#tnno

[msmargaretmurry]

i read tnno recently and just wanted drop a note to tell you how much i loved it, idk if you're from the oakville/sauga/toronto area but as a person from here, tnno really felt soooo real. hrpf is actually the first fandom i've been in where the settings of fic (in canada anyway) are often places i've lived and it's always so nice when writers have captured that feel of a place you know intimately. thank you soo much for tnno ♡

aw thank you so much, i'm so glad you enjoyed it! i love a strong sense of setting in a story and it's definitely something i worked hard on in that one -- it was really important to me, since choosing to set it in dylan's hometown was a very deliberate choice. i am very much not from the gta 😂 but i do think i have spent an above-average amount of time there for a usamerican gal from from the washington dc metropolitan area, in both the burbs and the city (it's a great city btw, congrats on that, i haven't been in a few years now and i'm like i wanna go back againnnnnn). so that + a fair amount of google maps research were the basis of my setting-making in tnno! honestly it's really really cool to hear that someone from there thought it felt real ❤️ thank you so much for telling me!

[grittyreadsfic]

hello my besties this is just an fyi that while i’ll probably still have recs going every day until the season starts, i’m gonna be a bit MIA on the blog for a bit

[myke-charrie]

#photography #personalinspiration #stayamystery #fatalframes #houstonartist #texasphotographer #houstonphotographer #htxphotography #gayphotographer #proudphotographer #dslrphotography #dslr #Nikon #nikond300 #nikkor #adorama #instaphoto #photographersofinstagram #artistsofinstagram #caramelizingmyenemies #visualambassadors #charriéphotography #houstonpride #prideweekend #outinhouston #hereandqueer #htxpride #gaypride (at Tony's Corner Pocket) https://www.instagram.com/p/BtrQU-TnnoS/?igshid=1n75nzk82qx3r

[gblogger876]

Liked on YouTube: Comfortably Numb solo https://youtu.be/TNNo-GmFvJc

[clwnpunk]

im a bad person lol so two people who used to be my Best Friends and Big FPs have abandoned their tumblrs which shouldn’t matter except I like??? /have/ to snoop on people who’ve abandoned me to see if they ever think about me n shit i get really overworked with emotions if i can’t see (Even though they’re never thinking about me whch just causes different breakdowns) and!!!! for one of them i dont even know what i did!!!!! they never told me!!! they just cut me off !!! bloocked me on everything!!! never said!!! i dont know!!!!! they were my best feiend for YEARS nad then they just!!!!! cut me off with tnno explanation!!! and i cant!!!!! see!!!!!

[msmargaretmurry]

i just want to say that i enjoy your blog and just put two and two together and realized that you wrote the next next one, one of the greatest hockey fics of all times. i was recently rereading it since it is one of the greatest hockey fics of all times, and i wanted to say a. as a born and raised washingtonian caps fan, it made me laugh that you accurately predicted dylan strome playing on a team with rasmus sandin, and b. people who love the caps and also, separately, previously cared about dylan strome will inherit the earth. i am now off to read your more recent fics

oh my sweet anon, this is one of my favorite asks ever. i need to tell you that just last night i was deep in my feelings about how much dylan has endeared himself to the local sports media here in dc. they love him so much! he seems so comfortable with them! i am constantly pinching myself that my sad raccoon boy is now a happy healthy girldad (x2!!!!) who seems legitimately thrilled to be on my hometown team. you should see me dance anytime i'm in cap one and "the middle" comes on. (you shouldn't see this, i am so lucky my friends will be seen in public with me.) (also, he and sandin are coincidentally the two caps i wound up with on my fantasy hockey team this year. kismet!)

anyway, thank you very much for the kind words about tnno. it is a fic that to me now feels a bit from a different era of everyone involved, but it is still so very dear to my heart and has some of my favorite bits of writing i've ever pulled out of my brain. somewhere in a different universe, the tnno versions of dylan and connor are going to go to worlds in helsinki this coming spring ❤ i hope you enjoy the newer stuff too!

