#would have wanted the nets to pick him but I literally spent three hours waiting for them to trade for a pick but that never happened.

[meadowlandss]

My fav pic of the draft night 🥹

[angryschnauzer]

No i In Team

Summary: Having been dumped, you find yourself standing in the mud and rain as a bootcamp instructor yells at you. Finally you snap, telling him your mind before storming off. Later when he appears at your room to see if you are ok, he makes sure you are fully over your ex, proving that some men are a lot better than others.

Pairing: Captain Syverson x Female Reader (no race or body type mentioned) Fandom; Henry Cavill, Sand Castle - Movie

Warnings: NSFW, 18+, Masturbation, Oral Sex, Unprotected Sex, Rough sex, vaginal sex, doggy style, cowgirl, inappropriate use of a mini sombrero. 

I do not operate a tag list, however please follow @angryschnauzerwrites​ and put that blog onto notifications. You will then get an alert every time i post something.

My masterlist got too large for tumblr, so now you can check out my AO3 on THIS LINK to find my previous stories.

No I In Team

This was it. This was the worst decision you had ever made. In fact, the worst collection of the worst decisions. Ever. In the history of decision making. 

The rain continued to pour. Any sane person would not be standing in the middle of an assault course in this weather. They certainly wouldn’t be joining in on a ‘team building get-away’ when you had in fact already quit the company and it just finished your notice period. And they really wouldn’t have come when their ex was parading his new girlfriend around and they were on the same team as you. 

Okay, so the last bit wasn’t in your control; your ex had in fact dumped you - via text - whilst you were in the cab there. Which honestly was a bit of a surprise seeing as you were meant to be sharing a room, and you had splashed out on one of the luxury rooms in the hotel where the corporate events were held at. He was a little surprised - which proved how much of a dumbass he really was - when you refused to let him and his new girlfriend take your room, and you stay in the smaller and cheaper one she had paid for. It was simple, you had paid, they could fuck off.

The other girlfriend, now that was a surprise. You didn’t want to hate her, she seemed very sweet but there were definitely a few sandwiches short of a picnic going on with her. Your weasel of an ex had cited a number of reasons for the break up, all laying blame on you, but really you had known it was coming and were quite relieved in a way… he was now someone else's problem.

However, because of being blindsided by the break up, you had continued on autopilot and now found yourself soaked to your skin, and the enormous brute that ran the bootcamp was doing his best to yell at every single person to ‘encourage’ them. Jesus christ you weren’t built for climbing up ropes and flinging yourself over 10ft walls, and with each passing obstacle you were falling further and further behind.

“COME ON! GET YOUR SORRY ASS OVER THAT ROPE NET!”

Rolling your eyes you let out a huff and slid-ran through the three inch deep mud, starting to climb the net that led up to a rope ladder you were expected to climb across as it was suspended over a pool of muddy water. You looked into the distance, your ‘team mates’ having well and truly left you behind, and as you reached the bottom of the net you looked up at it, taking in how muddy and slippery it was where 11 other people had already climbed up it;

“ARE YOU AFRAID OF A NET? PULL YOURSELF UP AND STOP FUCKING AROUND IN THE MUD”

The ‘Captain’ yelled at you from six feet away. Jesus you were fed up with him. The guy looked like he lived, breathed, and slept military. At the start of the course he had introduced himself as Captain Syverson, but everyone was to refer to him as Captain. His fatigues and t-shirt were plastered to his skin, his beard soggy as puffs of steam came from his mouth as he continued to yell at you. 

You turned to him, watching as he took a single stride and was just a foot from you, taking a deep breath to yell again before you pushed your hand up and pressed a single finger to his mouth;

“No”

He stopped, unable to hide his surprise as his eyebrows shot up before you pulled your finger away.

“Get your ass up that net, NOW!”

Crossing your arms you repeated yourself;

“No. I will not”

“THERE IS NO I IN TEAM!”

“No. There isn’t. But there is an i in Vibrator”

“W-what?”

“Vibrator. Dildo too. And i quit”

“You can’t quit”

“Unless you are going to throw me over your shoulder and carry me across that net and ladder, i quit. I am going to go back to my expensive hotel room, stopping at the bar to buy a bottle of the hardest liquor they have, have a hot bath, and give myself something a man has never been able to”

“What’s that?”

“An orgasm”

You turned on your heel and started towards the hotel building in the distance, leaving the Captain speechless in the rain. When you were halfway across the lawns you could hear him yelling at the rest of the team, but you couldn’t give a fuck, you’d had enough.

-

The bath was amazing. You’d spent a good hour if not two in it letting the spa jets send streams of bubbles over your body, and had in fact given yourself the first of many orgasms you had planned for your evening. You had been disappointed when you’d discovered that the bar wouldn’t sell bottles of alcohol, but the bartender had quietly told you that if you ordered the corporate entertainment tray over room service they were obliged to send up a selection of miniatures with mixers and nibbles.

You were still standing in your towel when you heard a knock at the door, puzzled to be interrupted as you had the Do Not Disturb sign hanging on the handle. Approaching the peephole you looked through, surprised to see who was on the other side. Opening the door a few inches you looked out, and saw him leaning casually against the doorframe, now wearing dry clothes that accentuated how he was 101% muscle, from the kingfisher blue sweater that made his eyes even brighter, to the dark denim that clung to his muscled thighs, a smirk played across his face when he saw what you were wearing;

“Hi”

“Captain?”

He shifted and held out a bottle of Tequila;

“The bar doesn’t sell liquor by the bottle”

He motioned for you to take it, and as you did so you swung the door open a little more, seeing him look you up and down, his eyes growing a little darker as he licked his lips;

“I thought about what you said…”

“Which part”

“About what words the letter i are in” you didn’t realise but he had shifted a little closer, his toes now over the threshold of the room; “Cos’ i thought of another word that has the letter i in”

You cocked your head to the side, a smile tugging at the corner of your mouth, already gauging the reason his thickly muscled man was at your hotel room door with a smile and alcohol;

“Dick has got an i in”

“You’re absolutely right” you pulled the cork from the bottle of Tequila, taking a sip and grinning at the captain as you fiddled with the little hat that hung from the neck of the bottle, taking a step back as he slowly crept further into the room. A flash of lightning from the bad weather outside illuminated the room, and yet the air between your bodies almost sparked from the energy you were giving off.

“But my favourite letter is U”

“Ok… i’m waiting for the punchline…”

“Because that’s in the word Tongue, and i would very much like my tongue to be in u”

Closing the gap between you, you pressed two fingertips to his chest, the soft blue sweater he now wore warm to the touch;

“That…” you paused, walking your fingers up his chest with each word: “Was the best pick up line i’ve ever heard, Captain”

Pushing the door shut behind him, his slid his hand into the split of your towel, his warm palm resting on your hip before pulling you flush with his chest;

“You can call me Sy”

-

He had lifted you into his arms, your legs instinctively wrapping around his waist, the towel trapped between your bodies but now unraveled as it dragged along the floor, your naked back and ass cooling in the air of the room, but soon warmed by two large hands as they roamed over your skin. His kiss was rough, his tongue licking into your mouth as his beard tickled your face. 

You hadn’t even realised he’d gotten to the bed until he had pulled away and sat down, pulling you down with him so you were straddling his waist;

“Ride my face, let me give you what you need” he growled, his hands on your ass pushing you up his body.

You’d quickly scrambled to set the bottle onto the nightstand before straddling his face, his eyes sparkling with mischief as his massive hands cupped your ass. He pulled you down until you were literally seated on his face, his thick beard brushing against your thighs and ass, his tongue burying itself between your slick folds, teasing you open. 

Winding one hand through his short brown hair, the soft chocolate curls caressed your fingers as your other hand rested against the headboard of the bed to steady yourself, his eagerness already rapidly pushing you towards an orgasm, your body still buzzing from the one you’d given yourself in the bath. 

“Oh fuck… Sy, Jesus Christ your tongue…”

You’d never met a man with a tongue so wide and juicy, the thick muscle pulsing within your cunt as his nose teased your clit, and soon you were shaking above him, attempting to push up on your legs from the intensity of it, only for his strong grip to tighten on your ass and pull you back down onto his face.

“Ride my tongue Darlin’” you heard his muffled voice, and as you looked down you saw his face was flushed but his eyes held nothing but mischief.

Tossing your head back you let yourself go, calling out his name as you unashamedly rode his tongue to an intense orgasm, flooding his face with your juices. 

Limp and pliable, you felt him lifting you before setting you down on the bed, his lips finding your neck and shoulders as he pressed kisses to your skin. The storm raged outside the window, rain lashing against the glass and making you feel even more enclosed in as Sy’s body covered your own. Finally enough of your senses returned that you grabbed his face and pulled him in for a fierce kiss, tasting yourself on his tongue. When he finally broke away from your lips he started to kiss down your body, only for you to tug at his soft blue sweater, wanting the knitwear gone;

“Okay ok Darlin’...”

“Want to see you… feel you…” you were lust drunk now, a fire in the pit of your belly where you wanted nothing more than this beast of a man to split you open and fuck you raw.

He let out a low belly laugh, pushing off you and standing, a grin on his face as he saw you watching him as he stripped for you.

With his sweater tossed aside, he toed his boots off as his hands made quick work of his jeans, revealing a pair of tight black boxer briefs that were obscenely bulging at the front. Clenching your thighs together did little to satisfy the arousal, and as he tucked his thumbs under the elastic of his underwear you bit your lip as he teased you, pulling the elastic down to reveal the thick bush of hair and a tantalizing peek at the thick root of his shaft. Inch by inch he lowered his underwear until they dropped to the floor, and your mouth was agape as you took his size in all his glory;

“Wow, you really do have the equipment for the BDE you give off...” He paused and looked at you, cocking an eyebrow as you started to explain; “It means big…”

“I know what it means” he smirked, hooking his finger at you and watching as you crawled over the bed until your face was level with his rapidly hardening dick; “Why don’t you show me how good that mouth of yours is?”

Wrapping your hands around his hot flesh you could feel him growing harder and thicker under your touch, leaning your head forwards until you could take him into your mouth, tasting him on your tongue as he grunted above you;

“That’s it Darlin’, get me nice and wet, gonna have this buried in you sooner or later, the harder you get me the more dick you get inside you”

He rested his hand on the back of your head, guiding you to take him deeper but without being pushy about it. When his tip nudged at the back of your throat you fought back the feeling, looking up with watery eyes as his own bored into your soul as his dick tried to do the same to the back of your skull.

Holding you deep he finally with a gasp pulled himself out of your mouth with a string of curses, stroking your hair as you coughed and sucked in precious oxygen;

“Fuck, that mouth of yours is a thing of wonder Darlin’... but i want to get into that sweet cunt of yours… how do you need it?”

“N-need it?”

He gently pushed you onto your back, crawling over you until he was poised and ready to go;

“Yeah, need it. You’ve just broken up with some limp dick, how do you need me to fuck you?”

“W-what are the options?”

“You want slow and gentle, or you want me to fuck you like a beast and toss you around like a rag-doll”

“Beast mode please”

With a low growl he grinned as he surged forward and caught your lips with his own, his tongue pushing its way into your mouth as he took complete control. You felt him gripping his dick as he swiped it through your soaked folds, dousing himself with your wetness before he pulled away and grasped you by the hips as he knelt on the bed, pulling you up his thighs before thrusting his fat girth into you with one swift movement.

“HOLY FUCK!”

“That’s it Darlin, take my dick all the way. I’m gonna fuck you so good you’ll forget about anyone else that has ever disappointed you”

Gritting his teeth he moved your body like you were a rag-doll, pulling you onto his hardness as you could do little but to go limp and let your mind get flooded by the pleasure he was giving your body thanks to the best sex you’d ever had. Gripping at the sheets you felt an orgasm start to building within you;

“Sy… keep doing that… i’m gonna cum…”

With a smile and a grunt he did exactly as you asked, keeping his pace fast and steady as you lost control around him, your back arching as your legs shook and you came hard. You were trembling from the force of the aftershocks as he slowed down and finally stilled, letting you relax onto the duvet as he covered your body with his, pressing openmouthed kisses to your chest, murmuring against the soft flesh;

“These titties are spectacular”

He moved a little and you felt that he was still hard, a smirk back on his face;

“Oh i’m not done yet Darlin’, that was just an intermission”

He pulled out of you and you found yourself being flipped over, your ass pulled up as he filled you from behind this time, his thickness splitting your walls open and his massive hands found their way to your breasts, pinching your nipples between his thumbs and forefingers as he pile drove into you from behind;

“Feel so fucking good Darlin, love the way your cunt feels around my dick, wanna feel you cum again before i shoot my load in ya’, then you can have a breather before round two”

Your eyes went wide; this was still only round one? Fuck, Sy was an utter beast and as he tilted his hips and his dick hit just the right spot, your eyes rolled back in their sockets and your jaw hung open, the pleasure running through your veins turning your brain to jelly and all you could comprehend was Sy fucking the living daylights out of you. 

Starting to tremble, your sighs became squeaks which became screams of his name as you started to cum and it kept going, your body squeezing him tighter than a vice before he finally came with a beastly roar, shooting ropes of his creamy seed and coating velvet walls. 

The pair of you slumped down onto the bed, your bodies still joined as he pressed kisses to the back of your neck. Finally he pulled out and you whimpered at the loss of his warmth and weight on top of you, instinctively rolling and curling up against his side as you rested your head on his chest, the song of his heartbeat strong and steady beneath your ear;

“Fuck… that was amazing”

He gently stroked one hand over your back;

“You can say that again Darlin’. Your pussy is like heaven… never had a cunt grip me so tight and be able to take me balls deep before...”

You smiled and let your eyes rest for a moment, before you felt him shift and the sound of a cork being pulled from a bottle disturbed your post orgasmic bliss. Looking up you saw him oof the cork out of his mouth before bringing the bottle of tequila to his lips and taking a large mouthful. Holding the bottle to you he grinned as you sat up and took it, following suit and still wincing at the burn as the expensive liquid slid down your throat. 

Just at that moment there was a massive crack of thunder outside and an immediate flash of light, before the electricity fizzled out, plunging you into darkness. You weren’t afraid of the dark but the suddenness of it made you squeal, Sy pulling you close;

“Shhh its ok Darlin’, this place gets its power knocked out all the time cos’ its up on the hill here. That’s why there’s candles in every room”

He deftly slid out of your grasp and you heard him fumbling around on the floor before he illuminated the room with his phone, and you watched as his silhouette made its way across the room and you heard the click of a lighter. Moments later the room had a pale glow from the candles that had sat on the side table, and as he carried one back to bed you saw that he was still hard;

“How are you…”

“Still up? Oh Darlin’ i can go eight or nine rounds before i droop”

“Eight or… nine…”

He flopped down onto the bed beside where you sat, his hands behind his head and a wide smile on his face;

“So, what do ya’ wanna do next?”

You laughed softly  before taking another sip of tequila, toying with the little hat that was attached to it before a sudden urge overtook your senses. With a look of amusement on his face Sy watched as you took the hat from the bottle and softly tied it to his dick, the hat standing proud on his tip;

“A perfect fit” he remarked, but before either of you could say anything else a knock at the door interrupted you.

“Babe?” a quiet voice came from the other side of the door; “You in there?”

Your heart sank;

“Its my ex… I’m gonna go tell him to fuck off…”

Sy caught your arm gently, a grin on his face;

“Let me”

What happened next was something you could only have dreamt of, and as you pulled a pillow in front of you to hide your nakedness, Sy basked in his own naked glory as he strode to the door and pulled it open;

“Yes?”

Your ex stood in the hallway outside your room, his bags at his feet;

“What are you…?”

“I’m busy keeping my girl happy. What’re you doing here?”

“I got dumped…”

“Well champ, that sounds like a you problem…”

Without another word Sy stepped back and shut the door, making sure to flip the security lock extra hard so that your ex could hear it from the hallway. Striding back to the bed you couldn’t help but to laugh;

“I can’t believe you answered the door completely naked, hard, and with a mini sombrero on your dick!”

Climbing onto the bed he lay on his back, his hands behind his head as he grinned at you, wriggling his hips so his hard dick swayed to and fro with the hat still attached;

“Oh i think it made the moment all that more memorable Darlin’”

“He’ll certainly remember it, that’s for sure”

You carefully took the little adornment off of Sy, tossing it aside as you straddled his hips and grasped his hot shaft, helping to find your waiting entrance before sinking down onto him. 

The feeling of taking him inch by inch was almost overwhelming; thick and gnarled, his fat dick stretched you in every direction, and you were thankful for the added lubrication of his cum already dripping out of you.

As you started to ride him you could feel your body already deceiving you and climbing towards a rapid orgasm, and you found yourself cupping your breasts and twisting your nipples to distract yourself and let it last just a little longer. However when Sy’s massive hands rested on your hips and he started to thrust up into you, it was the beginning of the end. The final straw was when he slid one hand to your front, his thumb finding your clit and rubbing quick circles firmly against the engorged bud did it send you over the edge and you were coming again, back arched and head thrown back as your bodies moved as one in the candlelight.

-

Sy fucked you until the storm cleared and the candles fizzled out, just the moonlight illuminating your room when you both crawled under the duvet and fell asleep, sweaty bodies cooling in the night, sated from your energetic lovemaking.

Come morning and you were woken up by a series of featherlight kisses to your naked back and shoulders. For the briefest moment panic set in, but then you remembered your bed companion from the night before;

“Mmm Mornin’ Darlin’” he drawled, his voice low and coarse from sleep.

Turning you smiled at him before his lips caught yours for a gentle kiss. What followed was the best oral you’d ever received, followed by a steamy session of shower sex where for the first time in your life you’d felt confident that your partner was strong enough to not let you slip and injure yourself. 

The following room service breakfast had been thoroughly enjoyable where the two of you had talked and laughed, swapped numbers and both made it clear you’d like to see the other again. Sy had even driven you back to the train station, where you’d attracted the odd few stares as he’d kissed you with tongues and teeth before giving your ass a squeeze. 

-

Two weeks later.

Sy fiddled with the zippered pocket on his fatigues as he waited nervously outside the meeting room at the corporate offices. After what had seemed like an amazing night with you, he’d arrived at work on Monday to discover one of his boot camp cadets had made a formal complaint about his ‘lewd behaviour’. He knew it wasn’t you, but it had distracted him from the string of text’s you’d shared in the following days. He was thankful that you’d told him not to apologise, having started your new job and that was full on from the word go.

The door to the meeting room opened and his name was called, standing he smoothed his shirt down and nodded before entering the room. This was probably the most nervous he’d been since leaving the army; at least there if you fucked up you got a court marshall, now he was a civilian if he lost his job it meant he couldn’t pay his bills.

-

You were attempting to get a file out of the huge stack that sat on your desk without knocking your coffee over when your office door opened and a friendly face peered around the corner;

“Hey, you ready for the disciplinary hearing?”

“The what?... Oh, right… let me find the file…”

“Did you read it?”

Shaking your head you grinned at the manager of offsite contractors;

“Don’t worry, i’ve skimmed it. You guys brought me in to sort through this mess my predecessor left behind, I just wasn’t expecting it to be this much of a mess…”

Grabbing your coffee and the file with that day's date on, you followed your colleague through the building, attempting to scan over the complaint, frowning when you saw that the printer been running out of toner and had omitted the two parties names. Nevermind, you could always write those in.

Chewing on your pen as you shut the meeting room door, you quickly took a seat at the end of the table, looking up and only then your eyes going wide. On one side sat your ex, and someone that looked like a low rate lawyer judging by the cheap suit and even cheaper briefcase. On the other side sat Sy - Captain Syverson - whose eyes were as big as saucers and you saw the slightest hint of a smile start to tug at the corner of his mouth before he restored his poker face.

The manager introduced himself and then you;

“This is our new Human Resources manager, she’ll be overseeing this meeting”

Taking one last look at your report you took a sip of your drink before standing, keeping your face neutral;

“So, your client alleges that our employee acted in a lewd manner whilst on a team building exercise two weeks ago?”

“That is right Miss, you see…”

“And that your client wishes to pursue a lawsuit based on ‘emotional distress’ and that our employee caused the breakdown of his relationship”

“Yes Miss, Its like this you see…”

Cutting the lawyer off again, you looked pointedly at your ex;

“So, did you or did you not actually end the relationship with your partner, before even meeting Captain Syverson? Actually there’s no need to answer, i have a transcript of the text messages here…” you looked down at your your file, although you knew the texts by heart; “And i quote “I’ve found someone new, someone prettier than you, she’s better in bed too”

You looked up at your ex who was now sinking down into his chair;

“And by lewd behaviour, did you or did you not approach your ex’s bedroom at the hotel in the middle of the night, and continue to knock on her bedroom door whilst there was a ‘do not disturb’ sign on the door?”

The lawyer attempted to talk, but yet again you cut him off;

“So therefore, you had no emotional or romantic relationship with the person whose room it was, and therefore as fully consenting adults, our employee and your ex, were perfectly within their rights to start a romantic relationship, were they not?” you took a deep breath; “And, as you have a history of making civil lawsuits against companies that you have deemed you ‘wrong’, this frivolous attempt at extortion has now been recorded, and will be submitted to the authorities”

You lifted your phone before setting it back down onto the table. You hadn’t been recording, but it was enough for your ex’s lawyer to stand and leave the room quickly, your ex scurrying close behind. Leaning to the manager you cleared your throat;

“You might want to make sure security escorts them completely offsite”

“Absolutely. Can i leave you debrief Syverson?”

“Leave it with me”

You shut the door behind him as he left, and felt the warmth of Sy’s body behind you;

“This is a very unexpected, but oh so pleasant surprise”

Turning in his arms you were thankful that there were no internal windows to this meeting room, kissing him deeply before the giant bear of a man pulled away and smiled softly at you;

“I need to buy you dinner for what you did… you’re fucking badass”

“How did you not know what the meeting was about?”

“They just told me it was ‘lewd behaviour’. I’d been wracking my mind for the last week to figure out what i may have said or done… yeah i yell at people for a living, but i’m never lewd…”

Placing your palm on his cheek you smiled at him;

“Dinner sounds good by the way”

“Come over to my place tonight, i’ll cook you dinner”

“Will there be dessert?”

Sy licked his lips, his gaze travelling down your body and back up again;

“There definitely will be for me… i’m sure i’ve got some cookies you can have too Darlin”

[tobiosmilktea]

hello there. my bday is around the corner and i was wondering how would random haikyuu boys celebrate it with u 💓

how the haikyuu boys will celebrate your birthday with you

a/n: my birthday is just around the corner too so this was really fun to write 🥺 i decided to do it by team bc i couldn’t pick who boys to do lmao

— karasuno

i think they’ll definitely pull some intricate plan that will go wrong one way or another

like a surprise party maybe

it was fs nishinoya and tanaka’s idea to set one up after school in the gym where they tell everyone to pretend to forget your birthday just to add that special element of surprise

but then again, guys like tsukishima and kageyama don’t need to pretend they didn’t know your birthday because they truly didn’t until hinata brought it up to them (don’t take it too personally tho lmao)

speaking of which, hinata almost spoiled the surprise for you if yachi wasn’t there to distract you 💀

despite being the second year’s idea to throw this surprise party for you, it’s primarily the third years doing all the work since tanaka and nishinoya don’t know how to organize a party for shit

poor kiyoko is actually doing all the work while daichi and asahi are putting up decorations with the help of the first years (tsukishima had to be forced tho smh)

yamaguchi and yachi seem like the types to overthink what to get you for a birthday present, probably going all out while kageyama would just buy you your favorite drink and snack from the vending machine near the gym literally five minutes before the surprise

it’s the thought that counts ig

sugawara made your cake as well with the usual message, ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY Y/N !!’

and since the surprise party was being held in the gym after practice, everyone had to hurry and clean up before setting out all the decorations. and can i just say, it’s chaotic™️

yachi had to distract you for a good ten minutes by asking you to walk all the way towards the other end of campus to ‘get something’ that didn’t exist in the first place

meanwhile in the gym, the second years were in charge of taking down the volleyball net to replace it with a badly homemade painting with tanaka’s messy ass handwriting wishing you a happy birthday

the third years and first years as mentioned before were setting up decorations, hanging up streamers, setting out balloons, and handing out party poppers

with kiyoko, takeda-sensei, and ukai set out a table for sugawara to place the cake he made for you (which it almost fell cause ennoshita bumped into him)

hinata was also on the lookout if you and yachi were nearby

and when you were, he shout so loudly that even you heard down the hall

finishing up any last minute details, the team sets out their presents for you with their party poppers in hand before shouting, “SURPRISE!!”

it’s all fun and games until nishinoya accidentally released confetti at your face by accident

he made up for it with his present though lmao

— aoba johsai

saying that seijoh probably won’t do anything as big as a surprise party is a complete lie

knowing oikawa and the moment he found out it was going to be your birthday soon, he’ll plan something more extravagant than some lame surprise party (albeit, badly planned without the help of iwa)

he’d probably rent out a party bus to drive around the city before stopping by at some random karaoke place downtown

he’ll only invite the third years and your close friends so it isn’t too big of a celebration that it doesn’t feel like it’s your own party

the best part of the night was mattsun absolutely outshining oikawa in literally everything

there was even a stripper pole in the party bus and he just started fucking around with you to pretending to make it rain on him,, it was hilarious

you love rewatching the videos you took of that night

your favorite (besides stripper matsukawa) was iwa singing a ballad for you and when i say that man has vocals i mean it

at the end of the night, all your friends got up to sing happy birthday to you on the karaoke machine

the second years would probably feel bad celebrating your birthday with you, so instead they take you out to get udon after school and just vibe

you were honestly just surprised that it was kyotani’s idea to take you out like this, not to mention the cute gift he gave you that he put a lot of thought into

meanwhile i think the first years are just too intimidated by you minus kunimi

like kindaichi knew of your birthday but he was just too scared to go up to you and wish you a happy birthday before handing you your favorite convenient store snack as a little gift

— nekoma

unlike karasuno and seijoh, the way the nekoma boys celebrate with you is definitely on the more laidback side, yet they still put effort in wishing you a happy birthday

kenma, kuroo, and yaku would definitely stay up with you the night before your birthday playing video games just to be the first ones to wish you a happy birthday the moment the clock strikes midnight

they’ll even set up a minecraft server that kenma spent hours setting up and building everything that you like with a gigantic banner made out of your favorite colors of wool saying ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY!’

the rest of the night staying up playing party games on hypixel despite having school the next day

in the morning, you’d find kenma and kuroo waiting outside your house so they can walk the birthday celebrant to school, plus they had bags in their hands to which you assume were presents for you

it was then did you realize that you were going to get more throughout the day after kuroo mentioned how he told the team that it was your birthday

there was something embarrassing and a bit cringey being showered with attention for your birthday, especially at school, but you still appreciated the team’s efforts

throughout the day, people would notice the gifts in your hands and would wish you a happy birthday, definitely causing a stir in the school when yaku, lev, and yamamoto burst into your classroom to shout happy birthday

while yamamoto is literally showering you with birthday wishes and presents, lev would give you a cute plushie of your favorite animal along with a little cake

he’d probably ask to eat it with you during lunch lmao

by the end of the day, kuroo and kenma would help you carry all the presents you received as you guys end the day off getting ramen

— fukurodani

i don’t think they’ll make a big deal out of it knowing you don’t like making a big deal out of your birthday either

the only reason why they even found out that your birthday was around the corner is because bokuto couldn’t keep his mouth shut

it played out somewhere along the lines like this: akaashi would ask you if you were free this weekend so you two could study for the upcoming math exam

bokuto was there as well when you had to ask for a raincheck on studying as your parents were forcing you to go out on a celebratory birthday dinner (as by their words, “it’s the least you could do.”)

to which bokuto literally gasps and shouts, “IT’S YOUR BIRTHDAY THIS WEEKEND?” his words echoing throughout the gym and definitely catching the attention of the rest of the volleyball team

if that’s his reaction to finding out it’s your birthday soon, just imagine how shocked he would be when you tell him that you don’t really like celebrating it

akaashi would definitely understand and opted to buy you a little something for his appreciation and give it to you the following day, but bokuto wants to full on throw a party for you

“come on! it’ll just be a little get-together at the park!” he would beg

“thank you, bo, but i’m honestly fine just going out to dinner with my family.”

he would huff, planning to throw one as a surprise party instead, but akaashi immediately shoots down his idea out of respect for you

instead, bokuto would channel all that energy to giving “the best birthday gift of your life!” (end quote)

even konoha would challenge him on that just to tease him, but would still give you a well thought out gift

and yeah, it’s honestly kind of embarrassing seeing him walk into school with a box full of things you’re into including a giant owl plushie (school spirit ig??)

poor bo was outshined by yukie and kaori when they made a birthday cake for you

— shiratorizawa

lowkey i feel like shiratorizawa is definitely one of those private schools that would announce when their student’s birthdays are when they come close

like no one of the vb team would’ve found out your birthday was in a couple days if it wasn’t for that overhead announcement made by the vice principal

however, i wouldn’t think they’d make a huge deal out of it besides tendou maybe

the moment you would walk into the gymnasium, he’ll immediately wish you a happy birthday loudly before nudging ushijima to do the same

instead of one big party, you celebrated with them almost individually

tendou and ushijima both took you to the aquarium and bought you a gift that you specifically chose out cause they’d probably wouldn’t be bothered to do so without you

and then you’d go out with semi and reon to which you three just get sushi after school

lowkey i feel like they would buy literally anything you show even the tiniest amount of interest in and they’ll buy it within a snap

you literally had to stop semi from buying you anything else as he’ll end up spending all his pocket change when the sushi was enough

and unlike their upperclassman, shirabu and goshiki would probably just celebrate with you by just hanging out at your house--watching netflix, playing video games, maybe ordering some pizza

it’s pretty simple, but they’ll be there all day cause the time spent together is just really nice

— inarizaki

the twins literally cannot keep their mouths shut

the team was already pretty aware of your birthday, but they have been keeping the surprise party for you on the downlow ever since the twins proposed their idea of doing a little picnic for you

but go figure that it would be atsumu and osamu exposing their entire plan in front of you after nagging their team not to say jackshit in front of you

they’d still follow through with their plans, however, despite not being a surprise anymore

the little celebration would be held at the park, suna being in charge of the picnic blanket, kita being in charge of bringing drinks, osamu being in charge of bringing the food, and atsumu being in charge of... well,, bringing you ig

aran would arrive late only because he had to get his bday gift for you (which btw was the best one fs) as well as picking up your birthday cake with the words ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY BITCH <3′ 

it’s so obvious that suna was the one who ordered the cake, but it’s literally the best you have every received

overall, it’s pretty chill but you couldn’t ask for anything more knowing their efforts and how you’ve been laughing your ass off the entire time

you guys would even watch the sunset as yall sat atop a hill, taking photos to put on your stories and to post on social media

out of the hundreds of photos taken of you with your cake or aran force feeding suna food, the group photo taken exactly at golden hour was your absolute favorite

[hockeyboysiguess]

three french horns -> three goal horns | n. mackinnon

a/n: and like clockwork, here is fic number three in my 12 days of christmas series! i wrote this one a while ago and i hurt myself re-reading it to proof it, so i hope you all like it! rest of the christmas series linked here.

word count:  4,037

warnings: alcohol, drinking 

“Hey, Nate?” you called out from the living room when you heard the back door open, signaling his reappearance in the house after letting the dogs outside. 

