away from his. How could he be so oblivious to the fact that he’s in love with you? All this time it could’ve been real, but it took a fake relationship for him to realize he can’t wait any longer to tell you how he feels even if it’s terrifying.

Little do either of you know, the same thought is going through both of your minds at the same exact time.

This is it.

“Y/N,” Cale starts when you say “Cale,” at the same time. He chuckles, trying to hide his nerves, and dips his head down before looking at you again as you both keep dancing. “You go first.”

“Okay,” You whisper, fumbling with Cale’s collar and keeping your gaze locked with his. It feels as if the rest of the ballroom falls away. There aren’t any other dancing couples or bright lights shining down. It’s just you and Cale and your favorite Taylor Swift song playing in the background. “I know this may seem like a surprise and if you don’t feel the same way, that’s okay. This is just something I can’t hide anymore.”

Cale’s breath is knocked out of his lungs at just those few sentences. Is this really happening? Is he about to get his girl after all this time?

“I love you, Cale. I love you with my whole entire heart and I’ve known since the day we met in class, but didn’t want to ruin the best friendship I’ve ever had. I realized though that it’s not your friendship that makes my life infinitely better, it’s you. And I know you came to this wedding as my fake boyfriend because I was nervous about seeing my stupid ex, which was beyond kind of you to do, but I want to leave here with you as my real boyfriend. I want to love you like I’ve dreamed of for years now.”

Time stops. Or at least Cale swears it does. He almost thinks this is all a dream except he knows it isn’t because of the tender look on your face. Nothing but love and admiration is on display across your beautiful features and he knows you’re preparing yourself for a potential reaction which is the farthest thing from the truth.

“I love you too, Y/N. Always have. Everyone around me has seen how insanely in love I am, but I couldn’t risk losing you either. You’re the most amazing person I know and it would make my heart so happy to be with you. I think we’ve proved this weekend that we can definitely make a real relationship work.” Cale replies honestly, his voice shaky. You laugh softly, your eyes filling up with tears for a moment.

This is real. He loves you too.

As you’re convincing yourself this is all real life, the bridge of the song begins and a beaming smile blossoms across Cale’s lips. He looks beautiful under the shimmery lights of the dance floor and he’s excluding pure happiness. His cheeks are rosy, blue eyes bright and you’ve never been so in love.

“Can I kiss you now?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

Cale leans forward to close the small gap between the two of you with a gentle, but passionate kiss that says everything he’s been holding back for years. You melt into him, letting the overwhelming sensation of love wash over you. And as Cale pulls you impossibly closer to deepen the kiss, your heart feels as if it might explode.

This is all you’ve wanted for so long.

When you both slowly pull away, leaning your forehead against his, the rest of the crowd dissipates as the fast paced music picks up to get the party started. There’s nothing to do but bask in the moment and commit every detail to memory. Cale hasn’t stopped beaming yet and you don’t think you’ve ever been this happy before.

“I know everyone here already thinks we’re a couple, but just wait until the guys find out. I think they’ve been waiting for this just as long as I have been.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” You chuckle, cheeks going pink from blush at the thought of Cale’s teammates hearing the news the two of you are now together. Cale is sure that he’s never seen anyone cuter in his whole entire life and now he gets to call you his.

But right now, he isn’t thinking about talking to Ryan like you’ve been dreading all day or returning home for the rest of the offseason. Cale is just focused on having the best time dancing the night away with the love of his life because he finally has you. And he won’t be letting you go anytime soon.

tagging some friends/mutuals who might be interested!

@tonyspep @starshine-hockey-girl @kailyn-writes @happer08 @rosesvioletshardy @sorryjustafangirl @laurenairay @miracleonice87 @hockeyunits @stroopwaffle8 @musiclove-12 @eightmakar @ilyasorokinn @barzysreputation @breezymichelle99 @comphyjost @comphy-and-cozy @jostystyles @ya-pucking-nerd @fallen-froots @beauvibaby @barzysunflower @boqvistsbabe @wyattjohnston @tpwkstiles @hockeylvr59 @2manytabsopen @lam-ila @nateslehky

#cale makar #cale makar fic #cale makar fics #cale makar imagines #cale makar imagine #summer fic exchange 2k23 #nhl fic #nhl imgaine #cale makar x reader #cale makar fluff #colorado avalanche

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baiyunli · 1 year ago

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how to watch baseball now: a primer

This is a long, hopefully-comprehensive guide on how to watch baseball for hockey fans feeling adrift during the offseason — I have constructed this from the perspective of not only how to understand what you’re watching, but how to make it interesting to yourself.

If the numbers aren't interesting to you, forget about the numbers! They don’t have to exist in your version of baseball. Make up your own rules and use them to watch the game. Watch games only for the one kind-of okay player you like. Pick your favourite team because of a video you saw of one of them bouncing a baseball off his ass (Sean Murphy, then of Oakland A's and now of Atlanta Braves). Baseball Olds will try to pretend like the game is this big thing that only people who already watch it can appreciate, but you just have to find what you love most about it.

I’m using the NHL as my best point of reference: in terms of growing the game, I’d say MLB suffers from a very different problem than NHL (other than like, the current uproar around letting queer people exist, which is a throughline in both), in that while the NHL has a very exciting product but can’t reach people where they’re at, baseball is by and large perceived as a boring, slow game and the league will bend over backwards to make polarizing changes to the Boringest and Slowest parts rather than capitalizing on what excites fans about the game. However, both leagues are plagued by Shitty Commissioner disease. Such is the way of life.

Feel free to read all of this, or none of it, but I’ve tried to split it up in a way that makes sense and is easy to navigate. Last note: many people will tell you baseball is the only major sport going on in North America at this time of year. This is false. The WNBA and NWSL are both in full swing—not to mention the World Cup next month. Supplement your baseball watching with a wide variety of sports where you can!

How to Love Baseball

Pick a Team, Any Team

The first step in becoming a baseball fan is obviously picking a team! I could probably give you NHL comparatives and let you figure it out from there, but I don’t personally think your favourite NHL teams have much bearing on your favourite MLB ones, so I’ll give you a quick and dirty rundown of my teams instead and how you might want to pick a team.

The easiest team for me to love is the Seattle Mariners because I live just across the border, and they aren’t good enough to be annoying but also not bad enough to be embarrassed about. They’re just kind of there, which I enjoy greatly. I also love the Philadelphia Phillies because they’re my friend’s favourite team. They went on a Cinderella run to the World Series last year (before losing to the Astros in the final) and are now solidly middling. My other favourites are the Washington Nationals because of their fantastic social media presence and their hilarious stadium traditions. The current-day Nats are very much the epitome of "how can we lose when we're so sincere?"