[msmargaretmurry]

music anon here to tell you that listening to night shift by lucy dacus while thinking of mcstrome might be the best and the worst thing to ever happen to a person actually

hi music anon!!! i hope you've been well!!

god ok. yeah. YEAH. that's it. that's the mcstrome of our current era. "i'm doing fine, trying to derail my one-track mind / regaining my self-worth in record time"??? ahhhhhhhhh "don't hold your breath, forget you ever saw me at my best"????? i keep picking out lyrics to quote back at you but really it's all of them. "i feel no need to forgive, but i might as well / but let me kiss your lips, so i know how it felt" im going into the forest to become moss

[msmargaretmurry]

For writing ask game, 13, 17 (about a WIP or a fic/series you've already done!), 27, 28, please!

i answered 13 here and also technically 17 but in an extremely cop-out way 😂 i am one of those people who really doesn't like sharing much about fics before their posted but here are some assorted bits of lore from published fics:

- several years before i wrote tnno, i had originally conceptualized of it as a mceichel fic. i'm pretty sure i wrote several very long emails to friends about it. but then i decided i liked the mcstrome version better, et voilà 😌

- i started writing haw in january 2022 thinking it would be "a quick 40k" and finished well before the season was over, so i just made up how the playoffs went. obviously that didn't happen and the actual playoffs were such good content that i rewrote a bunch of it to use the real playoffs instead of my fake playoffs. and then the trade to florida happened and i was just like, fuck it we are fully ignoring that 😂 haw is its own universe now

- it is no secret in haw that matthew is miserable because he's trying so hard to be what he thinks he's supposed to be, but an underlying part of that which didn't get a lot of attention is the hockey part of that. he's lonely in calgary and kind of knows he might be happier playing somewhere else but he feels like the ~correct thing to do is stay and make good on what he's said about the city and be a good captain like brady is in ottawa. no one has ever commented on this but i always thought the way that sutter gives him the c in haw is kind of dickish -- no time to decide if he really wants it, no time to prepare a speech, no time to invite family to his first game with it. not exactly an auspicious start to his captaincy!

- also in haw, connor likes matthew as a person just fine but he's going to be so wary of him as leon's boyfriend for a while the same way brady is wary of leon as matthew's boyfriend. that guy broke his best friend's heart!!!

27. Who is the most stressful character you’ve ever written? Why?

head above water matthew!!!!! that fic was supposed to be like 40k but he took sO LONG to figure out his issues!!!!!!!!!!!!!

28. Who is the most delightful character you’ve ever written? Why?

oh brady for sure. possibly recency bias here but in both the haw verse and my various wips he is just so easy and fun. he feels a lot of feelings but is also laid back and kinda goofy and deeply caring and that's just pleasant to write!

[msmargaretmurry]

1, 25, 35!

1. What font do you write in? Do you actually care or is that just the default setting?

arial 11, aka the gdocs default. i use it because it's the default but i do think it would feel very weird to write in a different font at this point.

25. What is a weird, hyper-specific detail you know about one of your characters that is completely irrelevant to the story?

i don't think any of these are completely irrelevant but here's one from both big fics--

in the tnno universe, connor got super into reading memoirs after he wrote his memoirs and now will read the memoir of just about anyone. i feel like i meant to have a line somewhere in the fic about the books in his apartment but it never actually made it in there.

in the haw universe, matthew lost his virginity at the u18 tournament to one of the canadians after the semifinals. there's a line in haw about him having slept with guys who don't like him before; this would be one of those. just the first of many smart sexual choices by him!

35. What’s your favorite writing rule to smash into smithereens?

i have fully yeeted almost everything anyone has ever told me about outlining and building character profiles before i start writing. i simply do not think there is a "correct" way to write or plan for writing! but honestly i think most writing rules are useful to an extent but are almost universally guidelines, not rules.

[msmargaretmurry]

just to contribute to the brothers convo, before and unrelated to game 7 i was fondly reminiscing about the dylan and ryan dynamic in tnno and how wonderfully stabilizing brother relationships are in your fics (i also recently re-read the quinn pov of haw). there is something so warm and central to the role the siblings play in those stories. and then matt strome scored that goal and then brady watched matthew win, and it all felt very full circle

awww anon, this is so nice! thank you for sharing! i really do love writing about those brother relationships. probably there is something to the fact that so many of my faves have those strong and very openly loving family ties 😅 and those are such an important part of their lives that i just can't leave them out of the writing! and it definitely brought an extra layer of joy to the bears + cats wins getting to see the brothers celebrating each other ❤

[msmargaretmurry]

