When Love Was Found…

“He would go out to Boston and if you live in Springfield you have to travel an hour and a half to get to any legitimate competition, and he would always have a target on his back. We have so much pride in the 413. So much. That’s our area. Like Frank, Keith, John, myself. We train together. There’s no need for Ryan to go outside of Western Mass to train in the summer and get better, and we’ve proven it across the board with all of our guys.” John says that where they come from has as much to do with their success as what they’ve put into it. “There’s six pros that are in the gym and on the ice with him every single day and from a personal standpoint I try to be a good role model and show him the habits that guys taught me when I was that age. But him being able to be around those types of players on a daily basis is a pretty cool thing for him,” John said. “I don’t think every kid gets the ability to do that with where they’re from, but Western Mass is a pretty special place.”

and despite everyone’s distrust of them to keep their apartment in order, everything’s pretty nice. misa has a joint calendar hung on the fridge, and they have multiple forks now, so they’re killing the whole living together thing. honey has slipped into sam’s vernacular more than he would like to admit, he’s got other stuff he worries about so he can’t quite keep every bit and joke neatly into their own boxes. sometimes misa is mike, or mikey, dude and bro, and sometimes he’s honey or babe. it’s a non issue, misa responds to anything anyways. sam once threw out puppy just to be annoying and misa tilted his head up all the same.

they’re both sort of messy but not in any drastic way, hotel rooms versus spaces they actually live in are different. hoodies over the back of the couch, some plates left on the table, shoes that live more in the middle of walkways than anywhere else. their laundry is all mixed up at this point too. misa’s more of a shirt on but boxers only sleeper and sam’s more of a no shirt, basketball shorts sleeper. all it means is that sam sometimes turns around from making coffee to find misa stumbling into the kitchen with undeniably his shirt on, london knights three which really doesn’t give any wiggle room for misa to have thought it might have been his at all. it doesn’t matter though because misa will just lay his head on the counter and complain that the coffee smells bad. and that night he’ll pop up for an episode of bad sitcoms in sam’s sharks hoodie, number six over the heart, and sam will just have to be okay with it.

misa’s a pretty good roommate anyways, he sticks to three things he can actually cook so he doesn’t accidentally burn down the kitchen. sam likes having someone around anyways, it was half the reason he was always over at the toffolis last season. misa’s always in the apartment now too, leaves with sam and comes back with sam, and only has an outing or two a month without him. sam sort of figured something like that would be annoying but he really, really likes it, likes having someone to come back home to who’s in always in one of his reliable three spots: corner of the couch, at his desk, curled up on sam’s bed. sam’s not really sure when it became his bed misa was more commonly found in but it is. sam will come back from lunch with musty and walk into his own room to find misa in sam’s hoodie, playing clash in sam’s bed.