“Yeah, baby?” he asked as he stomped his boots on the mat, shaking the last bit of the early Denver snow off. 

You asked the question you’d been asking him since two weeks after his birthday, the same question you’d been asking a variation of for the three months before his birthday. “Nate, what do you want for Christmas?” 

The sound that left Nate’s mouth was barely human, a groan coming from deep within, from the place that never knew what he wanted for any major gift giving holiday of any kind. You tried to be original, get sentimental things, but it was hard to buy for someone who could literally buy anything they ever wanted. Nate didn’t have big, expensive wishes, so if he wanted something, he often just bought it on the spot and you were none-the-wiser until it showed up at his house. This penchant, this bad habit, carried throughout the holiday season; it was a perpetual state of being for Nathan MacKinnon. This meant that items Nate ordered for himself were as likely to show up December 24th as any other day of the year, which was eternally infuriating as a person in his life trying to buy him gifts on the semi-regular basis. 

“I don’t know,” he answered you, like he did every other time. “I’ll like it because it’s from you.” 

That response was sweet the first, second, and half-sweet the third time he’d used it on you. Now, that response was worn out like an old pair of jeans, with holes in the thighs and the knees hanging together by a thread, absolutely unusable at this point in time really. Yet Nate continued to say it, like that string of seven words didn’t light a fire in your stomach completely unlike the kind crackling under the stockings on the mantle right now. 

“Nate,” you groaned, all too similarly to how he had when you asked your question. Spend enough time with a person and you pick up their habits. You and Nate were a completely unoriginal example of that. “You know I hate when you say that.” 

Nate rolled his eyes and shrugged, “Well, I don’t really know. A hat trick? But you can’t get me that, I’ve got to get that for me.” 

The infamous illusive hat trick. While it wasn’t those dreaded seven words, you were pretty sure you had heard about this hat trick that was alluding him every other day at this point. In all fairness to Nate, the amount of times he had scored twice in the first two periods of a game this season and been held off the scoreboard in the second was absurd. Commentators were joking about it, his teammates were chirping him over not one, not two, but three missed empty netters that would’ve sealed it, even though Nate liked to say those didn’t really count as hat tricks. Greater than all of that, Nate was starting to incredibly frustrated with himself and his performances. You knew Nate was a competitive guy before you even went on your first date with him, but his competitiveness ran deep and honestly you weren’t sure your relationship would work if you were even an ounce more competitive than you were. Nate had to win, he had to achieve his goals. This goal was quite simply just three goals, but it continued to be just out of reach this season and coming up on the holiday season, pushing the halfway mark, Nate was starting to think it might not happen this year. 

“You’ll get one, Nate,” you sighed. “You’re so close and you’re too good not to get whatever you put your mind to.” 

“I got a good feeling about the game tomorrow,” he replied, sliding up next to you on the couch to throw a Christmas sweater-covered arm around your shoulders. “My good luck charm is going to be there, right?” 

Nate wasn’t superstitious in the slightest, but he said he always scored more whenever you came. Statistically, a complete lie, but it made you feel special all the same. He kissed your temple softly as he relaxed into the couch cushions next to you. 

“So, what are we watching? Classic or trashy Christmas?” 

That question itself somehow encapsulated every single reason you loved Nathan MacKinnon, despite his pension for buying his own Christmas presents, his overly competitive nature, and the difficulty that came with trying to buy him a present. Nate didn’t love Christmas movies; he wasn’t a hater like some people you’d dated before, but you adored them, both classic and trashy alike. Nate jumped on board with whatever you liked, no questions asked. He always said you didn’t sign up to date all of his teammates that walked through the door scrounging for homemade food or the long hours alone, the least he could do was be as supportive of the things you liked as you were about hockey for him. Nate’s support came in casual, steady waves of constantly and consistently showing up, no matter how tired he was, no matter how long the day before had been. He might fall asleep twenty minutes into the movie, but Nate was here and active and present for as long as he could stay awake. He’d cross deserts and move mountains for an hour with you, and some days that’s what it took, but Nate showed up and jumped on board, which made him the easiest person in the world to love in spite of everything else. It made him the only person you wanted to spend this Christmas and every other one in the future with.

The next day, with his last name on your back and a Santa hat on your head, you found yourself in a position that felt all too familiar this season. You were watching the ice with eager eyes among the other wives and girlfriends. Your breath caught in your throat halfway through the first when you saw two seconds after him that there was nothing between Nate and the net but open ice and a goaltender. You slowly stood up, leaning forward as if those all important inches would help you see the ice better. You didn’t miss the puck sailing over the blocker’s side of the goaltender, or the eruption of cheers from everyone around you as the goal horn rang out, hopefully the first of three for Nate this evening. Mel hugged you, as if you had anything to do with Nate scoring. You adjusted your hat, pulling at the fluffy white edge until it sat a little less haphazardly on your head as you cheered. 

“Two more, right?” Mel waggled her eyebrows at you and you rolled your eyes. 

“For my sake, I hope so,” you laughed. 

Going into Christmas break without this elusive hat trick meant the next four days would be spent with Nate’s mind half at the rink, trying to scheme and plan and game his way into a hat trick, as if the part he was missing was anything other than luck. Maybe he didn’t need regular luck though, maybe just a little bit of Christmas would do the trick tonight. Your third beer in, a vain attempt to calm your nerves with alcohol, and five minutes into the second, on the power play, you watched as Nate easily sailed in his second goal of the game from the high slot, causing the ever familiar cheers and the ringing of the Avalanche goal horn to sound out across the arena. 

Two down, and hopefully one to go. 

“Hatty watch,” one of the other girls sang out from behind you, giving your shoulders a squeeze. 

You let out a loud, long breath, causing a wave of laughter to ripple across the other women around you. Mel teased you about it; they all did. Nate’s quest was well known among the group, something they were equally supportive and teasing about. 

“He’ll get one,” Mel assured you with a comforting pat to your leg. “He’s too good not to.”

You really thought he had it. You watched as Mikko and Nate peeled off from the defenders caught on an odd change, leading to a two-on-one with a lone opposing forward doing his best, but poor, impersonation of a defensemen. Mikko passed the puck to Nate, which Nate passed back easily and set himself up for the perfect slap shot on the return. The quick passing had sent the other team’s player sprawling over the ice. It was just Nate and the goaltender, who was frantically shifting his eyes from Mikko to Nate, tilting back and forth on the ice. Mikko’s pass was perfect, right on the middle of Nate’s tape and Nate was ready for the pass. It was tracking high glove side, exactly where Nate wanted it to go, right into the back of the net. The goalie was facing Mikko, two key seconds behind the actual action. Except out of nowhere, the Grinch stole Christmas and Nate’s hat trick when the goalie’s glove suddenly appeared in the path the puck was taking and wrapped around the puck, just on the wrong side of the goal line for Nate. 

The referee blew the whistle and signaled no goal. Nate’s hands dropped down, stick hanging low. His head tilted up toward the ceiling of the arena and you could practically hear the groan rise from deep in his chest. It was absolute robbery at its finest and the entire arena knew luck wasn’t on Nate’s side that night. You slumped down into your seat, preparing yourself for yet another two goal game and a frustrated Nate waiting for you in the tunnel when it was over. There were another twenty minutes left in the game, but if the first half of the season had taught you anything, third periods weren’t where Nate racked up anything other than wins and assists, both of which he loved, but he just wanted a third goal, just once. Mikko and Gabe each having one already this season, all six goals involving Nate as either the primary or secondary assist, didn’t help either. 

“I think you need to pray or something,” Mel told you with a laugh. “Pray to anything and anyone out there at this point.”

You cleared your throat and looked up at the ceiling of the Pepsi arena, “Santa, I know this isn’t how you take requests,” Mel and the girls around you were already laughing, “but please, pretty freaking please, can we just get some Christmas miracle magic vibes in here? It’s all he wants for Christmas. Please and thank you and I hope you have a Merry Christmas.” 

“Are you supposed to say amen if you pray to Santa?” someone behind you asked. 

“Look I’m not opposed to it,” you sighed. “It just didn’t feel like the right ending when I was asking for a Christmas miracle.”

The girls all laughed and you just stared up at the ceiling. Maybe Santa might grant your unorthodox request delivered via an even more unorthodox method. Maybe you should’ve written him a letter and dropped it into one of those charity red mailboxes at Macy’s. Maybe Nate just wouldn’t be getting the one thing he wanted for Christmas and there was absolutely nothing you could do about it. You knew he was joking when he asked for a hat trick for Christmas, but joking or not, it was the only thing he even sort of mentioned wanting. If sending out a Christmas wish audibly in the middle of the Pepsi arena was what it took, you were more than happy to do it. 

You grabbed your fourth and fifth beer together during the intermission, knowing full and well that you didn’t want to miss a second of one of Nate’s shifts in case something good happened. If after all of this time, all of this waiting, all of Nate’s back and forth debating, if you missed his hat trick goal because you were grabbing another beer, you would have to guess that higher powers didn’t exist and the hockey gods loved laughing at you and maybe Christmas wasn’t that magical after all. 

The third period was half over when you finished your fourth beer. Your right leg had been bouncing on the concrete since the period started. Nate was getting some good looks, and added another assist to his point tally for the night, but you and everyone knew what he actually wanted tonight. A slashing call with eight minutes to go put the Avalanche back on the power play, and you knew Nate was going to fight to play every bit of those two minutes he could get, which meant you were about to be in for a mentally exhausting two minutes. Mel offered her hand to you, already knowing you would need her to ground you through this. 

The first shot on the power play from Mikko ended up in the opposing goaltender’s glove. Nate lined up for the next face-off and you swore you didn’t breathe as soon as the puck left the referee's hand. Nate swept it back easily to a waiting Gabe. You gripped Mel’s hand hard, grateful you both did this for each other often enough that she didn’t mind. Nate slid up through the low slot and you saw the stars aligning as Gabe sent the puck perfectly in Nate’s direction. Nate was already ready for it when it came, the puck on his stick for less than a second. Your eyes went wide and you felt like you were about to break Mel’s hand as the goaltender shrugged his shoulder up to block Nate’s shot, but he came up short and the puck hit the back of the net. 

You were screaming as you jumped to your feet, arms wrapping tightly around Mel as someone else hugged you from behind, again like you’d done anything other than practically give yourself a heart attack watching it. Nate was surrounded by his teammates on the ice, earning a swift pat on the top of the head from Gabe. A glance up at the Jumbotron showed you the wide, bright smile on his face, filling with relief and absolute joy. Mel grabbed your hat by the pom pom and chucked it down towards the ice, making you laugh and a smile that rivaled Nate’s come across your face.

“Finally,” you breathed out a sigh of relief as the arena calmed itself, calming you with it. 

You plopped back down into your seat, hatless with half a beer and your pride in Nate left to coast you through the next ten minutes. You knew Nate was going to be in a good mood, and you just wanted to get through the next ten minutes of the game to get to him and congratulate him yourself. The score was heavy in favor of the Avs and they weren’t in any danger of losing this game, so you got to drink your beer and let out a long breath you’d been holding since Nate first came home after back to back two goal games in October without a hat trick in sight. 

You were practically bouncing on your heels as you waited in the tunnel for him, fingers fussing with the frayed edge of your denim jacket to get out some of your anxious energy. The second he rounded the corner, a wide, gorgeous smile on his face, you ran toward him. Nate wasn’t the type for large public displays of affection, but satisfaction from your incredibly competitive boyfriend was a hell of an influencer and he opened his arms wide for you. You jumped into him and he stumbled a second before catching you easily, one hand guiding your legs around his waist, the other supporting the back of your thighs. 

“Congratulations,” you mumbled in his ear as he laughed at your openly shared excitement for him. 

“Thanks, baby,” he told you, the smile he was wearing evident in his voice.

“Proud of you always,” you reminded him as you untucked your head from his neck. 

You said it after every single game, win or lose, five points or no points, goal or no goal, you told Nate you were proud of him after every single game. The stats sheet didn’t matter to you. You loved him and you saw the grueling work he put in every single day, every single second he was on the ice. You were proud of him no matter what, and it was one of the thousands of reasons he had come to love you for. Your support, your pride in him and the work he put in never wavered. It was steadfast, something hard to come by in a life as crazy as he lived. You were his rock, his home, and he felt it like the gradual, comforting warmth from sitting by the fire on Christmas Eve, when the world seemed a little more good than it actually was, when you told him you were proud of him. 

Nate smiled as he pressed a soft, quick kiss to your lips before gently guiding your feet back to the ground. He pulled you in tighter, collapsing you into him as he let out a long breath that had been holding his tension for months, caught in the hollows of his chest, finally working its way out into the open air. It had been haunting him, like a ghastly Halloween hangover that dared to last until Christmas. Thankfully, it was December now and Nate felt lighter and freer than he had in months. 

“You got what you wanted for Christmas,” you mumbled into his chest, causing his chest to vibrate with laughter. 

“Guess I sort of did, yeah.” He kissed the top of your head softly. “Ready to go home?” 

“Ready for four days of you and me time?” you teased him a little. 

Despite your teasing, his response was entirely genuine, “Been looking forward to it for weeks now.” 

Your smile in response to his words stuck with you the entire way home. Nate loved you in actions, but sometimes it was nice to hear words from him as well. You kicked off your shoes at the front door, just in the knick of time before the dogs could come and greet you both. 

“Want me to crack a bottle of wine or champagne?” you asked Nate as he dropped his bag by the front door. 

“Champagne,” he told you before dropping a kiss to your temple. “We’re celebrating tonight.” 

You slid into the kitchen, dogs hot on your heels, as you made a beeline for the champagne in the fridge. You’d slid it in before you left for the game on the chance Nate finally got his hat trick tonight. You hadn’t wanted to drink warm champagne if that was the case and now, holding the cold bottle of champagne and two flutes, you knew you had made the right decision betting on your boyfriend tonight. He rounded the corner into the kitchen a few moments later, game day suit still on, jacket and tie lost back in your shared bedroom.

“Glad you got yourself what you wanted for Christmas, Nate,” you smiled teasingly at him as you started to fuss with the gold foil over the champagne cork. 

“Before you pop that,” he told you, reaching a hand out to place over yours as you worked on the foil covering the cork, “I, um, I have something for you.” 

“Nate, it’s December twenty-third,” you sighed, setting the bottle down on the cool stone counter. “Can’t it wait a couple of days?” 

Nate smiled softly at you, a smile that seemed to mean he knew more than you in this exact moment, “I’ve actually been holding on to this gift for a long time and I think tonight is the perfect night to give it to you. Are you okay if I blow up Christmas a little bit?” 

You sighed again and gave Nate a stern look up and down, but the softness in his blue eyes and the innocence in his lazy smile pulled you in and had you nodding in approval. Your nod caused nerves to dance in Nate’s eyes and his hands to slide into his pockets, fidgeting with their contents. He shifted softly from one foot to the other. His eyes dropped to the floor for a moment to watch his feet move before he slowly lifted his head back up in time with a bounce on his heels. 

“Okay, here we go,” he mumbled softly to himself. 

He cleared his throat before speaking, “I told you I don’t know what I want for Christmas. Hell, I told you that I didn’t know what I wanted for my birthday and that was back in September. The truth is I’ve known what I’ve actually wanted the whole time. The hat trick was nice and all, but it wasn’t really what I wanted.”

“Whatever it is, you could’ve told me,” you chided him a little. 

Your words were met with an anxious smile and more shuffling of his feet across the floor. He shook his head softly and let out a tight breath before continuing. 

“The only thing I want for Christmas is something you can give me, but you can get it for me,” he told you softly, his voice shaking as he spoke, the nerves in his eyes and his feet and his hands tightening and constricting his voice resonating in his chest. 

Nate slowly pulled a hand out of his pocket before purposefully, and painstakingly slowly, dropping down on one knee in front of you. Your hands flew over your mouth on instinct and your eyes clouded over instantly. Nate smiled softly at your reaction, trying desperately not to let what he hoped your actions meant take over and make him too hopeful of your answer to his question to prevent him from asking it. He carefully opened the small black box in his hand to show you your early Christmas present, a beautiful ring nestled among the black velvet inside. 

“For Christmas, I’d like for you to say you’ll be my wife,” he continued slowly and as steadily as he could. “The thing I’m most proud of, of everything I’ve ever done, is being your partner. I love you so much more than I say, but I hope I show it enough that you want to sign up for me forever because it’s just you. It’s just you forever, for every single day, every single holiday, every single moment. I want to spend every single Christmas for the rest of my life with you. So, what do you say? Will you be my wife? Will you make my Christmas wish come true?” 

The cliches hung thick in his words, but the emotions behind them, the sentiment was so true you could feel it in the very core of who you were. Nathan MacKinnon saw you, faults and gifts and everything in between and loved you in the steadiest, most true way you had ever known. In the light of the Christmas tree, in the home you built together, with the life you build together palatable around you, Nate was asking you to build the rest of it together. You didn’t have to think about your answer. 

“Yes, Nate. Yes, I’ll marry you.” 

Nerves gave way to relief which even more quickly gave way to joy on Nate’s face as he slowly slid the ring he’d had tucked in the back drawer for months onto your finger where it belonged. Nate let out a long breath at the sight of it finally on your hand before slowly standing up in front of you, his hands reaching out to cup your face gingerly. 

“Best early Christmas present ever,” you told him with a wide smile on your face. 

He smiled back just as widely and happily as you grinned at him, “Merry Christmas, my future wife.”

[six-of-woes]

The Clown and the Potato Sack (Aerin x MC) Chapter 2

Chapter 2/?: A Sudden Interest in Floriculture

Paring: Aerin Valleros x F!MC

AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24533863

Previous Chapter: https://hi-im-a-salty-human-being.tumblr.com/post/619969185697710080/the-clown-and-the-potato-sack-aerin-valleros-x#notes

Summary: Now with the Dreadlord defeated and her friends out of Whitetower, Cassia Nightbloom, is bored. Extremely bored. She wants to do literally anything, but she doesn’t know what. Her solution? Try to get some answers from a certain corrupt prince. Unfortunately, that leads to a wacky yet angsty adventure involving a potato sack, a wooden spoon, and A LOT of clowning around. At least she’s doing something…right?

Author’s Note: Soooo...I wrote another chapter. It’s shorter...but that’s beacsue there’s gonna be more chapters...So you have that to look forward to. Idk how to know when people want to be tagged unless the specifically tell me because I have the social awareness of a turtle...so... if you wannt be tagged...let me know in the notes...

Tags: @what-do-you-mean-theyre-evil @theclowneryqueen@findmeafterlife @0oi-io0 @thatgirlbuhle @mirabelle-choices@souhmhey @king-erzsebet @vlastomilsworm @diamonds-and-decorum @xsweetnspookyx @ernest-harrington @walkerswhiskeygirl @gela-mndz

~~~

“I have time.”

Aerin swallowed hard and took a seat across from Cassia. “Are you sure?”

Cassia continued to frown, but nodded. “Everyone else left town a few hours ago and this is the most dangerous things can get right now.”

“Are you really that bored?” He asked, starting to fiddle with his potato-sack-tunic.

“I’m bored and I want answers,” she spoke firmly, trying not to let her emotions out. Why was she doing that anyway? Aerin couldn’t do anything to her if he saw that she was weak, right? Other than get in my head. So yeah. Cassia wasn’t gonna look sad. Not that she was. Well...she was sad. But that was because her friends had just left town. Not because of Aerin. Duh...right?

Aerin shook his head. “Fine, but don’t act surprised when the answer is just corruption.”

“Just tell me what happened, Aerin,” Cassia said, biting her lower lip. 

A few seconds of silence passed before anyone said anything. The longer Cassia stared into his dark, corrupt, eyes, the more the whole situation set in. This was the real Aerin. The prince she met in the Deadwood was just a facade.

Aerin sighed and shook his head. “Alright, fine, but I’m only doing this to get you out of here.”

“That’s fine. All I need are some answers,” Cassia said, crossing her legs. “It’s not like I want to be down here much more than you do.” She shivered and pulled her cloak tighter around her shoulders.

“Okay,” he breathed. “It happened when I was really young, maybe two or three. I don’t remember the full details of what happened, but it ended with my chambers trashed, my storybooks torn to pieces, and my nose bloodied. I tried to tell my parents but…they refused to believe that their “perfect little future king” could cause such destruction.” Aerin let out a dry laugh and looked at the mossy brick wall. “They actually tried to accuse me of doing it myself for attention…Attention that neither of them ever gave me.”

About a minute of silence passed by again. Aerin continued to look at the wall, but Cassia could see the emptiness in his expression. There wasn’t any sadness, but there wasn’t any anger either. He just…stared.

“Soooo…How did you get corrupted?”

Aerin looked back at Cassia and sighed. “The details are fuzzy…but I remember running off to somewhere in the castle to be alone…that’s when Erthax found me. I don’t know or remember how, but he told me that if I helped him, there would be a day where I’d never have to be hurt by Baldur again.” He looked down. “I’m quite sure you can guess what happened next.”

He was three. Cassia thought. A child. A pawn.

“Can you leave me alone now?”

Cassia shook her head. “Not until the other two guards get here. You’re not supposed to be left alone.”

The grown that Aerin let out could probably be heard from Flotilla. Or the shadow realm. Or both. Probably both. Aerin was a bit of a drama queen.

“You think I want to be here? Because I don’t. “

“But—didn’t you—aren’t you—for a reason—what?”

Cassia crossed her arms and shook her head. “Just because I wanted answers doesn’t mean I want to spend an extended amount of time in this cold, damp, mossy dungeon. It’s freezing.

Aerin scoffed. “Oh, poor you. You’ve had to stay down here for what—thirty minutes? I can’t even fathom that. I’m only down here for, oh, I don’t know—the rest of my life!”

The pair spent the net few minutes glaring at each other. Anger and frustration began welling up in Cassia’s chest the longer she gazed into his eyes, the eyes that she couldn’t believe were Aerin’s, the eyes that weren’t the ones she saw at the lake. They couldn’t be. They didn’t have the same life in them. That Aerin was hopeful. This Aerin was a bitch.

Cassia sighed and laid down on her back. She ignored the puddle she was laying in, even as the water soaked through her clothes. Truly, what could she do now? She got what she could out of Aerin. That was the last interesting thing she could think of.

Fifteen minutes passed, and there was still no sign of the guards. Fifteen minutes passed, and Cassia’s eyelids grew heavy. Fifteen minutes passed, and Aerin stared blankly at his prison.

Drip. Drip. Drip. Cassia gazed at the ceiling, watching the droplets of water fall all around her. And on her. There was a reason that puddle she was laying in was where it was.

As much as she didn’t want them to, Cassia let her thoughts drift back to the lake again. The unicorn still bothered her, but, she knew that with Aerin in this bad a mood, she wasn’t going to get that answer any time soon. She thought about when it was just them, sitting on the edge of the lake. When they splashed each other, when they just talked. How pretty those flowers looked in the moonlight…

The lake…those flowers…

Cassia sprung to her feet. “THE MOONBLOOMS!”

“GAH!” Aerin screeched, falling back at Cassia’s sudden shout. He held a hand up to his head and glared at Cassia. “What the hells are you going on about?”

“Oh gods,” Cassia breathed, starting to bounce from foot to foot. “That’s the cure!”

“For what?” Aerin snapped. “Corruption?”

“No!” She yelped. “My boredom!” Cassia let a beat pass by. “…Okay, maybe to cure your corruption too.”

“Psh,” Aerin scoffed, turning his back to Cassia. “What makes you think I want to be cured, huh? I have a revenge plan to form. I don’t have time to not be corrupted.”

Cassia snorted. “Of course you don’t want to be not corrupted. You’re corrupted!” She made a mad dash to the exit. “I’ll be back! I have a plan!”

Aerin turned back around and grasped onto the bars of his cell. “No! Wait! I don’t consent to this plan!”

“Too late!”

~~~

“Soooo…You gonna tell me why you have an interest in magical floriculture all of a sudden?”

Cassia didn’t look up from her book. “I’m bored, Kade. I’m bored and I want to learn about flowers. Must you judge me for such an innocent hobby?”

The morning light bathed Cassia’s spot in the library in light, creating a warm blanket around her. Cassia’s book was one on magical flowers(unsurprisingly) and their properties. So far, there was nothing on moonblooms.

“You know the fact that you’re calling your hobby “innocent” makes me even more suspicious, right?” Kade picked a random book off one of the shelves and sat down on the floor in front of the chair Cassia was sitting in.

“Well, I never questioned your tiny chair collection,” she muttered, thumbing through the pages. 

Kade shrugged and started reading his own book. “Alright, you got me there.”

Cassia smirked. “Thanks. I’ll be sure to update you when I get out of trouble.”

“What could you possibly be doing with flowers that could get you into trouble?” Kade scratched his head. “Wait…never mind. You can get into trouble for anything.”

“Damn right I can.”

As Cassia continued to skim her book, she smiled at all the memories she had of getting in trouble with Kade. It was a simpler time…when the most danger she could get in was by trying to steal a pie, not…you know…having to venture into the equivalent of hell to make sure her best friend wasn’t used as a vessel for an ancient beast to try and take over the world.

Eventually, Cassia came across the page she was looking for.

Moonblooms: Only Known Cure for Corruption

Cassia’s heartbeat quickened as she read the title. Alright, this is it. What do we gotta do to cure Aerin’s corruption our boredom? 

Moonblooms used to be used by the Elven Empire to cure any forms of corruption. Unfortunately, just before the Shadow Court revolted, they made an effort to destroy as many moonblooms as possible. Within the last few thousand years, there haven’t been any reports of living moonblooms.

However, if you ever find yourself in a situation where you know of a place to get moonblooms, and have some corruption you’d like to cure, here’s what you would need to do:

Soak the petals in a bowl of water for around eight and a half minutes. By then, the water should be a deep plum color, and it should be steaming. Once your concoction is in this state, have your corrupted being drink it. Yes, it may be extremely hot, but it’ll do no lasting harm to the mouth. Once the cure has entered the system, results will be almost immediate, but be warned: all of the shadow being expelled at once will be incredibly painful for the one being cured. The records have people stating that it feels like throwing up knives, as well as stating an appearance of blood. Another side effect of this cure is feelings of extreme remorse, sadness, and joy, all at once.

“Hey, Kade?”

“Hm?”

“Do you wanna help me with something?”

Kade didn’t look up from his book. “Sure.”

“Even if it involves breaking Aerin out of his cell to get him to the Deadwood to cure him of his corruption?”

“Does this happen to have anything to do with you kissing him at some point?”

Cassia scoffed. “N-no! I’m just bored!” She started rolling from her heels to her feet. “I need more adventure! This is the closest I can get to the ordeal we just went through! I’m certainly NOT doing this because I have a history with him.”

Kade looked up from his book and raised an eyebrow.

