puppy blog

i do think misa would love to dictate a good joint calendar. perhaps it’s because rocket league and cte has rotted his brain and his memory is dog shit so everything must be written down. he’s the type of guy who actually takes self improvement very seriously, even the “girly” versions of it that are “lame” and “embarrassing”, not misa’s words. he heard that writing things down helps you remember things better, so he has a million sticky notes scattered around the house, and sam’s apartment, and some even stuck on the inside of his stall. his notes app is an organized mess and takes up way too much of his phone’s storage.

sam is pretty content to forget whatever he says the second it comes out of his mouth (unless he needs it to win an argument where he suddenly can remember every little misdeed), misa is absolutely not content to live like that. he would like to have a nice list of all the dishes he can make without burning down the house, even if it’s a short list. cherny just sort of remembers, or he’s fine to let the small stuff slip his mind.

misa is very serious about the joint calendar, even if no one respects it, and misa is sort of a pushover when it comes to changing or making plans. he will put all the practice times on it, and the games, and tape review, and dinner plans with graf. but also once it’s on the calendar, he does expect sam to look at it and tell him, you got a thing with cat at four. it’s teamwork.

girl!!!!! i havent gotten any work done today i cant possibly

so mike pretty well trusts sam to handle the logistics at this point and besides, he’s known to sit there playing video games for 6 hours and ignoring his corporeal form. sam stops whatever he was doing when he realizes it’s been hours and his boy needs to hydrate and probably to pee, probably doesn't even realize he needs to go. so sam gets up, hip checks misa’s chair and goes “go piss, girl"

misa grumbles because he was like "locked in" but he does go and it's nothing, regular, a continuation of the thing they’ve already accepted as normal where sam tells mike what his body needs

Okay, so I know you've already seen this clip but like... imagine this clip but they realise they're soulmates halfway through 😗✌️

(also I see you reblogging SuzuField and yes, yes, yes, TASTE!)

- @71mack

first of all, i watch that clip a lot, so one more time is nothing, but also literal excerpt out of my ideas document:

in which they only realise after the game, but i like the way you're thinking, so i propose to you an omegaverse true mate au:

Ben presents at some point before the 2024 USA CHL Prospects Challenge. He's an omega, but he's determined to not let that sway him from any of his goals. He's still a damn good hockey player and he will make it to th NHL.

At the Prospects Challenge he feels weirdly drawn to the (still unpresented) Porter Martone, but the guy's his captain and projected top pick in the draft, so it's not particularily weird that Ben wants to be in his vicinity. Porter presents after the Prospects Challenge, but 18 is a normal age to present, nothing weird about it. (He's an alpha btw, if that wasn't clear)

At the draft, they don't really meet. They're in each others vicinity from time to time, sure, but everyone is wearing heavy duty scent blockers, running purely on adrenaline and also they have things to do. They don't meet again afterwards until they play each other in the playoffs.

NHL players are only mandated to apply scent blockers at the start of the game. Of course, players are welcome to reapply as much as they want, but it's completely their choice. The scent blockers get worn down by sweat (even the heavy duty stuff) so by the end of the game, there's a lot more scents flying around than at the begining but it's all one soup of scents.

Except for when you fight someone one-on-one and even initiate skin-to-skin contact. It makes your opposing players scent much more present, in a way. So when Ben's omega suddenly begins to scream 'Mate' inside of him when Porter rips at his helmet he just gets more angry, because Why is his life like this? And who does this guy think he is?. And Porter's alpha also tells him 'Mate', but his supposed mate is currently trying to punch him in the face and he won't stand for that, the alpha inside him be damned.

Ben goes through a breakthrough heat afterwards (it's like 12h long and they have an off-day anyways, it's fine) but he won't tell anyone why. He knows exactly why but he's prepared to take it to his grave. He's not gonna have a soulmate on the Flyers, they can wait with that until they retire.

Porter goes into breakthrough rut. He tries to play it off as shit happens, you know but he spills after 36h because he's a yapper and likes to use Denver Barkey as his soundboard. They both don't know what would be the right thing to do in this situation, so they just carry on as if nothing happened.

thinking about how sam seems like the kinda guy to attract super hot, super cool, high maintenance girls who look at him like a little court jester. his past girlfriend wanted him to watch her try on 15 different dresses at reformation and pay for her nails, and pick out what color she'd get. and sam is happy to do all of this because despite the rumors, he's a committed guy. a good partner. and he loves a little task, a little responsibility so he doesn't spend all of his rest days playing cod and jerking off.

he starts hanging around misa more and thinks he's different. he's not asking for anything, not making a big deal, but that ends up being exactly the problem. mike will just sit there quietly getting worse. hungry, tired, too hot, too many people talking, shoelace untied, headache starting behind one eye, whatever. he won’t say shit until he’s at the point of being snippy and short and totally retreating into himself, and what's sam to do about this but start paying attention?