I just reread tnno while listening to Taylor swift’s evermore on a plane and it was a truly amazing experience. That fic is one of my favorites of all time and it genuinely just feels like a masterpiece. And hearing “if you ever get tired of being known for who you know, you know, you’ll always know me” “everybody wants you but I don’t like the gold rush” “you’re a cowboy like me” “I don’t need your closure” and absolutely especially “sorry for not making you my centerfold” as I read it did convince me that evermore is a mcstrome album. I’m just absolutely obsessed with tnno and every time I read it, I feel like I catch new details.

aw thank you so much!! ❤️ i was thinking lately maybe i'll reread it myself when my semester it over, haha. tis the season for tnno. but really thank you for the lovely words. sometimes when people mention they reread it i'm like "oh no i hope they don't catch all the things i should have edited" but MOSTLY i'm just really flattered. it's such a lovely compliment when someone reads something you wrote more than once on purpose. and also as a person who is obsessed with my own characters i love so much when people want to spend more time with them ❤️❤️

and 1000% agree that evermore is a mcstrome album. it's got that melancholy nostalgic bittersweet yearning in spades. obvs it wasn't out yet when i wrote tnno but i did listen to the slow tracks from lover a ton when i was writing so i think there's a connection in vibes there. anyway on the metro to work tomorrow i think i will put on evermore and disassociate while thinking about mcstrome so thank you for the inspiration 💕

[msmargaretmurry]

Just listened to the new ts album and am feeling a little insane about everything. Clara Bow is giving me tnno vibes with all the generational talents. Also, Peter feels so mcstrome coded. Do you have any hockeys you would connect to the song?

anon please don't hate me but i thought the new album was only okay so i haven't listened to it much 😭 but i'm glad it's resonating with you!! i can def see how you got there with those songs, with the generational talents in clara bow and the the kind of like, lost youth/naivete and pain of growing up and losing someone vibes in peter. i can't say i particularly thought of any of my hockey guys when i first listened to that one but now that you've said it i'll probably think of it as a mcstrome song! i'm easy like that.

obviously florida!!! is a matthew song, and i don't have specific guys or pairings for them but down bad and i can do it with a broken heart are definitely gonna make it onto some of my writing playlists. as for the rest... we'll see what grows on me 🙈

[msmargaretmurry]

💓 HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! 💓

HAW Matthew & Leon: 52 TNNO Connor & Dylan: 13, 38

hi thank you!!

52 - Describe their weekend getaway?

there is a joke amongst my friends that the red deer holiday inn has seen way too much, but if they have a couple of days off for a "weekend" getaway... red deer is right in the middle, so. those weekend getaways are spent almost entirely in the hotel room. (as a person who has made the drive from edmonton to calgary and stopped in red deer on the way, i feel pretty confident saying they aren't missing much in the way of sightseeing. sorry to any red deer, alberta stans in the audience.) however! depending on the schedule, sometimes one of them will make the whole drive up or down hwy 2 so they can play house for a couple of days. this is really what they prefer, because they're big softies. every now and then when the stars align, leon comes down and they do a lil overnight getaway to banff. long distance isn't easy, especially for matthew, who is so insecure about everything at first, so not to be a huge sap but anytime they get to steal a couple of days together during the season, it's really just about them cherishing the time together, recalibrating from the distance wearing them down. stealing another t-shirt. making another memory to bury the bad ones with.

13 - Who’s the bigger tease?

i feel like in many universes it's dylan, but in this universe, at first, it's connor. for a while after the end of the fic, dylan's one of the only things in connor's life that he doesn't feel a little fragile about, and so it feels fun and good to tease dylan, rile him up a little, get him to drag connor to the bedroom. dylan absolutely does not mind but it does take him a little while to get used to it and starting giving as good as he gets. a big part of that is trusting that connor can handle the teasing, tbh! and i think that after a little while they wind up being on pretty much the same level of tease, really.

38 - Who is more sexually experimental? Who’s more vanilla?

similar to above, i feel like dylan is naturally the more experimental one, but in the specific circumstances of tnno, at first it's connor pushing the boundaries and wanting to try new things. he's making up for lost time, while dylan is still learning to trust what connor can handle. connor's version of experiemental in bed is not super wild or anything, though; once dylan feels more secure, he's going to be the one pushing boundaries and suggesting new things more often, although sometimes connor comes in with something out of left field and dylan is just like wow okay yeah let's do it, lol.

[msmargaretmurry]

Perspective Flip: the next next one!!!! (I have so much love for that fic!)

hi anon! sorry this took so long for me to get to, but also thank you!! here's a little bit from connor's pov the morning after the big fight in dylan's apartment, i hope you enjoy it! ❤

Dylan’s apartment feels like a foreign country.