“Okay—maybe it has something to do with it,” Cassia mumbled, crossing her arms. “But—that’s not…the only reason why…”

“Sure, Cassia. Whatever you say.” Kade set his book on the floor and grinned. “So…what do you need me to do?”

~~~

“So remind me why we’re stealing sacks of potatoes from the kitchens again?”

Cassia slung another sack over her shoulder. “Because we need to make a convincing decoy.” She watched Kade drop one of the sacks. “Plus they’d probably help us knock out the guards.”

Kade heaved the dropped potato sack over his shoulder. “Right…how are you supposed to get him out of there? Isn’t there a magical shield or something?”

“You’re forgetting I’m a powerful magic-user. I’m sure I can figure out some way to break him out.”

“So what I’m hearing,” Kade said, pushing the kitchen doors open. “Is that you don’t have a plan at all.”

“You wound me, brother,” Cassia said, slinging the potatoes into the wheelbarrow sitting outside. “My plan is to make it up as I go.”

[acnhplayertwo]

Player Two's Diary.

Entry 1.

Dear diary,

Thanks Bobness I have this phone with me. Not gonna lie, I'd totally be going cuckoo without an outlet by now.

Why, you ask? Well, it's simple! Let me explain.

This utter mess began something short of one week ago, when my partner, let's call 'em S, presented me with an idea.

"Let's go away, buddy. Let's just toss this boring life behind and go somewhere new. New and fresh. Like... like the Outskirts, or-- or an island. A deserted one, maybe. Somewhere nobody knows us and none of our problems would ever be able and find us. Come on, buddy. Let's do it."

And, pal, I know not whether it was their enthusiasm, or the fact I was starting to resent my life as mayor of a lethargic town, or that we both had a glass too many of Wolfgang's homemade apple wine, but... I accepted.

I said yes.

Actually, I may have said something more than that. In my drunken haze, I remember yelling something like "OH MY BOB, THAT'S AN AWESOME IDEA AND I ALSO HAVE A FRIEND WHO TOLD ME HE'D TAKE ON A DEAERTED ISLAND BUSINESS AND CAN YOU BELIEVE THE COINCIDENCE HAHA, LET ME CALL THAT OL' RASCAL NOOK!"

And that was it, dear diary. In the span of an our we had traded our entire life's savings for a couple tickets to Nowhere.

But it wasn't that bad at first. I was actually psyched. "You go first, S!", I said. "You go and prepare a cozy spot for us. I'll reach you in three days tops."

And so we did. The next day, S kissed me goodbye, nothing but a backpack on their shoulders and hope in their eyes. "Plane's departing soon. I'll be waiting for you in our lives' next chapter, buddy."

So they went, while I stayed. I had too much stuff to do still, what with signing my temporary resignment as town mayor, packing up, saying goodbye to my citizens.

Then, 48 hours later, there I was, waiting to hop aboard on one of Dodo Airlines' rickety machines.

"Oh my, you won't believe how perfect it is here!" S' voice crackled assaulted my ears with a mix of squawking happiness and bad reception through my phone's speaker. "Weather is marvellous, and Sakura's are bloomin' and and and everything is just SO PERFECT!! There's so much stuff to do, and things to craft, and everyone is just SO DEAR!! They even threw a welcome party for the first residents, and there were confetti, and juice, and even a BONFIRE!!"

I found myself smiling as I left my old life behind and flew through the skies that would lead me to a brand new one. But my smile soon faltered as I stepped off the plane and onto Sleepwalk Island's wooden dock.

"Oh, you here. Finally. Fearless Leader's waiting for you."

"Allright," I thought as I followed Tim ad Tommy’s fuzzy shadows across the island and into a green tent, “they have never been the friendly type, but... is a hug really too much to ask?” I ignored my disappointment, telling myself that they must have been busy, like they always are, and let my face melt in a huge smile as I breathed in the familiar musk of wood and tanuki fur. 

“PT!! Such a pleasure to see you here, yes yes!“ Tom rushed towards me, paws extended, his eyes nothing more than a couple happy slits. “I heard of your arrival and boy, I couldn’t wait! Here, drink something and make yourself at home...“ He slapped a can of soda in my open hand and began explaining me the hows and whys of his new business venture, nodding with his usual verve. “... and from this terminal here you can order anything you want and have it shipped right at your door-- ahem, tent step! Isnt’ it great??“

I smiled, knowing full well there was nothing I could say or do to stop his tirade. “And look! This is my new workbench! You can use it anytime, and-- let me show you how it’s done!“

Twenty minutes later, I stepped back out into the morning sun, arms heavy with Nook’s patented survival bundle, head buzzing with info. 

“Awesome! I will repay this trifle of a loan by nighttime, and after that, this island will be mine! Oh boy, I can’t wait! It’s gonna be so rad!“ 

Or so I thought. 

Reality, in fact, was soon to smack me in the face. Hard.

You see, S had told me all about how they had been able to trade bugs and fish for much-needed DiY recipes. “And you’ll be able to craft lotsa useful stuff, like axes, and you’ll need those to find wood and get stones and iron from rocks and build so much amazing objects-- I just can’t even!!“

So, understandably, I was all set to seize the occasion and do the same. 

That afternoon, I stepped into Nook’s headquarters with a bucket of fish, looking forward to my bright future as Sleepwalk’s craftmaster, when...

“Oh. I see. well, buddy, I’m afraid I can’t help you at this time,“ Tom said, avoiding my gaze and preferring to stare at one of my flapping mackerels instead.

“What d’you mean?,“ I asked, wiping the sweat from my surprised face.

“Well, it’s kinda embarrassing, but...“ Tom scratched his head before continuing. “You see, every other person no this island came in here, trading their critters for recipes, and... there were more people than I expected and I didn’t take into account this possibility and...“ He sighed. “...I’m all out. I have no more recipes to give you, buddy. Sorry ‘bout that.“

I blinked more times than needed. 

“But... what am I supposed to do now?“

Tom shrugged. 

“You can still sell your catch to scrounge up a few bells, I suppose. Or you could keep some fish as pet, I dunno.“

“Yes, no, what I mean is...“ I looked around and gestured to the outside world.

“What am I supposed to do?!“

Tom cocked his head and bit his lip. Then, unexpectedly, he flashed me the biggest smile in the universe.

“It’s simple! ENJOY LIFE!“

He slid an arm around my shoulders and began dragging me towards the exit.

“You can fish some more, gather branches and craft a bug net, or-- or or, ehm, take pictures! Yes yes, pictures are nice, you can post them on Twitter and make all your friends jealous, and then Ireallyhavenoideaso GOODBYE FOR NOW!“

And just like that, he shoved me and my broken heart out of his tent and back into Sleepwalk Island’s untamed wilderness. 

Needless to say, I was dumbfounded. 

Still, I couldn’t stop now. I still had a debt to repay.

So, I took a deep breath and lunged into my activities. 

I spent the entire day fishing, and fishing, and catching bugs, and picking fruit, until the sun set, and the fresh night breeze began freezing the sweat on my skin.

I was beyond exhausted, dirty and disheartened. But I was ready, and, most importantly, furious.

The moon was high in the sky when I stepped into Tom’s tent, and found him alone, beer in hand, a stack of paperwork under his muzzle.

“Nook,“ I announced, voice low and gravelly with rage, “check your phone.“

“Oh, PT! I didn’t see you the--“

“Check. Your. Phone.“

I stared at him as he obeyed.

“Ah. Your debt is settled, I see! Now we can think about building you a home proper, yes yes!“ He was trying to hide his embarrassment behind a thin layer of businesslike enthusiasm, but I wasn’t having it.

“Yes, I want my roof blue, thank you. But that is not why I am here.“

I sat on a stool beside him and spread my fingers on his desk.

“Now listen closely, Nook. I did everything you told me. I spent the entire day chasing bugs and I caught so much fish I will stink like one for a month. Then, I took pictures. I took so many my thumbs are sore, and people are wondering wether I am planning to become a professional photographer. And now, here I am, same as when I started, doing ZERO progress cause guess what?!“ I could hear my voice raising in volume, but could do nothing to stop it. “There is nothing to do on this island. Nothing. I can’t craft anything, cause there’s no recipes. And even if I did, I couldn’t craft, or build anything, cause there are no materials for me to gather. But tell me the truth, Tom. This isn’t the same for everybody, is it? No... these things are happening to me and me only. Cause there is nothing for me to do on this island. Ain’t it the truth, Tom?“

When the raccoon looked at me, he did it with his saddest eyes.

“Alright, PT, yes. You want the truth, you shall have it.“

He drew a long, shaky breath and tossed me a beer.

“You see, bud, Sleepwalk is an island. And until not long ago, a deserted one at that.“ He cleared his voice before resuming.

“So, yeah. There isn’t much here. Literally. Resources are awfully scarce. And in order to thrive, you need as much as you can get your paws on, and at times, even that isn’t enough. Sure, people here might seem kind and friendly. But truth is, we’re all locked in a constant fight for survival. Every single one of us. Never forget that.“

“But... But I...“

But I am the mayor, I wanted to yell.

“You are the second human relocator, my friend. It’s a first come first served world, buddy... and you, I’m afraid, arrived a bit late.“

I do not remember walking out of that tent and into the darkness. 

I don’t even remember how I ended up on the beach.

All I know, is that I did not sleep last night, busy as I was hugging my tear-soaked knees, wrestling with that crushing realization. 

The realization that, on this island, I will never be anything more than... Player Two.

[popatochisssp]

Fur a Good Time, Call... 3/15

Series: Undertale, Horrortale Relationship(s): HT!Sans/Reader, HT!Papyrus & Reader Chapter Warnings: none

You work at an animal shelter. You love all your fuzzy buddies and can’t imagine a better job for yourself than looking after cats and dogs all day, even when the work is hard and often gross. What can you say? You’ve got a lot of love to give!

You’re just not quite sure yet how you feel about the new monster who’s been helping out these days, and this riddle wrapped up in an enigma is something you just can’t resist investigating…

AO3 Link

Crushed

Sometimes, you kept weird hours at night.

You had a bad habit of coming home from work and immediately passing out, only to wake up around ten or eleven at night and have some space to fill until you could get back to sleep again.

Occasionally you made do with the slim pickings of nighttime TV or made yourself some food that you probably shouldn’t be eating so late, but mostly you resorted to screwing around on the internet with your phone.

That was how you found out that Sans kept weird hours, too.

You had stumbled across one of those unfortunate neon sign burnouts—one ‘Elmhurst Emergency & Trauma Center’ that became the ‘ Im hur t Emergency & Trauma Center’— and immediately thought of somebody who would appreciate it.

Before you could reason with yourself that it was after midnight and you had literally never sent Sans a text before and this was a hell of an opener with no context, you’d sent off the photo.

A response came not ten minutes later.

PUNbelievable: lol thanks for that, Pap just yelled at me to keep it down.

You: Sorry, not sorry!

And that was the humble beginning of your textual friendship with Sans.

You texted back and forth about a lot of things. Most of it was silly stuff you found online (you’d been right, Sans did appreciate memes) but you were surprised by how many topics could arise from that kind of thing.

You: No way you have that many.

PUNbelievable: you doubt my hoarding ability? [IMG-1]

You: Holy shit, so that’s what 86 rocks looks like. Congrats?

PUNbelievable: and those are just the pretty ones. i got some more in shoeboxes and stuff.

You: You have shoes?!

PUNbelievable: hey hey hey what do you take me for, some kind of fancypants? no shoes, just the boxes.

You’d even started to go a little out of your usual way to find things Sans might get a kick out of. You started following a couple geology-themed blogs just so you’d occasionally find something nerdy to share.

You: [IMG-24]

PUNbelievable: whoa, perfect cleavage, thanks. yours?

You: Not mine. Perfect, though? Really? I just thought it was gneiss.

PUNbelievable: calcite, actually.

You: LOL!

Completely by accident, you’d also discovered his love of cat photos. He sent them to you often as reaction images, some he probably just found online but a lot you recognized as cats from the shelter.

He admitted to you that pretty much whenever he got a free moment at work, he was in the cat room, picking up or poking or otherwise gently harassing somebody.

PUNbelievable: most of them are just chill little dudes, they’re great. i love it when they get happy and start vibrating, that’s the best.

You: You don’t have to convince me, I love every one of those fuzzbutts, especially when they purr! I think I just might be more of a dog-person.

PUNbelievable: really? i thought you were a human-person.

You: Hilarious, spoken like a true cat-person. I should’ve put you as Good@Cats in my phone.

PUNbelievable: what am i now?

You: PUNbelievable.

PUNbelievable: what that’s great!

PUNbelievable: keep it!

PUNbelievable: it’s perfect!

A triple-text and the first time you’d ever seen him use exclamation points: how could you say no to that?

It didn’t take long before you caught yourself thinking of Sans as a friend—not just a work-friend, an actual friend—and you weren’t positive, but you were pretty sure he thought of you the same way.

For one thing, when you talked to him at the shelter, he actually talked back. It was a little thing, but it was so unlike the clipped and stiff replies he gave when other people tried to make conversation that it was a noticeable difference.

Sans’ silence had seemed so antisocial and mysterious back before you knew him. Now that you did, it seemed infinitely obvious that the man was just an awkward dork who wasn’t sure what to say and didn’t want to bug anybody so he split the difference by saying as little as possible.

He smiled a little wider when he saw you, though, and mostly came to you now when he’d finished a task and wasn’t sure what else needed doing. He was always available when you were about ready to go to lunch and happily gushed to you over how well his brother’s schooling was going, and he listened attentively when you talked about your own life, even when it couldn’t have been very interesting to hear about.

Sans had to be a friend: you couldn’t think of anybody else you’d rather send videos at three in the morning, and that was the truest measure of friendship you could think of.

Speaking of which…

You: [LINK: Sad Cat Diary]

PUNbelievable: oh big mood.

You snicker a little at the mental image of Sans, huge and spooky-looking, trying to sneak up on a tiny thumbtack in the wall.

You’re glad you went for it that day when you asked Sans to lunch. It was impulsive and a little nerve-wracking to put yourself out there like that, but it netted you a really good friend.

You couldn’t regret that, not even a little bit.

-

Buddy was with you again, which seemed superfluous to say at this point, but there he was.

His clicker training had gone incredibly well—the food-motivated little gremlin that he was—and you’d gotten him to pick up all the basic commands that people expected out of their dogs and didn’t want to have to teach them.

He knew sit, stay, drop it (though he was stubborn and sometimes pretended he didn’t), and even shake! He’d also pretty quickly picked up when and where he was supposed to do his business, and after all the socialization you’d been doing with him he didn’t flinch or shy away from being touched by people anymore.

With all that and his clean bill of health from the vet, Buddy was almost ready to go up for adoption.

There was just one small formality left on the list to check off, and it was how Buddy interacted with other animals. Since he spent so much time in the dog room, around other dogs, you already had a pretty good idea of how he was with his own species, so you’d gotten your boy leashed up, asked Sans to snag a couple cats for you, and met in the playroom.

Based on Buddy’s walk awhile back, you had a feeling you knew how this would go, but better to get it all done according to the shelter’s protocols.

Sans was standing there waiting for you when you and Buddy walked in. At your advice, he’d grabbed Snickers and Button, two of the more easygoing cats you currently had with a history of not batting the shit out of curious dog noses.

You had to cover a laugh at the sight of Sans, though. Button was fully latched onto Sans’ arm, all four limbs wrapped around it while she chewed at the cuff of his sleeve, and Snickers had perched herself up on his shoulder to paw at his face while he ineffectively tried to lean away.

“You good over there?” you asked, just to cover your bases.

“yep. as you can see, i’m a ladies man.”

You bent down, undoing Buddy’s leash and giving him a quick pat. “Would you be offended if I made the obvious ‘drowning in pussy’ joke?”

“yes, i would,” Sans said. “that’s just vulgar. low-brow. have some class, wouldja?”

You laughed, which had clearly been Sans’ intention. He grinned proudly even as he knelt and tried to shoo the cats off his body, a little easier to do now that there was something else for them to focus on.

Buddy, for his part, was reacting pretty much exactly how you’d expected. He was alert and very obviously curious…but also extremely unsure about these small bendy-looking dogs that were fearlessly trotting up to him.

“you think he’ll be alright?”

You shrugged. “I think so,” you decided, “more or less. I wouldn’t put him down as a great choice for homes with other pets, but if they’re friendly like the girls here, I don’t think he’d be in trouble.”

Buddy had mustered enough courage to give Snickers a good sniff…only to recoil a little as she sniffed him, something that was obviously uncalled for and totally unpredictable.

“that’s what this is for, yeah?” Sans asked, and you turned to face him. “you’re seein’ what kinda place he’d be a good fit for?”

“Yeah. I mean, that’s pretty much what we’ve been doing the whole time he’s been here. Adoption’s the goal: we don’t have as many rules and procedures as a rescue, but we still want everybody to end up somewhere good.”

Sans’ red eye moved from you to the animals. Button was trying to loop around Buddy’s feet, which Buddy was not sure he was totally cool with.

“so…what’s ‘somewhere good’ for buddy?”

The question made you consider it. “Well… he’d probably need somebody a little patient. He’s still nervous around new stuff and needs awhile to get used to it.”

“sure.”

“Ideally an only-pet situation,” you added. You gestured to where Snickers was playfully trying to catch Buddy’s tail while Buddy hastily tucked it and scrambled around to keep her in his line of sight. “Can you imagine him having to deal with that all day? Or worse, a territorial cat?”

“nah, he’s a lover, not a fighter.”

“Exactly! Big ol’ marshmallow.” You smiled fondly. “Buddy just needs a place where somebody can be his best friend.”

“so…you, right?”

Cue the mental record-scratch.

“Huh?”

Sans clearly didn’t think he’d said anything unusual. “everything you just described is you. you’re patient, no pets, you’re already his best pal. why can’t you take ‘im?”

“I…” You frowned. “I can’t.”

Sans didn’t say anything, but you felt his eye on you so you turned to watch Buddy again. He’d laid down to keep his underside protected, and the cats were rubbing up against him on either side.

It was adorable.

“I can’t,” you said again. “I…work way too much. I’m always here, y’know? I’d feel awful leaving…a dog,” you pointedly don’t say Buddy’s name, “alone in the house all day long. And then half the time when I get home, I just go straight to bed, so I wouldn’t even be able to play with him or give him the attention he should get.”

You chanced a look at Sans. His expression…wasn’t judgmental. Maybe a little…sad? But he wasn’t judging you.

You sighed. “It just wouldn’t be fair to him,” you say finally. “I’ve always believed you shouldn’t get a pet if you can’t take care of it. Buddy’s a good boy, he’ll go to a good home real fast. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

“……if you say so,” Sans replied eventually. “guess i just always wondered why ya didn’t have your own pet when ya take care of ‘em all day. i know i thought havin’ a pet was pretty cool.”

Was? Oh, no.

“Did you…did you lose a pet, Sans?”

You shouldn’t be so surprised. The monsters went through hell underground, it should follow that no one was exempt from it, not even pets… but the thought still hurt your heart.

“yeah,” Sans said, and you ached with sympathy. You reached out to put a comforting hand on his arm when he continued, “Pap and i used to have a pet rock.”

Your expression flattened. “What do you mean, ‘used to’?” you demanded. “You’ve got like a hundred pet rocks.”

“nah, those are just rocks, they’re not pets,” Sans insisted. “not like rocky was.”

“……His name was Rocky.” Sans nodded. “I am…ninety percent sure you’re fucking with me.”

Sans put a hand to his chest, like an affronted southern belle. “would i do that?”

“Yes.”

“i’m hurt,” Sans said. “really. cut deep. rocky was a very important part of our family, i mourn his loss every day.”

“Okay, so what happened to him?” you wondered, suspicion evident.

“ran away.”

“…………”

“Pap blamed me for it,” Sans continued, shaking his head. “he was probably right to. i never fed him his sprinkles on time. didn’t appreciate him the way i should’ve, he was my rock and i just wasn’t there for him…”

“I’m a hundred percent now,” you said. “You’re fucking with me.”

Sans laughed, loudly and unabashedly. It made you laugh a little too, even though you shoved him in the arm right after.

“You’re such a jerk!”

“seriously, though,” he said. “if you ever meet Papyrus, ask ‘im about rocky, he’ll tell ya’.”

“Oh, I’m sure,” you said, tone dripping with sarcasm. You went over to rescue Buddy from his wannabe feline friends and added, “You better hope I don’t meet Papyrus because I’m gonna remember this and ask him and you’re gonna be exposed as a total liar!”

It wasn’t until you’d gotten Buddy’s leash back on and body-blocked your poor dog friend a little from Button and Snickers that you realized your designated cat-wrangler hadn’t answered you.

“Sans?”

He had his phone out and a serious expression on his skull as he penned something in. You’d learned only a week back that he kept a lot of reminders in his phone. He said it had been a major lifesaver to have something with him that could remember important dates and times for him, even when he couldn’t.

“Did you forget something?” you ask him gently.

Sans took a second to reply. “nah, just…remembered something i wanna do later. don��t wanna forget about it.”

“Okay.” You didn’t dwell on it. “Can you get Heckle and Jeckle here for me? I think Buddy’s had enough friendship for today.”

“yeah, sure.”

Sans scooped up the cats for you with only minimal mewing as protest, and you gave Buddy a scratch at his neck.

“Good boy,” you reassured him, leading him back to his kennel.

You were a little distracted, trying to decide how his adoption description should go.

You’d post it on the shelter website before you left work today.

-

The next day had you feeling…a little annoyed.

A new employee started today, somebody else’s young relative if his last name and obvious resemblance to your coworker were any indication, and no one had ever made you hate nepotism so much in your life.

You tried to rein it in: he was young and it was literally his first day, probably his first ever job and you knew there was always a learning curve. You wanted to respect that!

But… you might feel a little more forgiving if it seemed like he even sorta cared about the shelter and what you all did here.

You couldn’t speak to anyone else’s experience with him, but every time so far you’d tried to show him where something was or what the procedure is for such-and-such, he was looking off into the middle distance and nodding his head when he thought you were looking for an answer.

His phone buzzed once while you were talking and he broke direct eye-contact with you to respond to it.

You knew right then that he was somebody only in it for the paycheck. You didn’t think there was anything wrong with that, a job was a job, but he could at least have some decorum and try to look like he wasn’t bored of being there right in front of the person training him!

It was even worse because today was a day Sans wasn’t working. You couldn’t even complain to him about the new guy, or ask him to cover all the stuff he probably wasn’t doing that you’d have to go do yourself later.

Needless to say, you were already in a not-so-great mood when he came up to you in the middle of litterbox emptying around mid-afternoon asking for your attention—by the wrong name.

You didn’t bother to correct him. “Yeah, I can take a minute. What’s up?”

“The front desk girl called back. She said a guy wants to see a dog?”

…helpful. “Did she say anything else?” you prompted. “We got a lot of dogs here.”

He squinted, seeming to think about it. “Uhhh… I think it was Buddy? Or something like that.”

You weren’t quite prepared for the way your stomach dropped when he said the name. To cover it you spoke quickly, “Okay, thank you, I’ll go handle that. Can you finish cleaning the litterboxes for me?”

He sighed deeply, muttering, “I guess,” but you were already shucking off your gloves and heading to the sink to wash your hands. You could comfort yourself later with the knowledge that this guy couldn’t possibly last long here with an attitude like that. For now…

Oh, god.

You knew this was coming. You’d written up a great description for the website, and Buddy sat for his picture like a professional model: one ear flopped and the other pointed up with his pretty blue eyes and his tongue lolling happily out of his mouth.

He was a good boy and a beautiful dog, you knew he’d get adopted quick.

You just…hadn’t thought it would be so soon.

It’s not like you hadn’t gotten attached to dogs before. It happened a lot, actually, and it hurt a little each time watching them walk out the shelter door, but it had always been a light sting, easily soothed by the knowledge that they were going to a good home with people who’d love them.

But you had a terrible feeling that Buddy was going to hurt a lot more.

“How come you’re different, you little stinker?” you asked him, opening up his kennel and stepping in.

Buddy seemed oblivious to your sudden distress. He all but hopped off his cot when he saw you and the leash in your hand, his tail wagging while he sniffed at your pant leg in greeting and oh stars, this was going to be the last time he ever did that.

You got down on your knees to put his leash on. “C’mon, you gotta be a good boy. We’re gonna go meet your new dad.”

Because really, there wasn’t a question of if. It was like you’d told Sans, there wasn’t really a screening process or applications needed to take home a pet from here.

If you liked a dog, filled out the single sheet of paperwork, and paid the fee, that was your dog—and who wouldn’t like a sweetheart like Buddy once they met him?

You took a deep breath and got back to your feet. “Alright,” you said, mostly to yourself. “Alright. Let’s go, Buddy.”

The walk over to the lobby seemed shorter than it had ever been. You had to force yourself not to stop right before the doorway for ‘just a minute,’ knowing damn well that it wouldn’t be just a minute.

When you got there, there was only one person waiting in the lobby…and the sight of him nearly made you drop the leash.

He was a skeleton.

If you’d thought Sans was a big guy, the sight of this man scrunched into the almost comically small waiting chairs had instantly disabused you of the notion. It was hard to get a bead on exactly how tall he must be, since he was seated so politely with folded hands, but you’d guess he might be actually double your height, if not taller. He at least wasn’t built as broadly as your friend, but his overall length of limb seemed to make up for it and if it weren’t for his obvious good manners the sheer size of him might’ve been enough to make you a little nervous.

Well…his manners, the cobalt-blue squares of his (really cute) braces, and his matching glasses frames that were actually taped to the sides of his skull.

He spotted you almost the moment you walked in and rose to greet you.

“Hello!” he said cheerfully, offering one massive, spindly hand for you to shake. “I’m Papyrus! It’s A Pleasure To Meet You.”

It was…interesting trying to figure out how to shake his hand in return with the obvious size difference, but he took pity on you and helped you make it work. You introduced yourself right back.

“Ah, Of Course,” he said when you told him your name, “Sans’ Human. He’s Told Me A Lot About You, All Good Things, Naturally!”

You laughed a little, feeling just a tiny bit nervous all of a sudden at the thought of Sans talking about you—and at being called ‘Sans’ human.’ “Likewise. Uh, congratulations on acing that test last week!”

Papyrus scoffed, but you couldn’t help but notice the sudden hint of denim-blue on his cheekbones. “Thank You, But Really, I Have No Idea Why Sans Would Brag About That To Anyone! Did He Tell You The Exam Was On The Human Skeletal System?”

“Pfft… No, he left that part out, I think.”

“I Didn’t Even Study, For Obvious Reasons,” he told you, gesturing broadly to himself. You suddenly noticed the vibrant rainbow tie-dye crop-top he was wearing, and the black jacket he had over it with intricately embroidered flowers stitched into the leather.

Sans had been so right: Papyrus was insanely cool.

“We’re Getting Off-Topic,” he declared, bending further from his already hunched position to look at the dog beside you. “This Must Be Buddy. Hello!”

Buddy’s nose went straight into the hand Papyrus reached out to him, sniffing with vigor as always.

“Ah, You Smell My Bone Cologne! You Must Be A Dog Of Excellent Taste, A Connoisseur Of Fine Smells!”

You couldn’t help your smile. “Buddy certainly is that,” you agreed. The cold dread that had pooled in your gut at the thought of Buddy being adopted today had curiously disappeared and it left you feeling lighter than air. “Why don’t we all head to the playroom for a bit? You can interact with him a little better in there than in the lobby.”

“Excellent Suggestion!” Papyrus said. “I Would Be Delighted!”

The skeleton followed you further into the shelter, ducking under door frames blatantly not built with his height in mind. You were glad that the playroom had a high ceiling so everyone would be comfortable there.

As soon as you were all through the door, you unclipped Buddy’s leash and wrapped it up around your hand. “Papyrus, you can go ahead and ask Buddy to bring you a ‘t-o-y,’ he knows what that word means and he’s good at fetch.”

“Oh, So Am I!”

“Really?”

“Yes, Unrivaled At Fetch In All Of Snowdin,” he said proudly before pausing and looking a tad hesitant. You noticed he had the same nervous gesture Sans had, of looking down and to the left, and you found it unspeakably endearing. “Well, I Was, Anyway, For A Time. I, Erm…Worked Quite Closely With The Canine Unit And My Fetch Time Was Always The Best Out Of All Of Them! My Training Regimen Hasn’t Been…As Rigorous As It Was Back Then, Though, So I Suppose I Can’t Say With Certainty That It’s The Same. I’ve Been Busy Lately, Even By My Own Standards!”

“I know the feeling,” you empathized. “Adding Buddy into the mix won’t be too much, will it?”

Papyrus laughed, a bright and booming ‘NYEH-HEH-HEH’ that totally disarmed you.

“I Don’t See How It Could Be,” Papyrus assured you. “Buddy,” the dog focused on him instantly, “Can You Bring Me A Toy?”

Buddy perked right up when he heard the word of fun-times and happily bounced off to pick his favorite, a spiky rubber hedgehog that had seen better days, but its squeaker still worked so it was The Golden Toy to many of the dogs here.

Papyrus seemed pleased to have the slimy thing dropped into his hand and he gave it a gentle lob across the room. Buddy went after it like a shot. Almost as if he knew his performance was being judged, he even jumped a little to snatch it right out of the air.

Papyrus gave a suitably impressed noise and patted Buddy on the head when he returned the hedgehog. “Well,” he said, giving the toy another toss, “He’s Smart And Fast And A Very Handsome Dog—He’s Already Met All My Standards!”

“I can’t say I’m surprised, I’m pretty fond of Buddy myself. I, uh, I have to admit, though, I am curious why…” You frowned, wondering if the thing you were about to ask was presumptive. “Did…Sans tell you? About Buddy?”

“Yes, Of Course!” Buddy brought the hedgehog back again and Papyrus put it to the side, abandoning the play in favor of scratching through Buddy’s black and white fur. “We Don’t Really Keep Secrets. I’ve Known About Buddy For Quite Awhile!”

“Oh. Right.” You cleared your throat. “Then, I guess I don’t have to give you the disclaimer about his one unfortunate biting incident? Which hasn’t been repeated!” you quickly added.

Papyrus didn’t seem concerned. “The Only Thing Unfortunate About That Incident Is That Sans Still Wears That Old Hoodie!” Buddy had rolled over onto his back and if his windmill of a tail was any indication, his new skeleton friend was very good at belly rubs. “It Speaks To Buddy’s Tenacity! I Admire A Dog Who’ll Protect Himself When He’s In Trouble!”

Not many people saw it that way—an aggressive dog was just an aggressive dog, even with extenuating circumstances. Papyrus’ perspective was…refreshing.

“Well… he’s not exactly a guard dog, if that’s what you’re looking for,” you cautioned. “Mostly, he runs away if he’s in trouble, so…”

“That’s Even Better! Unnecessary Conflict Is So…Unnecessary!” Papyrus grinned broadly at you. Even with his braces, it was a totally winning smile. “I Think Buddy Will Fit Right In At Our House!”

“That’s…that’s great!” you said and you sincerely meant it. “If you’re ready to take him home today, we can go back to the front and get everything settled.”

Papyrus agreed immediately.

On the way there, he seemed compelled to assure you that he was well-prepared for Buddy’s arrival. He’d read through as much dog-ownership literature as he could find online last night and purchased all the essentials as soon as the stores had opened this morning: kibble, a bed, a leash and collar set with bones on them—and how fashion-forward was it of dog-accessories to include bones in their designs? Papyrus was very impressed!

“…And Of Course, He’ll Get Plenty Of Exercise, I’ve Been Looking For A Jogging Buddy And He Already Has The Right Name For It!”

You laughed. “Papyrus, I can’t tell you how great that is to hear. I love knowing my dogs are going somewhere good for them. You know half the people who adopt don’t even fill out the form all the way?”

Papyrus looked at the piece of paper you handed to him. He flipped it over to see the blank backside and frowned. “What, Seriously???”

“Seriously. It's not technically required, mostly for record-keeping, so people just don't do it or leave a bunch of blanks. You wouldn’t believe how many of those have no addresses because people couldn’t be bothered to remember what street they lived on.”

“………” Papyrus started snickering. “Oh My God, How Embarrassing… Nyeh-Heh-Heh, I Really Shouldn’t Laugh,” he said, grabbing a pen and jotting down his information. “That Sounds Like Exactly The Kind of Thing Sans Would Do.”

“Does it really?”

“Sadly, Yes. If I’d Left This Up To Him, It Would All Be Blank Except For Maybe His Name. And Then He Wouldn’t Turn It In. And I’d Find It Three Weeks Later Crumpled Up In His Trash-Tornado.”

“That sounds…exactly right, actually.” Sorry, Sans, can’t defend you against completely true accusations!

The lobby was quiet for a few moments, filled only by the sound of Buddy’s panting and the scratching of the pen.

Then Papyrus spoke up again. “Actually… Is…. Feel Free Not To Answer, If It’s Something You Don’t Feel Comfortable Discussing, But… Sans.”

You waited for him to finish his thought, but he didn’t. “Yes?” you prompted.

“He’s Not… Is He Like That Here?” Papyrus asked you, looking concerned. “I Know He’s Not Technically ‘Employed,’ But… He Does Things Here, Right? He Doesn’t Just… I Don’t Know, Sit In The Break Room All Day And Look Busy When Someone Important Walks By?”

You blinked, startled by the thought. “No, he doesn’t do that. He’s a big help around here. Actually,” you added, sheepish and a little quiet in case your voice carried, “I was kind of upset he wasn’t in today, ‘cause I don’t think I’m gonna get as much done without him around to lend a hand.”