he can't just stand there watching mike sway a little on his feet, pale around the mouth, stomach audibly grumbling. he goes, “jesus christ, did you not eat today or are you being haunted?” then he’s guiding mike by the elbow toward the car before he even answers, hitting the drive thru without asking if mike wants anything because of course he wants something, he’s just being weird about having regular needs. he shoves a water bottle into mike's chest because it’s hot out and mike is still wearing a hoodie like he WANTS to get heat exhaustion, so sam gets right in his space to unzip it himself.

for what it's worth, mike doesn't seem to mind. he acts annoyed, obviously. he'll make a face, but he drinks the water. he lets sam unzip his hoodie and tug it off his shoulders. he eats what sam ordered without complaining because sam knows his chipper order. he whines when sam interrupts his scrolling to go "kay, enough screen time, let's go for a walk" but still, he goes. if he told sam to fuck off for real, none of this would be happening. keep happening.

toff notices and kinda acts like his job is being co-opted, like sam is getting in the way or something, but sam's just like, this is what you do when your best friend has the self-preservation skills of a bug flying into one of those zappy lamp things.

it takes 30 days to form a habit and that's about how long it takes for mike to start expecting sam to just know what he needs and do it. not consciously. if you asked him, which reavo had, if something was going on, he'd just go "no, dickie's just annoying." but he starts pausing beside sam when they leave practice, waiting for sam to check if he has his phone, wallet, keys, airpods. he starts handing sam granola bar wrappers and half-empty drinks without thinking. he starts drifting closer when rooms get loud, letting sam put himself between mike and whoever is talking too loud. he’ll stand there with his arms out while sam pulls his jersey over his head and goes "damn, hope your arms aren't broken" and then fully winks.

and sam, who already loves a task, is immediately like oh no. oh this is the best task in the world. he gets so embarrassingly into it. he starts having opinions about mike like it’s his job. he's tired. he's too quiet. too warm. needs food. needs to sit. needs to get out of here before he starts biting people. mike will be like “i’m fine” and sam’s like “you’ve been cranky for twenty minutes."

it turns into this private language where sam just knows best, and he tells mike to do something, and he just does it. for the best really.

arms up.

come here.

sit.

look at me.

and mike is still bitching, still rolling his eyes, still calling sam annoying, but his body is already halfway through listening before his mouth has finished objecting. which is fine. usefully really. definitely not something sam is thinking about later when he’s alone remembering the way mike went limp when sam put two fingers under his chin and told him to drink the damn gatorade.

the worst part is mike isn’t even coy about it. he’s not trying to be hot. he’s just standing there, sixish feet of deeply repressed hockey player, letting sam manhandle him into basic wellness like he doesn’t understand that this is doing irreversible damage to sam’s brain chemistry.

like sam will be rubbing out mike’s shoulder after a game, talking absolute nonsense because silence makes him feel like he’s gonna do something horribly regrettable, and mike is all loose and heavy under his hands, half-listening, making these tiny annoyed sounds whenever sam hits a sore spot. and sam is like yeah, this is very normal, bro stuff, nothing to see here. meanwhile mike’s head drops forward and sam can see the back of his neck and soft tufts of hair there and suddenly sam is having to remember all that stuff he heard during "the talk" about respect and responsibility. it's hard to be respectful and responsible when mike's grinding into his lap, but prolly not even grinding, just trying to squirm away because sam's trying to get a gnarly knot out.

then sam says, “quit moving,” and mike does. he still huffs and makes that annoyed little sound again and it's unfortunately kinda cute, and his body goes loose again. head tipped forward. shoulders heavy. hands useless in his lap. and sam has this insane second of like, oh, okay, so that works. he can just say something and mike might? listen. it seems like too much power to have over some guy, some 2nd round pick nhler who's not even close to his ceiling. and that should not do anything for sam but

obviously it does. because mike is still sitting there, warm and pliant and bitchy, letting sam work his thumbs down from his shoulders to his hips like sam has any business knowing this much about how his body works. letting sam find the sore spots. letting sam tell him when to sit still, when to drink, when to move, when to stop pretending he’s fine. and the whole time mike is acting like this is just sam being annoying, overbearing, which is almost worse because it means he isn’t even trying to be hot. he’s just like this

because it’s not just that mike needs things. lots of people need things. sam has dated girls who needed things and he was good at that, actually. elite, even. he can carry bags. he can wait outside dressing rooms. he can say “the blue one” with enough confidence that it sounds like a real opinion.

but mike doesn’t point. mike doesn’t ask. mike just gets quiet or pissy and sam has to figure it out himself. and you know sam gets off on being right. so maybe sam thinks he wants a high-maintenance girl until he gets one low-maintenance boy who won’t admit he needs anything, and then he develops a full-time unpaid position as michael misa’s emotional support nuisance.

and maybe mike thinks he’s just letting sam be annoying because it’s easier than fighting him.

but sam knows better. or he’s starting to.

because mike can say dickie, stop managing me all he wants, but then he’ll hand sam his battery dead phone, or stand there with his collar crooked waiting for sam to fix it, or drift into sam’s side in a crowded bar there's no way he can leave until sam tells him it's time to go.