Connor, of course, lost him too early in adulthood to know what he would do with a place that was truly his own, getting brief glimpses of messy starter apartments in Tucson and Glendale and Chicago before they dropped out of each other’s lives for those empty years in the middle. If he had been asked to guess, he wouldn’t have pictured this downtown Toronto condo in beiges and blacks. Pictures he can count on one hand — Dylan’s parents; Dylan’s brothers; school portraits of Dylan’s nieces and nephews stuck to the fridge with magnets. A half-unpacked box of books and knick-knacks tucked into the corner of the living room, as if it’s waiting for Dylan to remember it’s there. The view, yes, is great. But it doesn’t feel like a home.

Not that it’s any of Connor’s business. Maybe Dylan spends more time at his parents’ place, at his teammates’ places, than hanging out here alone. He’d had those two rookies over last night, but it’s not like Connor really knows anything about Dylan’s life now. He expected Dylan’s place to feel homey because Dylan has always felt like home. And, well, he kind of evicted himself. He doesn’t really get to have an opinion anymore. But it’s not that he’s judging. It makes him sad.

When he woke up, it took him a moment to remember where he was. Dylan’s bed doesn’t smell like it did when they were in junior — different laundry detergent. Different shampoo and body wash in the shower, as Connor stood under the hot water and replayed the last twenty four hours meticulously in his head. He has to do that, now, with Dylan. He can’t read Dylan’s mind like he used to, but he can sometimes figure it out after the fact. What he did right and what he did wrong. Whether he still has a chance.

The fight felt good, last night. Maybe that’s weird to think. It felt awful, of course, but it felt good, too, because it felt real. Connor’s had enough of putting on a neutral face and talking around feelings for a lifetime. If Dylan wants to yell at him, he would rather Dylan yell than keep it bottled up inside. Can’t deal with it if you don’t say it, his therapist likes to tell him.

He scrubs himself dry with the towel from the rack. Changes into sweatpants and a hoodie from the drawers that Dylan had vaguely gestured at before falling back asleep. The clothes smell like the same detergent as the bed. He breathes in; tries to slot the new memory in alongside the old.

The book is where Connor left on the sofa the night before. He’s still kind of embarrassed by it. Not by the content, but by how easy it was to make happen. Connor McDavid writing a book — surely with a ghostwriter, right? No, no, actually writing it. Okay, instead of a ghostwriter, here’s an editor to shape the rambling pages of your journals into something that people can read. Whatever you need. Sure, we can condense our usual publication schedule to get it out at the start of the next hockey season. Sure, we can set up signings at NHL games. So many people tripping over themselves to make this happen for him, and Connor, happy to let it happen, because it got him what he wanted. It got him back to Dylan.

Okay, maybe the whole thing isn’t about Dylan. That wouldn’t be very healthy. But right now, in Dylan’s living room, wearing Dylan’s clothes, damp from Dylan’s shower, it sure feels like it’s all about Dylan.

Connor takes the book with him to the kitchen and leafs through it while the coffee brews. He knows the damn thing front to back by now, but he sat with it for a while last night, after Dylan stormed off to bed, trying to read it through Dylan’s eyes and utterly failing. Just like he can’t read Dylan’s mind anymore, he can’t figure out how Dylan feels about the words he’s put on these pages. He had hoped, obviously, for sympathy — understanding — he’d hoped Dylan would have read it before they saw each other again, but he knows now what a ridiculous hope that was. Dylan’s read part of it, now, he knows that, but he doesn’t know which part. Connor looks at it and sees the I love you, I love you, I love you screaming from between the lines. Dylan probably reads right past those. He can’t read Connor’s mind anymore, either. All he sees, apparently, are the things Connor left out.

It takes him a minute to find the sugar, but the milk’s in the fridge door, and he drains half his cup of coffee in one go and refills it before moving back to the living room. Going back to the bedroom would probably wake Dylan up, and he doesn’t want to do that. Instead, he settles in on the sofa with Dylan’s soft, fuzzy Maple Leafs-branded blanket, coffee on the coffee table, book open on his thighs, pen stolen from the kitchen counter in hand.

Connor stares at the dedication page — and for the other half of me, who deserved better. It would be an easy place to start. Circle it. Underline it. Big arrows all pointing straight to it. Don’t you know? How can you not know? It would be the easy place, but somehow that makes it the hardest, too. That doesn’t make sense, except for how it makes perfect sense in Connor’s head. Just another thing he’ll never be able to explain.