You may as well have told Papyrus it was his birthday and every other holiday combined into one.

“Really? Oh, That’s Great!” He pressed a hand to his chest and heaved out a relieved sigh. You weren’t quite sure how that worked with a skeleton, but there it was. “I’m So Glad He’s Being Productive. I Knew This Place Would Be Good For Him! He’s Even Made Two Wonderful Friends!”

Oh, that meant you and Buddy, didn’t it? You think you might be flushing a little, but try to play it cool.

You and Papyrus get the adoption fee and all the other logistical stuff taken care of and soon enough, “That’s it, Buddy’s all yours, free and clear!”

“Thank You So Much For Your Assistance! And Obviously, Call Me Anytime!”

You paused. “Call you?”

“Yes, Of Course! My Number Is On The Form.” Papyrus seemed to notice you were still confused. “Sans Mentioned You May Want To Come Visit Buddy From Time To Time. You Seem Almost As Busy As I Am, We’d Probably Need To Align Schedules At Some Point To Make It Work.”

Sans mentioned…?

You put a pin in your train of thought. Hesitantly, you got out your phone and pulled the piece of paper closer. “Are you sure that’s alright?” you asked, just to make sure. “I, uh… I can’t say I don’t want to see Buddy again sometime, but….”

“Nonsense, Any Friend Of Sans Is Welcome Over Whenever.” Papyrus gave another quick pat to Buddy’s head. “And Any Friend Of Buddy Is Doubly Welcome!”

Good enough for you! You put his number in your contacts, just under ‘Papyrus’ for now. “You know,” you said as you did so, “we could be friends, too. If you wanted.”

When you looked up from your phone, you found Papyrus staring at you like…well, like he didn’t know what to say.

“…Really?”

“Sure?” Offering to be friends with somebody shouldn’t have been able to put a look of such touched elation on their face, but there was Papyrus looking like you’d just offered him the moon in a few short words.

“Oh! Well, That’s! That’s Fantastic! I Accept!” He was blushing blue again even as he laughed that cute laugh of his. “A Friend, Wowie!” He seemed to remember Buddy at his feet. “Two Friends! What A Day! I’m Sorry To Leave So Suddenly, But I Think I Have Some Energy to Run Off Right Now, Do You Mind?”

“Not at all,” you promised. “Go bond with your new dog.”

“I Will, And Thank You Again! Come Along, Buddy!”

Buddy spared a glance at you, seeming to wonder why you weren’t coming with, but he wasn’t concerned enough to hesitate more than a second before trotting after Papyrus out the door.

Buddy didn’t need to worry about never seeing you again, after all. Neither did you, for that matter.

All thanks to a certain meddling skeleton.

A skeleton that you called the second you went off the clock for lunch.

“y’ello?” he answered after a couple rings, sounding a little like you’d just woken him up.

You didn’t waste time feeling guilty about it. “Hey, did you tell your brother to adopt Buddy?”

“heheh, what? no.”

“Really? Because he said—”

“look, i don’t tell Papyrus to do anything,” Sans said flatly. “…but maybe i did mention that the cool dog was up for adoption, the one who tried to eat my terrible jacket that Pap hates. and that my pal at the shelter might be a little, uh… sad if he went real far away and they couldn’t see ‘im anymore. if he decided to go pick buddy up after that, that’s just serendipity, y’know?”

You huffed out an incredulous breath. “I can’t believe you did that.”

“did what?”

“You adopted a dog for me!”

“he’s a good dog. Papyrus can tire ‘im out when he’s not at work or studying and i’m not at the shelter every day, so i got ‘im the rest of the time. that’s what you were worried about, right? buddy gettin’ left alone too much?”

“Well…yeah.”

“so, problem solved, right? plus you can have visitation an’ stuff. long as you pay child support.”

You snorted loudly. “Child support?”

“yeah, child support. he was your son first.”

“He’s not my— what even is ‘child support’ in this scenario?”

Sans sounded like he was thinking it over. “mmm…lunch for a month?”

“…you’re kidding.”

“you’re right, two months.”

“That’s not how haggling works!”

“drivin’ a hard bargain, huh? okay, a week.”

You finally broke down giggling. “Fine,” you laugh, “fine, a week.”

“oh, nice, i didn’t think that would actually work.”

What a goober.

“Oh my god. Okay, sorry to bug you on your day off, you can go back to bed now, I guess.”

“bold of you to assume i ever left it.”

“And Sans?”

“yeah?”

“Thanks.” It seemed weak. Not enough of a word to convey the warm gratitude you felt bubbling up in your chest when you thought about what he’d just done for you—him and his brother both.

It was weak, but it was all you could think to say.

“forget about it,” Sans said simply.

And that was that.

You got on with your day, going to lunch, coming back and dealing with your duties and that damn new guy, but the whole time, in the back of your mind, you were thinking, He adopted a dog for me. He sent Papyrus to adopt Buddy so I wouldn’t be sad.

You were starting to think that maybe you were in trouble here.

Your relationship with your ‘pretty good friend’ was starting to feel an awful lot like a crush.

-

Later that night, Sans texted you first.

PUNbelievable: hey, sounds like you made my bro real happy today. thanks, he deserves to have more good stuff in his life.

So do you, was your first thought, but something told you Sans might not see it your way.

You: Sure, he’s as cool as you said he was, but don’t think you’re off the hook about that Rocky thing because I forgot earlier. I’m gonna ask him next time and then you’re busted!

PUNbelievable: lol

You had almost mustered enough irritation to be playfully annoyed at him when he sent another message.

PUNbelievable: [IMG-13]

It was picture of Buddy curled up on a bare mattress in a dark room—Sans’ room—with a big bony hand settled on his withers mid-fur-ruffle.

PUNbelievable: somebody’s making himself right at home, guess life over here ain’t so ruff.

…Okay, yep. You were crushing.

Prev Chapter | Next Chapter

[garden-ghoul]

here read my gertrude fanfiction (also on ao3), includes fraught soul-searching and tarot

After they disembark Gertrude leaves Gerard to his own devices. He takes this to mean that he should secure dinner for them both while Gertrude checks into the hotel. He’s too good at teamwork for what he is, and certainly for what Gertrude is. She rather wishes he’d been able to beat it out of himself. She doesn’t like to think of him running errands for Mary. At least he manages stoicism where none of her assistants ever did; where neither of his parents could.

Gerard is so late finding the hotel that she considers going to a convenience store for food, but at nearly midnight he does knock on the door. “Sorry about this,” he says, a little breathless. “I had a hell of a time finding the place.”

He’s lying. Gertrude isn’t sure why.

They eat in silence, and immediately afterward Gerard disappears into the bathroom for a shower that lasts nearly an hour and ends with a gout of steam that rolls out into the room, waking her from her half-sleep. She gives no sign, but only listens to him tiptoeing around the room and sighing.

She wakes up early to have a miserable ‘continental’ breakfast in the hotel lobby, then leaves for the Institute without bothering to wake Gerard. He knows what his task is, and he’s showed good initiative and decision-making in the past. Gertrude needs to put in an appearance, if only to prove that she is still the Archivist, that she is not yet replaceable. She finds a totally unfamiliar set of assistants who look so shocked to see her that it’s quite possible they’ve only heard of her by reputation. She does not go to see Elias. It would be redundant. Rather, she fills her bag with relevant statements compiled by one or another of the assistants and leaves again for Soho. As she’s walking out the door Rosie asks timidly if she’ll be in to work tomorrow; “Perhaps,” says Gertrude.

At the occult shop off Dean Street she finds a young woman who must be an employee talking animatedly with Gerard about tarot. She barely glances up when Gertrude comes in, but Gerard straightens with a vaguely guilty air. She doesn’t even need to do anything to encourage his guilt—he spent over twenty years trying to understand how to please the impossible Mary Keay, and he was quick to attune himself to Gertrude in the same way. It irritates her for no reason she can fathom, despite how useful it makes him. No—for no reason she wants to fathom. Self-deception is an idiot’s tool, and yet Gertrude sometimes finds herself making use of it for the sake of expediency.

“Dekker’s in the back,” Gerard says. “Didn’t want to start without you. I can go and get him if you want.”

“No need. There’s no reason for you to be there. Continue with your games.”

She can feel his sullen irritation burning on the back of her neck as she opens the door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY and slips through. Good. If only he could bring himself to trust her a little bit less: he still thinks he’s somehow different from the assistants she has sacrificed to the hungry mouth of necessity. It always sickens her a bit to betray trust, but when she has to betray him it’s going to be—worse.

Dekker is taking notes on something he’s reading in the storage room. He looks up and smiles at her, and stands to clasp her hand. “Good to see you made it back in one piece.”

“Yes, well, for however long it lasts.”

His smile turns sardonic as he sits again. “Right. That’s exactly what I wanted to talk about.” He slides a piece of blank paper and a pen across the table toward her. She only has to wonder why for a moment before he picks up his own pen and starts drawing a chaotic fractal (spiraling, angular) with no obvious algorithmic origin. Gertrude follows suit with one of her own. She’s now forgotten the name but the thing itself is strikingly memorable, rising and falling, weaving and unweaving itself until every part of it meets in a hungry plexus. She’s drawn it so many times that she sometimes dreams it making itself step by step, a netting in front of the monstrous eye that always watches her.

“This is what I’ve found so far,” says Dekker, gesturing to an open folder in front of him. “Does the Archive in fact have nothing?”

Gertrude doesn’t yet look up from her drawing, because he has paused. “It does, in fact. I have come to believe that any statements taken on it were destroyed immediately. I myself have only taken two, which may mean that witnesses are systematically eliminated.”

“Systematically, but not completely. I’ll draw, you look.”

She puts her pen down to look over what’s in the folder. Three new statements concerning preparation and one concerning the substance of the Rite of the Watcher’s Crown. She skims them intently and nods. “Thank you, Adelard. I should mark the folder as well, while we’re here. Do you have any other news?”

“Hmm,” says Dekker, as Gertrude begins to draw her fractal web on the folder. “No supernatural news. And I’m sure you don’t want to see pictures of my sister’s kids. Very cute, though. Sometimes she brings them in to visit, Paulina dotes on them. I think Gina’s afraid they’ll grow up into witches, though, if they keep playing with cards and crystals.”

Gertrude doesn’t speak or look up. She has nothing to say on the subject. It’s been decades since she had anything she could call a family. This is intentional.

“So I tell her she doesn’t have to bring them here, but she says they love the shop. Spoiled kids.”

Dekker lapses into silence, idly continuing his sharp spirals. She thinks of warning him not to get comfortable drawing fractals without thinking, but he’s a grown man. And in any case she doesn’t need associates who can’t take care of themselves. Getting rid of Michael was practically a public service—

She stops for a moment, caught between human decency and practiced cruelty. In any reasonable value scheme, Michael was worth nothing as a person, less than nothing as a research assistant, and his only value was his ability to get in the way. But a very long time ago Gertrude was taught a different value scheme. Her parents insisted that humans have some kind of inherent worth, and she has been unlearning it ever since. Sometimes she wonders in her father’s voice why she should bother rescuing humanity from its collective fears if all of them are worthless, and she has never found a satisfactory answer. Only that it is something she needs to do.

She finishes the net and stands up, tucking the folder into her bag. “Thank you,” she says again. “Be careful.”

To her relief he puts his pen down as he smiles wryly up at her. “You need that advice more than me, Gertrude. Get on with you.”

He accompanies her out into the shop and looks over the girl’s shoulder where she’s leaning over one of the display cases. “Making friends, Paulina?”

“Shit!” she says, jumping slightly. “Hey, Mr. Dekker. I was just showing Gerry how to read tarot.”

Gerry?

Gertrude raises one eyebrow at him, but he is industriously tapping the deck on the table to align all the edges of the cards. She does not point out that Gerard has known how to read tarot since he was very young. Heaven forbid she should interfere with his flirting.

“I’d like to do a reading for you,” Gerard says. He looks up and makes eye contact, which seems to indicate that this request is important.

“I won’t stop you,” she says.

He shuffles seven times, flamboyantly, and then holds out the deck. She cuts it and he squares the edges on the table again.

When he draws the first card she realizes that the deck is not the Rider-Waite-Smith deck she was expecting. The angel in the sky of Judgment is not a winged humanoid but a wheel of eyes, an ophan. “This is your major concern,” says Gerard. “I don’t have to tell you what that means, do I.”

“No.”

“Your challenges,” says Gerard, flipping the next card. “Eight of cups. Detachment, abandonment of connections. G-d, this is a lot more embarrassing than I was expecting. Er, also symbolizes escapism. So, moving on. Something you need to know. Four of coins, reversed. Normally that means… huh. Material wealth…” For her the card appears upright, and it’s impossible to deny the subject’s striking resemblance to Elias Bouchard. “The crown is… literal. So maybe look for that. And don’t be shy about spending resources to go after it, I guess.”

Gertrude leans forward intently. “Where is it?” she asks. Although as far as she knows tarot is complete nonsense based in apophenia and confirmation bias, she is willing to believe that if anyone can use it for genuine divination it is Gerard.

“Right, this one’s ‘a thing you need in order to progress’.” He pushes the next card into place. “Hah! Oh, I like this deck. I’m sure you’re aware the Devil is usually a metaphor for imprisonment, but in this case he’s also a person.”

“Elias has the crown?”

“No,” says Paulina. Gerard looks around at her in surprise. “Not yet. It’s going to become his, or become real. That’s why it’s reversed. It doesn’t just show who has it, it shows how he has it. And he’s got to do something first.”

“Oh,” says Gerard. “Right, yeah, that makes sense. Pity, though, that we can’t steal it.” Gertrude gestures for him to continue, and he sighs. “Final card. What you’ve got to do.” He places it below the second card. “Four of cups. Play it safe. Wait.”

“No,” says Gertrude, and she flips the next card off the top of the deck, laying it sideways across the four of cups.

He sighs again, longer. “What you’re going to do anyway. Ace of swords. Reveal secrets at any cost.”

“That is a card for how to fail,” says Paulina.

“I have everything I needed,” says Gertrude. “Good-bye, Adelard.” She strides toward the door. Behind her Gerard hastily says goodbye to Paulina, muttering that she should text him, and hurries after Gertrude. Briefly, and for no reason at all, she hates him for assuming that he is required to leave with her.

Gerard catches up to her quickly, but as he often does he walks half a step behind. “She actually did teach me,” he says. “M… Mary never worked out how to use it for anything, she just liked the look of it. Apparently it gives you awful dreams, though. So, looking forward to that.”

“How unfortunate,” says Gertrude. “Especially as I suspect you’ll be using it a lot in the near future.”

[pixiealtaira]

To Find Your Peace

Authors Note:  This is number one of the not posted Hummel Holidays fics....this had been stuck for well over a year and 9 months or so because I couldn’t find the right mood to describe tacky Christmas decorations.  Obviously, I should have just waited until July, when I find most Christmas decorations tacky...due to the fact I shouldn’t have to see them in stores yet...(here’s looking at you Hobby Lobby!)

Anyway, on to the story

To Find Your Peace

rated:PG

Pairing: None.

Prompt 5: Decorations

Kurt should have known something was up the day after Thanksgiving...but he had believed his dad when he’d said that they were going to blend family traditions for holidays just like they’d blended families and no single family was going to be given precedence.  They all insisted…well his dad and Carole…that the first Thanksgiving wasn’t going to count at all because it was all about introducing families to each other for a longer period of time than the wedding and just making sure no one killed anyone else.  Therefore no one’s traditions were being used.

However…he should have realized something was up when he asked his dad what time to be home from shopping so they could put up the outdoor lights and his dad had answered he didn’t need to worry about it, especially since his dad then handed over five hundred bucks and hadn’t even told Kurt to get something nice for the Mildreds and whoever else was usually on his dad’s Christmas shopping list from the mall and then to use whatever extra Kurt ended up with on something fun, like he usually did if he gave Kurt money for Black Friday shopping.  (Kurt did his dad’s shopping anyway; he even bought a few base gifts for Carole and Finn. It hadn’t been worth it…although his dad approved of the gifts he’d picked, he complained the whole time that now he had to find somewhere to hide them all until Christmas, because apparently Finn was a snooper, go figure.  Kurt ended up needing to wrap everything up and take everything with him to school. And since he had the stuff at school he had to spend the money to send off the gifts to everyone on his dad’s list who was out of town and had to finish up shopping for the guys his dad worked for since his dad couldn’t remember what Kurt had already bought and his dad didn’t send extra money for any of that.)

His second clue that something was amiss should have been that he distinctly remembered Puck talking about the Hudson’s house being all light up by Thanksgiving time every year.  So, if they were combining traditions, shouldn’t putting up lights outside the day after thanksgiving have been within the realms of combining tradition?

But he didn’t notice anything was off and he trusted his dad, and so his requests to hang lights were put off for the rest of the weekend and then it was Monday and he was back off to Dalton and he was well aware he wasn’t getting home until school let out for break unless he was extremely lucky…which he hadn’t been.   He may not have been at Dalton for long, but he still had to take finals with the rest of the bunch.  Kurt figured he’d averaged about three hours of sleep a night from the time he got back from Thanksgiving to the last of day  finals…the 16th… which was the last day of regular classes, although he wasn’t allowed to go home until the 22nd, unless his parent came and checked him out…which his parent hadn’t. His parent hadn’t even shown up for the Dalton Parent’s day on the 17th, let alone checked him out early.  That was embarrassing.  He still has no idea if anyone bought his emergency at the shop story.

Kurt had had a miserable December.  No one helped brighten it at all. (Blaine might have brightened it briefly with the song they sang together; however he promptly went on to dis Kurt’s festive accessories and tell him to stop singing Christmas carols in the halls, so no…) There was no advent of daily activities.  And although his dad did make it to the Nutcracker to see it with him, like he’d promised right after his heart attack, he missed half of it because a ball game he was watching with Finn went into overtime. It wasn’t even a game that involved either of the two’s favorite teams. And Burt left immediately afterwards because Carole wanted Burt to go out to eat with her and had made reservations for them and Burt didn’t want her upset if he didn’t make it. Kurt was given house demerit points for his string of lights and the electric candle in his window and the holly and ivy garland he’d hung in his room (and for the sprig of Holly he attached to his uniform and the hot chocolate maker he had in his room.)  The only one who appreciated the card he’d given them was Jeff, at least as far as he could tell.  He even got in trouble for baking, because he was distracting too many boys from their studying. And he found out the last day of class that he probably couldn’t board the next semester unless they could fork over at least another three thousand bucks on top of tuition….which they’d only managed to pay for the quarter, not the full semester…by the end of December (and that wasn’t even the full boarding amount, since they hadn’t been informed they needed to fill out paperwork to keep Kurt’s emergency student status past the end of the semester). (Apparently the Headmaster had emailed his father about it early in December, but his dad hadn’t responded at all.) Kurt had packed everything in his dorm room that he wasn’t using and moved it to his SUV that night.  There was no way they could come up with that much on top of tuition in less than two weeks, not In December. Then he got reprimanded for watching unapproved videos over the weekend after most the other boys had left, except those staying the whole vacation period. The last few days were spent working off his demerit points by cleaning classrooms for teachers who were as unhappy to still be at the school as he was.  He was looking forward to going home and putting up the Christmas tree and relaxing by a fire in the fireplace while he sipped hot chocolate. He was going to play Christmas Music and sing to it as loud as he wanted and watch Christmas Movies, maybe even all night long!  He was finally freed to head home at what would have been then end of the school day of the 22nd.  Kurt finished packing the SUV with the rest of his stuff and left Dalton. It was past 3pm when he finally got out of there.

It snowed the whole drive home -blizzard conditions- so the two hour drive took nearly twice as long. He’d nearly been run off the road three times and each time he later saw the idiot drivers in the ditch.  He’d been stuck as emergency vehicles struggled to get through for twenty minutes behind a diesel truck which wasn’t burning its fuel properly. His head hurt and he was cold and tense. By the time Kurt pulled onto the street the house was on all he wanted was to go home and hopefully be able to get things together for Christmas with some semblance of sanity surviving to maybe even enjoy something about the season.  He figured the outside lights would be up, but he looked forward to decorating inside. Surely his dad had left the garlands for him to do and the tree for him to help with. He dreamed all the way home of putting the garland up the banisters on the stair cases, and over the mantle of the fireplace.  He thought about what cute things they could do with a wreath for the front door, because surely Carole and Finn would enjoy one and so his dad would finally allow one.  Maybe his dad would even agree to a garland along the tops of the china cabinets and the bookshelves this year.  Kurt had been trying for years (since the year after his mom died) to get his dad to agree to more than just the tree and a garland on the fire place mantle, finally winning the banisters when he was 14.  His dad always said that more than that was just not necessary, a waste of money, and too much in a tasteless manner, not a good one.   Kurt had found some plaid ribbon though, and some woodland critters which would be sedate and not too loud, so maybe that could convince his dad.  He thought about what ornaments needed to be on the tree, and which could be left off so Finn and Carole could have space for theirs.  He wondered what stories he’d learn as they put up the tree and talked about what the ornaments meant or when they were bought or made.

He was debating inside his head whether or not to include the Elvis Bear on the tree when he realized he’d driven past his house…because that monstrosity of tasteless inflatables and obnoxious outdoor illumination could not possibly be his house.  His dad wouldn’t even allow Kurt to string lights around the small pine in the front yard or exchange the regular walkway light for candy canes or Christmas shaped lights.  The inflatables up in their yard weren’t even tasteful inflatables.  There was Sponge Bob and Simpsons and Mario and Mr.Potato Head inflatables…and was that Santa in an outhouse with half his rear end showing?   There was a Santa in a hot tub…and a Santa waving from a camper…and some sort of superhero group.   On the top of the house were wooden Reindeer cutouts, lit up and a fake chimney with Santa’s butt showing…again…lit up so no one could miss it.  The house was dripping with lights, in no orderly fashion what so ever…lights of multi colored lights went into white blinking lights or icicle lights then back to colored, no pattern or  reason to them. The colored lights didn’t match each other and even the white lights didn’t match each other. There were even pink and turquoise lights and purple lights.  There were lit stars and snowflakes, which Kurt would have liked had they been hanging from the eves like they were meant to be and not attached to the side of the house, literally…to the siding...at least a foot under the window sills. Everything was covered in lights, but not well…light nets weren’t put on correctly and left huge sections blank, only half of things were strung with lights, or if the full item was cover, it wasn’t covered with anything that matched. There were dozens of animatronic lit critters…bears, deer, reindeer, penguins…that didn’t match...as some were again colored and some were white (different whites as well), and dozens of those spiral trees his father had forbidden Kurt from having (Kurt had wanted two… a tall one and a shorter one.)…several of which actually clashed with each other even though they sat right next to each other. There were large plastic candy canes and plastic choir boys and plastic carolers and plastic Santas and plastics elves and plastic snowmen and plastic candles and Kurt thought he might even see plastic aliens in the yard, and possibly a plastic camel. They were scattered throughout the yard like someone had shaken a dice cup and let loose.    The walkways to the house were lined with Red and Green and blue and white and orange and black rope lights, in no manner that made any sense.   Kurt pulled into the drive way and stared.

When he opened the car door, he was blasted with four different Christmas songs being piped out from somewhere in the mess.  The cacophony was nearly painful.  Kurt wasn’t even allowed to play Christmas Music loud enough to be heard throughout the house, let alone outside it.

Kurt sat in his SUV and stared.  The front porch not only had a wreath on the front door, one of those huge ones made of garishly colored mesh…it was bright pink and lime green and teal for goodness sake and the only thing that made it look Christmas like was that it was covered in glass balls of the same garish colors…but it had wreathes on both the pillars of the porch and they didn’t match.  One was a huge evergreen wreath that would have been lovely without the batman themed ribbon and decorations and the other was made of the type of bows you buy in bulk to put on presents, with the sticky square backs, in the worst color assortment ever.

Strands of gold, silver, green and red tinsel garlands hung on each side of the door…just hung down, the slight breeze was making them sway to and fro.  Across the top of the door was a baby blue fake pine garland trimmed with pink lights. The blue of the garland clashed with the teal of the wreath, let alone everything hanging to the sides of the door.  The porch was littered with wood cutouts that were poorly painted.  One of the elves looked positively demonic and seemed to have pointed buck teeth painted on it.

Even the normal tasteful sconces that generally served as the covers to the porch lights had been replaced by hideous Santa faces from which the glow of the porch lights made Santa look like his eyes were glowing.

Kurt took a deep breath; grabbed two suitcases filled with his stuff from Dalton in them, and braved the front door.  The moment he stepped on the porch a new set of Christmas Music blasted through speakers. It didn’t mesh with any of the other blaring songs at all. He scrunched up his face and plotted the closest way to the nearest pain meds to ease his head ache and then the fastest way to his bedroom. Then he opened the door.

It looked like a five year old had hung streamers for a birthday party, except with tacky tinsel garlands and crepe paper in every color sold.  There was no pattern to the mess, just tinsel garland and crepe paper tacked into the ceiling, hanging down to far, criss-crossing willy nilly and clashing often.  The entry way walls were plastered in holiday pictures and cutouts and even window clings that had been taped to the wall with packing tape. There were tacky singing fish wearing Santa and Elf hats that sang as you walked in the door. Somewhere else in the other room other singing things started up, ones that were noise activated. Christmas music blasted through the house, loud and annoying.

There was nowhere to hang his coat or put his shoes because the coat rack and shoe cubbies were filled with horrid Christmas sweaters hung where they could be seen and bins of pine cones and wooden blocks painted like gifts…poorly painted….and the most horrid mixed colors of…plastic balls…and sticks? Ribbon bows were tied to everything they could be tied to, often with jingle bells hanging from them…but there wasn’t any cohesive color scheme.  There were purple and pink and red and green and lilac and neon yellow and lime green and orange and brown and black and a red that was either brick or blood bows scattered throughout the entryway and hall.  The floor itself was covered in Christmas themed welcome mats….dozens laid out on the floor in a odd type of runner.  The entry ways to the living room and dining room were framed by stringy tinsel like the front door, which seemed to reach out to him as he walked by due to the mass amount of static generated by the sheer amount of tinsel.

He walked by the arched opening to the dining room first and looked in.  And immediately wished he hadn’t.  There were four Christmas trees on the dining room table.  They weren’t small, really, each was about three feet to three and a half feet tall.  They were mashed together due to the fact the dining room table lacked the space for them all. One was bright pink and one was lime green, the other two were pine colored, and at least one was real judging by the amount of pine needles on the table.  The pink tree was covered with cupcakes and the most hideously scary looking gingerbread ornaments and baby blue beads and ribbons and purple topical scary looking birds with huge feathered tails and flamingos and cocktail glasses and donuts and then Victorian looking lace and cones…that weren’t the same nearly neon pink as the tree and so looked bad on it. The lights were bright red and blinked.

The lime green one wasn’t any better.  There were red and lime green balls and ribbons and lots of candy ornaments in various colors and patterns, shoved in with feathery birds in extremely bright pinks and teals and purples and yellows and oranges, neon colored swim suits and goggles and snorkels and swim fins, and loads of very bright fake extremely glittered citrus fruit.  The birds didn’t even match the other tree.  The tree was topped with peacock feathers….the colors of which matched maybe one freaking feathered bird.  The lime green tree’s lights were bright pink and chased through some strangely timed pattern.

The real pine tree was covered in small kitchen ware and bake ware type items, and could have been fine if not also mixed with seashells and sand dollars and beach items and a ribbon that went around it that encouraged all to have a Bloody Merry Christmas and looked like it was splattered with blood.  It also had bright red lights, a shade darker and adding to the blood feel.

The final tree was completely stuffed with religious ornaments.  He’d been to Aunt Mildred’s during Christmas season.  Aunt Mildred was very…evangelical. She did a Jesse tree and Nativity tree. Everything was wrapped in Jesus Loves You paper and Jesus is the Reason for the Season paper.  It only lasted a few years, but Kurt was there for them. He thought it more tasteless than not even back then, but now he was thinking his Aunt Mildred did it tastefully.  The first problem was that it was just packed so full and nothing matched.  The bright crayon colored circles proclaiming Jesus’s love and purpose would have been fine, alone or with the white nativity pieces. They didn’t look good with the neon stars that had different names of Christ or the nativity pieces that looked like they belonged in a circus (which were horrid anyway).  The Jesse ornaments on it were just…not tastefully done. Perhaps if they had just been white ceramic they would have been fine, but these were white ceramic that had been poorly gold leafed…which made them tacky to start off with even if the gold leaf had been applied well. To top it all of…there were close to a dozen Christ on a Cross ornaments that had I’m Saved written on them…across Jesus’s chest.  The lights on this three were neon colored…pink, green, yellow, blue…and flashed at such a high speed Kurt was worried for people visiting.  His house now needed seizure warnings inside as well as out.

Kurt closed his eyes, hoping again that upon opening them his dining room would look normal.

It didn’t.

Having taken in the Christmas Trees on the table, he saw everything else.  The table had runners on it under the tree…over a hideous Christmas table cloth.  Runners…plural. None matched the ugly elf table cloth…some of which looked demonic…and none matched each other.  The chairs were dressed up in those stupid slip covers that only look good done well…and at things like weddings.  These weren’t done well and didn’t match at all. The stupid reindeer chair cover had antlers that Kurt assumed were supposed to stick up but which flopped backwards, the snowman looked half melted and like something out of a horror film and the less said about the two Santas, the better.  Suffice to say, they clashed with each other and if Kurt never saw another Santa again, he’d be happy. The thought of a Santa looking like either was enough to keep Kurt from even wanting Santa gifts at all….no Santa gift means Santa didn’t come to his house.  He couldn’t understand why anyone would buy them…and since they all had tags that were sticking out, someone had.

The walls were plastered with Christmas Prints…that again didn’t match or make sense together. The tacky Tinsel garlands criss-crossed the ceiling in the dining room as well, shedding down onto the floor and all over the table.

Kurt was terrified to look at the rest of the house.  And depressed. Utterly depressed.   He couldn’t believe he dad had told HIM no all these years and then let THIS happen. Unless maybe the reason his dad hadn’t answered anything was because they’d killed him…or tied him up somewhere.

He turned and walked further down the hall, pausing to look into the living.  And concluded his thought that they had actually killed his dad and stuffed the body somewhere wasn’t as unlikely as it seemed.

The tree was in the middle of the room.  The TV was blocked. The tree touched the ceiling and was quite wide as well.  It was real, Kurt could tell by the mass amount of pine needles on the floor. And it was heavily flocked.  The white powder stuff sat on many of the branches in piles. It was flocked so badly Kurt could see flocking on the furniture and when the heater kicked on the air movement made flocking dust float into the air. It was also covered in silver tinsel strands….the individual ones that got EVERYWHERE. And Kurt meant covered…every branch was draped with strands at least five inches in, it looked like it was melting.  The air lifted those as well, and made them sway on the tree in a very nauseating manner. The only things on the tree were huge fake poinsettia flowers in every color imaginable and so heavily glittered the glitter they shed could be seen on every surface and the type of feathers that really only worked on Pirate hats, Victorian hats, and as pens at weddings, also dipped in glitter.  The lights were all chasers, set on super speed, and the strands did not match…not bulb shape or color.

