#andy bowman

Andy hates casino night. Not just because he’s bad at everything, though he is, or that he looks like a toothpick in a tux, though he does — for some reason the second he puts on a bowtie instead of a regular tie he looks way taller and way skinnier — but because Derek loves casino night, and every time they do it Andy’s concerned Derek’s going to remember how much he loves gambling, run to Vegas, and never come back. Andy’s just lucky Las Vegas doesn’t have a hockey team.

“Bowie, blow on my dice,” Derek says.

“What?” Andy asks. “Why?”

“It’s good luck when someone pretty blows on them,” Derek says, with possibly the sleaziest wink Andy has ever seen.

Andy glances over at the other people at the table, mostly Sens fans. They look amused but not like they think anything of it, like they expect this, like it’s just Derek joking around. Derek does have that reputation among fans, Andy knows.

“No,” Andy says. “Blow on your own dice.”

“Aw, you think I’m pretty,” Derek says, and that gets a laugh from the table, except Andy, who’s trying to figure out whether Derek made up the dice thing to be funny or if he’s being ridiculously superstitious here too, and Dan, who’s on his phone, probably with the Diver. “It doesn’t work if it’s your own dice though. Riley, blow on my dice.”

Dan rolls his eyes but pockets his phone before leaning over and blowing on the dice in Derek’s hand.

“Hey,” Andy says, frowning. “You can’t just get anyone to blow on your dice. And Dan’s a married man.”

The woman sitting next to him snickers.

“You can blow on them next time, Andy,” Derek says.

He rolls a six and a one, which is apparently great. Andy isn’t really good at craps, there’s too much to remember. He wanted to go to the blackjack table, but Sven and Gerard are already there, and five Sens at one table is probably too many. They’re supposed to spread out, mingle, make the people who paid for this feel like they got their money’s worth.

“Nevermind,” Derek says. “Dan, blow on my dice again.”

“Hey,” Andy says.

“Sorry Bowie, he’s good luck,” Derek says.

Andy scowls at him, because ‘and I’m your boyfriend’ isn’t something he can say at a table full of Sens fans.

Derek holds his dice out for Dan again, and Dan obligingly gives them a blow. And that’s a stupid word. Blow. It’s all — whatever.

“I’m telling the Diver,” Andy mutters at Dan.

“And once again he’ll laugh his ass off,” Dan says, then, under his breath, “What’re you even going to say? ‘Hey Lapointe, your husband blew air at my bf-slash-bff’s hands, you mad?’.”

Andy elbows him, and Dan just laughs, pulls out his phone again under the table, probably telling the Diver exactly what’s going on.

Derek wins again, whatever that means, which has him holding the dice out for Dan again.

“I have a —” Dan says, then, holding his phone up, “Marc.”

Andy sees two guys at the table roll his eyes, and he’s not sure whether it’s because Marc’s a Hab or not. He hopes it’s because he’s a Hab. He really hopes it’s because he’s a Hab.

Dan walks away from the table, phone already at his ear, the way it so often is, and Derek slides the dice under Andy’s nose. “Blow?” he says.

“No,” Andy says.

“Bowie,” Derek says.

“Wait for Dan if you want good luck,” Andy says, crossing his arms.

“Andy,” Derek whines, but Andy stands firm.

Derek quickly loses every single chip he won, and he blames it on Andy refusing to blow on his dice, but Andy thinks he should blame it on being crappy at betting, and says so.

“I miss anything?” Dan asks when he comes back to the table.

“Your lineys always bicker like this?” the woman sitting beside Andy asks.

If Andy wasn’t positive he’d be found, and then mocked, he would be hiding right now.

Maybe he can turn it into a game? Grab some of the kids from the backyard, tell them they’re playing hide and seek?

“Andrew,” Derek wheedles, and Andy can jump into the hall closet or he can give into the inevitable.

He stays where he is, again, only because he knows Derek will look for him, and then find him, and then make a lot of jokes about coming out of the closet, and Andy will still have to play the Newlywed game with the Carruthers.

*

It starts out fine. Andy was worried about sex questions coming up, but half the people at the table are related by blood, so that’s probably something they don’t want to know about one another. Andy doesn’t want to know it either, or for anyone else to know, but he;s aware he’s a little more…private about that stuff than most people, and especially the Carruthers, who are all over-sharers about everything.

Him and Derek get the lead early — it’s easy to know about stuff like favourite food or TV show or what their pet peeves are when you not only live with them, but work together, spend basically all your time together, and Andy starts to feel okay about it, wonder why he was reluctant in the first place.

It doesn’t last, of course.

“What does your partner find most annoying about you?” Adam reads, and Andy just…blanks. Obviously there’s got to be something, but Derek isn’t a complainer — well, he is, but Andy can’t think of any habits or anything Derek’s complained about.

He scribbles down ‘won’t do karaoke’, because that was Derek’s most recent complaint, when Andy sat out and watched a good chunk of the Senators, lead by Derek, butcher song after song. Derek somehow wasn’t the worst. That, Andy thinks, went to Sven, though he also thinks Sven was singing badly on purpose, and knows very, very well that Derek wasn’t.

‘Nothing’, Derek flips over with a flourish, and the entire table boos.

Andy slinks down in his chair.

“But that one’s good too, Bowie,” Derek says. “You’re so good at this.”

“Oh my god,” Ivy says. “Kick them out.”

Adam starts chanting it, and everyone else picks it up, three Carruthers and their significant others in perfect unison.