Some teams you might want to look into are the LA Angels (actually of Anaheim) for Shohei Ohtani, the Milwaukee Brewers for — at least from what I understand — their boyband energy similar to the New Jersey Devils, the Baltimore Orioles or Tampa Bay Rays for an exciting and winningest team, and the Oakland A's for a miserable fan experience including horribly dysfunctional team management and a coming relocation to Las Vegas.

The easiest team for me to hate is the Toronto Blue Jays, which is a result of their god complex re: being the only Canadian team. A funny thing from this season is that the Rays opened their season with a historic 13-game win streak, only to be killed 6-3 by the Blue Jays to end it. Something about Toronto teams and ending another team’s 13-game heater, or whatever.

Also look into any local teams if you can. In Vancouver, our local minor league team is the Vancouver Canadians, and setting up a little picnic on the grass with friends while watching a Canadians game is a summer staple. Here’s a very cute article about them. There are a variety of lower-level and exhibition teams across the world, especially in countries where baseball is incredibly popular. One exhibition team is the Internet-famous Savannah Bananas who are dearly loved on TikTok. If there isn’t a huge baseball foothold in your area, it’s worth looking into which MLB teams are most popular where you live and/or have the most coverage. Some analytics sites like FiveThirtyEight will occasionally create maps showing each team’s popularity in different states, countries, etc. and that can be a great guide.

Petty Rivalries 101

You can always just Google these, but I decided to just list off a few major ones for your perusal: the Yankees and Red Sox, the Rangers and Astros, the Dodgers and Giants, and the Orioles and Nationals. As Toronto Maple Leafs scholar Acting the Fulemin once put it, the point of sports is to be sad in a group, and the counterpart to this is that it absolutely rules getting to see a team you hate lose.

A quick note on the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry is that it's brought us one of my favourite ever quotes from ex-Mariner and current Yankee Nestor Cortes:

Once you’ve chosen a favourite team, they’re bound to have some kind of geographic or historic rivalry, and you can search those up to find out the background behind them. Also, I highly suggest deciding on a random team you hate for no reason. It makes the season experience much more interesting and gives you the chance to pray on their downfall whenever possible.

Where to Watch

As with most things about baseball, this will vary by your team. Depending on your cable package, you might be able to watch your favourite team already! That’s great news. Even if you can’t, feel free to turn on the TV, find a random baseball game, and imprint on either of those teams like a baby bird. The MLB website offers games broadcast with an MLB.tv subscription, but if you have an account you can also watch the Free Game of the Day and collected highlights from previous games! This is a great way to expand your team repertoire and figure out which team broadcasts you hate with a burning passion. Local radio stations do commentary on games if you like listening to that.

If you just want to get your feet wet rather than diving in straight away, pretty much every major game of the postseason will be uploaded by some “FirstName BunchOfNumbers” user on YouTube: for example, you can watch Game 1 of the World Series last year by just searching 2022 World Series Game 1 Full Game. However, watching the full game might be a slog if you don’t know what’s going on, and you can learn the intricacies of the sport without having to watch all four hours and twelve minutes of like, the 1962 World Series Game 7 (although that is a very exciting game). In that case, skip to the ‘How the Game is Governed’ section and read on.

All of this pertains to MLB teams, but there’s plenty to watch elsewhere. If you have a local baseball team, you might be able to catch a game or two in-person! Minor League Baseball also has their own broadcasting services and highlights are available on YouTube or their website.

League Structure

The MLB season is 162 games long. Spring training, aka the preseason, begins in February. During the regular season, teams play a three or four-game series with the same team before playing another with a different team. For example, this month the Philadelphia Phillies played 3 games in a row against the Washington Nationals on consecutive days. The day after the conclusion of their last game against Washington, they started a series against the Tigers, which was three games with one rescheduled due to weather, and then another three games against the Dodgers. This leads to a schedule that looks like this:

Occasionally, due to weather issues or other postponement reasons, a game will be rescheduled for the same day as another game against the same team — so they’ll play two full games in one day. This is called a double-header. They used to be routinely scheduled in MLB, but now they’re only played as a result of scheduling problems.

Team-wise, it’s a little more complicated than the NHL. Like the Eastern and Western conferences, MLB is separated into two ‘leagues’: the American League (AL) and the National League (NL). Both leagues have fifteen teams, and until the 1990s teams in different leagues didn’t play each other during the regular season at all, leading to different styles of play, tactics, and rules implemented between them. This is no longer the case! However, it’s important to recognize that unlike the NHL, NBA, NWSL, etc., Major League Baseball comprises two leagues, rather than two conferences of the same league. This matters because individual awards like the Cy Young or Gold Glove are given to the best players at their position in both the AL and NL, and the MLB MVP includes both an AL MVP and NL MVP.

MLB is made up of six divisions, with three in each league: AL East, AL Central, AL West, NL East, NL Central, and NL West. A division has five teams. If you know much about US geography, you might notice that the teams in each division don’t actually correspond very well to their geographic location: this is for a variety of reasons, not least of which is expansion teams requiring change in division partitioning, but nobody’s going to fix it at this point. And that’s okay!

Fandom and Things As Such

Baseball fandom, regrettably, is not much of a Tumblr phenomenon these days, but Baseball Twitter does have some incredible gems. The Baseball RPF tag on AO3 is also fairly fleshed out (albeit not to the extent of HRPF) and you’ll find that many authors who write HRPF have dabbled in baseball as well. If you’re lost on where to start choosing a team, going through the AO3 grab bag and choosing a random player who you really like in a fic is also a very respectable avenue.

I cannot stress this enough: the easiest way to learn the game without having to learn the characters is reading baseball AUs. That’s it. They’re ten times more approachable than trying to memorize everyone on your favourite team’s roster, and they abound in HRPF if you’re looking for a landing port. I have witness testimony from Lil (@wymgreenteam) that she learned what pitching signs and shortstops were from the wonderful Jack/Nico baseball AU. It works! Obviously fanfiction won’t teach you everything, but if you’re feeling overwhelmed they can be a fantastic first step and really illustrate the game from a fan perspective.

Other Media

I will caution against taking the ‘consume baseball-related media’ advice too seriously, because I find that unlike baseball AUs, other media involving baseball does not always come from someone who watches and loves the game. Think of it like hockey romance books—just like the main characters of those novels are probably not scoring hat tricks in 5 consecutive games, they probably aren’t reaching such baseball heights either.

With that said, I have not watched Daiya No Ace but I’ve heard that people do enjoy it! For genuine baseball culture-oriented media, Roger Angell wrote fantastic articles and books on the game. I love his book ‘Five Seasons: A Baseball Companion.’ Then there are movies like Moneyball and shows like A League of Our Own which tackle specific aspects of the game and how it’s played. Depending on your eventual favourite team(s), hometown coverage will also play a huge part: for the Phillies, that’s outlets like the Philadelphia Inquirer or Penn Live.