There were about twenty stockings hung on the mantle, all with Finn’s name on them…except two, labeled MOM and DAD. And they were all tacky…and huge.  There were piles of gifts under the tree, most quite large and all, even from afar, clearly labeled FINN. Kurt was strongly reminded of Harry Potter and Dudley Dursley.  There were hundreds of animated stuffed things in the room and so many throw pillows that one couldn’t actually sit in a chair anyway. And none matched.  The shelves were overflowing with Christmas items stuffed on them…most ugly or just odd.  His tasteful nativity wasn’t up anywhere in the room, nor were his candles or the angels they always had out.  Even his dad’s display of antique toys wasn’t to be seen. Those had been put up at Christmas time in his dad’s family since his dad was four and his dad’s great-grandmother had given them to him to display for Christmas.

Kurt clenched his jaw and walked to the door to the basement.  There was so much static that a bolt of electricity shot four inches to zap him from the handle.

Kurt closed his eyes and hoped that wasn’t an omen.  He wondered where his dad was…or Carole or Finn for that matter.

Christmas music different than what was playing on the main floor blasted from down stairs. There were tinsel garlands hanging off the ceiling and handrail. And there were stands of jingle bells hanging down from the hand rail as well, so every step jingled.

“I told you I’m not going to some stupid party at the Fire Department. I refuse!” Finn shouted.

Kurt could hear the sounds from his video games blasting loudly enough to be heard over the Christmas Music.

Kurt stopped at the bottom of the stairs.

Nothing in the basement was as he left it.  In fact nothing of his seemed to be there at all.

“Where’s my stuff?” Kurt asked.

“Why are you here?” Finn yelled back. “I’m calling your dad! I’m telling!”

“Ok.  Where’s my stuff?”

“We got rid of it. Except from the closet, because it was locked and Burt wouldn’t let us break in. I wanted to just throw it all out because you know…you don’t live here…but Burt made us keep it all so mom rented a storage unit and we put it all there.  She’s trying to convince Burt that it doesn’t belong here at all anymore and we need access to the closet too.”

“Of course I live here.”

“No you don’t, your dad moved you to the school and so you live there and aren’t supposed to return any more.”

“Do neither of you understand how boarding schools work?  Not to mention, I only was boarding as full time as I was the last few weeks because of my work load the last several weeks was so huge.  I’m all caught up now and unless your mom is forking over 10,000 bucks, I won’t be boarding.”

“You can’t live here. Mom promised it was all mine now.  Even if your dad wouldn’t let me have the stuff of yours I want, she is supposed to make him give it to me by Christmas…so you can’t be here and you have to give me all your good stuff…like your computer and TV and shit.  Mom promised. I’m calling Mom! I’m telling Burt….I’m telling him right now, how you are sneaking in here and harassing me! I will.”

“So, Dad and your mother are at the party at the fire department?” Kurt asked, glaring at Finn.

“Probably.  It sounded dumb. I don’t see why I should go and help out stupid little kids. No, go back where you came from.”

Kurt turned and marched back up the stairs. Not without noticing that there was five Christmas trees filled with various forms of sports paraphernalia and hunting stuff scattered around the basement, all live and half nearly bare due to the lack of needles, which littered the floor and all bone dry. The floor was also covered with dirty clothes and towels, food in various forms of rot and empty food boxes, empty soda cans and… empty beer and wine bottles… and other smelly things.

He marched out past the horrid decorations to his SUV.  He put his suitcases back into the vehicle and drove to the fire station.  He got out and stomped into the party…over to the adult games area, which his father was usually in charge of.  Carole wasn’t there.  Fire Chief Michaels was though.

“Burt Hummel.” Kurt snapped.

Burt dropped the bowling ball he was retrieving to hand to the next person playing Bowling For Pop.

“Kurt…when did you get home?” Burt asked.

“Today.  AFTER YOU DID NOT COME GET ME ON THE 17TH WHEN YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE THERE FOR PARENT’S DAY! I spent the days from the 17th to leaving time today working off demerit points for you missing it. Furthermore you have NOT answered any email or message left, or answered any calls from me and NOW you will be very sorry. I will not be able to board next semester. Because YOU couldn’t be bothered. I hope you have fun explaining that to your wife  and new son, who shall be calling because I harassed him apparently by a) coming home and b) asking where all MY STUFF IS!”

Chief Michaels looked at Burt. “You forgot to go to Parent’s day at your kid’s school and forgot to check him out?”

“You got rid of all YOUR child’s stuff? Like what kind of stuff are we talking here?” Deputy Jones from the police department asked.

“All of it that I hadn’t locked in my closet.  I have no bed, no dresser, my mother’s old vanity is gone, my TV and computer are missing, my sewing machine and everything!” Kurt said.

“I thought they left things be down there.  Carole said she set Finn straight when he demanded the room cleared for his use.” Burt said.

“Yeah, well apparently not. Finn says they put it in a storage unit after you wouldn’t let them throw it out!” Kurt snapped. “Fix this! Fix this now, Dad.  If it is NOT fixed by tomorrow, I will call YOUR Aunt Mildred. And fix the atrocity that our house has become. I am not kidding.  I am taking photos, I am sending them to Aunt Mildred…I am sending them to Uncle Lou.”

“But Kurt, you don’t understand…”

“What?  What don’t I understand?”

“Don’t you want Finn and Carole to be happy and feel welcome?” Burt asked.

“Finn and Carole can be happy and feel welcome without turning the house into a monstrosity and creating the biggest FIRE HAZAARD IN LIMA!  Not to mention the biohazard that is now the basement! Things spark in there due to the static. And I’m surprised you haven’t been fined due to violation of any number of city ordinances…you know, the ones you always quoted to me when I asked for more lights than the strands along the roof.”

“But Carole said they always decorate big.” Burt said. “She said she would be crushed if she couldn’t decorate as much as she dreamed and that if she couldn’t decorate properly here then she’d have to go to her folks were it was properly decorated for the holidays. She so wanted to spend the holiday as a family, it would have upset her to have to leave to a properly decorated home.”

“And you bought that?” Kurt asked.

“She cried Kurt.  She cried when I told her just one tree.”

“Yeah…I’m sure she did. I think you should check the accounting. I bet most is brand new.  Except those horrid and tacky stockings…where is mine by the way?”

“Well. It upset Finn to have it, you know.  And your gifts from me are at the garage because Finn only wants his under the tree…I told him yours would be under the tree for Christmas.  Carole insisted she’d get him agree to it.  He screamed and stomped off when I told him that.”

Fire Chief Michaels put his arm over Kurt’s shoulder. “Come on Kurt.  I bet Santa has a treat for you, and I’ll set you up with a gift for the white elephant exchange and an ornament for the ornament exchange. There are playing bingo by the pole and we’re supposed to start a new round of name that tune in a few minutes. You always win at that.  We’ve got some great prizes this year, too.”

He turned to Burt. “Burt, I’m with your kid on this.  Fix it.”

“But Hal, you had a new wife. Surely you know how it is.” Burt said.

“I would have NEVER let Janice remove my kids’ stuff from our home.  It is always home to ALL of us.  And Cami had been off to college when I married Janice. Still wouldn’t let her get rid of Cami’s stuff until she’d moved into a place of her own and wasn’t living in dorms anymore.  And then we asked.  He’s your kid, Burt.  He’s not all grown-up yet, he should still matter most.”

He turned Kurt away and started walking with him towards Santa.

“So tell me about the biohazard.” The chief said.

“Oh My God. Finn is so nasty. There is rotting food in my basement! On the floor! And stinky socks and underwear and loads of trash.  I had it spotless over Thanksgiving. I thoroughly cleaned it after I got home from black Friday shopping and all Finn’s cousins were finally gone….”

Kurt watched his dad as he continued telling the Chief about the disaster that the house was in.

His dad was looking confused.

As Kurt was seeing Santa, the Chief headed back towards his dad and Deputy Jones.

Santa, otherwise known as Mr. Morrison, the owner of M&S grocers and farmers market, slipped Kurt an extra gift and told him to come back over when the night was over and he might slip Kurt more. He asked if Kurt was going to the old folks’ home, his dear mother would hate to miss him this year if he wasn’t.  Kurt promised to be over the next day…minus cookies because he was certain his kitchen was not useable due to the amount of tinsel in the house. Kurt beamed when Mr. Morrison offered use of the store’s bakery and the company of Mrs. Morrison to help bake cookies for the old folks’ home.

Mrs. Michaels set Kurt up with items for the exchanges that would be happening soon and allowed Kurt to snatch up the set of wooden birds, one of which looked just like Pavarotti, in exchange for last minute mending to the nativity costumes. When he managed not just the hole in Joseph’s side seam and the tear in the shepherd’s robe where he stepped in it as his stood up, but also sufficient enough hemming on all the angels costumes so that no one tripped on them and ripped them, she also added the set of angel ornaments he looked at.

He won a Christmas candle, an old Reader’s Digest Christmas Treasury sheet music book that was still in near mint condition even though it was dated 1950, and a word puzzle book while playing name that tune, before he bowed out and let others have a chance to win. He won four bingos and picked out some fabulous snowflake cookies cutters, a stocking filled with crafting supplies (nice color pencils and drawing pencils, watercolor pencils, blenders and erasers, paint brushes, and a cute set of watercolors), a set of little tea lights that were battery powered, and an awesome winter themed throw that was very soft.

He won a set of cards that were Scooby-doo themed in the white elephant exchange and an owl ornament in the ornament exchange.

He also called around to find someplace to stay over that night.  Jeff’s family lived near Liberty Hill Golf Club in Bellefontaine.  It wasn’t quit an hour away and Jeff’s dad promised the snow had eased up and traffic would be fine.  Their road was already plowed and clear.  His mom would love to have Kurt for a day or two.  Kurt told her it would be for the night at least, and maybe tomorrow night as well, but during the day he had a few commitments in Lima he needed to attend to, namely baking for the old folks’ home and a trip to the old folks’ home. After hearing Jeff’s mom go on about how sweet he was, Kurt thought he might even have company the next day…and wondered just how many siblings Jeff had.

Kurt told them he’d be there in about an hour and half.  Then he went to find his dad again.

Burt was sitting at the table with the fire chief and Deputy Jones and Hank from the shop.

“Dad, I’m going to go stay at Jeff’s for the night.  If things aren’t somewhat fixed by tomorrow afternoon when I am finished at the old folks’ home, I will stay there tomorrow night as well.  Things will be fixed by then, as I will be at my home for Christmas. The basement will be cleaned and those trees removed, all the tinsel will be gone, the trees on the dining room table will be gone, and the tree in the living room will be removed of its tinsel, de-flocked as much as possible, and gone if it is too dry. Carole and Finn will be informed that they will be paying to fix the damage to the house since I know you were not stupid enough to do that. The music will not be there anymore…if any is there it will be ONE single song playing at a time.  The music in the house will be quieter and tasteful, like you always made me play it when you relented and let me play anything, and something will be done with the Santa butts that are hanging out everywhere! I will also give you until tomorrow afternoon before I call Aunt Mildred.  I’m going to stop by the house and grab a few things before heading out. So, yes, I was back at the house if Finn calls…no I will not be harassing him.”

“You saw the tree in the bathroom?” Burt asked.

“What tree in what bathroom?” Kurt said.

“Umm nevermind.”

“Dad….what tree?”

“The main floor bathroom has a tall thin tree in it that is covered with hot tub Santas and bathtub Santas and outhouse ornaments.  They collect them.  They have them from many states and all sorts open to show them being used by everything from Santa to moose to one that even had Jesus in it.”

“Excuse me?” Kurt said. “And they had the nerve to comment on my lack of religion.”

“Finn’s vacation bible sleep-away camp sold them.”

Kurt just shook his head.

“See you tomorrow Dad. I do love you, you know…but this is not OK.”

Kurt stopped by Santa to solidify his plans for the next day, and came away with two books he’d wanted to read and two more puzzles books and three heatable rice packs, two small scent candles, four Christmas scented lotions, and two textures washcloths…and a basket.  Jeff’s mother would get a nice little spa basket as a thank you gift for letting him invade.

Kurt hit the house on his way out of town.  He left his goodies in the car. He used his phone camera to take pictures of everything that horrified him.  He even went in the bathroom and found the Jesus in the outhouse ornament and took special care to take a photo of that.  He realized his dad hadn’t mentioned that there was also various naked Santa ornaments, with different type of hats placed so his privates wouldn’t be seen.

Several hundred photos later, Kurt decided enough was documented.   He had gone downstairs and photographed the carnage that was his basement.   Finn hadn’t even noticed as he had huge headphone on and the TV blasted enough louder than before. He was singing to something other than the Christmas song that was blaring away, so Kurt knew music was playing through his headphones as well.  It was a wonder the idiot wasn’t deaf.

Kurt grabbed the old recipe books with the cookie recipes he always took to the old folks’ home in them and the emergency sleep kit from the garage, just in case he needed a sleeping bag or something.  He stopped and bought himself fast food on the way out of town.

The snow was just slightly falling and the roads, though icy, were free of snow.  The plows had been out.  The drive was peaceful and nice.  Kurt found a public radio station that was reading The Christmas Carol over the radio.  He made great time and was to Jeff’s house within an hour.

Jeff’s house was huge. There were lit deer in the front, looking like they were eating at the base of one tall spiral light tree and a few smaller ones…all the same bright white lights.  The house’s trim was lined with white lights, except the door, which was lined in green light.  Several trees in the yard were light as well, properly lit and covered by the same lights. There was a single evergreen wreath on the front door. It had a large red bow on it.

Kurt took a moment to put together a small overnight pack, gathering the items he’d need from his luggage and putting them into his school bag. When he looked up again, Jeff was on his way down the front path to the drive to help him with anything.  Jeff assured Kurt he didn’t need his emergency sleep kit, but his dad would love to hear about it when they got in.  Kurt handed Jeff his bag when Jeff insisted on carrying something and carried in the gift basket for Jeff’s mom.

Jeff’s mom was as vivacious as Jeff and Jeff’s dad was delightful as well.  His mom handed a hot cup of cocoa to Kurt nearly as soon as he stepped into the foyer.  

Their Christmas tree…single… was huge as well, but it was against the wall and set off nearly in a corner of the room.  It was covered with white lights that were steady and had a ribbon that wound from the top to the bottom…red and white candy cane striped.  There were red and white balls…not glass yet because Jeff had little siblings who touched too much still…but mostly scattered tastefully about the tree were more random type ornaments that represented Jeff’s family.  Jeff found his baby’s 1st Christmas ornament and then showed Kurt all seven others…with the triplets having the same ornament in different colors.

Kurt met the triplets, who were almost four, Joanne, who was 11 months older than Jeff and James who was 11 months younger.  He found out that the other two, Kim and Karen, were significantly older than Joanne…and that Jeff’s dad was their step-dad. Both were married with kids of their own and would be descending upon the family on the 24th.

There was soft Christmas music playing in the background as the family talked and watched a movie.  A scented candle burned in the kitchen, filling the air with a light evergreen scent.

Kurt looked around. There was a fireplace with stockings hung along the mantle, but these stockings were all denim with different colored plaid cuffs and heels and toes.  Jeff told Kurt his grandmother made them for each kid…Karen’s kids were a darker denim and Kim’s kids were a very light denim, but they still matched. Each stocking had a pocket, like the back pocket of a pair of pants on the front and a letter sticking out of it.

They looked good against the mantle, and the evergreen garland that trimmed it.  The evergreen garland had little plaid bows decorating it and pinecones and woodland critters.

A garland trimmed the top of the bookshelves as well.

There were Christmas throw pillows, that matched and were cute…and that matched the Christmas fleece blankets that draped over the back of the couch and chairs when not in use by people.

There were candles on the window sill, fake.  However having watched one of the small ones tip them over no less then five times, well Kurt thought fake was probably the safest bet for maybe the next ten years.

Jeff’s house was blessedly free of tinsel.

After the movie Jeff’s parents sent everyone off to bed and Jeff showed Kurt the guestroom he could use.

It was decorated by Christmas’s bedding and a bow over the mirror on the dresser.  There was a small Christmas Bear sitting on the dresser as well. It didn’t do anything.

“The other guestroom is more pink and had dolls on the dresser.  I thought this might be better. There is one of those play and pack baby bed things under the bed, though, so be careful not to stub your toe.  There is a bathroom through the door with the lever type handle.  The door with the knob goes to the closet.”

“Thanks Jeff, you and your family are life savers. You’ve salvaged my whole day.”

“It’s been fun and I’m glad I could help.  I can’t believe your family forgot you were coming home today.”

Kurt shrugged. “I guess maybe things have been busy at the garage…I don’t know.  I didn’t ask.”

They chatted a bit longer, mostly about the garage and things Kurt did there and what types of cars they worked on.  Jeff loved cars and motors of all sorts, so was thrilled to have someone with any interest in them as well to talk to.  Before too long, though, Jeff’s mom came and hustled him off to his own room so Kurt could get some sleep.

Jeff’s mom ruffled his hair as she left, like she did Jeff’s.  It was nice.

As Kurt crawled into bed, he couldn’t decide if he hoped his dad had fixed things by the next afternoon or if he hoped to be able to spend one more evening at Jeff’s, where he was more welcome than he was in his own house.

When he turned off the light he discovered one more holiday item in the room…a candle nightlight lit the room with a soft glow. He texted his Dad’s Aunt Mildred and asked if she knew a way to keep at Dalton past the quarter.

[fenweak]

Below the cut are 91 fics that feature Jonny and Patrick as creatures that lurk and prey (and snuggle) in the night. From wolfverses to fluffy animal transformations to love/sex magic. I've had such a great time re-reading all of these, as this pairing has been graced by so many amazing authors. Happy reading and happy Halloween!

★ are personal faves

Demons

a dainty dish to set before the king by mockturtletale ★ - demon!Kaner

But then the clocks strike midnight - clocks plural - and that’s weird as fuck, because the year is 2013 and Jonathan Toews doesn’t own any clocks that make that noise. He doesn’t own any clocks that make noise period.

Crossroad Blues by activevirtues- demon!Kaner

In which the demon Patrick Kane gives Jonathan Toews everything he's ever wanted.

Feathers by MJBadger - demon!Kaner, angel!Jonny

Not that Patrick has been snagging many souls or causing much in the way of mischief, lately. He supposes he should go out at some point and play a bit of catch-up. He assumes Jonny's been hanging out on park benches and saving jackasses left and right.

In which Jonny is an angel, and Patrick is a lazy demon.

Sweet and Tender Hooligan (or the post-apocalyptic au) by jezziejay - demon!Kaner

In which Kaner is a daemon of chaos, and Jonny is just trying to hold onto his city. Dystopian universe. Dark. Dark characterisation. A little TW, a litte GoT, and a little Patrick Ness. 

Together Burning Bright - demon!Jonny

Four times Jonny tried to eat Patrick's soul, and the one time he couldn't.

The Creek by mullsandmutts - demon!Kaner, angel!Jonny

Jonathan is a literal angel. Patrick is a literal demon (but with a sweet and kind heart -- it's complicated, okay?). They meet where their worlds are divided and existence might never be the same

Going West - not gonna spoil it but i love it

Jonathan finds the boy along the outskirts of a town market, chained to a post. There's a bronze armband clasped tightly on his forearm, winding around it like a snake, and he stares sullenly at the ground, heedless of Jonathan's gaze, while his toe traces patterns in the dust.

"I want him," Jonathan says to the vendor, pointing.

That's a lie.

Constant as a Northern Star - demon-hunter!Jonny, Pat is his safekeeper

The term "preux" was first used in the scripture that would become known as the Treaty of Avignon [signed in 1156, copies of the original - which was destroyed in the Siege of Harfleur in 1418 - are stored in Prague and Trondheim], marking not only the beginning of the working relationship between vampires and preux but also the use of a term to distinguish the preux from ordinary hunters.

(Or: Jonathan is a good fighter (it doesn't get more AU than this), Patrick waits for him,hates it and is a BAMF no matter the circumstances. Sharpy knows everything but doesn'tbetray anyone's secrets. He's a vampire, he has morals.)

Soulless by ice_hot_13 - demon!Jonny

Jonny used to have a soul.

Vampires

where the wild things are series by liketheroad - twilight AU

Seeing Johnny skate, Patrick realizes two things at the same time. One, Johnny is an incredibly gifted, terrifying hockey player, and two, Patrick is completely and irredeemably gay for him. Also, he’s definitely a vampire, but whatever, Patrick doesn’t really give a shit about that part. (Twilight AU)

Provenance by fourfreedoms ★ - vampire!Jonny  | sorta sequel here

“I uh, didn’t think it would be done so fast,” Patrick said when he arrived. Jonathan stared at him. “Done? You insult me. A good suit, at a lackluster slapdash minimum, needs three-fittings. You’ll be in here for four, I assure you.”

true blood chatfic by doctor_denmark - vampire!Jonny | not fic but still cute

So, sometimes hockey blogs say that Jonathan Toews's playoff fail-beard makes him look like a "victorian era vampire" (repeatedly), and when this happens, I start telling myself about the True Blood au, where Toews is the first vampire to play in the NHL, and Patrick Kane is the deeply closeted hockey player who falls in love with him. Then horrible enablers let me chat-fic at them for hours, and I end up with about 8,000 words, which is 9 times more than i managed on my thesis today.

I'm putting it here, because the world needs to witness my folly.

nature of the immortal being by Mayhem10 - vampire!Kaner

“Wait,” interrupts Jonathan, finally registering Patrick’s rant. “What exactly are you allergic to?”

Patrick waves dismissively. “You know, the usual.”

(In which Patrick is the worst vampire ever and Jonathan grows his own garlic.)

Sealed With A Kiss - (butt)vampire!Kaner

Five minutes after Coach Q explains to his new team that Patrick is indeed a supernatural creature of the night, he’s hustled into the corridor by his cute as hell new captain.

“An ass-eating vampire?” Jonathan asks.

“It’s not like I had a choice,” Patrick says, defensively.

bloodlust - vampire!Kaner 

One Time Patrick Kane Didn’t Drink From Jonathan Toews and Five Times He Did (also known as Vampire Kaner)

so say, what are you waiting for? by nuuclears - vamp!Jonny

“But are you even into this?” Patrick asks, biting his lip at how vulnerable it comes out.

Jonny straightens up fully and stares at him, hands full of gatorade bottles forgotten at his sides. “Kaner, it’s blood,” Jonny tells him incredulously, and ok, a valid point, Patrick does have some idea of how vampires get about blood, but still. It’s not like they’re just drinking from everyone either.

“And,” Jonny says, and blows out a harsh breath of air that he doesn’t even need. “And it’s you,” he admits, like it costs him something.

vampire!kaner AU by allthebros

He comes back to himself with Jonny’s blood in his mouth.

Werewolves 

All Practise and No Play by james - were!Kaner

Sometimes Tazer thinks it's like herding puppies. Actually, no, he thinks that all the time.

by the throat by liketheroad

The one where they're werewolves growing up in Manitoba.

Catalyst - were!Jonny

Full moon’s coming.

It’s about a week out, but even if they didn’t all keep a careful calendar of it, Patrick would know it just by looking at Johnny. Patrick’s known a few werewolves before, some distant family, and Johnny’s got all the hypervigilant aggression he’s used to seeing from them, but what they direct at others—bristling when people get too close, snapping when they’re provoked, showing teeth—Johnny turns inward.

fight or run, you're just getting older (podfic available by AshesandGhost) - were!Kaner 

Contrary to popular belief, weres don't actually need alphas. Patrick never had one, since he's the only person in his family with the gene, and his parents didn't push him into finding one. Alphas make their betas better; they keep them calm and level, they support them, they guide them. Without an alpha, betas are perfectly fine. They're just better with one.

Instincts (podfic available by exmanhater)

They don’t talk about what happens during the moon; and they don’t talk about how Patrick drives over sometimes to curl up on the couch and put his head in Johnny’s lap, jittery all over until he gets the anchoring weight of Johnny’s hand on the back of his neck; and they don’t talk about how Johnny calls him some nights and says, “Come over,” and Patrick does, because Johnny’s head is pounding with the need to get Patrick where he can see him, breathe in the scent of him, know he’s there and well. If they don’t talk about it they can just keep having whatever they need from each other; and that’s what they’ll do, because Johnny is Patrick’s alpha and Patrick needs him to be that for him.

For Johnny, it’s always been more.

I've Got A Feeling (I Hope You're Feeling It Too) by aohatsu - highschool werewolves AU!

When Patrick met Jonny for the first time, it was because they'd both just been picked for the same hockey team. When Patrick netted his first goal during practice, Jonny skated over to give him a congratulatory hug and, well, it's not like he didn't sometimes shift on accident, when he was excited or happy, but it hadn't happened at practice in ages.

Not Passive but Aggressive by reserve

Patrick Kane is a shitty werewolf; Jonathan Toews loves him anyway.

sun sweet berries of the earth series by gasmsinc -  were!jonny, forest spirit!kaner

There is a spirit living in Patrick State Park.

“Listen,” says Jonny. “I didn’t mean to step on your crown.”

The spirit’s bottom lip wobbles.

What If The Storm Ends ★

Here’s how it goes: Pat was out at a club, got bitten by a wolf—wtf?—got yelled at by Abby Sharp, woke up naked on her kitchen table, spent the day hiding in an IHOP, played the most aggressive game of hockey in his career and got mob-bossed off the ice by Sidney Crosby who, for the record, was surprisingly terrifying.

That was Tuesday.

wolf like me by gasmsinc ★ - were!Jonny

When Patrick had imagined his eighteenth birth year celebrations, he hadn’t imagined them taking place in a fortress a thousand miles away from home, surrounded by a people who were only his by marriage, while sitting next to a husband he barely knew.

He had imagined celebrating in Paelford Castle, right there in the great hall where his family had held every celebration, surrounded by the servants and nobles he had known his entire life, his parents and sisters on either side of him. He hadn’t imagined celebrating his eighteenth birth year on his wedding day, either.

Wolfverse by linsky - were!Patrick

Patrick has two goals for himself when he comes to Chicago: Win the Stanley Cup. And don’t let anyone find out he’s a wolf.

Ghost

Transcendence by ice_hot_13 - ghost!Jonny

Jonny shows up at midnight to play at the rink, and Patrick doesn't know who he is, what he's doing, or how the hell he even gets into the building, but Patrick still can't stay away.

If You Like It, Then You Should've Put A Ring On It - stepquietly

Tazer haunts Patrick through his TV and keeps threatening to kill him. And Kaner makes jokes about how Tazer lives at the bottom of a well and still uses a VCR. (The Ring AU crack!fic)

feel your heart beating as clearly as my own - ghost!Jonny

[He still doesn't get enough sleep most nights, and even though Jonny's there, he's notreally there, and he spends a lot of time sitting on the couch staring out the window,Jonny's hand clenched around his, like he's not sure what else to do.]

Jonny dies. Then he starts bothering Patrick.

the ghost & mr. kane - ghost!Jonny

"Uh," he starts. "You--if you're robbing me, you're not doing a great job of it."

"I'm not--I live here!"

"No you don't," says Patrick, dumb. "I live here."

"Yeah, I'm--I'm--I do too."

It snaps together for Patrick, suddenly--the guy's weird muttonchops, his suit, the way he disappeared and reappeared. "You're my ghost?" he asks. Just for confirmation, you know.

"Yes," his ghost says, glowering and still rusty-voiced.

as the ominous others

defrost, debauch, destroy by psocoptera (podfic by exmanhater)  ★ - ???

Beneath the ice, dread things lie dreaming. Or listening to One Direction, whatever.

thy hair soft-lifed by the winnowng wind by forochel ★ - leprechaun!Kaner

He made sure to lay out two saucers, one of spiked milk and one of pure whisky, that night; it was the closest to an apology he could think of.

Anatomy of a Hybrid series by maccabird_23 (abandoned WIP) - magical hybrid AU

Professional sports were chock-full of wolf and dragon hybrids; littered with adept humans but lean on the fairer hybrid. Most elves stayed to the more delicate athletics. Ballet and figure skating being the few sports they excelled at. Elves definitely didn’t play hockey. + Pat was many things but dumb wasn’t one of them. He knew how his teammates looked at him when he got worked up or even worst, turned on. He felt it deep in his gut and couldn’t control as the excitement, anger or arousal blossomed on his skin. Sparks of red and blue taking off from the tips of his pointy ears when he was happy. Deep reds gathering like coal along his scales when he was upset. His lips turning blistering silver before settling on frostbite red whenever he looked at Jonny.

bare those teeth to me please, man-eater - selkie!Jonny

 the one where johnny is a selkie, and patrick is the fisherman's son who loves him.

1988 selkie AU by allthebros - selkie!Jonny

They never give their skin willingly, his grandpa told him. You gotta either steal it and hide it away where they can’t find it, cause, believe it, first chance they got, they’re gone–doesn’t matter if they love you or if they have kids, they love and want the sea more. Or you gotta let them have their skin and let them go once the tryst is over. They don’t stay land-locked by choice, though they can still be happy and love like we do.

Patrick’s grandpa was a wise man, which is why it takes him more than a moment to understand what Jonathan is saying. “Take it, Patrick,” he repeats, his seal-skin all folded up between his strong hands. “I wanna stay.”

But You're So Magnetic by forochel - veela!Kaner 

Kaner comes into his veela heritage on his 24th birthday. Shenanigans and surprise feelings ensue.

call it magic by thundersquall ★ - faerie!Patrick

“It’s the faerie blood in me,” Patrick explains.

Jonny is just not equipped to deal with this shit.

OR, on March 17, Patrick turns into a faerie.

(Can't Help) Faun'in in Love by Miss_Psychotic - faun!Kaner 

When Jonathan is 12, he meets a boy named Kaner.

Crest and Break by hatrickane - mer!Kaner

 Kaner’s life in the deep is more than fulfilling - even despite his fascination with the fisherman who floats on the surface. He knows he has to keep his obsession a secret from the other Merfolk - but no banishment, magic, or legend is going keep him from getting closer to those kind eyes.

Friend Like Me by hatrickane ★ - genie!Jonny

 It wasn’t as beautiful as most oil lamps, Patrick surmised. It was a little stained, the ceramic chipped in places, but a meticulously crafted leaf sat nestled at the open mouth and Kaner dragged his fingertips over it.

It was warm, and he wanted it. Even without knowing what was inside.

First Frost by SimoneClouseau ★ - faerie (unseelie!Jonny)  

When he makes it to the party they ask him where he disappeared to an hour ago and Patrick stares back at them.

“What do you mean an hour?” he says. “It’s been ten minutes.”

Sharpy starts laughing. “Fine, don’t tell us.”

Patrick thinks maybe, just maybe, he’s going insane.

Patrick ends up somewhere he shouldn't be, and Jonathan is forced to claim him to save his life.

I want to meet the kind of folks I've never met by pistol_red - mer!Jonny

In which Johnny is tangled in a net and Patrick is the merman who saves him.

kiss the boy by gasmsinc - mer!kaner

The fish’s head is submerged completely under water. The only thing sticking out is the curve of its back, but Jonny can finally see why it’s stuck: there’s a fishing net hooked on a part of the rock.

It’s then that the fish decides to move again. Its tail thrashes back and forth wildly, and in its panic the fish bangs its broken fin right into the rock. A series of air bubbles pop up to Jonny’s right, but he doesn’t have time to acknowledge how weird that is, because three seconds after the bubbles, a boy’s head pops out of the water.

Jonny yells.

My Heart's in the Sea - Samantha_Holmes - mer!Jonny

When a mermaid named Jonathan saves a prince named Patrick from drowning, little did they know that their lives would be intertwined forever.

Animal Transformations

After Forever After by hockeyhawk ★ - angry frog!Jonny

One moment there was a captain. Next moment there was a frog. Someone has to step up, apparently it's Kaner.

The Hedgehog Can Never Be Buggered At All by forochel - hedgehog kaner

It’s a little known fact that the Kane family are in possession of a genetic quirk — an x-linked recessive gene — that basically boils down to this: Kaner turns into a hedgehog one day and gets stuck.

An Experiment In Hedgehog Physics by exmanhater - hedgehog!Kaner

Hedgehog!Kaner has the best ideas.

Hedgehog!Kaner series by altri_uccelli ★  - hedgehog!Kaner

Uhhhh, hedgehog Kaner in Switzerland.

+

Jon brings him up to his neck, cuddling him against the skin of his throat. He’s always done that, way back before everything. Even though it prickles, even though it gives him a light rash sometimes, he just likes Kaner there.

“Been awhile,” he whispers again.

+ A collection of ficlets and tagfic in the hedgehog!Kaner 'verse.

Better Off With You by tictactoews - hedgehog!Jonny 

Tazer has always seemed prickly on the outside, but he takes it to a whole new level when he turns into an actual hedgehog and becomes dependent on Patrick's care.

Changing on the Fly by mermaid - pitbull!Kaner

"Where's Kaner?" Jonny asks. "Where did this pit bull come from?" Duncs chews on his lip. "Uh, see, there's actually only one answer to both those questions."