Instead, he flips a couple of chapters in, finds the passage he’s looking for, and hunches over to write as neatly as he can in the margin under it: My favorite memory from this season: the first time I spent the night at your billet house, and you made me hang out with you while you skyped your brother, and you told him I was your best friend. It was the first time you called me that.

The words look strange. Even when he’s writing carefully, Connor’s handwriting isn’t very good. But there’s no taking them back now — it’s ink. It’s a tattoo. No undos or re-dos.

He turns a few more pages and does it again.

The way you smiled at me the first time I saw you in Erie filled me with relief. Isn’t that strange? Relief. Somehow I knew from the first moment that you were someone I would always be able to lean on.

There’s a strange rush to it. When he was writing the book, these were all the places he had to hold back, and now he doesn’t have to at all. He wanted this book to tell Dylan something, and now it can. For the first time since he finally saw Dylan again, he feels like he has a real plan. Feels gripped by determination in a way he hasn’t felt in a long time.

I started missing you right away and I don’t think I’ve ever stopped.

After a while, the sensation of being watched tingles in Connor’s peripheral vision. He looks up and Dylan is there, leaning in the hallway entrance in his pajamas, watching Connor with a sleepy look on his face. An awful yearning blooms up in Connor’s chest, but he breathes, and it ebbs. He closes the book. He’ll take it home. Finish later.

“You’re up,” he says.

“Practice,” Dylan says, and continues shuffling toward the kitchen.

“I made coffee,” Connor calls after him. “You have the same machine as my mom. It’s probably still warm.”

Dylan’s grunt in response tells Connor that he’s not awake enough for conversation yet. Connor sets the book aside and picks up his phone instead. He’s got texts and emails he should answer, but he scrolls through Instagram instead, not seeing any of the posts that he scrolls past. After a minute, Dylan reappears with a mug. He’s got bags under his eyes, but then again, he’s always got bags under his eyes. 

“I’m glad you got some sleep,” Connor says.

Dylan gives him a grimace that’s almost a smile. “What were you writing?”

“Just some notes.” Connor sets his phone aside to pick up his coffee instead. “You said I left stuff out, so.”

[msmargaretmurry]

the tenderhorny couch scene in tnno....from the wonder twins perspective

wonder twins, my children!! pls enjoy this brief detour into the brain of the more sober one during the tenderhorny couch scene. ❤

Coming into the season, Tanner had big expectations and bigger dreams for what he’d hoped would be his first full year in the NHL. He played a couple of games with the big club at the end of last year, once his junior team’s season was over, before getting punted to the Marlies to help them out on their playoff run. Which had been fun, and surely valuable for his development or whatever, but that taste of The Show — man, he didn’t want to be anywhere else. So he’d worked his ass off, earned a roster spot, and other than the incident with Kevin nearly getting his head knocked off, it’s been a dream of a season so far.

In none of his dreams, however, could Tanner have concocted this: tipsy and playing Chel on a teammate’s sofa while Connor McDavid watches.

Kevin loves it. Oh, Kev’s in his prime. Kev hasn’t had more than one drink at a time in months, and he forgets sometimes that Tanner has only met the guy that once, when they snapped some selfies in the locker room toward the beginning of the season. Kev thinks that because McDavid is his friend now he’s also Tanner’s friend. Tanner disagrees. To Tanner, the man on the couch is still Connor McFucking McDavid, and Tanner feels a little bit like he’s having an out of body experience. Like, in the corner of Tanner’s eye, Dylan is — holding McDavid’s hand? No, he’s picking at the sleeve of McDavid’s hoodie. There’s a hole in the cuff. And this is real life.

Dylan glances over toward the sofa, and Tanner wrenches his attention back to the television. The distraction is not helpful for winning the video game. Tanner doesn’t want to get smoked in front of the man, the myth, the legend. He buckles down and concentrates, digging his elbow into Kev’s side as Kev laughs and forces a turnover, then lines his digital Mo up for a massive hit.

“Wow, you’re really gonna let him do that to you?” Dylan asks.

“Fucking — fuckity fuck,” Kevin says as the puck slides uselessly away onscreen, and his chance to get a shot off before the period ends goes up in smoke. He groans and hops to his feet. “I need another beer. Connor, you want one?”

“I want one,” Tanner says, to remind him that there are other people in the room. Kev flips him off.

