#guentzel

He did his best. Raising a hockey player was already a tough thing, let alone a generationally talented one. He had to straddle the line between father and coach and protector and defender and confidant and friend and—it was a lot. He was certain that he fucked up more than once. But now, especially now, after all the time that's passed, he tried to give himself some grace. They'd made it here, after all: another Dad's Trip on the horizon, 20 seasons in, shooting the shit in the car like it was the easiest thing in the world. Sid wouldn't even hear him talk about a hotel. He had a room for him in the big house in Sewickley that he worked hard for because of course he did.

But the feeling stuck Troy now, standing in the middle of Sid's living room staring at the notebook.

It was clearly something he wasn't supposed to see. It was one of those spiral notebooks he remembered buying so many of when Sid and Taylor were kids, the metal bending in the way it always did when it got full. It had a worn bright green cover, pages and pages full of Russian in big, scratchy handwriting.

Not Sid's.

And not Geno's either. Troy didn't know why he thought that, or how he knew it, but he did.

Troy took a deep breath. Decades of hard talks should've prepared him to ask a stupidly simple question like hey, what's this? But Sidney burst into a coughing fit when he did and that feeling, like ants under his skin, came rushing back like it'd never left as he rushed into the kitchen.

He watched the gears turn in Sid's head behind his eyes before he told him it was Nikita's book and that he and Geno had stayed with him while the police looked into the robbery. Troy smiled, but it felt weird on his face. "Oh, that’s nice. Nice that you’re helping them out," he said.

"Of course. He’s my—" Sidney stuttered, his mouth frozen on the word he clearly couldn't say.

The feeling crawled up Troy's spine. "Sid, seriously." He stepped into Sid's space, only a few steps before he overthought it and froze again. “Are you okay?”

God, it was so cliche, but Trina was always so much better at this. She'd know what to say, when to reach out and how lightly to touch Sid on the neck or shoulder or arm. He suddenly wished for Sid to be eight years old again, furiously scrubbing tears from his eyes in the back seat of the car after a bad game. Back then Troy could get away with saying nothing. Could just Sid cry it out and hug him when he was done and take him out for ice cream after. He thought if he touched Sid now, he'd flinch or smack his hand away, do something that would break Troy's heart in half.

Sid locked eyes with Troy. His knuckles were white where he gripped onto the edge of the counter. Holding onto dear life, Troy thought, and the ants under his skin stung just a little harder.

"He's my partner," Sid said.

Troy blinked. Took in the sight of his only son standing in front of him. Felt the world underneath him shift, tilting sideways., never to go back.

"Uh…yeah. You guys’ve been friends for a while." He added, "Teammates for longer," before he could stop himself.

Sid's jaw clenched. "No, that's not what I mean. Geno's my partner."

Troy was a lot of things, but he wasn't an idiot. "Like...like on the ice," he said slowly, even though he knew exactly what Sid was trying to tell him.

"I mean—yeah. But not just that. I mean…off the ice too. At home. We’re together."

Troy could do nothing but breathe. Inhale, exhale. "Sid..." he began, but he didn't know what to say. A million things raced through his head—how long and why didn't you tell me and did you know you could tell me and and I love you I still love you I'll always love you. The itch made him cleared his throat, open his mouth and say the first thought he could grab. "Thank you for telling me."

"Sure," Sid said flatly. Then he turned his back to him and went back to plating their dinner. The dinner Sid made for them. The dinner Troy ruined.

They watched the game together. Ate together. Talked the whole time about the game and the charity event tomorrow and how the trip would go. The prickling remained just underneath the surface the entire time, even when Sid hugged Troy when they said goodnight. Neither of them said anything.

The guest room was cool with soft blankets to bury himself under. But Troy was hot all night. Tossing and turning, thinking of all the things he should've said but didn't. Thinking the prickling feeling was right. That Troy did something wrong and he had to fix it.

With a groan, Matthew hauls himself up off the bed, hand coming to cradle under his growing bump as he steps out of his bedroom and into the hall. There’s light coming from under Sam’s bedroom door as he walks past and, for a single fleeting moment, Matthew considers knocking on the door. He doesn’t because there’s a line to be drawn and Matthew has been doing an awful job of it lately. Sam moved in to help him out, not to be drawn into whatever nonsense Matthew’s brain is currently conjuring.