Still muzzy with sleep, Jonny blinks at the guys. "So, like – Kaner got me a dog? And sent you two here to deliver it?"

"No," Sharpy says. "No, Kaner is the dog."

Duck Tales - duck!Jonny

“I think he needs floaties.”

Patrick resists the strong urge he gets to slam his head against the wall. “Kaner. He’s aduck; I don’t think they make floaties for them. What kind of duck can’t swim?”

“The kind that are magically transformed hockey players?” Kaner suggests and damn it, hehas a point.

Gone to the Dogs - puppy!Jonny

Jonathan Toews turns into a puppy. Then some other stuff happens.

Hooked on a Feeling (podfic available by exmanhater) - pug!Jonny

The one where Patrick is not exactly Bella Swan and Jonathan is definitely not Sparkly Whatshisname.

OR, THE WERE-PUG AU.

Into Each Life Some Rain Will Fall Like Cat Piss on Your Shoes by james - cat!Kaner

Johnny is waiting for Patrick to get home from Switzerland. What he gets is a surprise.

Slip the Jesses, My Love by flitterflutterfly - literally a hawk!Jonny

Jonny’s gets turned into a hawk and the only one he lets hold him is Patrick

The Cat Crept In by Celly1995 - kitten!kaner

Jonny's not entirely sure why he needed to get back to Chicago so urgently, because he *definitely* doesn't want to admit to himself that he's missing Patrick. But it's just as well he did come home, because Patrick's... not himself.

the skies are not cloudy - buffalo!Jonny

In which Jonathan Toews can turn into a buffalo, and Patrick Kane is the idiot in love with him.

Through the Looking Glass - puppy!Jonny, kitten!Kaner

The fic where Tazer becomes a puppy and Kaner turns into a kitten, but Sharpy still doesn't see any difference in how they behave.

To push a frozen rope - kitten!Kaner

It's just another day in the Blackhawks locker room when Patrick Kane decides to turn into a puppy.

you come around and the armor falls by altri_uccelli - puppy!Jonny

Patrick's in bed when he hears it, and at first it sounds like a peep that a phone might make, but then it happens again, elongated like a whine. His only theory is that it's a mouse, caught somewhere, and if Jonny's going to make a nuisance of himself by staying when he's not invited, he can damn well take care of this.

Bonus: IGAL 'verse by svmadelyn has an amazing tumblr tag that has ficlets and tag!fics with puppy!Tazer and doggo kids. Warning cuteness overload

Love & Sex & Magic

#1 Crush - sex magic

Patrick shows up at his and Jonny's hotel room under the influence of sex magic. 5000 words of porn ensues.

caring is creepy by liketheroad ★ - truth magic

When he gets out of the shower Johnny stares at him like Kaner’s the best thing he’s ever seen, which weirds Kaner out even more than the rest of this situation, because what, not even Johnny’s eyes can lie, now? This is some fucked up shit. Fucking Canucks fans, seriously.

 In which Tazer is truth whammied by a Canucks fan and it turns out he has a lot of feelings. Mostly about Kaner. But also about bacon.

Changing the Rules of the Game by Herwhereabouts - magic powers

Tazer has a concussion and is desperate to get better, while Kaner has healing powers he is unaware he possesses. Much drama ensues.

still into you by altri_uccelli - gender transformation

It's not even 12 hours after Jonny discovers he's a girl that he's sprawled on an itchy sofa, biting on his fist and being eaten out by Patrick Kane. He can't believe that a day exists in which having oral sex with Kaner, his oldest friend on the team and frequently a pain in his ass, is not the weirdest thing to happen.

A Handy Guide To Making You Feel Good by fourfreedoms and joyfulseeker - gender transformation

When it had first happened, body melting into this new form right there in front of all the guys, he’d demanded an answer from Jonny. “Did you see this coming?” A five first times fic.

+ “Um…” Patrick says, staring at the water beading down over the curve of one breast and along his taut stomach.

“What?” Jonny asks, furrowing his brows.

Patrick finally gets the chance to lend a helping hand.

Hanging on a Moment of Truth - sex magic

As it turns out, the weird sex magic is the least of Kaner's problems.

i mingle with divinity by mockturtletale - lucky sex magic

“Hey,” Patrick says, putting his hand on Jonny’s thigh, feeling giving, “It’s totally us. You and me, we’re golden when our boners touch. It’s just what happens after that’s unnatural or whatever.”

roving eye ravenous by toomanyhometowns ★ - possession

He opened his mouth to start talking and blinked.

So Deep in My Heart (That You're Really a Part of Me) by kiwoa - bodyswap

"No way," Jonny says, and he slowly turns his - Kaner's - head from side to side, watching the muscles in his face and neck shift. He licks his lips; it tastes wrong. His left wrist feels too stiff and his legs and stomach look too skinny and his hair still itches, damnit. Jonny scratches the back of his neck with nails that are too long and uncomfortably ragged.

"Okay," he says slowly. "Okay, this is not good."

Symptomatic by snapple_jax - sex magic

“What, like it’s hard?” Jonny parrots along with Elle Woods. He side-eyes Patrick, fully prepared for the gleeful chirp about how he knew Jonny loved this movie all along.

Only Pat’s turned an alarming shade of red before scurrying to the bathroom, blanket trailing behind since he couldn’t untangle himself fast enough.

the gift of obedience - obedience magic

Patrick will be fine without Jonny. Really. All he has to do is track down Lucinda and get her to break the spell. He doesn’t even have to liberate an oppressed magical species or find true love along the way.

The Hug Offensive by ingenius - magic powers

When he's five, Patrick figures out that he has a super power. He thinks it's awesome.

under your skin by hazel - bodyswap

Patrick goes to bed that night in Tazer’s guest room. It’s not the first time he’s slept there, but it’s the first time he’s tried to sleep in Tazer’s body. His legs want to kick out weirdly into the corners of the bed, and his head can’t find a comfortable position on the pillow. He drops off eventually anyway, worn from the current of rage he’s been carrying around all day and the constant slow rhythm of Tazer’s heartbeat, drumming in his chest like a cage.

yours and/or mine by demotu - bodyswap

Jonny shows Patrick how it works. And by "it", I mean his dick. Jonny's, but temporarily Patrick's.

love is a contact sport by hazel and mermaid ★ - soul bond

"And the tragic reality of Patrick's life is that even though they broke up over a year ago, he and Johnny still play beautiful hockey together."

A high school AU, featuring dream-fish, bad movie dates, and a little bit of magic.

glory days by liketheroad - soul bond

He never expected his destiny to involve anything but hockey, never thought it would show up in flip flops, but when Patrick smiles at him across the locker room, quick and surprised, Johnny lets his priorities shift and change without a hint of reluctance or regret.

22 by aohatsu ★- soulmate

There’s no other explanation. His soulmate must have turned twenty-two yesterday.

more magical Realism and fantasy

say it with flowers by hazel ★

GOOD WORK, YOUNG HAWK, the oak tree outside his building booms once the season’s over, and Patrick smiles sleepily in its direction.

He's never been sure how the trees of Chicago know about hockey—trees hear a lot, but it's not like he's ever stopped in a public park to ask one about it.

The Purity Myth by downjune ★

Patrick Kane is a unicorn—the ferocious, foul-mouthed, man-hating kind.

these are the fables on my street by Fahye ★

Patrick makes a fucking superhuman effort, sweeps up the mess of his emotions, and stashes his incipient freakout about all of this somewhere in the back of his mind where he can have it later. When Jonny's back in the driver's seat, and Patrick's had a chance to bring up the whole blowjobs-and-beach-walks issue. Focused on the win, that's Patrick Kane.

Custos by hatrickane

The legend goes as this: The Sorcerer of Mount Custos, the guardian, serves as the protector of the farmfolk.

Patrick thinks it's bullshit.

I have as much soul as you (and full as much heart) by Mayhem10

Jonathan Toews was born with only half a heart. He didn't know that the other half existed, let alone that it was held by some irritating American named Patrick Kane.

A Magical Realism AU

May your past be the sound by elareine

After that, Jonny set some rules for himself.

1. No using his power for himself. That just looked like a slippery slope to him. Helping others was fine, though. 2. Consequently, no manipulating the outcome of a game, no matter how badly he wished to change the way he’d played. That would be unfair and undermine any victories. 3. No relationships with teammates. Not related to the time travel thing, but important enough to include in this list. Just because he could turn back time didn’t mean he had to create any more opportunities for a giant clusterfuck than necessary.

(Five times Jonny travelled back in time, one time he couldn't, and one time he chose not to.)

Like a Leaf That's Caught In the Tide by Frosting50

For more than 200 years the Toews men have been blamed for everything that’s ever gone wrong in the town of Pumpkin Hollow. Or the Practical Magic AU no one asked for.

bring it if you really want it by staraflur

It starts like this:

Well, okay, Patrick has no idea how it actually starts. But as pertains to him (in other words, the important part), it goes a little something like so: America, being a nation composed in large part of a melting pot of immigrants who may or may not have taken over land already owned by others using less-than-savory means, doesn’t have much of a magical national identity. Much less a magical continental identity. There’s no grand heritage going back thousands of years. Magical families home-schooled all their kids until, like, the 1800’s, and tough for the muggle-born, apparently. Hopefully you got noticed by someone who knew what to do with you before you got burned at the stake. Since you probably can’t control your powers, sport.

forget met (not) by hippietoews

“You're remembering him, aren't you?" Pat asks. Jon hums quietly.

After the battle with Pitch, Jon never talked about his memories. He didn't share anything about his previous life with the other Guardians. He knows that they have memories of their own previous lives, but they seem so unattached to them now.

Who they are now is what matters.

Long Way Home by tictactoews

Jonathan Toews is a young heir to the Winnipeg castle and estate, but this comfortable and sheltered life is not what he really wants. When circumstances force him to join a group of Grey Wardens - warriors dedicated to defend the world against monstrous enemies - Jonathan finds a new life and new friends, including two runaways from the neighboring country of Orlais, an old friend who's now back in his life, and a rogue elf who will come to mean more to Jonathan than he ever expected anyone could.

Dragon Age AU. No prior knowledge of the game necessary to read this story.Spoilers (if any) for Origins and Awakening.No spoilers for Inquisition.

the times i spent with you

"Pat plays Quidditch because not playing feels like dying. It's just that simple." Quidditch AU

through the mirrored maze

Jonathan's relationship with his daemon is different from anyone else's.

together again for the very first time by draftingletters

Like, seriously, this is the great fucking irony of Kaner’s life. You’d think it’d be pretty awesome, having powers of prophecy and all that, but all the dreams that end up coming true are so hideously fucking boring. It’s the perfectly natural normal dreams his brain spits out that are fucked up. The kind where he plays for the Ducks, or is a professional florist, or a neon green elephant. Or banging Tazer.

the walls kept tumbling down (in the city that we loved) series by altri_uccelli 

“Patrick wonders idly what Toews' daemon is; something like a python, maybe, or a bird of prey. It would just figure if it were a hawk, Patrick thinks in disgust; he's already starting to hate Toews a little so he tries to dial it back. Then he notices a big cat—some kind of, like, mountain lion—sitting well apart from the other daemons. It's watching the ice intently, and if Patrick had anyone to bet with, he knows where he'd put his money.”

+ fighting dragon remix ★ by altri_uccelli

A month ago, Jon thinks: a month ago he hadn't even heard of daemons, hadn't yet had his life turned upside down by a talking otter and a boy with dimples and the smoothest skin he'd ever touched and secrets held close behind long-lashed blue eyes.

world enough and time

The effect is instantaneous: Jonathan jerks forwards, gasping, and over the white-noise screaming his eyes are wide and frightened and fiercely alive. In that instant Patrick thinks, clear as a bell, god, he’s gorgeous. Fuck. (A Pushing Daisies AU.)

For fic inquires. Rec me a fic? Happy reading!

[jahaanofmenaphos]

Art by the awesome @tommieglenn!

Of Gods and Men Summary:

When the gods returned to Gielinor, their minds were only on one thing: the Stone of Jas, a powerful elder artefact in the hands of Sliske, a devious Mahjarrat who stole it for his own ends and entertainment. He claims to want to incite another god wars, but are his ulterior motives more sinister than that? And can the World Guardian, Jahaan, escape from under Sliske’s shadow?

Read the full work here:

ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN

FANFICTION.NET

TUMBLR CHAPTER INDEX

QUEST 02: RITUAL OF THE MAHJARRAT

QUEST SUMMARY:

With the Mahjarrat Ritual upon them, Jahaan, Sir Tiffy and the others venture into the frozen North in an attempt to curtail Lucien’s latest power grab and reclaim the Staff of Armadyl. But a bloodcurdling battle of the Mahjarrat might be the least of their worries…

CHAPTER 2: RETURN OF LUCIEN

Enakhra was annoyed. She’d been waiting beside the Ritual Marker now for hours, shivering in the fiercely cold terrain. Mahjarrat were not made for the winter; her tribe's home world of Freneskae didn’t exactly have anything other than ‘bloody hot’ on the temperature scale. Hence, she much preferred her home in the desert. The only saving grace was that, while waiting, she’d spent the most part of it undisturbed. Akthanakos turned up about an hour ago, not even giving her a small wave in greeting before standing on the opposite end of the plateau. Neither Mahjarrat enjoyed small talk. That, and it was no small secret that the two despised each other. Akthanakos had spent much of his time on Gielinor with the camels in the desert, teaching them to fight and conversing with them through the aptly named ‘camlet’, the amulet of camel-speak. This association went so far that he began being depicted as the ‘camel-headed god’, even by the humans of the desert. Enakhra, on the other hand, had spent thousands of years dwelling inside the temple she had built to honour Zamorak. Her god visited the temple once, and did not receive the gesture as well as Enakhra had hoped. She still found the time to capture and imprison her bitter rival, Akthanakos, inside, until he was eventually freed by a budding explorer.

Such acts did not calm the already turbulent waters between the two...

When’s this thing going to start? Enakhra grumbled internally, cursing herself for her promptness.

Boredom fueled her intense impatience, as there was only so many times you could count the tiles beside the marker or try and catch snowflakes on your tongue. She stopped the latter as soon as Akthanakos had arrived.

Then, as if karma was punishing her for her restlessness, the last person she wanted to talk to teleported in and made a b-line towards her, attempting and failing at a suave swagger.

“Hey Enakhra.”

“Zemouregal,” she rolled her eyes. “I don’t feel like talking right now. There’s plenty of plateau to go around. Go stand with Akky.”

Relaxing into a casual stance, Zemouregal replied, “I think I like it right here.”

Rubbing her cold hands together, she shot him a look of intense irritation. “As if the Ritual wasn't tedious and miserable enough…”

“You know, you really need to get over yourself, Enakhra,” he grumbled, frustration getting the better of him. “You think you’re so much better than everyone, just because you're the last female Mahjarrat. Arrogance doesn't suit you.”

“This coming from the man who wrote ‘This is me. I am amazing’ next to his own name when making notes on the Mahjarrat.”

At this, Zemouregal froze. “How did… y-you read my notes?”

The smile she flashed was wicked. Finally, she thought, I've found a way to shut that mouth of his.

After a long enough silence to make his embarrassment crystal clear, Zemouregal cleared his throat and tried to pick up some of the dignity he'd dropped on the plateau. He narrowed his eyes and tightly warned, “You know, it’s better to make allies than enemies at a time like this.”

“Right,” she scoffed. “Because someone might suggest, ‘I have an idea - shall we kill the last surviving female of our race and doom us all into extinction?’, to which the reply will be, ‘what a splendid idea!’. Yes, Zemouregal. That’s astute.”

“Oh yes, you’re really continuing our survival, pining after Zamorak like that.”

“Shut up,” Enakhra hissed. “When will you take the hint, Zemouregal? I’m. Not. Interested!”

Zemouregal threw his hands in the air. “It’s literally for the survival of our species! Our child would be the future of our race!”

“If the future of our race has your blood, evolution has already failed us.”

Jahaan woke up at dawn, having gained only a handful of hours of sleep. With all that had transpired the previous day, relaxation wasn’t exactly in the cards for him. After tossing and turning for about an hour, he finally lulled himself to sleep by counting sheep. A classic, but when you get up to three hundred and two, your brain shuts down out of boredom.

Pulling himself out of bed, he rubbed the sand from around his eyes. The bunk next to him, Ali’s, was already empty, and the door to their chamber was open.

Stumbling to his feet, Jahaan dragged himself out the door, thinking some brisk morning air would wake him up enough to begin the day. When he reached the balcony, Ali was already outside, pondering up at the fading stars that were being eased from the sky by dawn’s early light.

Ali didn’t turn around. He didn’t have to. Instead, he simply stated, “The planets have aligned. The Ritual begins now.”

Once everyone awoke that morning, preparations were immediately made for the Ritual to come. This included gearing up with armour, weapons and other useful items. Now, while he did have a rather nice runite dagger, Jahaan didn’t fancy his chances against Lucien with a fishing net and a tinderbox. Bringing this up to Sir Tiffy, the old knight assured he’d sort him out in a jiffy.

The longer he awaited Sir Tiffy’s return, the more his excitement grew. The anticipation of getting to wear some decent armour was like a boyhood dream come true. After all, the best he’d ever worn was mithril, way back in the day. It was incredibly decent, for sure, but Temple Knight armour - heck, even White Knight armour - was superior to that.

His expectations were soaring.

However, when Sir Tiffy returned with three squires in tow, two heaving large, dusty crates and a third hefting a long, rickety box, his expectations were cut down a little bit.

“‘Fraid there was a little snafew, old sport. Something about protocol, initiations, yada-yada… long story short, the armoury’s off limits to you, my lad.”

Doing his best to hide his disappointment, Jahaan watched with quiet desperation as Sir Tiffy blew onto the old crates, an innocuous act that ended up forming a dust cloud so big he started choking on it.

“These here belong to a couple of the knights,” Sir Tiffy continued, wiping his monocle clear. “I say, it’s been here almost as long as I have. They forgot they even had it! What?”

With apprehension far overwhelming his former anticipation, Jahaan pried the lid off the first crate. However, when he laid eyes on the contents, he gulped, mouth suddenly feeling very dry.

Then, he started to grin.

“I think this’ll do just fine.”

Jahaan would leave the White Knights Castle wearing his new armour, a full set of runite. It fit like a glove, moulded perfectly to his form. While he thought that mithril was good, compared to wearing runite, mithril was like wearing granite. The mobility it provided was so significant, he felt like he could traverse the Barbarian Agility Course in this thing. Plus, it was so much lighter in weight, and a lot quieter too - no more bumbling about with the stealth and grace of a pigeon. Despite being second hand, there was barely a scratch on it, and no dents in sight. Jahaan wondered if it had ever been worn.

The weapons he had been provided with… ehh…

Glass half full, glass half full, Jahaan reminded himself, awkwardly clutching his steel kiteshield and scimitar.

Full runite armour, full steel weapons.

One of these things is not like the other.

Soon enough, everyone was ready to go to the Ritual.

Idria and Sir Tiffy tried, in vain, to convince Akrisae to stay behind and not attend the Ritual - the man was a priest who hadn’t swung a sword in over twenty years - but he couldn’t be talked out of going, preaching something about wanting to keep a ‘close eye’ on the Mahjarrat. It was like arguing with a brick wall.

Sir Tiffy gathered a group of his strongest Temple Knights to accompany him, while Idria took two other Guardians of Armadyl alongside her. They didn’t have too many to spare, to be honest. Thaerisk rounded up some druids that had combat experience to attend as well.

Fortunately, all the druids were well-versed in teleportation magic and, between them, they managed to teleport the entire entourage in one go.

In the iciest depths of the Wilderness was the Mahjarrat Ritual Site. Technically it was located within Troll Country, between the Trollweiss Mountains, but no trolls had traversed the Ritual Site in centuries. The closest points of ‘civilisation’ were Zemouregal's Fortress to the west, and the abandoned Zarosian fortress of Ghorrock to the north. Aside from the Marker and a few crumbled pillars, the plateau was vast and empty, blanketed by snow.

Fortunately, Ali had told them all to dress up warm enough, but nevertheless, neither knight nor druid was prepared for just how cold the site was.

“I say!” Sir Tiffy hunched his shoulders. “A bit nippy, isn’t it, ol’ chap?”

Ali, too, was shivering, despite having detoured back to his home in Nardah for some fur-lined clothes. “This is why I like the desert. Before we continue, I wanted to reiterate how thankful I am to have the support of your forces against Lucien. I fear we will need them before long. These things never go down peacefully. The other Mahjarrat will have their own forces, too. One just hopes they train them on Lucien and not us.”

“Think nothing of it, ol’ chap, “Sir Tiffy slapped Ali on the back. “We want him gone just as much as you.”

Smiling warmly, Ali said, “Come now, the Ritual Marker itself is just up this ridge…”

But before they could walk much further, Ali stopped abruptly, sensing a disturbance.

Then, in a whirl of blue and purple, a bulky looking Mahjarrat warrior in battle-hardened steel and black armour teleported into the fray. A skull emblem was emblazoned crookedly upon his chest, matching the bare skeleton of his skinless head. His sword was about as tall as Jahaan, and looked like it weighed as much, though he carried the razor-sharp blade with ease, what with his frame being as bulky and as statuesque as it was.

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then this particular Mahjarrat had flattered a lot of large boulders in his time.

Accompanying him were human troops - looking like dwarves in comparison, but they were most certainly human - in similar armour, carrying steel longswords. When looking between the Mahjarrat’s blade and the ones the human’s carried, they might as well have been wielding butter knives.

The Mahjarrat drove his sword into the snow and rested on the hilt. “So, all the vermin together in a pack, ready to be slaughtered like lambs!”

Ali the Wise rolled his eyes. “You never were our brightest star, Khazard. 'Vermin slaughtered like lambs'? What mess of idioms is that?”

Despite the insult, General Khazard’s fearsome demeanour relaxed into a somewhat casual one. He squinted his eyes, leaning forward slightly. “Wahisietel, is that you?”

“What are you talking about?” Sir Tiffy demanded. “Who's Wahisietel?”

Khazard pointed to Ali, a baffled smirk getting the better of him. “He is!”

With a wave of his hand, Khazard cast a spell that engulfed Ali the Wise in stars and glowing white light. In mere moments, it faded away, leaving a olive robed Mahjarrat in its place, red lines crossing over his slightly spiked skull, with a gem in the middle of his forehead.

Akrisae jumped back, aghast. “What in Saradomin's name is this? What fowl abomination have you brought upon us, Jahaan?!”

Instead of answering, Jahaan regarded Ali with solemn, heavy eyes, mumbling, “...Ali?...”

Frowning, Ali turned to Jahaan and rested a hand on his shoulder. “I apologise for the deception, my friend. ‘Ali’ was a necessary disguise in human lands. My real name is Wahisietel.”

The Mahjarrat turned to the apprehensive knights and warriors - alongside a fearful priest - behind him and addressed, “You need not fear me. I am still on your side. Do not waver now, save your holy crusades for later. We have Khazard and his lackeys here to worry about first.”

“And worried you should be!” Khazard scowled, “I think you'll make the perfect sacrifice for the Ritual, Wahisietel, just as soon as we've dealt with these maggots!”

Akrisae edged closer to Sir Tiffy and whispered, “Should we get some more back-up?”

“No need…”

This response did not come from Sir Tiffy. Rather, it came from Azzanadra, who materialised just in front of them. Bringing forth a ball of pulsing energy to his palms, he stared down Khazard and declared, “This child is not worth the effort. We can deal with him ourselves.”

“Knights, ADVANCE!” Sir Tiffy bellowed, causing his Temple Knights to surge into combat. They clashed with Khazard’s mortal troop, black and white melting together as steel battled with armour and, occasionally, flesh.

From their vantage point beside the Marker, Enakhra and Zemouregal just sat back and enjoyed the show, the latter wishing he had bought drinks and refreshments. Akthanakos watched on with trepidation, not daring to get involved.

They watched as Azzanadra sent a rush of smoke to engulf Khazard, seeing him stumble backwards ever so slightly, only to return with a fierce blood spell of his own that Azzanadra barely had time to deflect.

The younger Mahjarrat had discarded his sword very quickly, having enough wits about him to know to fight fire with fire, and that trying to cross the distance of the plateau to charge his opponents with his blade would leave him vulnerable. Alongside his impressive sword skills, Khazard was an incredibly apt sorcerer, casting intrinsic and deadly blood and smoke spells with ease.

Unfortunately for him, Wahisteil and Azzanadra were a lot more proficient, especially the latter, and thus the younger Mahjarrat realised soon on he had bitten off more than he could chew. Nevertheless, he kept fighting on, knowing that all it took was one well-placed, highly impactful strike on his part to extinguish the flame of one of his Mahjarrat brethren, and it would all be over. The Ritual would be complete, everyone else would be rejuvenated, and he wouldn’t have to see any of the miserable fools for another five hundred years.

That last thought alone made fighting an uphill battle much easier.

Between them, Jahaan, the Guardians of Armadyl and the Temple Knights managed to keep Khazard’s elite troops at bay, allowing Wahisietel and Azzanadra to take on Khazard personally. The soldier’s Khazard had bought were incredibly well-versed in melee combat, holding their own against the numbers disadvantage quite formidably. A handful of Temple Knights even fell victim to their blades, and one of the Guardians of Armadyl severely wounded her leg due to a carefully targeted lunge of a dagger, effectively sidelining her for the rest of the ensuing battle. While a couple of druids tended to her, the other two continued their assault on the Khazard troops from a distance, sending precise and effective spells at their opponents.

With a malicious cackle from Khazard, a targeted burst of lightning struck the ground beside him and, from the crack in the earth, a skeletal, ghostly apparition pulled itself from the ground. When it reached the surface, it was apparent that this was Khazard’s deceased hellhound - and Postie Pete’s worst nightmare - Bouncer, raised from its eternal slumber to aid him in combat once more. Bearing his teeth with a constant growl, his mouth was full of daggers.

The undead hellhound launched itself at Jahaan, gnashing teeth biting and snapping at the young man who fell to his back in shock. His shield fell to the side, but luckily, Jahaan got his scimitar up to protect his head, pushing back Bouncer with all his strength as the dog tried to chew his sword in two. Jahaan shrunk back into the snow, wincing away from the growling and barking monster pinning him to the ground. Then, suddenly, Bouncer fell limp on top of him with a muffled whine before disappearing in a puff of smoke altogether. Looking up, Jahaan saw Wahisietel send him a brief nod of reassurance before resuming his attack on Khazard. Scrambling to his feet, Jahaan readjusted his grip on his sword and went to work on some of the remaining Khazard troops.

Before long, all of Khazard’s elite troops were all defeated, scattered and wounded in crimson patches around the plateau. Azzanadra’s latest blast had sent Khazard to the ground, next to the unconscious body of one of his soldiers. After looking around and seeing his army in pieces, realisation sunk in.

General Khazard pulled himself to his feet, clutching his wounded shoulder. “Ha! You think I'll end up being the one sacrificed today? Not likely!”

In a flash, he teleported away, the sound of maniacal laughter being the only remnant he left behind.

Jahaan’s shoulders sagged. “After all that, he just runs off?”

Wahisietel straightened his cuffs. “Fear not, Jahaan. Khazard may be a cowardly child, but even he is not stupid enough to leave the area at such an important time. He’ll return.”

Leaving the wounded where they were to be tended to by druids, the remaining forces of Sir Tiffy, flanked by the Mahjarrat, made their way up towards the Ritual Marker. Azzanadra scowled at Zemouregal, the first one to catch his eye, but did exchange a friendly nod of greeting to Akthanakos.

“And here I was hoping Khazard could be sacrificed before I had to bother conversing with you two,” Azzanadra cast heavy eyes at the two Zamorakian Mahjarrat.

“It’s not going to be Khazard,” Zemouregal stated, his challenging glare not flinching against the weight of Azzanadra’s. “I’m not having a Zamorakian sacrificed today.”

Enakhra joined him, “As much as I hate to agree with this tool, I concur.”

Akthanakos protested, “No! It will be Lucien or Khazard. Oh how I’d love it to be you, Enakhra. If you weren’t the last of your gender, you’d have been thrown to the Marker ages ago.”

“Well, it’s not going to be me. Besides, I would toss you to the Marker without even breaking a sweat.”

“Your mind is warped by your arrogance, Enhakra,” Akthanakos growled. “My power supersedes yours with ease, and I’ll take on any Zamorakian that challenges me.”

“Please! You were too scared to join in on the fun.”

“I didn’t see you throwing any punches out there!”

Stomping away from the pack, Wahisietel demanded into the skies, “This is ridiculous. Come out and fight, Khazard! Prove yourself, coward, or face oblivion!”

“Khazard's not here... Will I do, Wahisietel?” the voice floated alongside the snowflakes, sinister and malicious.

Wahisietel’s eyes narrowed. “Lucien!”

“Yes, it is I…”

In a haze of black and smoke, Lucien teleported directly in front of the Ritual Marker. From years of decay his skin had withered away to nothingness, leaving only the frail, haunting shell of his skeletal frame. The crimson robes he draped himself in did little to shield the emptiness of his body. Yet despite his hollow exterior, he somehow managed to give an imposing, almost commanding presence. Perhaps it was the way his robes flowed that gave the illusion of strength and muscle, or the pulled back lips that showed the ridges of his jaw, or the sunken black sockets of his eyes being filled with an icy green glow. There was a stench of death and overwhelming magic that surrounded him, too.

Zemouregal strode to stand closer to the arriving Mahjarrat. “Greetings, cousin. You came at the perfect time. I was growing tired of these Zarosians.”

Instinctively, Idria’s fists clenched into tight balls, her vision turning red as she spat, “Lucien, you murderer!”

Lucien cackled, regarding the assembled entourage with disgust. “And what's this? You've bought some feeble excuse for backup with you too. Who do we have… a faltering priest, an old man, and-”

When his eyes laid on Jahaan, they lit up with malice. “And so we meet again, adventurer.”

“And this time will be the last time, Lucien,” Jahaan didn’t care how cliched he sounded. “You'll answer for the deaths you've caused.”

“How dare you address a god in such an insolent tone!” Lucien exclaimed, venom on his tongue.

Wahisietel retorted, “You're no god, Lucien. You’re just a petty thief.”

“Well said!” Sir Tiffy cheered. “Where’s the Stone, sneak?”

“Like I'd tell you. The Stone is mine and mine alone. Allow me to demonstrate some of the power these new artefacts have given me!”

With a hand in the air, Lucien summonend the Staff of Armadyl into his grasp with a malevolent sneer. Holding the Staff aloft, Lucien caused a grey skull of smoke and ash to emanate from the peak. It washed over him, transforming into pulsing rings of black and purple energy. The ground began to shake, cracking the ice. From these cracks, the ground morphed into two dozen ice-based monsters, covered in spikes and flashing glowing red eyes.

Wahisietel shrunk back a few steps. “Oh no… this isn’t good at all…”

Sir Tiffy, on the other hand, kept a steady expression of resolve. “We'll do our bit if you can hold off Lucien again, old chap!”

Wahisietel nodded. “I'll do what I can, but I fear this will require more power than I own.”

“Then perhaps it is time for us to fight alongside each other once more, brother...” a voice echoed through the crisp breeze.

Fading out of thin air came a black and purple robed being; his skinless appearance and tall stature suggested he, too, was a Mahjarrat. He was hunched over, wringing his skeletal hands together constantly, like some sort of nervous tick.

Jahaan jumped backwards as the man appeared next to him. “Gah! Where did he come from?”

Wahisietel hurried beside the newcomer, a relieved smile breaking into his face. “Praise Zaros! Sliske! Always in the right place at the right time.”

Lucien’s eyes narrowed into slits. “Ah, Sliske. I wondered when you might slink in... but you should have stayed hidden in your shadows this time. What can you alone hope to do against the power of Lucien?”

Sliske’s lipless mouth cracked into a grin, his lifeless eyes challenging Lucien. “Who said anything about being alone?”

Teleporting backwards, Sliske held out his arms, and they began to shake and quiver as energy pulsed through them. One by one, six fully armoured warriors were summoned in front of him. Their green armour was cracked and dented, rusted slightly from age, but their weapons, my...  they were unparalleled, some of the finest craftsmanship in the five ages. One held a large crossbow with a quiver full of knife-like bolts at his hip. Another, a fearsome battleaxe that looked like it weighed as much as he did. One held a ball and chain, another a curved spear, and another a twin set of warhammers. The last, hooded and cloaked, held a battlestaff. Though they all wore some sort of face protection, one thing could be realised if looking closely enough…

...they didn’t have pupiled eyes.

Sneering, Zemouregal drawled, “Still the puppetmaster as always, Sliske. Well, two can play at that game…”

In a wisp of darkness and shadows, Zemouregal summoned his loyal gargoyle commander, Sharathteerk, to his side, alongside half a dozen armoured zombies. The poor being hadn’t quite got around to dying yet, it seemed.

“I come at your call, my lord,” Sharathteerk bowed before his master, his rocky joints creaking with the action.

Gritting his teeth, Lucien pointed towards Sliske and the surrounding group, barking, “DESTROY THEM ALL!”

DISCLAIMER:

As Of Gods and Men is a reimagining, retelling and reworking of the Sixth Age, a LOT of dialogue/characters/plotlines/etc. are pulled right from the game itself, and this belongs to Jagex.

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[well-hidden-hot-mess]

an update and more rambles (what else is new?)