Narratives

Once upon a time there was a young man named Shohei Ohtani who was breaking records set in the 1920s while playing on a horrible, failing team that refused to build around him. I assume you have some familiarity with Ohtani, but he is very difficult to describe because he is literally making history. He is the only two-way player in MLB right now: a two-way player is someone who is both a pitcher and a batter; there are a ton of rules about what constitutes a two-way player, but currently Ohtani is the only true two-way player at the Major level. This is not a perfect analogy, but he’s sort of like if Jason Robertson went out there and had a 50-goal season, then immediately jumped into net and played like Juuse Saros. He’s the best all-around player in MLB, and even though he isn’t the best pitcher or the best batter, the fact that he’s incredible at both of them makes him stand out. He also plays with Mike Trout, who’s breaking records of his own, while trying to drag the LA Angels to any sort of notoriety. Here is a prescient article about the Ohtani-Trout era in Anaheim.

Each team has their own current narratives and pairings, but Ohtani and Trout are the biggest one right now. People compare them to McDavid and Draisaitl, but it’s more like if the Oilers had McDavid and Draisaitl but were also one of the worst teams in the league right now. However, Trout is currently in the worst slump of his career while the Angels have won the last 11 of 14 games, so really all this means is that baseball is fake.

Baseball is rife with redemption and villain arcs—you just have to dig a little to find them. I have presented the Ohtani and Trout trainwreck because it’s the closest comparable to the Oilers tragedy, but there are plenty others that really depend on team and current events.

Bush Leagues

MLB teams have a very different relationship to their minor-league affiliates than NHL teams do. There are about five hundred various regional minor leagues, but the MiLB levels are Rookie, Single A, High A, Double A, and Triple A, each of which has two or three individual leagues similar to the AL-NL system in MLB.

The fun thing about MiLB is that it’s a lot closer to home than MLB! Most places don’t have an MLB team, but there’s a good chance anywhere in the USA has a nearby MiLB or regional/collegiate league team. They also have way more interesting names, like the Portland Pickles, Rocket City Trash Pandas, and Sugar Land Space Cowboys. The prospect pipeline in MLB runs a whole lot slower than it does for the NHL, and generally through those Double or Triple-A affiliates, so it’s definitely worth paying attention to minor-league teams and their standout players to see who might be the next rookie on your favourite team.

MiLB player compensation has been an issue for a long time, and the players recently unionized! A few great write-ups on it: 1, 2, and 3.

Regional Popularity

I’ve said this plenty, but I truly do think that finding your baseball niche hinges upon imprinting on a hometown team or a player you just really like. This sport isn’t just an American pastime: it’s hugely popular in Central America and parts of East Asia, and some of the best and brightest up-and-coming (and current) players hail from countries that haven’t traditionally been viewed as bastions of baseball. The game is growing every day, and it’s wonderful to see.

Baseball is very popular in the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Japan, and Korea. Out of those, I’d probably say the Dominican Republic has the largest MLB presence, with only American players outnumbering Dominican ones in the league, but the sport is also fast-growing in Japan, Korea, and Australia. Japan won the 2023 World Baseball Classic, which is the baseball equivalent of the World Cup of Hockey, where the best players in the world compete against each other and Shohei Ohtani (captain of the Japanese team) pitched to Mike Trout (captain of the American team) in possibly the most electric moment of baseball in the 21st century.

How to Understand Baseball

How the Game is Governed

Rather than doing a big writeup on this, I figured I would just find some articles and videos that go through the rules well and hold your hand through it! Think of these like helpful assets, similar to the first time you search up ‘what is goaltender interference’ or 'what is offsides' after hearing it mentioned on the play-by-play and a goal got turned over and all the fans were mad and you wanted to be in on the reason why. This is that search.

Baseball Explained in 5 Minutes

How to identify baseball pitches

Everything there is to know about the The Strike Zone in Baseball.

Intro to Baseball: Positions

What’s going on with the DH in MLB? (MLB Originals)

Rules Glossary | MLB - PDF Version

Lastly, once you’ve got a good grasp on the rules and positions, I probably wouldn’t go straight to watching a full game—you want to make sure you’re using your three hours well rather than staring at a game you don’t really get or don’t care about, or both. Instead, watch YouTube highlights of various players and best (or worst) plays of the week! This gives you an idea of what creates excitement in a game and why, and different positional strengths. From there, you can start watching longer clips, like full innings or the highlights uploaded after each game, which give you a better idea of the game’s pace.

Pressing Play

While I was writing this I remembered that a fun and unique baseball tradition is players having walk-up songs when they’re up in the batting lineup.

Most teams will post their players' walk-up songs on Spotify, YouTube, etc. and while there are a few songs that are synonymous with legendary players - like Mariano Rivera's "Enter Sandman" - players usually like to switch up their songs. Often, a song will become emblematic of an era in that team's history (Anthony Rizzo's "Intoxicated" and the Cubs' 2016 playoff run). After a while, you'll notice patterns in what players pick.

Learning about each player’s song rotation can be extremely revealing, like Mark Canha switching his walk-up songs to Born This Way, Vogue, and I Wanna Dance with Somebody in honour of the Mets Pride Night last week!

Diamond Sports Bankruptcy

I’m not going to pretend to know anything about broadcasting or RSNs, but Diamond Sports, the group that runs Bally Sports, recently filed for bankruptcy, which has really affected some franchises’ profit margins and where their games can be streamed. Not sure if this interests you, but you can read about it here!

The Oakland A’s Relocation

Again: I’m not an Oakland fan, but there’s a lot of debate right now about the owners of the Oakland Athletics moving the team to Vegas despite the wishes of the town and city. Rob Manfred, the MLB commissioner, also made rude comments about Oakland fans as a result of their Reverse Boycott Night, where almost 28,000 fans came out to support the team. A professional sports league commissioner acting like an asshole to fans of a small-market team is nothing new, but it’s the culmination of a lot of drama between terrible owners and a market that loves their team.

The Long, Storied History of Cheating

The long, storied history of cheating in MLB encompasses not only stealing signs and tipping pitches, but also foreign substance usage on hands (which pitchers sometimes try in order to change how they pitch the ball), illegal equipment, and more. It’s kind of a lot. The most notable, recent case is the 2017 Houston Astros World Series Win.

Houston’s Fucking Astros

Nobody likes the Astros except Astros fans. They won the World Series last year and are universally hated, not least of all because of the 2017 cheating controversy.

In baseball, ‘signs’ are what catchers use to communicate to pitchers what kind of pitch they should throw. These rely on knowledge of the hitter currently on the plate and catching them by surprise. Each pitcher-catcher battery will usually have their own signs. In 2017, a year in which Houston won the World Series, the team set up a video camera in the center field seats with a full frontal view of the catcher, and they would use that to figure out what pitches the pitcher would throw. Then from the dugout, whoever was watching the video feed at the time would use a signal (audio cues, like banging garbage can lids) to tell the hitter who was up what pitch they had to expect. This was mostly possible because of the time delay between a catcher signalling and a pitcher throwing, which has been changed by this season’s pitch clock implementation.