The walk to the kitchen is slow, Matthew’s brain foggy and body aching. When he gets there, the first thing Matthew does is pour himself a glass of water from the fridge, leaning against the counter as he sips at it slowly. His eyes glaze over as he stares unseeingly at the oven, glass held in both hands. He loses track of time a little, finishing the glass of water and pouring himself another glass before refilling the filter jug.

By the time Matthew is getting to trying to reach the sleeve of crackers on the top shelf of the cupboard (thanks a lot, Sam), he’s hit with a sudden burst of warmth. Cedarwood practically wraps around him, making him falter as he goes up onto his tiptoes again. The scent gets stronger, the citrus usually a soft undertone but bursting like fireworks with each step he takes to get closer to the kitchen.

“Oh my God, Matthew.”

Sam’s voice is thick with sleep and soft exasperation, tutting as he gently nudges him out of the way. He reaches up to get the crackers, handing them to Matthew with a smile and Matthew can only roll his eyes, trying to fight the smile that works its way onto his mouth.

“Shut up. You put them up there, asshole.”

Sam’s smile is warm and not nearly tired enough for the time of night. Matthew wonders for a moment how long he’s been awake, but he’d figure it was a while from the energy he seems to have. So much more than Matthew does. But, of course, that isn’t strange these days. Matthew feels exhausted most of the time and now is no exception, leaning back to rest against the counter. His thumb slides under the seal on the crackers, working it open slowly.

He can feel eyes on him but he ignores it, pulling out a cracker and biting the corner of it, chewing slowly. Matthew is no stranger to nausea these days, so he’s mostly figured out how to handle it by now. Eating slowly helps, drinking lots of water helps. Crackers really help. He had mentioned it once, how good they taste when he’s feeling sick. The next day, Sam had filled the cupboard with crackers, more than Matthew knew what to do with. He still thinks about that, how easily he had done it, made such a small change in Matthew’s life but it had a massive impact.

Matthew looks up, finds Sam watching him. Not just him, his eyes are darting between Matthew’s face and his bump, like if there was something wrong, Sam would be able to tell. It makes Matthew’s heart pound and he really hopes his scent isn’t doing anything stupid right now. From the look on Sam’s face when he looks back up at him, it must be.

“What?” Matthew says, mouth full of crackers in what is certainly not a calculated move.

Sam shakes his head, brow furrowing deeper as he looks away, like he’s trying to work something out. Matthew knows what he looks like when he’s trying to pretend everything is fine. Sighing, Matthew puts the crackers down, rubbing the crumbs off his hands against his stomach, his shirt stretching over the swell of his bump.

“Just tell me, Benny.”

“You just… You smell kind of anxious.”

Matthew could honestly laugh and he would if Sam didn’t look so uncomfortable. Like it physically pains him to have this conversation. And, yeah, when Matthew really focuses, when he lets Sam’s scent wash over him, all he can pick out is the sour berries, woody smoke curling around him and taking hold, determined to root itself in his memory. He hates when Sam’s scent changes into this. He especially hates being the cause of it, however unintentional it may have been.

“I’m okay. I mean – I’m fine, you know?”

“No, I don’t know.”

He pulls a face, shifting slightly to press himself further back against the counter, like he can get away from the way Sam is looking at him. It’s so much, the weight of Sam’s gaze has always made Matthew want to squirm, not let him look too hard or too long. Matthew is always fearful of what Sam might see in him.

“You’re doing it again.”

Matthew makes a noise halfway between a scoff and something incredulous, arms stretched out beside him.

“I’m just standing here!”

“Yeah, but you’re just like, doing a lot.”

Sam’s hands wave between them, like that’s meant to make sense. Like Matthew should understand exactly what he’s trying to get across.

The worst bit is that Matthew does.