Well things have changed a lot since my last post. Good and bad things. Just lots of things. This is going to be a long one so buckle up. You’ve been warned.

I (FINALLY!!!) moved to my dream city that I’ve been dreaming of for the last 10 years and it’s everything I’ve ever wanted and more. I truly feel at home in a way I’ve never felt before and it’s so freeing. That’s something I need to remind myself when I feel like I’m drowning in stress and just life - just stop, take a second and remember that you did something that so many people never have the balls to do (aka pick up their entire lives and move across the country from everything they’ve ever known and everyone they care about and everything that was “safe” to them to embark on a whole new life in a brand new place where they know no one) and not just to any place, but to the place that you instantly knew was your home the second you landed over 10 years ago and decided to do what you knew deep down would be the best decision you’ve ever made in your life and guess what. It was the best decision you’ve ever made and it worked out despite all of the days spent worrying about “what if I hate it there? what if I fail and have to come back home with my tail between my legs and admit that I was wrong? what if my happy place isn’t all that I expected it to be and I realize I made a huge mistake?” and do I regret a single thing about taking that chance? Not even the slightest bit. Yes I do miss having my family so close (especially my puppy since he doesn’t understand how to FaceTime) and I miss that sense of security of having my safety net/support group so close by but I’m starting to finally feel like I’m growing roots here and it’s honestly just such a good feeling. Fuck why am I crying? lol. I love my home here and I’m so proud of myself for putting myself before all the stupid worry/doubt my brain kept pushing at me and saying fuck it I’m doing this. It’s the best decision I’ve ever made and that wouldn’t have been possible without me standing up against those inner demons or whatever and it feels great to finally have won/have some sort of victory over them so next time they’re taking over again, I can be like yo remember what happened last time you fought back harder than you ever had? Look what happened, you changed your life and got out of the dead end miserable existence you had and created a life that makes you truly happy in a place that makes you feel more alive than you ever thought possible. You did that. No one else did it for you. Yes you had help along the way but you did it. If I can do something that I’ve truly felt like I've been called to do for over a decade despite all of the scariness/risks/etc and put myself out there and put my happiness first over those stupid inner demons, I can honestly do anything. Well that turned into way more of a rant than intended but that’s what I do here lol.

Originally before I left, wifey had told me she had free tickets to go see Luke Bryan/Cole Swindell at Jones Beach and since I wasn’t sure when I was moving I was like oh 100% I’ll go. Then we figured out my move date was 4th of July (Independence Day - so fitting lol) and the concert was July 17th. Wifey was saying how sad she was that I wasn’t going to be able to go since I’ll have moved already and it’s our yearly tradition to see him now. I looked at her surprised and was like “umm she’s been my best friend for almost 15 years and acts like she’s never met me before...?”. So needless to say, 2 weeks after I moved, I flew back home to CT to go to the show with her, Jenny, Kristin, and Sam and holy. shit. It was my first concert at Jones Beach so that was cool. We picked up Kristin in NYC on the way there and had the best time blasting music and singing and pregaming on the way there. We got to go to a meet and greet and listening party for Cole Swindell. He was super sweet and we got to hear 2 of his songs that weren’t released yet/wouldn’t be released. It was so I don’t even know the word to describe how cool it was and how like full my soul felt to see him listening to the songs along with us and you could just feel the passion radiating out of him while the songs were playing and I just felt like the grinch where my heart grew three sizes in that moment. It was so refreshing to see that that passion and pureness does still exist in this crazy world and it was just a moment I’ll never forget. Then we went to the concert where we were originally like halfway up the stadium and when wifey sent a thank you text to who got us the tickets with a picture from the seats, they were like umm no that’s not good enough and were told to go meet some guy from security. So we go over and as we’re waiting, I turn around and in the most like hidden seats I see Theresa aka the Long Island Medium and her daughter just sitting there like NBD. So I freak out about that obviously and have to tell my mom but the selfie attempts failed so I was sad. But then we were lead into the pit and I was 3 people away (security included) away from Luke the entire show. I don’t think I blinked the entire time. I felt kinda bad because wifey was like “oh come over here there’s more room” and I was like “I love you but this is the only chance I might ever have to be this close to the love of my life/obsession so I’m going to stay here if that’s okay” and she immediately understood and was like “yep, say no more” and we were close enough where if something happened I could turn and make eye contact with them so it was okay. It was honestly the best night of my entire life so far and did I mention that he made direct eye contact with/sang to me for a few seconds during Play It Again? Because he did and I’m pretty sure I felt my soul leave my body at that moment. That night was easily in the top 10 greatest moments I’ll ever have in my life and I regret not a single thing. The hassle of having to pack up and fly home in the midst of not even being close to done unpacking was beyond worth it and I’d do it all over again a million times. 

Okay let’s see what else. So I got offered a job at the first interview I went to which was a nice little ego/confidence boost as the assistant manager of a spa (ironic I know since the last spa managers I’ve known have been nice but the bane of my existence most of the time lol) in a town like 20 mins outside of the city. I had to be incognito about being the new manager for the first 3 months as like a trial period to make sure it was a good fit before we announced it to everyone. I wish I could say it’s been all sunshine and rainbows since then but seeing how this is the first new job I’ve had in 6 years, the beginning was a bit rough. I’m used to being the veteran that knows everything and is the go to person but now I was the newbie who felt like they didn’t know anything (because I didn’t lol) and felt kinda useless at the beginning during training because I was so eager to jump in and help and show my true work ethic and all that but it’s hard to do when you have zero idea what you’re talking about. Then they kinda dumped on me that in a few months they wanted me to be ready to move up to full on spa manager and I panicked hard. Then the manager left for a week and a half on vacation where she wasn’t reachable if I needed help and let’s just say it was just short of a disaster. I also contracted a respiratory infection during that time and had literally zero voice above a faint whisper even if I tried yelling and it was so painful to breathe/exist let alone run a spa when I feel like I was not prepared at all for that. Then when she came back we had a talk and I was told that I had disappointed the owners since they thought I should’ve handled things better despite being sick and that I'm not further along into being ready for that role. That fucking hurt because I was killing myself just to get there each day and survive and I was trying to be positive and get things done when inside and outside I was clearly dying. Then after some reflection, I sat down with her again and we had a very productive talk. I explained that I didn’t ask many questions before she left because I didn’t know what I didn’t know until I was left alone with no one to go to for help and it was all on me. I also explained how before this job, my highest role was equivalent to a lead SA there and this was all brand new to me. I wasn’t the one making the big decisions with clients or dealign with managing the entire staff instead of like 10 people but mainly like 5 who were more than just coverage people if needed or doing inventory or reports or calling the shots on when to waive final payments or the 24 hour cancellation fee or any of that. I think once she kinda understood where I was coming from and that was laid out in front of her, she realized I needed to actually be trained not just tell me how to do things when problems arise and since it had been so crazy busy with gift card season and the holidays and vacations and training the influx of new SAs, we didn’t do any specific manager training other than when problems came up in the moment. So things became a lot different and we’re putting aside time to really train and get me prepared for my current role and the future role too. During all of this, my depression took full control of me for a month or two and really took a nose dive after the week I was left alone (I’ll go into more of that later on) and it really affected my work. I was constantly 20 or more minutes late despite numerous talking to’s, I wasn’t fully present despite how hard I was trying to be, my sales went out the window, my team lost respect for me (I don’t blame them for that at all since I was so in my own little bubble and focused on just surviving another day that I wasn’t up to my full potential and not able to support them in the way I should’ve/want to be), I stopped working out and was binge eating the worst foods constantly and gained about 40lbs in a few short months (sound familiar?). Then a couple weeks ago, I got written up for being late and if it continued, I would be demoted to SA and then eventually fired and that was exactly the kick in the ass I needed to get my ass back in gear and lift myself out of that depression slump. I’ve been at least 5 minutes early for every shift since then and have been actively making sure I’m there for my team and learning how to be a better manager to help support them and the business as a whole. I feel so much more in control of my life and it feels fucking great. I don’t dread going to work each day anymore and don’t have to fight to get out of bed each day to get there and don't feel so hopeless like I'll never be good enough for them no matter how hard I try (aka how I felt after that week of being alone). I had my latest one on one yesterday and my boss kept saying how much improvement she’s seen in me and feels so much more confident in me as that potential future spa manager now that she’s seen how hard I've been working to do my best. Like I wasn’t holding back tears but I was one tiny step before that because I was so happy that my hard work is being recognized and is paying off. I truly do want to do my best there and she sees that and appreciates it and that’s just not something I’m used to so it’s like “oh this is what being in a non toxic work environment is like... this is what it’s like being appreciated and supported by management.... huh...”. So that’s pretty cool. And I even got a fleece zip up with the company logo on it as a reward kinda which just added to it lol. I’ve been there 6 months and got a really nice fleece zip up when after 6 YEARS at EQX all I got was a stupid hat lol. I don’t know if being with this company is a lifelong thing but it’s working for me now and I think it’s exactly where I should be, even just to learn how to be a manager and learn those skills to take with me elsewhere in the future so that’s pretty cool too. It can be stressful at times don’t get me wrong and I may have many homicidal thoughts that I would obviously never act on towards some of my coworkers at times when they drive me absolutely insane but I do enjoy being there and being part of that family/having that support. 

Now fitness/health wise. Where to start. So yeah the last few months has been spent binge eating my face off and honestly I think it started as a nice break from worrying about calories or the scale or the gym especially since my body was failing me and I felt terrible all the time and couldn’t push myself at all or I’d get one of my vertigo like migraines or overheat or just not have the physical ability to do anything so removing myself from that environment of always building frustration was probably a good thing. Well at least that’s how it started. Then the holidays hit, then work became crazy and my depression consumed me and I felt like shit to begin with so I had zero motivation to even try to meal prep or eat anything that wasn’t ordered off ubereats that was at least 5-10k calories each sitting. Plus my insomnia was the worst it’s been in years where I would stay up until 3 or 4 am each night watching Criminal Minds or Silent Witness or Dexter and wonder why I couldn’t function at all during work. So yeah, that’s how I got up to my most recent highest weight of 196lbs and seeing that number SUCKED. Was I surprised? Nope. Was I a little surprised it wasn’t higher than that? Yup lol. It wasn’t such huge blow because I knew how I had been eating/living so it’s like yeah that makes sense but still hurts none the less. So about 2 weeks ago I decided it was time (also right after when I got written up and kicked my ass back into gear in my life in general) and started just by using Norm to count my calories. My weight was all over the place and would spike from 194lbs down to 189lbs overnight, then back up to 192lbs and I was like wtf. I knew it was probably water weight fluctuations and all of that but like come on, it’s not even going in a downward trend at this point. Then a couple days in, I started working out again. That was rough. My first workout back I did 3 leg exercises with what was normally my warmup weight (10lb dumbbells) and I couldn’t move for a day and a half (thankfully I was off those 2 days) and then was still excruciatingly sore for another 3 days after that. So then once I could kinda move my legs without wanting to die, I did arm day and It wasn’t nearly as bad. My strength is absolute shit but that’s to be expected when the most movement you’ve had is walking across the hall pretty much to the elevator and the few steps out the door to meet your ubereats driver then going back upstairs to be horizontal again. But this week I’ve been getting up each morning (even on my days off or later work days) at 5am and staying awake while I wait the 1.5 hours for my Vyvanse to kick in and watching youtube videos to gently wake up/stay awake, then I’ll have my green supplement drink thing and take my vitamins and prep my work meals/snacks for the day and get ready, then head down to the gym by like 8am, work out for up to an hour depending on time/energy levels, then shower and get ready and leave at 9am to get to work by 9:30am and sit in the parking lot and do my makeup instead of how I used to spend my mornings aka wake up late, take Vyvanse too late, suffer through barely being able to function while getting ready and not making meals and having to buy food that was never healthy then end up rushing there and panicking while trying to put makeup on while doing 90mph on the highway and having the shame of arriving like 30 minutes late AGAIN and having to face my boss/coworkers. Much better start to the day I must say lol. I’m feeling a lot more like me again too which is a nice change from being a shell of a human fighting just to survive another hour let alone another day. So I’ve been on point with my food for the last like almost 2 weeks and my weight is still all over the place and I'm like what the actual fuck. Then I’m like super drained and have no strength, overheat from just picking up a weight, am exhausted to the point where one day after a harder but not actually hard workout I literally HAD to lay down because I was so drained at like 2pm and couldn’t physically move the rest of the day, one day I was so bloated it was beyond painful and I had no idea why since I ate the same things I have been and never had any reaction to and it was so much worse than when I ate 10k calories of all the gluten and dairy in the form of sonic shakes/mcdonalds meals/etc, and I'm just like what the actual fuck is going on body??? Then out of nowhere I'm like wait... are those... no it couldn’t be.... CRAMPS???? then out of nowhere it began and I'm like woah woah woah I get stabbed in the stomach once every 3 months so this doesn’t happen wtf is going on? Then I'm like oh I did wait a month too long in between the last rounds so that's probably it. So that’s a thing and it’s fucking rude since now I need to go get supplies since I threw all mine out since I thought I didn't have to deal with this anymore. ugh. Oh and get this. I finally got my lab results back from my blood test at the lyme doctor. Turns out I have another new co infection of lyme that I now have to deal with and treat. Super excited for that. NOT. I was texting my person and I was like “guess who has a new co infection for her lyme that’s already tried to kill her and then ruin her life many times?” and he goes “oh of course you do because why would you ever be allowed to get better?” and I'm like oh I'm so glad someone understands me lol because that was my reaction when I found out. I’m like oh of course I do, why wouldn’t I? *insert eye roll but laughing to cover how I'm really feeling about it*. So yeah now I have to figure all of that out so that should be fun. At least now I have health insurance lol. 

Okay last thing because I need to start my day since it’s already almost 9am and I'm still in bed. I went home for a week before Christmas since I wasn’t able to go home for actual Christmas and got to visit with family/friends. Everyone kept saying how much happier I seem and they could just feel how much happier I was since I moved and I'm like yup that is 100% correct. I got to spend time with dad’s side of the fam which was a lot of fun and reconnected with my sister for a much needed vent session on her part since it’s hard being 16 when you act like you’re 20 maturity wise and everyone else acts like they’re 16 and it’s countless amounts of drama and boys suck and girls suck and everyone sucks and college is looming and it’s a lot to deal with at once. So that was really nice to be able to sit down and be that big sister that she deserves and needs. I also went out to dinner with wifey and her family and re met her new man (since I was there for the brief moment when they first met then moved 2 days later lol) and had a blast. I really like him for her and think they're a great match and he’s gunna be around for a while if not forever and I’m a okay with that because he treats her like a queen and he is the male version of her to a scary point haha. Wifey was like attached to me the whole time I was there and it was so nice feeling so special and needed by her and the center of her attention for once. She wasn’t even drunk and was like almost crying when she realized that I flew home and made sure I was home for her birthday and how we’ve been friends for 15 years and never missed a birthday and god that meant so much to me I can’t even begin to put it into words. I was sad that was the only time I was going to be able to see her even though I made sure I kept Friday night open because it was her birthday weekend and this is her we’re talking about here but she didn’t seem to have any plans for it. Then her roomie pulled me aside and told me about a surprise party that her and the bf were planning for her so I was like ah that makes much more sense. So the day of I helped distract her via text and then went over and helped set up and brought booze because duh. The funny part was she was on the phone on speaker with the bf as I’m in the room with him helping him set up things and wasn’t allowed to make a sound so she wasn’t like wtf why are you two together???? That would not look good at all lol. Then she texted me saying how she and the roomie were going to go to his place to pregame then maybe out to a restaurant they love with a group of people so I'm like yes let’s do it. So I go over and give her her presents which were a big hit. A Friends show coffee table book that has a recap or whatever on every single episode (which was a big hit since it’s that show and it’s her but also because they went to a friends trivia night thing and she was saying how she wished she had something like that beforehand to brush up on things. That’s the wifey sixth sense kicking in haha), a cat calendar for her desk at work, fuzzy unicorn socks, and a couple other things since it was her birthday/Christmas present. She was like blown away at how in sync we were still despite not seeing each other for 6 months and life being crazy/not being able to talk as much. Then we finally go over to his place where we had set up the party room thing in his apartment building (same one an old friend lived in years ago where I pretty much lived so that was weird going back to to say the least) and she has NO idea at this point and I’m like this is amazing because normally she’d have figured it out weeks before now. As we’re walking into the party room to “meet up with him and his friends since they were having a drink over there” there's a glass two sided fireplace and she goes “wait... is that my sister??” and we’re like no, just keep going but she figured it out. She stops and goes wait, is this a surprise party....? And I'm like “just keep walking and smile” and we opened the curtains and it was indeed a surprise party. She was shocked and so happy and it made my heart melt to see her so happy. Then I was introduced to everyone as her “best friend/wife who moved to Nashville but flew back because in 15 years I’d never missed a birthday and not even all those miles between us would make me miss one” over and over again and it was so cute. It was like all of those years up putting up with some things that drove me insane that she did and all the times I was there for her but didn’t feel like I got that back from her was all worth it and she finally saw how good of a friend I really was to her all those years. Like she knew but I don't think she fully realized until that night and I just died in the best way that night. 

One last thing - so one of my big bucket list things is to see a Luke concert in Nashville. Has been for over 10 years since I found him and then visited here. Well for Christmas my stepfather normally gives me tickets to a show and wasn't sure which one I wanted so was like just let me know and we’ll make something happen. So flash forward to a week ago, Luke announced his next album and his next tour. Now the last like few years I've checked and it hasn’t said Nashville and same with a few other big country people I love (FGL, Cole, etc) so I wasn’t holding my breath. Then as I’m scanning the list, I see it. It’s there. July 30th. Nissan Stadium. So I spaz out and text my mother the link to where to get the tickets and which show and say THIS ONE. So I text wifey freaking out because of it happening at all but also that could be our yearly Luke show and I wouldn’t wanna experience that with anyone else. So she’s like yes omg but remind me when it gets to like June and I'll see what I can do to get us tickets or whatever and I'm like okay.... Then I'm like fuck it I'm going to at least get us 2 tickets just in case her connection doesn’t work out or something or she can’t come because of work or whatever. Like nothing crazy just something good enough so that if she gets us better ones, that’s great, if not, at least I'm guaranteed to be there and see him. Then I find out there's a pre sale for his fan club people so I join for $40 for the year because duh. Then the day of the pre sale I’m like texting my mom freaking because the tickets are going fast. The pit was sold out in under 10 minutes so she’s like okay I'll send you money and you go buy them . I’m like okay got it. So I'm looking and I'm like oh there’s a VIP package, what's that? (go big or go home right?). It includes a 2 song acoustic set before the concert with only other VIP people so a smallish group and then a free copy of his CD, a free t shirt or something, and I'm like I want that. How much is it? So the pit tickets I wasn’t able to get were like $250 each I think but these were like $335 so I'm like #yolo #treatyoself and bought those. Well where are my seats you ask? Oh I don't know just on the floor THREE ROWS FROM CENTER STAGE. Needless to say I was a wreck while purchasing the tickets until I got my confirmation and then spazzed out and felt like it was all a dream once I got them. It’s still not real. Like I think like it’s hit me 1% now and will go from 1 to 100% the moment I step into the arena. So now I have 6 months to get my body looking the best it can because I refuse to go into a bucket list thing in a body i’m not proud of and worrying about how I'll look in the pictures since they’ll be around forever and I just want to go enjoy and not worry about feeling fat or whatever in any way shape or form. Plus I'm doing all the hair growth treatments from now until then to make my hair long again before then because it’s so much more me and I feel so much better with long hair. I refuse to let a single physical thing about me take away from the experience and yes I know that's an issue I need to work out with my brain but I don't have time for that before the concert. Plus this was exactly the kick in the ass/ goal I needed to get back on track and start taking care of myself again so hey I'm not mad. It doesn’t matter what the motivation as long as it works right? So yeah I'm counting down the seconds until that day and I refuse to let my food cravings get in the way of me feeling my best that day or anything else for that matter and I'm going to have another night I'll never forget. GOD I”M SO EXCITED I CAN”T EVEN. 

Okay that’s it. I’m done and need to start my day. There’s more that I may or may not get to at some point soon but yeah. that's been my life the last few months. Still not sure on what my path in life is and still not fully settled here but it’s getting there and I know I’m on my way to fully building a life here that I love and makes me feel alive and like my true self and I can’t fucking wait. 

[flauntpage]

DGB Grab Bag: Traveling Jagrs, Mythical 1917, and Nutso Billy Smith

Three Stars of Comedy

The third star: This KHL player – This is technically from last week, but qualifies for this week's list due to the time zone difference.

The second star: The Travelling Jagrs add a member –

You've seen these guys before. They're a roving pack of Jagr impersonators who represent every one of the star's many stops around the hockey world. Now that he's in Calgary they need a new member, and the auditions seem to be going well.

The first star: Nathan Walker's butt makes history– He's the first Australian to ever play in the NHL, which earned him a call from the prime minister, during which he awkwardly had to talk about his own butt until the PM said "Well that's fantastic."

Bonus points to the Australian ambassador to the U.S., who shows up as a supporting character in this story and somehow has this actual name.

Be It Resolved

The first week of the season featured plenty of impressive performances, some of which even closed in on all-time records. In fact, you probably got pretty used to seeing stats like this:

Or this:

Or this:

And eventually, you probably stopped and went: Wait, what the heck was going on back in 1917?

You wouldn't be alone. The NHL has this weird thing about its history. The league has been around for 100 years, as they're constantly reminding us this season. But for the most part, they tend to ignore the first quarter-century or so and just skip right to the Original Six era starting in the 1940s. Plenty of casual fans have no idea that there were once teams like the Pittsburgh Pirates and St. Louis Eagles and Hamilton Tigers, and unless you're Dick Beddoes you don't know about Joe Malone and other stars of those early years. To hear the league tell it, history basically begins when Gordie Howe and Maurice Richard showed up, and everything before that was some sort of warmup.

And then we see all these stats show up this week, and you think "Gee, the 1917 version of the NHL sounds fun as hell."

I think the league should embrace this. Ideally, they'd do that by marketing their entire history, not just three-quarters of it, but that ship has sailed. The league has spent decades making it clear that they don't want to do that, so I'm not going to bang my head against a wall.

No, I think the league should go in the other direction. So be it resolved, the NHL needs to start making stuff up about the 1917-18 season.

It's a perfect opportunity. Nobody knows anything about what was going on back then anyway, so you may as well have fun with it. The NHL should just start dropping random "facts" about their inaugural season and see how long it takes everyone else to catch on. Stuff like:

In 1917, it was a minor penalty for a goaltender to let his skates touch the ice.

There were five pucks on the ice at all times, but you could only score with the one that had bees inside it.

Player awarded an automatic penalty shot any time an opposing goaltender made a save.

The league only started with only four teams, but quickly dropped to three because one of the arenas burned down. (Wait, that one is actually true.)

Goalies wore full face masks, but they were made out balsa wood and didn't have eyeholes.

Jaromir Jagr won rookie of the year.

Literally everyone involved was drunk at all times. (Also probably true.)

Have some fun with it, NHL. You've never told us anything about that first season before, so you've got a blank canvas to work with. Don't let it go to waste.

Obscure Former Player of the Week

While Walker is the first Australian-trained player in league history, he was born in the UK, meaning there has still yet to be an Australian-born NHLer. According to the hockey-reference.com database of player birthplaces, that leaves 16 countries that have produced one and only one NHL player. That includes this week's obscure player: Willi Plett.

Plett was born in Paraguay to Soviet parents but raised in Ontario, where he didn't start playing organized hockey until he was nearly in his teens. He was a big kid who could also play, and he was picked in the fifth round of the 1975 draft by the Atlanta Flames. He debuted that year, playing four games, then scored 33 goals as a rookie in 1976-77 to win the Calder. He'd top that with 38 goals in the team's first year in Calgary in 1980-81, a season that saw him become the first player to ever have that many goals and at least 230 PIM. (He's since been joined in that club by eight other players.)

He was traded to the North Stars in 1982 because in those days, everyone who could fight had to serve some time in the Norris Division. He played five years in Minnesota, then ended his career with a season in Boston after they nabbed him from the Rangers in the waiver draft.

Overall, Plett was a skilled tough guy, or maybe a tough skill guy depending on how you wanted to look at it. He crossed the line once or twice, including a nasty stick-swinging incident with Wings' goalie Greg Stefan that earned him a big suspension, but he was generally considered a respected enforcer in an era packed with them. He finished with 834 games, 222 goals and 2,572 PIM, one of only six players to record 200+ goals and 2,500+ PIM.

(And yes, his name was "Willi", not Willie or Willy. It's an Eastern European thing. What, you want to tell this guy that he spells his name wrong?)

The NHL Actually Got Something Right

Given what happen in Las Vegas two weeks ago, it felt like there was really no right way for the Golden Knights to handle their home opener on Tuesday. A big splashy ceremony would have felt inappropriate, obviously. But at the same time, it's the first home game in franchise history; you can't treat it like any other game, because there haven't been any others. The team was left to walk what seemed like a near-impossible line.

And they basically nailed it. On Tuesday, they managed to be respectful without being maudlin. They found a way to say what needed to be said without making it all about them, and hit the right notes in the process.

Does that fix anything? Not even close, as others have argued. But we knew they weren't going to be able to do that. So they did what they could.

When these things are done well, they always seem easy in hindsight. But this couldn't have been. As Elliotte Friedman pointed out, the Knights no doubt spent weeks preparing a big show designed to make an impression on their new home. It's almost a tradition that new teams have to do something embarrassingly over-the-top to mark their first game, as Grab Bag readers already know all about. Instead, the Knights had to scrap all that (including a mascot unveiling) for something more fitting.

And it worked. Full credit to the team and league for making it happen. And if they want to loosen up a bit and have some fun at tonight's second game, that's cool too. Things won't ever go back to normal in Las Vegas, but they'll inch their way in that direction, and the NHL can be a small part of that.

Classic YouTube Clip Breakdown

Today is Friday the 13th, which conjures images of a madman in a goalie mask hacking and slashing innocent people to pieces. Or, as NHL fans of the 1980s called it, Billy Smith.

Yes, it's our old pal Smith, the craziest goaltender to ever strap on the pads. When he wasn't winning four straight Stanley Cups, he was blazing a trail that would be followed by guys like Ron Hextall, Patrick Roy, Ray Emery, and others. He was nuts.

How nuts? Well, today's video features a selection of suspension-worthy stick fouls involving Smith and just one of the NHL's other 20 teams from a single playoff series. It's still five minutes long. You do the math.

Our clip begins with Game One of the 1983 final between Smith's Islanders and the Edmonton Oilers. We're midway through the first period, with the Islanders leading 1-0, and the Oilers have the puck deep in the New York zone. Glenn Anderson circles the net on a wraparound, then mysteriously falls over for no reason. Huh. Might want to see a replay on that one.

On a second look, we get a clear view of Smith executing a one-handed slash to Anderson's knee. Let's just point out two things. First, that play is dangerous and downright dirty, and should absolutely be a penalty if not an outright suspension. Second…I mean, that's a pretty cool move, right? Think of the combination of timing, hand-eye coordination and arm strength you need to pull that off and score a direct hit. I bet he couldn't do that again if he tried!

We skip ahead to late in game two, as Wayne Gretzky sets up behind the net. We used to call that Gretzky's "office," because it was where he did his best work. Unfortunately, he then skates out to the side of the net, which is Billy Smith's office, in the sense that it's where he performs amputations.

Yes, Smith manages to pull off the exact same move again, hacking Gretzky on the knee. That leads to a stare down, followed by a scrum. I can't tell who every player on the ice is, but the Oilers have Gretzky, Anderson and Jari Kurri, while the Islanders have a Sutter. So, advantage New York.

The announcer, longtime Islanders homer Jiggs McDonald, is great here. "Smith with a swing at the puck, and Gretzky has gone down like he was shot." Those 1980s pucks sure were tricky, always disguising themselves as the MVP's kneecap.

"You have to remember back to the time when Billy Smith… did it to Anderson." Ah, yes, back to those distant and hazy times of literally 48 hours ago. We were all so young then.

"He didn't hit Anderson obviously that bad." These announcers are great. "They're acting like a bunch of little kids now." Seriously, so great.

Hey, can we just point that legendary linesman Swede Knox is looking sharp out there? Not a hair out of place.

Meanwhile, a policeman who weighs 120 pounds and is clearly packing a loaded gun just casually climbs over the glass behind the bench to settle some fans down. He's never seen again. My guess is he's still there.

Gretzky is furious, getting in the face of referee Wally Harris to plead his case. I can't read his lips, but I'm pretty sure he's explaining that dangerous stick-related fouls need to be called consistently, even when they're committed by star players late in crucial playoff games.

Smith does indeed get five minutes, which needless to say outrages our neutral announcers. "Look how low the stick is!" If I'm ever charged with a violent crime, I want these two to be my defense lawyers.

We cut to the end of the game, as Edmonton's turns the tables by spearing Smith, causing the goalie to execute a full backflip in his crease while shedding all his equipment, Beetle Bailey-style. You'd think this would make the Islanders angry, but Dave Semenko is standing nearby so everyone just pretends they didn't notice.