In 2020, The Athletic published the first exposé article about the Astros cheating scandal, and it rocked the baseball world. Several immediate consequences followed: the Astros GM and field manager (head coach) were suspended for the full 2020 season, and although players received no punishment, the team gave up four draft picks (their 1st and 2nd round picks in 2020 and 2021).

Pitching and Sticky Stuff

Pitchers applying foreign substances on their hands is always a controversy in MLB games. Recently, star pitcher Max Scherzer was ejected and suspended 10 games after an umpire decided his hand was unusually sticky. TLDR: cheating is common, and consequences vary. Nobody has gotten over the Astros cheating scandal.

Expected By Whom

A quick rundown on the analytics side of the game and how baseball stats look very different both in their progress and insights than hockey. This is how you can sound like you know ball.

The Moneyball book does a great job explaining the rise of sabermetrics (baseball analytics) in the early 2000s, starting with Billy Beane and the Oakland A’s. Because MLB doesn’t have a salary cap and their luxury tax isn’t difficult for big-market teams to pay, small-market teams like Oakland have to constantly innovate in their game tactics in order to stay competitive, and that’s why the game today is so numbers-oriented. Watching a baseball game, you’ll see far more stats than you would in an NHL broadcast: OBP (On-Base Percentage), ERA (Earned Run Average), pitching speed, slugging percentage, pythagorean win percentage, and more. Do not fear the big numbers. You don’t have to know what every stat means in order to love the game, but if you watch enough and you hear commentators discussing what, say, Kodai Senga's ERA is, you’ll come to learn what they mean! In a pinch, you can also easily just search up ‘league average [stat]’ to figure out what the standard is.

Some websites that are really instrumental in baseball analytics are Baseball-Reference, FiveThirtyEight, and FanGraphs, plus YouTube channels like Foolish Baseball and statisticians like Bill James and Tom Tango. Baseball is a lot further along in its analytics revolution than hockey, and as a result, such analysis is not just a thing for Stats Nerds but also a huge part of the way the game is played and watched today. Personally, I love stats that assess umpire accuracy in calling strikes, and so Umpire Scorecards on Twitter is one of my favourites.

It's Too Long and Too Much Money

If Connor McDavid played in Major League Baseball and was close to the kind of player he is in the NHL right now, he would be getting paid north of 400 million dollars, not to mention endorsement money. Instead, he sold his soul to a sport where reporters ask about his biological clock and his only consolation for living in Edmonton is his heated driveway.

Because MLB payrolls are so much larger than the NHL’s and they have a luxury tax rather than a salary cap, contracts are worth much more. The sport itself is less volatile as well: both a product of the longer season (larger sample size) and the luck factor inherent in chance-based games like hockey that isn’t present as much in baseball, a player's year-to-year performance is easier to predict and therefore teams feel more comfortable betting on their production. In contrast to the NHL’s 8-year limit & penalty for long contracts (like the Kovalchuk deal), and bridge deals made when a player hasn't demonstrated that their performance is sustainable, MLB GMs often give their stars contracts over 10 years, and for hundreds of millions of dollars total. Mike Trout is on a 12-year contract for almost $430 million, and by several estimates, his endorsements and the money he receives for being named All-Star, AL MVP, etc. brings that up significantly.

MLB front office terminology is very similar to the NHL, but their contracts differ in another important way: baseball players can opt out of a contract and enter free agency. For example, last season Carlos Correa agreed to a 12-year, $310m deal with the New York Mets, but the Mets were worried about the results from his physical and his injury history, so they pulled out of the deal before the season began and instead, Correa signed with the Minnesota Twins on a six-year, $200m contract.

The Used Boy Auction

Drafting in MLB works very differently than the NHL. The amateur draft (the Main one, which is also called the Rule 4 Draft) takes place mid-season and lasts 20 rounds (used to be 40), plus picks that teams are given as compensation for other events. Teams can draft players either out of high school or college baseball—while the majority of players in the early days were picked right out of high school, nowadays the largest percentage are collegiate players. High school players are only eligible after graduation, and they don’t have junior leagues like the OHL or USHL. Players at universities can only be drafted after their 3rd season there in order to avoid going to a university only for drafting purposes.

Teams retain the rights to sign the players they draft until July 15 of the following year, and a player who does not sign with their team is eligible to be signed once again as long as they meet the age and educational requirements (attending an academic institution, three years of college, etc.) Unless the player has consented to be re-selected by their old team, they cannot be chosen again in another draft year. This leads to players like Brandon Belt having been drafted three times, by the Red Sox, Braves, and Giants, and ultimately playing for the Giants after his college career.

The Rule 5 Draft is another major part of the MLB drafting system. It's sort of similar to what happens in the NHL with an expansion draft, but it takes place in the winter every year. As the MLB prospect pipeline moves slower and it's easy for teams to Stockpile high-quality prospects and bury them in the minors due to the team's current success, this draft aims to ensure that young players have a chance to play in the bigs on a team that needs more manpower. Not every team has to select a player in the Rule 5 draft; last season, 15 players were taken, including the Nats selecting Thad Ward and the Phillies selecting Noah Song.

Here's the official MLB description of the drafting process:

Podcasters or Whatever

My most toxic trait is that I unfortunately love listening to sports podcasts, so here are some good baseball ones:

The Athletic Baseball Show

Ballpark Dimensions

Effectively Wild

The Strike Zone

I hope this serves as a useful first step! Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions or want to yell about baseball - I wrote this for two people, so if either of those two people find it helpful, the three hours I spent on it will have been worth it.

#baseball #waiting for spring #yun talks #mlb #baseball primer #i guess???#pinned for the offseason

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junebugwriter · 10 months ago

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I can't stop thinking about House (1977).

Haunted houses are a staple of horror culture. The haunted house goes back centuries, back to oral culture, before these kinds of things were written down. There are hundreds of movies about haunted houses, countless books about them. The Haunting of Hill House, the Amityville Horror, The Shining, the Conjuring, on and on there are examples and variations of the genre, and yet we still go back to the well because there is something so eerily alluring, so endlessly fascinating about the haunted house. Yet, I don’t think there is anything that could have really prepared me for the bizarre and surreal experience of watching House (1977), dir. Nobuhiko Obayashi.

I had heard about it in an offhand fashion from some essayists and critics, but only ever in passing and never in any detail. I think mostly that is because it is impossible to really describe, at least in text. It is a fever dream, a nightmare of color and editing that resists description. About halfway through the movie I had a realization: “Oh, I get it. This is a film made by an insane person.”

I know the word gets thrown around a great deal, and usually in an unserious way. It’s an ableist term, for sure, and one that stigmatizes neurodivergent people. But when you watch this film, you will understand what I mean, because there is no better term for the kind of film that was made here. It was made with remarkable craftsmanship, especially for a film with most likely a shoestring budget. The special effects are pretty silly, especially 46 years later, but there is an air of charming artifice to them that lets you know that the filmmakers were in on the gag. Aside from the effects, however, there is a grasp on genre and subversion that not a lot of films lean into, or they might try and fail to do. House, more than anything, has something to say about haunted houses that not every haunted house story would be willing to do.

Once upon a time...

Spoilers for a film from 1977, obviously. Not that it really matters much, because I’m sure you’ve heard a story like this before.

A girl, unhappy with the fact that her father is getting remarried after her mother died, decides to reach out to her mother’s sister, her aunt. The aunt in turn invites her and her friends to come visit for their summer break. The girl, named Gorgeous, takes her friends, Melody, Sweet, Prof, Kung-fu, Fantasy, and Mac, out to the countryside, where they find her aunt’s house, an idyllic rural mansion. The twist, of course, is that the aunt has been dead for years, and lingers on in our world by haunting her ancestral family’s house.

If any of that seems boring to you, well, congratulations, you’ve heard a scary story before. It’s not the novelty of the story itself that is the draw here, but rather in the way it is told, a way that can only be done through cinema. The imagery of this thing is... well, here’s a few images from the film.

And my personal favorite:

That last one is the severed head of a young girl, Mac, biting the rear end of one of the living girls. We’ll get back to Mac.

Images like this are a big part of why medium is so essential to the arts. Because the “story” is basic, but the film is not. Every great story can usually be boiled down to a simple idea. “Man takes a job at a hotel during offseason.” “Family moves into a house where a grisly murder takes place.” “There’s a doll with a ghost inside it.” Simple, adaptable, and leaves room for a storyteller to leave a mark.

House goes all in on artifice and genre, to the point of farce. At the beginning of the film, you would be forgiven for thinking it was a sunny daytime sit-com, and the girls are even introduced as such halfway through the film! It’s bizarre. It changes tone from “slice of life comedy” to “soap melodrama,” and in brief moments when Kung-fu has any action, “kung-fu movie.” The director took one look at the screenplay and went, “I’ll take everything on the menu.”

You don’t make a movie like House without being in love with film as a medium.

I could go on for a while about the effects, the tonal whiplash, the aesthetics of the thing, and I am very tempted by doing so. I could just list the incredible things this movie does. The set-piece deaths that come in quick succession through the back half of the movie. But that’s best left to someone with a film degree, who can get into the granularity of the medium that I cannot.

No, what makes me really keep thinking about the movie starts with poor, innocent Mac. And once you figure out what the film is doing, you realize that this is not a movie about a haunted house. Haunted house stories seldom are. Haunted houses are about us.

We need to talk about Mac.

Mac is a girl who likes food. That’s it. That’s all the character she was given. Mac likes to eat, is almost always eating something, and is frequently teased and mocked by her friends for being “fat,” which... well. I don’t know much about Japanese culture, but I do know that there is a rigid enforcement of conformity to certain ideals, which often gets translated to shaming and fatphobia. Mac liked to eat, and so she was the first real punchline of the film. Even her name, Mac, was an intentional joke about eating, a reference the word “stomach,” or even MacDonalds, or some other joke that does not translate from Japanese cleanly. All the girls are given Disney Snow White dwarf naming schemes, but only hers is most clearly a joke.

I was instantly invested in Mac’s wellbeing. Sadly, of course, she was the first one to die.

Mac died first, because she was obviously the odd girl out in a group full of oddballs. She’s the only one that really gets the worst teasing, even worse than Kung-fu, who is mocked for being “manly,” but whose manliness is seen with a kind of awe and reverence, rather than obvious revulsion. Mac was always seen eating something, or in pursuit of food. It is this pursuit of food that in the end results in her death. She went out to the well where she was storing her watermelon, and when a girl goes to check in on her, she is found as only an animated, floating head in the well, a head that makes a joke and then bites a girl on the butt because even in death, she is still hungry. Death cannot keep Mac from being the butt of a joke.

It is in Mac’s shameful death that you realize what the film is doing. Because Mac, though her name was a joke, was just as flatly characterized as everyone else is in the film. All these girls have silly, descriptive names, and all of them have extremely flat, one-dimensional characterizations. Kung-fu is sporty. Sweet is... sweet. Melody plays music, Prof is smart, Fantasy always has her head in the clouds, and Gorgeous is the most beautiful. And all of them, every single one, gets devoured by the house. And in the end, you realize why the house is eating them.

You see, the house is hungry because the ghost who animates it is still waiting, a cautionary tale about putting your own life on hold waiting for a man who will never return. See, the aunt who owns the house was betrothed to a soldier during WWII. She promised that no matter what, she would always be waiting to marry him. When he never returned home, the aunt grows bitter, and dies unmarried. Since then, she preys upon the lives of young, unmarried women in her bridal gown, feasting upon their youth and vigor to sustain her undeath. She literally put her own dreams, her own life, aside for the sake of a man because that is what women are supposed to do in a traditional, patriarchal society.

Once you learn this, you understand why Mac had to die first. All the girls’ names are not only descriptive, they are also flattering to an extent. You could hypothetically ask a man “What are the qualities of a good woman, one you would like to marry?” And the response might be, “I’d like someone smart,” “I’d like someone sweet,” or “I’d like someone beautiful,” etc. So in response, these girls all are simply the embodiment of an idealized feminine attribute, something desired or seen as valuable in a woman. All, of course, except for Mac.

Mac was the joke. She was the most disposable, the one ostracized and teased even by her friends, and also just so happens to embody an attribute that is not classically seen as desirable by patriarchal society. She eats. She consumes and is consumed by consumption. Therefore, she is the first to become consumed by the House.

All the girls meet with a similarly ironic punishment, a Dantesque hell of the film’s making. Sweet is smothered by an avalanche of pillows and mattresses. Gorgeous, sitting in front of the mirror, is swallowed up by vanity and possessed by the ideal itself. Melody’s hands are eaten by a piano. Kung-Fu physically tries to fight the house but is in the end broken by violent means. Prof drowns in a pool of blood as she reads the ghostly aunt’s diary, explaining the tragic end of the House’s owner, and dies in pursuit of knowledge. Fantasy, the final girl, is cradled in the arms of the possessed Gorgeous, and is gently comforted to eternal sleep. The final scene involves Gorgeous meeting her new stepmother in the House, and the cycle will continue anew with this new victim.

Each girl is in the end consumed by the identity which they embody, a grim and grisly vision of what might await them if they ever lived to be adults. The point then is that girlhood and womanhood is only ever seen as an inherently objectifying gaze of the masculine, patriarchal world in which they lived. Mac, the first to go, was but an appetizer, the most visibly mockable victim in the parade of victimhood. The House devours them because society devours us, despite our innocence, despite what qualities we might embody. The aunt was virtuous too, remember. It is virtuous to be patient, to be honest, to be faithful, even unto death. But what if that life is put entirely aside for the betterment of someone else? What is left of the woman left behind to mourn, to grieve? She carries on bearing the weight of expectation. Femininity in relation to patriarchy is a funhouse mirror, warping and distorting what makes us unique, highlighting and capitalizing on our flaws. The ghostly aunt perpetuates the horrifying cycle of predatory expectation, and in turn inflicts those expectations upon the next generation. Gorgeous then the final victim lives on to victimize another.

What is left is simply leftovers

Considering the film made it into the Criterion Collection, it’s safe to say that I’m not the only one who sees the value in House. There is something to the cult horror flick that lingers in the minds of its viewers. Each of us is in our own way haunted by the society that we participate in. Each bears the weight of patriarchy and are either consumed or rejected by it. Both paths lead to destruction.

House is not a hopeful movie, by any means. It's not meant to be a cautionary tale, either. Nobody is virtuous enough to survive, because there is not virtue great enough when the world values those virtues and seeks to consume those who embody them. I do think it is possible in real life to live beyond this cycle, but blaming the girls for dying to it helps nobody. We must instead learn to see why they were swallowed up by the old house and recognize ourselves in the same morality play.

I can recommend watching it, but only if you have a stomach for some out-there gore, silly special effects, idiosyncratic directing choices, and a critical eye. It is definitely the strangest film I’ve seen in years, and if you’re up for strange, you’re in for a treat. Just try not get too hungry.

#film #film criticism #house #hausu 1977 #house 1977 #patriarchy #feminism #horror

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youcouldmakealife · 1 year ago

Text

LBTE: Jared (128-129)

The fucking Scouts, man. And we end the Jared on the move arc. Next up: Bryce on the move arc!

If you want to read along, series page is here.

128. Outclassed

Jared drives home half-asleep, finds a very sleepy Bryce on the couch waiting up for him.

“Go to bed,” Jared says, pokes him up to their room and then follows suit.

Bryce wanted to stay up and celebrate with him. In reality he just ended up getting poked into bed in the two minutes before they were both snoozing.

He wakes up at ten-forty five — the latest he’s gotten up since the postseason started — to a kiss to the forehead, a cup of coffee handed to him, the immediate awareness that the Nucks did it, they’ve got at least another round to battle through. As ways to wake up go, it’s pretty fucking great.

Bryce is so good at husbanding, especially now that it’s his offseason: full time husband and covert Canucks fan until training starts.

Bryce isn’t offended by Jared living hockey, and it’s actually helpful as hell to have him right there beside him. Bryce watches the earlier Avs games with him, arm slung over Jared’s shoulder, making smart observations, has advice for Jared before and after every game. It’s like having a game tape coach and a husband all in one, it’s terrific.

Full time husband. Hockey smarts included.

It’s a hard fought, ugly series that takes a few of the Canucks with it, Dmitry unfortunately one of them — Jared guesses the line’s still cursed, though he’s selfishly glad he’s not the latest to fall victim to that — but the Canucks scrape out a win in seven, and they’re going to the Western Conference Finals, which is an incredible fucking feeling.

Yay!

Jared can’t say he’s surprised by who they’re going to be facing.

He can’t say he’s particularly pleased about it either.

Such a quick fall from yay.

“Okay,” Bryce says. “Here’s the lowdown about the Scouts.”

“Fuck the Scouts?” Jared says.

“Fuck the Scouts,” Bryce says. “But seriously.”

I mean, basically.

And then Jared’s getting something that isn’t quite a rant but is basically an insider report on pretty much all of the Scouts, because Bryce is clearly still pissed about that series, and he’s got a MENSA level hockey IQ. He was up against the first line, which Jared isn’t going to be facing much if at all, but he was apparently paying very close attention on the bench as well, and at a certain point Jared starts taking literal notes on his phone, trying to keep up.

When holding grudges comes in handy.

“Hey!” Jared says, torn from strategy. “You talking about my new Premier?”

“Holy fuck,” Stephen says after a moment. “No offence but if you voted for him him I’m kicking you out of our house right now.”

Jared takes no offence. “Obviously I didn’t fucking vote for him,” Jared says. “Dude’s a corrupt megalomaniac with an oil rig where his heart should be.”

We now interrupt your story for political propaganda. But like — from a policy standpoint, every statement here is accurate, up to and including the oil rig heart (Jason Kenney resigned in disgrace only to be replaced by someone worse somehow -- the conservative way -- and is now on the board of directors of an energy company. No one could have possibly foreseen this.)

“Are we talking about Kenney?” Bryce complains. “Politics are boring.”

“Politics are how we were able to get married, B,” Jared says,

Of note that Jason Kenney was virulently homophobic.

(He still is, I'm sure, but now he isn’t making homophobic policy decisions -- that’s the job of his successor!)

“These kids,” Gabe says to Stephen. “Bet they don’t even remember when gay marriage was legalised.”

“I do,” Bryce protests. “Sort of.”

Jared shrugs. “I was a little kid?” he says. “I wasn’t really paying attention.”

Jared once again hurting Stephen with his youth. Gay marriage was legalized in Canada in July 2005. Jared was 6. Bryce 9. Gabe and Stephen 14.

“Get out of my house,” Stephen says, but he says that all the time, and Jared no longer listens to him. Well, he probably genuinely meant it if Jared was a UCP supporter, but obviously Jared isn’t — he was raised by hobgoblins, not actual monsters. “Now let’s do Ford.”

God, let’s not — I’ll be here all fucking week.

“While I enjoy trashing Doug Ford as much as the next Ontarian,” Gabe says.

Not so much that they didn’t vote for more! Not going to lie, I’m still coping pretty hard with the fact the majority of my fellow Ontarians either voted for this guy a second time, or didn’t bother to get off their asses because his opponents weren’t ‘inspiring’. Is that on the Ontario Libs and NDP too? Yep. On ‘Rae Days’ BS and Liberals always talking strategic voting, but only if that means NDP voters vote for them? Sure. But for fuck’s sakes, everyone who didn’t vote essentially cast a ballot for everything Ford has done since, including the multi-billion dollar racketeering he’s being investigated for by the RCMP. But Rae Days.

Okay. Off my soap box.

“Stephen’s a lot,” Bryce says, all blink-y about it. Stephen isn’t even being extra Stephen, he’s just normal level Stephen, but then, Jared probably has a higher tolerance for snide, since he so often is himself.

Inoculation!

Though you’d think Bryce would be used to it too, considering who he’s married to. Maybe he’s just got immunity to Jared’s particular brand of it after enough exposure.

Jared and Stephen are similarly snide but not identically, Bryce only has Jared immunity. He gets very blink-y around Julius too. I’d say he has Erin immunity too but Erin isn’t even a hobgoblin with Bryce unless he dares suggest she and Jared have any similarities whatsoever, in which case she proves his point for him by getting extremely huffy about it just like Jared does.

“I believed you,” Bryce protests. “But he’s so — mean. He told me my hair was stupid.”

The first time Stephen calls Bryce’s hair Disney Prince hair. Bryce hasn’t realised it’s a compliment, as Stephen says it in a mean voice.

“His hair’s stupid,” Bryce mutters. “And he called me a cradle robber! And kept calling me Coach Bryce!”

I mean…

Jared was there for that, but he thought it was more because Bryce was like, coaching them through strategy. In hindsight it is more likely Stephen pointing out that Bryce was, in fact, Jared’s coach when they met, albeit tenuously. Jared really never should have told Stephen that. He’s never going to let it go.

Jared also understands a little better why Bryce scowled at him when Jared joined Stephen in calling him Coach Bryce.

Still fucking dying that Jared accidentally joined Stephen in roasting Bryce.

“You make a very good coach though,” Jared says, putting a soothing hand on Bryce’s arm.

Bryce scowls.

He knows you’re about say something mean, Jared, he’s been inoculated!

“Just don’t sleep with any other prospects, I’d be super—” Jared breaks off to protect himself from a half-tackle from Bryce, laughing as Bryce gets a jab in to his side.

Jared’s true love language: play wrestling.

“No PDA on the Markson-Petersen property,” Stephen says.

Jared opens his mouth, considering Gabe kissed Stephen right in front of them like twenty minutes ago. Bryce went adorably pink about it.

Literally the first time Bryce has personally witnessed two guys kissing (I mean, not involving him, obvs), and it’s people he KNOWS. Low key a big moment for him.

“He’s so mean,” Bryce mumbles. “That wasn’t even PDA, I wrestle with Chaz all the time.”

Jared would raise an eyebrow, but he thinks he’d get tackled again. Plus he also used to wrestle with Chaz all the time. Chaz loves a good wrestling match. Jared’s wrestling matches with Chaz have a distinctly different tenor to them than his grappling with Bryce, particularly when Bryce decides he isn’t going to let Jared win. Stephen was maybe not off about the PDA part.

Chaz’s love language is also play wrestling, but not like that. Bro love. Bruv.

Jared hears a lock click, though he’s not too worried. Gabe will intercede if he has to.

Spoken like someone who has frequently locked doors on his little sister, who had to be let in by Don or Susan. Or been locked out by said sister. Or, you know, the time they were both locked out by their mother so they couldn’t eavesdrop on Bryce asking for their blessing. A family affair.

“I know,” Jared says. It’d be bad walking into a series thinking you didn’t.

“We didn’t,” Bryce says.

Another win for the brain to mouth filter!

The Scouts are a juggernaut, but the Canucks are no slouch either.

The Scouts are better.

Every fucking time. Dynasties, man. (They haven’t even won their first Cup at this point; they’re going to be so much more annoying when they’re winning their third.)

Jared hopes it’s the Caps and Raf scores the game winning goal and does a fly by giving the finger to Williams and Simcoe. That doesn’t sound like a particularly Raf move

Robbie, though…

…but Jared’s not exactly being reasonable right now, all raw scraped nerves and hurt and a fucked up shoulder from a hard hit by Angelopoulos that probably should have sidelined him, but didn’t because it was the playoffs.

The first injury of Jared by a main cast member from a different series. But not the last.

Jared does his stupid painful exercises for the stiffness, gets out of packing anything because, well, shoulder, so it’s Bryce who’s doing it while Jared supervises and occasionally insults his packing decisions just to get that huffy Bryce sigh.

Yet another love language: intentionally bugging Bryce.

Jared’s in his parents’ kitchen with Erin when he hears the whoop from the living room, Bryce and his dad, mom lost under how loud they are, and him and Erin shuffle out to watch the Caps surge over the boards to dogpile their goalie.

Bryce and Don bonding on Team Fuck the Scouts.

Grace is clutch, and the group chat has a number of pictures of the partying the next morning. There’s a picture of Raf and Chapman looking absolutely shitfaced and more than half-asleep that’s particularly good, and Jared makes sure to save it for the purpose of mockery. Another very unflattering one Raf and Kurmazov the Senior, and Jared saves that one to send to Dmitry so he may use it for the purposes of mockery.

Look, Jared’s putting aside his feelings for Dmitry to help him be an annoying little brother, bless. Also that picture of Raf and David is adorable.

the salve of falling asleep in the same bed, of Bryce hitting his alarm immediately and trying to sneak around in the mornings so he doesn’t wake Jared up, Jared pretending he’s still asleep so Bryce doesn’t feel guilty, Bryce probably pretending he actually thinks Jared’s asleep

The softest game of deception devised since peek-a-boo.

129. Sabbatical

Summer’s — summer’s summer.

Very eloquent, Jared. (He doesn’t know how to describe the bone deep relief he feels falling asleep with and waking up beside Bryce, mixed with the grunt work of training, tempered by the fact he’s doing it with some of his favourite people, and they all get to hang out together after(!), Jared has a friend group(!) but also he’s not playing hockey which low key makes everything feel kind of off. So. Summer’s summer.)

Grace has cut her hair really short, and Raf’s done the opposite, letting his grow out, and Ash got a tattoo — her and Bryce bitch about the pain for a bit — but they’re basically all the same as they were a year ago, all feel like home to him even though Calgary only gets to be home in the offseason.

Grace looks great, Raf looks low-key terrible (Cup. Parties. plus the whole road to the Cup in the first place, man is battered.) and Ashley’s tattoo is fire. Not literally, thank fuck; that’d definitely make Chaz getting traded more awkward.

Jared goes up to Edmonton to visit Julius when he pops in for a week for dumb media stuff

I like that it’s completely unclear whether that’s Jared editorializing with ‘dumb media stuff’, or if Julius has been referring to it that way himself.

while Bryce has a ridiculous staycation thing with Erin — that’s code for renting a hotel suite all of a couple blocks from Bryce and Jared’s place for no purpose other than splashing around the pool, and Erin dragging Bryce from store to store and Bryce not even looking at price tags before handing the cashier his credit card, but Bryce was insistent on Erin getting something for her high school graduation, so whatever. Jared and Julius do absolutely nothing while Jared’s there except eat and watch TV and bitch about media and tell each other when they find something funny on the internet. It’s great.

The First Time Erin Makes Twitter Incoming. And Julius and Jared entirely oblivious in Edmonton (this is before Erin and Julius get together, for the record)

It’s honestly such a sweet thing for Bryce to do for Erin’s graduation, and frankly it sucks that it blows up in his face. Bryce did nothing wrong! (For once, says Dave.)

After their anniversary — Bryce buys him too much as usual, Jared does too this year, most currently living in a box in their closet that Bryce goes slightly pink looking at, and he looks often

Jared’s stinginess once again not applying to sex toys, which Bryce appreciates.

— they fly back so Jared can sign the lease and move some stuff out of Elaine’s and and Bryce can visit with Elaine and Gordie and Gail for a bit, do some early birthday stuff with them.

This is the other half of the sex toy sentence, what a fucking segue, Jared. Sex toy reference right before wholesome times with the Marcuses.

Jared’s new apartment is in a good location, not far from Gabe and Stephen’s house, which is pretty much perfectly placed between the practice rink, arena, and airport.

It's in Shaughnessy. Canucks practice at the University of British Columbia (they don’t have their own practice facilities). Triangulation was not by distance, but average commute in traffic and not in traffic (yes, he made the drives, and yes, he bought a real life stop watch and Stephen made fun of him incessantly for this. Does he not have a stop watch on his phone? Come on Gabriel. Gabe would argue, correctly, that he should not be on his phone while driving).

Also he fudged his results and picked somewhere closer to UBC because Stephen was going there at the time, or he would have likely gone for Mt Pleasant or South Main. Stephen is aware. Gabe is aware Stephen is aware. It is not discussed. They like their house, no plans on moving.

Getting a house around there will run you a couple million bucks, because Vancouver, so Jared, known opposite of a big spender, has decided to rent an apartment.

Jared can absolutely see Gabe doing that. Appreciates that Gabe did that. Jared was just google mapping it, Gabe’s test seems like better data.

He FUDGED THE DATA FOR LOVE, JARED. IT IS ALL A LIE.

He likes his place, likes it better when Bryce is in it, helping him put together a dining room table he’ll probably never use,

I am not sure if this dining room table even appears in the story again, it is so underutilized. Generally they eat on the couch (or at the kitchen island, but that's just coffee and breakfast, mostly). If paperwork needs to be done it gets used. That's about it.

“You are literally going to spend the next two days with me,” Jared says when Bryce looks particularly kicked puppy as Jared packs his laptop, which was an anniversary present he did not actually need. At least Erin appreciated getting Jared’s barely even past warranty old one as a university present.

Bold of you to assume that wasn’t Bryce’s plan all along so you aren’t all ‘you can’t buy Erin a laptop, Bryce’, ‘you’ve given Erin more than enough already, Bryce’, ‘stop buying my horrible sister things, Bryce’.

“I can pout whenever I want to, you’re not the boss of me,” Bryce mutters.

“That’s not true,” Jared says. Jared is very much the boss of him and they both know it.

Bryce appreciated his anniversary gifts.

“Nope,” Jared says when Bryce’s hands start creeping under his shirt. “I need to get this done, I don’t want to get halfway to Vancouver before I realise I forgot something important.”

“Flames are going to be in Vancouver in two weeks,” Bryce says.

“No guarantee you’d be playing that game,” Jared says.

“If I’m not I could send it with Chaz,” Bryce says, and before Jared can protest that Chaz might not either, “Canucks are in Calgary right after too.”

Jared doesn’t know if it’s Bryce being stubbornly logical or the fact that Bryce said all of that while unbuttoning and unzipping Jared’s shorts that sways him. Obviously a combination.

‘Keep talking workarounds for possible setbacks, baby, that’s so hot’. But like. Unironically.

After the first leg of the trip they land up in the best hotel you can get in the dead land between Revelstoke and Kamloops, which is not saying much

It’s in Sicamous and it’s a Best Western.

Mere years ago he was lucky if it was a hotel instead of a motel and he was stuck with an asshole roommate who talked in his sleep, and now he’s turning his nose up at a three star hotel.

It’s technically a four star, Jared, you gigantic snob. Also it looks nice enough, honestly, so either it’s been renovated and upped a star since I checked, or I was being lazy in my Revelstoke to Kamloops accommodations due diligence.

“How hard will you judge me if I ask to get back in the car and keep driving?” Bryce asks. “Because Salmon Arm has a decent hotel.”

“How far’s Salmon Arm?” Jared asks.

“Twenty minutes, half an hour?” Bryce says.

Salmon Arm does NOT have a four star hotel. This is a downgrade from that Best Western in Sicamous. As it is now. Possibly not back when I was doing research.

Bryce waits in the car when Jared gets their room, which ends up being a really fucking good call because the front desk clerk is clearly a big Canucks fan, recognises Jared before he even hands her his credit card. Jared texts Bryce a frantic ‘shelter in place’, getting a bunch of question marks in reply, and then he has to go out and sneak him in a side entrance lest he have to explain why he’s sharing a room with one king bed with The Enemy, so that’s great. This is a great trip. Jared’s really enjoying this trip.

THIS is a non chain inn. It’s kind of dated, but like, fine.

“Quit grumbling and tell me what you want from room service,” Bryce yawns.

Jared quits grumbling long enough to order a club sandwich, then resumes grumbling.

I genuinely remember looking at a room service menu for accuracy but now there is no room service. So either I am making this all up or they’ve gone downhill. But then, this was written in 2020, when more places may have had room service for pandemic related reasons. It DOES have an in house restaurant, unlike all other Salmon Arm-y places, so it very possibly did offer room service.

This is bothering me now. I am bothered. Petty grudge against Salmon Arm unlocked.

“Summers gave me a few excuses if things were like, asked,” Bryce says. “Mutual friends with Chaz, met years ago at a camp and still hang out, stuff like that.”

“That’s all true, though,” Jared says.

“Yeah but isn’t like, ‘we’re super in love’,” Bryce says. “Which I think was the part Summers wants to avoid.”

Dave has very low expectations about Bryce’s ability to make up a story, and I think that is extremely fair, to be honest.

“Would you be cool with me coming out to my team?” Jared says. “Not like the level of what Gabe knows or anything, just like, not hiding the fact I married a dude.”

Bryce is quiet. “Can I think about it?” he asks finally.

“Yeah,” Jared says.

“I know you — you can come out to anyone you want to, that’s like, your right,” Bryce says.

“I know,” Jared says.

“I need to think about it,” Bryce says.

This is so much progress! Bryce not reflexively saying no! Bryce acknowledging that Jared has autonomy in how he represents himself to others! Actually thinking about it!

“Yeah but I’m a BC boy now,” Jared says.

“I’m a BC boy,” Bryce mutters.

“Nope,” Jared says. “We swapped.”

“You can’t just be a BC boy,” Bryce says, sounding genuinely agitated. “You have to earn it. And you can’t be a BC boy: you don’t even like sushi.”

I love you and the things that bother you, Bryce Marcus.

“Your teammates,” Bryce says, and Jared looks up from his phone. “If you want to tell them you can. Like. The husband thing not the—”

“Not the you being my husband bit,” Jared assures him.

“Okay,” Bryce says, blows out a breath, then another one.

“You sure?” Jared asks.

Bryce takes a hand off the steering wheel to give Jared a so-so.

PROGRESS!!!

“Can we take this exit?” he asks.