The long minute while Kevin’s in the kitchen isn’t awkward, exactly. Tanner just doesn’t know what to say. He can talk to Dylan easy; Dylan is the easiest person in the world to talk to. But Dylan is on the love seat with McDavid, to whom Tanner has no idea what to say. Like, it’s Connor McDavid.

“They spent the break in Cabo,” Dylan is telling McDavid now.

“Oh, nice,” McDavid says. His eyes flicker over to Tanner belatedly, like he has to remind himself to look away from Dylan. “Good call, going somewhere warm.”

“You should have gone somewhere warm,” Dylan says.

“At least I went somewhere,” McDavid says. Dylan pulls a face at him.

“It was fun,” Tanner says, for the sake of saying something. 

He’s relieved when Kev reappears with more beer. He’s more confident with Kev sitting next to him, his thigh pressed warm against Tanner’s. Feels less egregiously out of place. It’s like that on the ice, too. He’s done so much less chirping with Kev out of the lineup; taken so many fewer high-risk high-reward chances. But with Kevin next to him, he can throw himself back into the video game, tease him, swear at him, elbow him, try valiantly to win his attention back from McDavid, who, just by being there, keeps drawing it away. It’s pretty funny, actually: who would win — Tanner, trying actively to keep his best friend’s attention, or the Next Next One, existing? The answer is: Kev has the attention span of a goldfish anyway.

In the corner of Tanner’s eye, now, Dylan has his arm around McDavid. McDavid is tucked against his side, and Dylan is saying something into McDavid’s ear. McDavid murmurs something back with a small smile. Something about it makes Tanner feel suddenly like he’s intruding on a private moment, and he jerks his attention back to the game, but he can’t help sneaking one more glance. He can’t hear most of their quiet conversation, but he catches cute and Kevin.

“Stop gossiping about us,” he says, by which he really means, stop distracting me. “We’re distracted, not deaf.” He squints at the television, twisting his controller to the side. The puck is stuck in a corner, and they both have several guys trying to dig it out.

“Personally I don’t mind if you gossip about me,” Kev says, grinning. “Besides, you know what’s really cute?” He pauses the game and grabs his phone, pointing the camera at the love seat.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” Dylan says, starting to sit up, but it’s too late. Kevin now has a very cute picture of the two of them cuddling. McDavid seems uneasy about this; Dylan seems grumpy; but Kev doesn’t seem to notice anything amiss at all, so Tanner throws himself back into the game and lets the weirdness of the moment pass them by. The ideal way to deal with conflict.

And yet, despite being notably more sober and arguably more determined, he loses the damn game. The way Kevin whoops and dances about his victory makes Dylan and McDavid laugh, though, so Tanner concedes defeat with minimal complaining. He lets Kev swoop in and kiss his forehead, and doesn’t even blow up his spot by calling him out for how many times he’s watched the end of the Helsinki  gold medal game on YouTube.

“Oh, that was awesome,” Kev says once they’re out on the sidewalk outside of Dylan’s building, waiting for their ride. He’s beaming, unaffected by the cold, his breath leaving him in small white clouds. Tanner’s not drunk enough to not feel the cold, but his forehead is still warm where Kevin kissed him. “Man, Stromer should have told us Connor was coming. But that was so cool.”

“It was very cool,” Tanner agrees, pulling Kev back by when he strays too close to the curb. Kev sways into him, hugs his arm, rests his head on Tanner’s shoulder.

“That’s gonna be us, you know?” he says dreamily. “Ten years into the league and still hanging out. Old and retired and still hanging out. That’s gonna be us.”

Tanner doesn’t think Dylan knew that McDavid would be showing up tonight. McDavid looked so tired, and Dylan kept looking at him with such concern. And Tanner doesn’t know McDavid on a personal level, obviously, but he did read the book, and between that and the vibes in the room tonight, he would feel confident betting that the relationship there is more complicated than “best friends from junior.” The way McDavid wrote about Dylan felt like he was writing about someone he missed. Tanner would never say that out loud, of course, and it’s none of his business, but he’s dying to know what got left out, if only because now, listening to Kevin’s babbling about their future together, he can’t stop thinking: I don’t think it’s that easy. I don’t think it was that easy for them. I think it might be harder than we think.

He pats Kevin’s head through his toque. “Wonder twins forever.”

“Mmm,” Kevin agrees happily. “Wonder twins forever.”