For the record, the NHL responded to all this by being furious at…the Oilers. For complaining too much about the Anderson slash. As league VP Brian O'Neill put it, "[Oilers coach Glen] Sather has created a situation where Billy Smith is a monster. Billy Smith has had his problems, but he's made an effort to tone it down." Seriously, right? He's slashing guys in the knee now instead of directly in the eye. If he tones it down any further he'll be hacking ankles, and at that point why even bother?

We skip ahead to later in the series, as Anderson gets his payback by blatantly running Smith on a loose puck. That leads to Smith dramatically dragging himself back towards his crease like a wounded Terminator before making a miraculous recovery once he realizes there's no penalty being called.

Our last moment comes from the final game of the series, as Smith nudges Anderson and gets rewarded with a swat to the head that once again causes him to temporarily die. Smith basically admitted to taking a dive after the game, telling reporters ''I was hurt about as much as Gretzky was hurt in the second game…when I hit Gretzky he lay down and he cried to the referee, so I just took a chapter out of his book. I put myself on my back, and I squirmed and kicked and I played dead just like he did."

I mean, can you imagine someone dropping that quote today? We'd all lose our minds for a week. Back then, everyone shrugged and went "Yeah, seems reasonable".

By the way, the Islanders won the series in four games, and Smith got the Conn Smythe. I think he won this round, you guys.

[Turns earnestly towards camera.] If you'd like to learn more about Billy Smith losing his mind, please enjoy clips of him getting into it with Scott Stevens, fracturing Curt Fraser's cheekbone, and fighting everyone from Tiger Williams to Eddie Johnstone to Lanny McDonald.

Smith was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1993, the only goalie to make it in that decade. HHOF officials could not be reached for comment, as they were all suffering from mysterious knee injuries.

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you'd like to see included in this column? Email Sean at nhlgrabbag@gmail.com .

DGB Grab Bag: Traveling Jagrs, Mythical 1917, and Nutso Billy Smith published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

[amtushinfosolutionspage]

DGB Grab Bag: Traveling Jagrs, Mythical 1917, and Nutso Billy Smith

Three Stars of Comedy

The third star: This KHL player – This is technically from last week, but qualifies for this week’s list due to the time zone difference.

The second star: The Travelling Jagrs add a member –

You’ve seen these guys before. They’re a roving pack of Jagr impersonators who represent every one of the star’s many stops around the hockey world. Now that he’s in Calgary they need a new member, and the auditions seem to be going well.

The first star: Nathan Walker’s butt makes history– He’s the first Australian to ever play in the NHL, which earned him a call from the prime minister, during which he awkwardly had to talk about his own butt until the PM said “Well that’s fantastic.”

Bonus points to the Australian ambassador to the U.S., who shows up as a supporting character in this story and somehow has this actual name.

Be It Resolved

The first week of the season featured plenty of impressive performances, some of which even closed in on all-time records. In fact, you probably got pretty used to seeing stats like this:

Or this:

Or this:

And eventually, you probably stopped and went: Wait, what the heck was going on back in 1917?

You wouldn’t be alone. The NHL has this weird thing about its history. The league has been around for 100 years, as they’re constantly reminding us this season. But for the most part, they tend to ignore the first quarter-century or so and just skip right to the Original Six era starting in the 1940s. Plenty of casual fans have no idea that there were once teams like the Pittsburgh Pirates and St. Louis Eagles and Hamilton Tigers, and unless you’re Dick Beddoes you don’t know about Joe Malone and other stars of those early years. To hear the league tell it, history basically begins when Gordie Howe and Maurice Richard showed up, and everything before that was some sort of warmup.

And then we see all these stats show up this week, and you think “Gee, the 1917 version of the NHL sounds fun as hell.”

I think the league should embrace this. Ideally, they’d do that by marketing their entire history, not just three-quarters of it, but that ship has sailed. The league has spent decades making it clear that they don’t want to do that, so I’m not going to bang my head against a wall.

No, I think the league should go in the other direction. So be it resolved, the NHL needs to start making stuff up about the 1917-18 season.

It’s a perfect opportunity. Nobody knows anything about what was going on back then anyway, so you may as well have fun with it. The NHL should just start dropping random “facts” about their inaugural season and see how long it takes everyone else to catch on. Stuff like:

In 1917, it was a minor penalty for a goaltender to let his skates touch the ice.

There were five pucks on the ice at all times, but you could only score with the one that had bees inside it.

Player awarded an automatic penalty shot any time an opposing goaltender made a save.

The league only started with only four teams, but quickly dropped to three because one of the arenas burned down. (Wait, that one is actually true.)

Goalies wore full face masks, but they were made out balsa wood and didn’t have eyeholes.

Jaromir Jagr won rookie of the year.

Literally everyone involved was drunk at all times. (Also probably true.)

Have some fun with it, NHL. You’ve never told us anything about that first season before, so you’ve got a blank canvas to work with. Don’t let it go to waste.

Obscure Former Player of the Week

While Walker is the first Australian-trained player in league history, he was born in the UK, meaning there has still yet to be an Australian-born NHLer. According to the hockey-reference.com database of player birthplaces, that leaves 16 countries that have produced one and only one NHL player. That includes this week’s obscure player: Willi Plett.

Plett was born in Paraguay to Soviet parents but raised in Ontario, where he didn’t start playing organized hockey until he was nearly in his teens. He was a big kid who could also play, and he was picked in the fifth round of the 1975 draft by the Atlanta Flames. He debuted that year, playing four games, then scored 33 goals as a rookie in 1976-77 to win the Calder. He’d top that with 38 goals in the team’s first year in Calgary in 1980-81, a season that saw him become the first player to ever have that many goals and at least 230 PIM. (He’s since been joined in that club by eight other players.)

He was traded to the North Stars in 1982 because in those days, everyone who could fight had to serve some time in the Norris Division. He played five years in Minnesota, then ended his career with a season in Boston after they nabbed him from the Rangers in the waiver draft.

Overall, Plett was a skilled tough guy, or maybe a tough skill guy depending on how you wanted to look at it. He crossed the line once or twice, including a nasty stick-swinging incident with Wings’ goalie Greg Stefan that earned him a big suspension, but he was generally considered a respected enforcer in an era packed with them. He finished with 834 games, 222 goals and 2,572 PIM, one of only six players to record 200+ goals and 2,500+ PIM.

(And yes, his name was “Willi”, not Willie or Willy. It’s an Eastern European thing. What, you want to tell this guy that he spells his name wrong?)

The NHL Actually Got Something Right

Given what happen in Las Vegas two weeks ago, it felt like there was really no right way for the Golden Knights to handle their home opener on Tuesday. A big splashy ceremony would have felt inappropriate, obviously. But at the same time, it’s the first home game in franchise history; you can’t treat it like any other game, because there haven’t been any others. The team was left to walk what seemed like a near-impossible line.

And they basically nailed it. On Tuesday, they managed to be respectful without being maudlin. They found a way to say what needed to be said without making it all about them, and hit the right notes in the process.

Does that fix anything? Not even close, as others have argued. But we knew they weren’t going to be able to do that. So they did what they could.

When these things are done well, they always seem easy in hindsight. But this couldn’t have been. As Elliotte Friedman pointed out, the Knights no doubt spent weeks preparing a big show designed to make an impression on their new home. It’s almost a tradition that new teams have to do something embarrassingly over-the-top to mark their first game, as Grab Bag readers already know all about. Instead, the Knights had to scrap all that (including a mascot unveiling) for something more fitting.

And it worked. Full credit to the team and league for making it happen. And if they want to loosen up a bit and have some fun at tonight’s second game, that’s cool too. Things won’t ever go back to normal in Las Vegas, but they’ll inch their way in that direction, and the NHL can be a small part of that.

Classic YouTube Clip Breakdown

Today is Friday the 13th, which conjures images of a madman in a goalie mask hacking and slashing innocent people to pieces. Or, as NHL fans of the 1980s called it, Billy Smith.

Yes, it’s our old pal Smith, the craziest goaltender to ever strap on the pads. When he wasn’t winning four straight Stanley Cups, he was blazing a trail that would be followed by guys like Ron Hextall, Patrick Roy, Ray Emery, and others. He was nuts.

How nuts? Well, today’s video features a selection of suspension-worthy stick fouls involving Smith and just one of the NHL’s other 20 teams from a single playoff series. It’s still five minutes long. You do the math.

Our clip begins with Game One of the 1983 final between Smith’s Islanders and the Edmonton Oilers. We’re midway through the first period, with the Islanders leading 1-0, and the Oilers have the puck deep in the New York zone. Glenn Anderson circles the net on a wraparound, then mysteriously falls over for no reason. Huh. Might want to see a replay on that one.

On a second look, we get a clear view of Smith executing a one-handed slash to Anderson’s knee. Let’s just point out two things. First, that play is dangerous and downright dirty, and should absolutely be a penalty if not an outright suspension. Second…I mean, that’s a pretty cool move, right? Think of the combination of timing, hand-eye coordination and arm strength you need to pull that off and score a direct hit. I bet he couldn’t do that again if he tried!

We skip ahead to late in game two, as Wayne Gretzky sets up behind the net. We used to call that Gretzky’s “office,” because it was where he did his best work. Unfortunately, he then skates out to the side of the net, which is Billy Smith’s office, in the sense that it’s where he performs amputations.

Yes, Smith manages to pull off the exact same move again, hacking Gretzky on the knee. That leads to a stare down, followed by a scrum. I can’t tell who every player on the ice is, but the Oilers have Gretzky, Anderson and Jari Kurri, while the Islanders have a Sutter. So, advantage New York.

The announcer, longtime Islanders homer Jiggs McDonald, is great here. “Smith with a swing at the puck, and Gretzky has gone down like he was shot.” Those 1980s pucks sure were tricky, always disguising themselves as the MVP’s kneecap.

“You have to remember back to the time when Billy Smith… did it to Anderson.” Ah, yes, back to those distant and hazy times of literally 48 hours ago. We were all so young then.

“He didn’t hit Anderson obviously that bad.” These announcers are great. “They’re acting like a bunch of little kids now.” Seriously, so great.

Hey, can we just point that legendary linesman Swede Knox is looking sharp out there? Not a hair out of place.

Meanwhile, a policeman who weighs 120 pounds and is clearly packing a loaded gun just casually climbs over the glass behind the bench to settle some fans down. He’s never seen again. My guess is he’s still there.

Gretzky is furious, getting in the face of referee Wally Harris to plead his case. I can’t read his lips, but I’m pretty sure he’s explaining that dangerous stick-related fouls need to be called consistently, even when they’re committed by star players late in crucial playoff games.

Smith does indeed get five minutes, which needless to say outrages our neutral announcers. “Look how low the stick is!” If I’m ever charged with a violent crime, I want these two to be my defense lawyers.

We cut to the end of the game, as Edmonton’s turns the tables by spearing Smith, causing the goalie to execute a full backflip in his crease while shedding all his equipment, Beetle Bailey-style. You’d think this would make the Islanders angry, but Dave Semenko is standing nearby so everyone just pretends they didn’t notice.

For the record, the NHL responded to all this by being furious at…the Oilers. For complaining too much about the Anderson slash. As league VP Brian O’Neill put it, “[Oilers coach Glen] Sather has created a situation where Billy Smith is a monster. Billy Smith has had his problems, but he’s made an effort to tone it down.” Seriously, right? He’s slashing guys in the knee now instead of directly in the eye. If he tones it down any further he’ll be hacking ankles, and at that point why even bother?

We skip ahead to later in the series, as Anderson gets his payback by blatantly running Smith on a loose puck. That leads to Smith dramatically dragging himself back towards his crease like a wounded Terminator before making a miraculous recovery once he realizes there’s no penalty being called.

Our last moment comes from the final game of the series, as Smith nudges Anderson and gets rewarded with a swat to the head that once again causes him to temporarily die. Smith basically admitted to taking a dive after the game, telling reporters ”I was hurt about as much as Gretzky was hurt in the second game…when I hit Gretzky he lay down and he cried to the referee, so I just took a chapter out of his book. I put myself on my back, and I squirmed and kicked and I played dead just like he did.”

I mean, can you imagine someone dropping that quote today? We’d all lose our minds for a week. Back then, everyone shrugged and went “Yeah, seems reasonable”.

By the way, the Islanders won the series in four games, and Smith got the Conn Smythe. I think he won this round, you guys.

[Turns earnestly towards camera.] If you’d like to learn more about Billy Smith losing his mind, please enjoy clips of him getting into it with Scott Stevens, fracturing Curt Fraser’s cheekbone, and fighting everyone from Tiger Williams to Eddie Johnstone to Lanny McDonald.

Smith was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1993, the only goalie to make it in that decade. HHOF officials could not be reached for comment, as they were all suffering from mysterious knee injuries.

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you’d like to see included in this column? Email Sean at nhlgrabbag@gmail.com .

DGB Grab Bag: Traveling Jagrs, Mythical 1917, and Nutso Billy Smith syndicated from http://ift.tt/2ug2Ns6

[kimhyunmin92]

Something I read over the net.. worth every minute..

So it goes like this: Did I ever tell you about Ashton? Ashton was your classic corn-fed farm boy. His parents had been hippies who never really managed to get their acts together until his mother inherited 15 acres in a rural part of Michigan. The family moved out there, bought a couple of dairy goats, and struggled to make a living selling organic goat cheese to the yuppies at the Ann Arbor Farmer’s Market. From the time he was ten years old, Ashton had to wake up every morning at 4:00 a.m. and milk those damn goats, and it was exhausting. Ashton loved going to school because it meant he wasn’t working knee-deep in goat poop. Throughout high school, he studied his ass off, hoping that a scholarship to a good university would be his ticket out of the farm. He found college to be so much easier than farm life that he didn’t understand why everyone else didn’t get straight A’s like him. He majored in Software Engineering because he couldn’t imagine engineers ever being required to wake up at 4:00 a.m. Ashton graduated from school without knowing much about the software industry, really, so he went to the career fair, applied for three jobs, got accepted by all three, and picked the one that paid the most: something insane like $32,000 a year, working at a big furniture company in the southwestern part of the state that manufactured cubicle farms for corporations all over the world. He never wanted to see a farm again, so he was determined to make a good impression on his boss, Charlie Sherman. “That’s not going to be easy,” his cubicle-mate, Jeff, said. “She’s something of a legend here.” “What do you mean?” he asked. “Well, you remember a few years ago, when there was all that uproar about Y2K?” Ashton was probably too young. “Y2K?” “You know, nobody expected that all the old computer programs written in the 1960s would still be running in 2000, so they only had room for two digits for the year. Instead of storing 1999, they would store 99. And then when the year flipped over on January 1st, 2000, the computer systems crashed, because they tried to fit “100” in two digits.” “Really? I thought that was a myth,” Ashton said. “At every other company in the world, nothing happened,” Jeff said. “They spent billions of dollars checking every line of code. But here, of course, they’re cheap bastards, so they didn’t bother doing any testing.” “Not at all?” “Zilch. Zero testing. Nada. And lo and behold, when people staggered back into work on January 2nd, not a single thing worked. They couldn’t print production schedules. They couldn’t get half of the assembly lines to even turn on. And nobody knew what shifts they were supposed to be working. The factory literally came to a standstill.” “You’re kidding,” Ashton said. “I shit you not. The factory was totally silent. Now, Charlie, she was new then. She had been working at Microsoft, or NASA, or something... nobody could figure out why someone like her would be working in our little armpit of a company. But she sat down, and she started coding. And coding. And coding..” “Charlie coded for nine days straight. Nine days without sleeping, without eating, some people even claimed she never went to the bathroom. She went from system to system and literally fixed all of them. It was something to behold. My God, there were COBOL systems in there that needed to be fixed. The whole factory at a standstill, and Charlie is sending people to the university library in Ann Arbor to find old COBOL manuals. Assembly-line workers are standing around shivering, because even the thermostats had a Y2K bug. And Charlie is drinking cup after cup of coffee and typing like a madwoman.” “Wow. And she never went to the bathroom?” “Well, that part might be a little bit of an exaggeration. But she really did work 24 hours for nine days straight. Anyway, on January 11th, about five minutes before the day shift is supposed to start, she comes out of her cubicle, goes to the line printer, hits a button, and boom! out comes the production schedules, and the team schedules, and everything is perfect, perfectly formatted, using a slightly smaller font so that the “2000” fits where it used to say “99,” and she’s even written a new priority optimizing system that helps them catch up with 9 days of missed production without pissing off too many customers, and all the assembly lines start running like nothing was ever wrong, and the heat comes on, and the invoices come out printed with ‘2000’ as the year instead of ‘19100,’ and after that day, nobody found a single bug.” “Oh come on!” Ashton says. “Nobody writes code without bugs.” “She did. I saw it with my own eyes. The first day back they ran two days worth of cubicles without a hiccup.” Ashton was dumbstruck. “That’s epic. How can I live up to that?” “You can’t, buddy, nobody can,” Jeff said, turning back to his computer terminal, where he resumed an online flame war over who would win in a fight, Spock or Batman, which had been raging for over four months. Not one to give up, Ashton swore he would, one day, do something legendary. But the truth is, there never was another Y2K. And nobody, in that part of Michigan, gave a rat’s ass about good programming. There was almost nothing for the programmers to do, in fact. Ashton got dumb little projects assigned to him... at one point he spent three weeks working on handling a case where the sales tax in one particular country was wrong because some zip code spanned two different sales tax zones. The funny thing was, it was in some unpopulated part of New York State where nobody ever bought office cubicles, and they had never had a customer there, so his code would never run. Ever. For two years Ashton came into work enthusiastic and excited, and dying to make a difference and do something terrific and awesome, while his coworkers surfed the Internet, sent instant messages to their friends, and played computer solitaire for hours. Jeff, his cubicle-mate, only had one responsibility: updating the weekly Excel spreadsheet indicating how many people were hurt on the job that week. Nobody ever was. Once a week, Jeff opened the spreadsheet, went to the bottom of the page, entered the date and a zero, hit save, and that was that. Ashton even wrote a macro for Jeff that automated that one task. Jeff didn’t want to get caught, so he refused to install it. They weren’t on speaking terms after that. It was awkward. On the morning of his two year anniversary at the cubicle company, Ashton was driving to work when he realized something. Not one line of code that he had written had ever run. Not one thing he had done in two years of work made any impact on the world. And it was 24 degrees in that part of Michigan, and it was gray, and smelly, and his car was a piece of crap, and he didn’t have any friends in town, and nothing he did mattered. As he drove down Lincoln Avenue, he saw the furniture company ahead on the left. Three flags fluttered in front of the corporate campus: an American flag, a flag of the great state of Michigan, and a white and red flag with the company logo. He got in the turning lane behind a long line of cars waiting to turn left. It always took four or five traffic light cycles, at rush hour, to make the turn, so Ashton had plenty of time to try to remember if any code he had ever written was ever used by anyone. And it hadn’t. And he fought back a tear. And instead of turning left, he went straight, almost causing an accident because he forgot that the left turn light didn’t mean you could go straight. And he drove right down Lincoln Avenue, and got onto the Gerald Ford freeway, and he just kept driving until he got to the airport over in Grand Rapids, and he left his crappy old Honda out right in front of the terminal, knowing perfectly well it would be towed, and didn’t even close the car door, and he walked right up to the Frontier Airlines counter and he bought himself a ticket on the very next flight to San Francisco, which was leaving in 20 minutes, and he got on the plane, and he left Michigan forever. Moral of the story? -  When you try to live up to other people's standards you will always fail to reach them. Only concentrate on being the best you can. Also, if one is eager for success, then one must go to where success can be had. In simple words focus on being yourself, and hustle, because good things only come to those who hustle. - If you aren't making a difference in your job or have any opportunities to advance, get a job where you will. *That’s some powerful message behind the long story*

[flauntpage]

DGB Grab Bag: Traveling Jagrs, Mythical 1917, and Nutso Billy Smith

Three Stars of Comedy

The third star: This KHL player – This is technically from last week, but qualifies for this week's list due to the time zone difference.

The second star: The Travelling Jagrs add a member –

You've seen these guys before. They're a roving pack of Jagr impersonators who represent every one of the star's many stops around the hockey world. Now that he's in Calgary they need a new member, and the auditions seem to be going well.

The first star: Nathan Walker's butt makes history– He's the first Australian to ever play in the NHL, which earned him a call from the prime minister, during which he awkwardly had to talk about his own butt until the PM said "Well that's fantastic."

Bonus points to the Australian ambassador to the U.S., who shows up as a supporting character in this story and somehow has this actual name.

Be It Resolved

The first week of the season featured plenty of impressive performances, some of which even closed in on all-time records. In fact, you probably got pretty used to seeing stats like this:

Or this:

Or this:

And eventually, you probably stopped and went: Wait, what the heck was going on back in 1917?

You wouldn't be alone. The NHL has this weird thing about its history. The league has been around for 100 years, as they're constantly reminding us this season. But for the most part, they tend to ignore the first quarter-century or so and just skip right to the Original Six era starting in the 1940s. Plenty of casual fans have no idea that there were once teams like the Pittsburgh Pirates and St. Louis Eagles and Hamilton Tigers, and unless you're Dick Beddoes you don't know about Joe Malone and other stars of those early years. To hear the league tell it, history basically begins when Gordie Howe and Maurice Richard showed up, and everything before that was some sort of warmup.

And then we see all these stats show up this week, and you think "Gee, the 1917 version of the NHL sounds fun as hell."

I think the league should embrace this. Ideally, they'd do that by marketing their entire history, not just three-quarters of it, but that ship has sailed. The league has spent decades making it clear that they don't want to do that, so I'm not going to bang my head against a wall.

No, I think the league should go in the other direction. So be it resolved, the NHL needs to start making stuff up about the 1917-18 season.

It's a perfect opportunity. Nobody knows anything about what was going on back then anyway, so you may as well have fun with it. The NHL should just start dropping random "facts" about their inaugural season and see how long it takes everyone else to catch on. Stuff like:

In 1917, it was a minor penalty for a goaltender to let his skates touch the ice.

There were five pucks on the ice at all times, but you could only score with the one that had bees inside it.

Player awarded an automatic penalty shot any time an opposing goaltender made a save.

The league only started with only four teams, but quickly dropped to three because one of the arenas burned down. (Wait, that one is actually true.)

Goalies wore full face masks, but they were made out balsa wood and didn't have eyeholes.

Jaromir Jagr won rookie of the year.

Literally everyone involved was drunk at all times. (Also probably true.)

Have some fun with it, NHL. You've never told us anything about that first season before, so you've got a blank canvas to work with. Don't let it go to waste.

Obscure Former Player of the Week

While Walker is the first Australian-trained player in league history, he was born in the UK, meaning there has still yet to be an Australian-born NHLer. According to the hockey-reference.com database of player birthplaces, that leaves 16 countries that have produced one and only one NHL player. That includes this week's obscure player: Willi Plett.

Plett was born in Paraguay to Soviet parents but raised in Ontario, where he didn't start playing organized hockey until he was nearly in his teens. He was a big kid who could also play, and he was picked in the fifth round of the 1975 draft by the Atlanta Flames. He debuted that year, playing four games, then scored 33 goals as a rookie in 1976-77 to win the Calder. He'd top that with 38 goals in the team's first year in Calgary in 1980-81, a season that saw him become the first player to ever have that many goals and at least 230 PIM. (He's since been joined in that club by eight other players.)

He was traded to the North Stars in 1982 because in those days, everyone who could fight had to serve some time in the Norris Division. He played five years in Minnesota, then ended his career with a season in Boston after they nabbed him from the Rangers in the waiver draft.

Overall, Plett was a skilled tough guy, or maybe a tough skill guy depending on how you wanted to look at it. He crossed the line once or twice, including a nasty stick-swinging incident with Wings' goalie Greg Stefan that earned him a big suspension, but he was generally considered a respected enforcer in an era packed with them. He finished with 834 games, 222 goals and 2,572 PIM, one of only six players to record 200+ goals and 2,500+ PIM.

(And yes, his name was "Willi", not Willie or Willy. It's an Eastern European thing. What, you want to tell this guy that he spells his name wrong?)

The NHL Actually Got Something Right

Given what happen in Las Vegas two weeks ago, it felt like there was really no right way for the Golden Knights to handle their home opener on Tuesday. A big splashy ceremony would have felt inappropriate, obviously. But at the same time, it's the first home game in franchise history; you can't treat it like any other game, because there haven't been any others. The team was left to walk what seemed like a near-impossible line.

And they basically nailed it. On Tuesday, they managed to be respectful without being maudlin. They found a way to say what needed to be said without making it all about them, and hit the right notes in the process.

Does that fix anything? Not even close, as others have argued. But we knew they weren't going to be able to do that. So they did what they could.

When these things are done well, they always seem easy in hindsight. But this couldn't have been. As Elliotte Friedman pointed out, the Knights no doubt spent weeks preparing a big show designed to make an impression on their new home. It's almost a tradition that new teams have to do something embarrassingly over-the-top to mark their first game, as Grab Bag readers already know all about. Instead, the Knights had to scrap all that (including a mascot unveiling) for something more fitting.

And it worked. Full credit to the team and league for making it happen. And if they want to loosen up a bit and have some fun at tonight's second game, that's cool too. Things won't ever go back to normal in Las Vegas, but they'll inch their way in that direction, and the NHL can be a small part of that.

Classic YouTube Clip Breakdown

Today is Friday the 13th, which conjures images of a madman in a goalie mask hacking and slashing innocent people to pieces. Or, as NHL fans of the 1980s called it, Billy Smith.

Yes, it's our old pal Smith, the craziest goaltender to ever strap on the pads. When he wasn't winning four straight Stanley Cups, he was blazing a trail that would be followed by guys like Ron Hextall, Patrick Roy, Ray Emery, and others. He was nuts.

How nuts? Well, today's video features a selection of suspension-worthy stick fouls involving Smith and just one of the NHL's other 20 teams from a single playoff series. It's still five minutes long. You do the math.

Our clip begins with Game One of the 1983 final between Smith's Islanders and the Edmonton Oilers. We're midway through the first period, with the Islanders leading 1-0, and the Oilers have the puck deep in the New York zone. Glenn Anderson circles the net on a wraparound, then mysteriously falls over for no reason. Huh. Might want to see a replay on that one.

On a second look, we get a clear view of Smith executing a one-handed slash to Anderson's knee. Let's just point out two things. First, that play is dangerous and downright dirty, and should absolutely be a penalty if not an outright suspension. Second…I mean, that's a pretty cool move, right? Think of the combination of timing, hand-eye coordination and arm strength you need to pull that off and score a direct hit. I bet he couldn't do that again if he tried!

We skip ahead to late in game two, as Wayne Gretzky sets up behind the net. We used to call that Gretzky's "office," because it was where he did his best work. Unfortunately, he then skates out to the side of the net, which is Billy Smith's office, in the sense that it's where he performs amputations.

Yes, Smith manages to pull off the exact same move again, hacking Gretzky on the knee. That leads to a stare down, followed by a scrum. I can't tell who every player on the ice is, but the Oilers have Gretzky, Anderson and Jari Kurri, while the Islanders have a Sutter. So, advantage New York.

The announcer, longtime Islanders homer Jiggs McDonald, is great here. "Smith with a swing at the puck, and Gretzky has gone down like he was shot." Those 1980s pucks sure were tricky, always disguising themselves as the MVP's kneecap.

"You have to remember back to the time when Billy Smith… did it to Anderson." Ah, yes, back to those distant and hazy times of literally 48 hours ago. We were all so young then.

"He didn't hit Anderson obviously that bad." These announcers are great. "They're acting like a bunch of little kids now." Seriously, so great.

Hey, can we just point that legendary linesman Swede Knox is looking sharp out there? Not a hair out of place.

Meanwhile, a policeman who weighs 120 pounds and is clearly packing a loaded gun just casually climbs over the glass behind the bench to settle some fans down. He's never seen again. My guess is he's still there.

Gretzky is furious, getting in the face of referee Wally Harris to plead his case. I can't read his lips, but I'm pretty sure he's explaining that dangerous stick-related fouls need to be called consistently, even when they're committed by star players late in crucial playoff games.

Smith does indeed get five minutes, which needless to say outrages our neutral announcers. "Look how low the stick is!" If I'm ever charged with a violent crime, I want these two to be my defense lawyers.

We cut to the end of the game, as Edmonton's turns the tables by spearing Smith, causing the goalie to execute a full backflip in his crease while shedding all his equipment, Beetle Bailey-style. You'd think this would make the Islanders angry, but Dave Semenko is standing nearby so everyone just pretends they didn't notice.

For the record, the NHL responded to all this by being furious at…the Oilers. For complaining too much about the Anderson slash. As league VP Brian O'Neill put it, "[Oilers coach Glen] Sather has created a situation where Billy Smith is a monster. Billy Smith has had his problems, but he's made an effort to tone it down." Seriously, right? He's slashing guys in the knee now instead of directly in the eye. If he tones it down any further he'll be hacking ankles, and at that point why even bother?

We skip ahead to later in the series, as Anderson gets his payback by blatantly running Smith on a loose puck. That leads to Smith dramatically dragging himself back towards his crease like a wounded Terminator before making a miraculous recovery once he realizes there's no penalty being called.

Our last moment comes from the final game of the series, as Smith nudges Anderson and gets rewarded with a swat to the head that once again causes him to temporarily die. Smith basically admitted to taking a dive after the game, telling reporters ''I was hurt about as much as Gretzky was hurt in the second game…when I hit Gretzky he lay down and he cried to the referee, so I just took a chapter out of his book. I put myself on my back, and I squirmed and kicked and I played dead just like he did."

I mean, can you imagine someone dropping that quote today? We'd all lose our minds for a week. Back then, everyone shrugged and went "Yeah, seems reasonable".

By the way, the Islanders won the series in four games, and Smith got the Conn Smythe. I think he won this round, you guys.

[Turns earnestly towards camera.] If you'd like to learn more about Billy Smith losing his mind, please enjoy clips of him getting into it with Scott Stevens, fracturing Curt Fraser's cheekbone, and fighting everyone from Tiger Williams to Eddie Johnstone to Lanny McDonald.

Smith was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1993, the only goalie to make it in that decade. HHOF officials could not be reached for comment, as they were all suffering from mysterious knee injuries.

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you'd like to see included in this column? Email Sean at nhlgrabbag@gmail.com .

DGB Grab Bag: Traveling Jagrs, Mythical 1917, and Nutso Billy Smith published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv