#em71

when you finally did meet baby malkin, you started crying. you held the little baby and swore that you were going to be best friends, holding him so gently and kissing his little forehead softly. the hearts of anna, geno, and your dad were melted into puddles.

there's no question about who the de facto babysitter is, because it's obviously you. any time you can, you're hanging out with nikita. you spend all of the penguins parties holding him, or holding his hand and following him around when he starts to walk. he's your little buddy, and it's the best thing ever.

you become nika's favorite person really quick. he recognizes the sound of your voice as a baby, reaches for you whenever you're near, and cries when you leave. sometimes, if he's really inconsolable, geno will facetime sid and ask to put you on, and this works to calm baby nika down like 99% of the time.

the older nikita gets, the more obsessed with you he becomes. he tells everyone you're best friends, and wants to hang out with you as much as possible. the two of you sit together at all the home games, talking animatedly and sharing a thing of popcorn.

he follows you around like a little duckling, hiding behind you when new people are introduced to him. he holds your hand whenever a room gets even slightly crowded to stay close to you, and abandons his parents the second he sees you.

it's not annoying, though. in fact, it's the opposite. you love nika, love hanging out with him. he's adorable, too, and has the cutest little chubby cheeks, which you love squishing. even though this usually annoys the heck out of him, nika just smiles and lets you do it. you're the only person he lets squish his cheeks, which geno reminds you of pretty regularly, never failing to make you smile.

around the time he turned five, nikita's obsession with you changed a little bit. not too much, and not in a weird way. he just started looking at you with little heart eyes, telling you how pretty you are, holding open doors for you whenever possible.

you don't notice, not really. honestly, his behavior hasn't changed that much, he just kisses the top of your hand whenever you say goodbye now, and you thought that was just a cute thing he picked up from a movie.

nika's six when you learn to drive, and then you start taking him out on little day dates on weekends. you pick him up from school when you're in town, and your babysitting gig becomes official.

you and nika spend a lot of time together, and it's awesome. you watch movies, and play games. the two of you become puzzle experts. you see new movies together, explore nearby arcades.

when it came time to teach nika how to skate, of course you were at the rink with them. you held onto his little hands and skated backwards as he started inching around on the ice, never letting him fall. geno and sid watched from the sidelines with proud smiles on their faces, loving seeing their babies together.

it's a bittersweet moment for them both. for sid, seeing his baby as a teenager, interact with his teammate's kid, is wild. he has a love/hate relationship with seeing such clear evidence that his baby... isn't a baby anymore. geno loves it because nika is very rarely as happy as he is when he's with you. he loves that the two of you have a relationship, and such a loving one at that. nika's your baby, even though he's not biologically related to you at all.

you make an effort to try and go to nika's games as often as you can. you write his number on your cheek, and cheer louder for him than anyone else. whenever he makes a goal, he points right at you with a huge smile on his face.

when you start dating mack, you're excited to introduce him to nika. you'd been telling nika about how you met him at the world championships, how you'd been texting him pretty much constantly ever since you met, and how you like him a lot. nika wasn't super into the idea of you having a boyfriend, but was constantly asking you if mack treated you well, if he made you happy, things like that. it was literally the sweetest thing ever.

nikita is your favorite person to gossip with. you'll just send your uncle geno a text saying that you'd like to talk to your best friend, and then your phone rings. it's usually nika sitting at the kitchen table eating a bowl of cereal with a huge smile on his face.

"okay, what did she do this time?" looking so eager and excited to hear all the drama.

every once in a while, you'll spend a day with nika on the weekends. bring him to your dorm to hang for a while, take him to lunch, take him to a movie. every time, you deck him out head to toe in upitt garb, and he goes home declaring he's going to go to upitt when he gets older.

mack and nika have beef. you think it's so stupid because your boyfriend is 19 and nika is 9, but mack insists that it's valid. whenever they're in each other's presence, they compete for your attention, and brag to each other about how nice they are to you. geno think it's the funniest thing in the world, but you beg to differ.

they've literally had competitions in the past. who can run the fastest, who knows the most about you... it's kind of annoying but also kind of really cute. and it never fails to amaze you just how many things those two notice about you. like the way you don't allow your food to touch on the plate, and how you always start with your thumb when painting your nails, and keep your rubber band on your right hand.

nika buys you gifts for any and every occasion. your birthday, christmas, valentine's day... literally everything. it's always something pretty, like a necklace or earrings. sometimes it's an art kit, tickets to some sort of experience, something the two of you can do together. you always tell him that he doesn't have to, that hanging out with him is a present enough, but he insists.

for your eighteenth birthday, he bought you a silver bracelet with a charm of your initials on it. you wear it every day, and every time nika sees it, he smiles really big.

despite being a bit tall for his age, nika loves it when you give him piggyback rides. and you love giving them to him, walking around with him, pretending he's suddenly gotten really tall, pretending to drop him, and swinging him back and forth on your back. nothing makes you happier than hearing his excited little giggles right in your ear.

he likes to call while you're getting ready. he likes watching your process, watching you curl your hair, do your makeup, accessorize your outfit. he tells you about his day, gripes about annoying kids on his hockey team, occasionally will complain about something his dad did, which always makes you laugh. he obviously compliments you the entire time, telling you the curl you just did looks "so super bouncy," that your mascara looks "perfectly pointy," and making sure you know just how beautiful you are.

you and nika are partners-in-crime, too. you've always loved playing pranks on the guys on your dad's team, and when nika was born, you decided that he was going to be your little assistant. when he was little, he would toddle after you as you set up pranks, would hide with you, and giggle uncontrollably when someone inevitably ended up with whipped cream on their face.

as he got older, he helped even more. he came up with a lot of the pranks the two of you did, picked your victims, and of course helped set everything up. you like taking videos, documenting the entire process, and then posting them on your tiktok. your followers love your pranks with nika series.

because of this, nika has become a very prominent and regular figure on your tiktok page. you vlog picking him up from school, your weekend dates with him, sometimes make little snippet compilations of the facetime calls between the two of you. your fans love nika, and love your relationship.

every once in a while, you'll take a video of nika and mack arguing about something. it's usually at a family dinner with you, your dad, geno and anna, and of course, nika. whenever mack is in town he joins too, and that's when the majority of nika and mack's interaction is. the videos are usually them doing weird little competitions with you snickering in the background, either egging them on or telling them to knock it off, depending on your mood.

nikita malkin is one of your favorite people on the planet. he's sweet, and kind, and is down for pretty much anything. he's been your buddy since he was born, and you can't wait to see what he grows up and does.

geno is beyond glad that his son has you. nika's probably the only child him and his wife are ever going to have, so he's glad that he has someone to hang out with, to talk to, to get into trouble with on occasion. you also keep him humble, often reminding him that just because he's the son of a professional hockey player doesn't mean he gets to be a little brat. obviously geno and anna try to keep that in his mind, but it has more of an effect coming from you.

the big thing is that you love him. you love talking to him and hanging out with him and doing things with him. he's one of the sweetest kids you've ever met, and you're so glad you have him in your life.

he's glad he has you, too.