He grabs blindly for a cracker, biting off a corner and letting his free hand rest under the swell of his bump, which feels like it’s growing bigger and bigger each time he looks at it. He can still see his feet for now. He spends so much time looking down at his bump, stroking his thumb over the soft fabric of his shirt, wishing he could just have the baby now, hold them and talk to them. Know what they look like, what they like and dislike. Yeah, they’d be a baby but they’d have a little personality already and Matthew would love every little aspect of it.

“Do you–”

Matthew cuts himself off, eyes wide and unseeing as he bites soft and little at the cracker in his hand. Trying to talk about this makes him feel even more nauseous. It’s something he’s been worrying about for a while and he wonders how long Sam has been noticing his scent being off and not said anything. Probably longer than he’ll care to admit.

Sam just waits him out, he’s good like that. He knows Matthew has something he wants to say and he can only imagine what his scent is doing right now. It’s probably bitter and smoky, overwhelming in a bad way. Taryn always tells him that he could choke out an entire room when he starts to feel bad. He tries to pull it back, keep it at least a little under control. He doesn’t want to choke Sam out.

“Don’t,” he says softly, stepping across the kitchen to crowd into Matthew’s space.

He can only watch as Sam reaches up to cup his cheek, tilting his head slightly so they are watching each other.

“Don’t hide anything from me. Feel whatever you need to feel, okay?”

Before he can stop it, his lower lip is wobbling, hands are trembling and he has to put the cracker down on the counter, trying to dust off his hands on his own shirt. Sam is too close, though, so he ends up just knocking his knuckles against his stomach. Matthew settles for reaching out and clinging to Sam, fingers tight in his shirt. Sam’s scent does something that Matthew can’t focus on right now, but it’s soft and wraps around him like a warm hug.

“I just, it’s – am I… am I not good enough?”

And just like that, Sam’s scent changes.

The warmth is still there, Matthew can feel how hard he’s working at keeping it there, trying to keep Matthew calm and steady. But the anger is prominent, the rich cherry Matthew has come to associate with Sam playing hockey after a bad hit, it’s right at the forefront. For a brief moment, he wonders if he said the wrong thing, if Sam is mad at him. It’s fleeting, there one minute, gone the next. Sam has made his feelings on all of this quite clear and Matthew knows Sam could never be mad at him. There’s only one person he’s mad at here.

“He never deserved you.”

It’s such a bold statement, one Matthew can’t ever bring himself to agree with. He isn’t sure deserving even comes into any of this. He had been an idiot, hadn’t he? Sleeping with the enemy just because it was good. It wasn’t worth this. Not the pregnancy, he couldn’t find it in himself to regret sleeping with Leon with this as the end result. But the way Matthew felt about it, how it still ate him up inside that he had just been, what? A means to an end? A distraction from the real thing?

That might be the worst part of all of this, Matthew has no idea what he was to Leon. He had overestimated his importance in his life and it had only lead to heartbreak.

“But what about her?” He asks quietly, hand dropping so his palm is cradling the swell of his bump.

Sam’s hand drops to meet Matthew’s stomach, stroking slowly over his ribs, where her little feet love to dig in.

“She deserves the entire world,” Sam says softly, eyes almost entirely closed where he’s watching their hands, “I want to give her it.”

Matthew’s breathing hitches and he blinks up at Sam, slumping back a little more against the counter. Sam had moved in, he had taken every request Matthew had thrown at him and met it each and every time. He had responded in kind to each and every little thing Matthew asked of him and it was more special and meaningful than Matthew had ever imagined it to be.

Sometimes, in the dead of night when he knew Sam wouldn’t be able to tell what he was thinking, he wondered if he deserved it at all. If he, a stupid slut who got pregnant by a guy who couldn’t care less, deserved to have such a good man take care of him. He knew better than to ask that out loud, to anybody in his life. Not a single person had taken kindly to the way he spoke about himself in regards to all of this and whilst Matthew was grateful – beyond grateful, really – he couldn’t bring himself to agree with them.

He had gotten himself into this situation, sure, Leon was just as involved, but Matthew should have known better. He should never have spent his heat with Leon, that was a rookie mistake. It wasn’t like Leon ever asked to spend a rut with him, Matthew had had to ignore the wound that had caused more than once.

It was just that, now, Sam wanted to do and give so much to Matthew. Someone who had never had any of this before, who had never been offered it, let alone actually given it. It was sometimes too good to be true and Matthew was just waiting for the other shoe to drop. For Sam to realise he didn’t want to raise some other alpha’s kid.

His scent must be doing crazy things because Sam’s nose wrinkles and Matthew thinks, quite startlingly, how cute it is.

“Are you sure this is what you want?”

Sam smiles and drops a hand down to curve under Matthew’s bump, thumb brushing against the stretched fabric of his shirt.

“Listen to me. If I didn’t want to do this with you, I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t have moved in, I wouldn’t be awake in the middle of the night because I know you’re up. I wouldn’t…”

Sam trails off and shakes his head, clearly about to say something and Matthew itches to know what it is. He wants to grab Sam by the shoulders and shake him until he admits whatever it is. Until he spills his guts, lets all of his soft and squishy insides pour out so that Matthew knows everything inside of him. All of his secrets, his desires, his needs. Matthew has never needed to know another person as much as he needs to know Sam right now.

Instead, Matthew stays quiet and lets Sam figure it out. Whatever he was going to say will stay in Sam’s head and the silence between them.

“I am here because I want to be. And being here for you and this baby? That’s what I’m going to do, Matthew. You can count on me.”

Matthew finds himself nodding slowly, staring at Sam.

He wants to thank him, to tell him that he doesn’t have to do any of this because Matthew can do it alone. He won’t ever have to, his family will always want to be involved and help him out and of course there’s the team. He’ll never truly be alone in this, not for a second. But Sam doesn’t have to be right here in the heart of it, not if he doesn’t really want to. Not if he’s doing this purely because he feels an obligation because of who Matthew is to him.

Or because… because he had been the one to get Matthew traded over to the Panthers, to keep him safe and nearby in case anything happened. He hadn’t known what to do with any of it when the trade had come in and Matthew had put two and two together pretty quickly. It took less than a week from telling Sam the test was positive to being in Florida.

One week and Sam had seen Matthew’s world turned upside down and been the one to turn it right side up again. Sam had been the one to make sure he was okay with all of this happening, that he wasn’t going to make a decision he’d regret. Sam was the one who was supportive, no matter what choice he was going to make. It was Sam’s hand he had held whilst he called his parents and told them the news.

How could Matthew, even for a second, think Sam wouldn’t want to do this with him? For him? Because of him?

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yeah. If… If you’re sure this is what you want to do, this is how you want to spend the next year of your life… Okay.”

Sam smiles and leans in to kiss the top of Matthew’s head, tapping his fingers against his bump lightly, like he’s trying to communicate with the baby.

snippet from 'heaven is not fit to house a love like you and i'

"YOU'VE SENT away everyone?" Nico asked breathlessly, nipping at Roman's throat. "Yes... Only the bodyguards are outside. But I've ordered them to not linger nearby," Roman whispered. The newly crowned king and his husband (newly crowned King Consort) were alone in the throne room. Roman was on the throne, while his husband was sitting on his lap, legs draped on either side of Roman. It wasn't the most comfortable position, but he could ignore the need for comfort whenever his darling husband was involved. Roman craned his head slightly, allowing Nico to continue to kiss and nip at his throat. It didn't seem the best idea, what with the crown that now sat atop Roman's head. It nearly fell from his head when Roman's head would move, and he reached up to try and take it off. But his husband stopped him by grabbing his wrist. "Don't," Nico whispered breathlessly. "Leave it on, my King." A shiver ran down Roman's spine. He reached to take Nico by the chin, gazing at him with nothing but love and desire in his eyes. "You're demanding things from your king now, husband?" Roman questioned. Nico whimpered, but there's a little smirk on his lips. "But what if I tell you that I've fantasized about riding your cock while you sit on the throne, looking regal, my liege?" he asked. His voice was innocent. But his face and words were far from it. "What if I wish for you to knock me up while you sit on the throne with your crown? For your first act as king to put a baby in me?"

snippet from 'tbd: a/b/o william nylander/mitch marner'