#kessdoan

Would love to hear more about your kessdoan fic!!

helloo 🥰🥰

trade timeline: lutzi texted josh that jj was going to utah, then kess called josh while he was having dinner ("i think we're getting traded" "what are you talking about, 'we're getting traded'??" "well, my agent's saying we're getting traded") and they dug around online before it was confirmed

3 years, 3 different locations, all together :')

socks and ranger stay upstairs mostly, but hank roams around free now that he's mellowed out of his puppy phase

they always end the day watching hockey together with hank on the couch

they play a lot of sports on off days (golf, football, basketball--josh calls kess a sports nerd)

elliotte asked what kess's nfl team was and josh GROANED before he said kess is a pats fan LMAOOOO ("it's awful right now, and he'll argue with us all day")

josh does NOT want the pats to win

non-kessdoan details under the cut:

since i started working on my current kessdoan fic, i've had a growing hunch that kessdoan asked to be traded together (or at least heavily implied they wanted to stick together) and the more that leaks about the trade, the more that feeling is confirmed

getting traded to save a failing franchise only has glory when you're an established elite player desperate for a change in scenery. when you're a dman struggling to play up to your size, logging less than 16 minutes a night, and when you're a rookie getting called an overrated nepo left and right by the crumbling franchise that only sees you as your father, there's absolutely no hope and no joy being sent to buffalo. it's a chance to get more ice time and that's it. there's nothing else in buffalo, no palm trees or points or playoff promises

michael is 25 with a bum knee and two cats who don't know how to socialise when armstrong takes him to the manager's office again. he's 25 with only a single full season to his name when armstrong tells him buffalo's looking for a defensive dman and a playmaking winger. he's 25 with a co-leased house and 0 cooking skills to his name when he cuts armstrong off halfway through a rambly explanation about cap space and dcorps reconstruction, so he can blurt out josh's name

that first stretch of the season, learning how to play for a city that's been breathing hockey since 1970, is the worst stretch of the tunnel by a mile. it's endlessly nothing, it's getting booed and shut out at the home opener, it's a locker room that sinks in the weight of everyone's dejection. their new captain trains like he's trying to kill himself on the eliptical bike. their new alternates deliver the same hollow speech each night. no one is scoring. no one is defending. they're scraps of a team with no beginning and no end. how do you rebuild a team that's been in the middle of a rebuild for 15 years?

there's that first conversation they have on the back porch, after the season starts out with a five game losing streak. what are we doing, how are we feeling, why are we here, the kind of questions that haunt you daily when your house still isn't decorated because both of you are still scared you're gonna get a call that ships you halfway across the continent again any minute now. josh's is in one of the sweaters he stole from kess because josh didn't own any sweaters thick enough for the northeast.

it's easier for josh to leave keybank after all the lights are off, because he gets to go back to the porch light on and kess's pc screensaver illuminating the bedroom and four warm bodies tucked into a bed that's probably not meant to hold this much. losing is soulsucking, josh knows this. he's lost more than his fair share of games back in arizona. but it's different, to lose on a team of young guys who have no idea what they're doing, under an office that's rebuilding from scratch. it's easier to laugh and brush things off and call your best friend logan cooley a superstar in the making, when games don't really matter and you're always playing second fiddle to a basketball team that's even more painfully mediocre

losing in buffalo is an entirely different beast. it's heavy and it's hard and it hurts in a way josh's never felt before, yet everyone around him seems to accept as the norm. it drives him fucking crazy, and the only person who gets it is kess. the only person who gets it is kess, which means the only person who can get him out of it is kess. on the road, josh counts the days until he gets back to buffalo, where kess and hank will wait for him at the door and follow him to the park where he can rant and rant and rant about their useless power play, then to the grocery store where he can rant some more about their even more useless finishing, then back to the house where josh can rant to the cats so they don't feel left out

there's a moment after kess gets reinstated, where he plays the best night of hockey he's played in years only for them to lose to an equally bleak columbus team in overtime, where they sit in his car, this ugly suv he brought out from new hampshire, in complete silence and try to stomach the loss. josh opens his phone, scrolls, closes it, stares, and opens it again over and over and over again until kess gets fed up and yanks the phone out of his hand to program their address in

buffalo is cold. not new hampshire cold, all multicoloured leaves and powdered snow, but a cold, wet, bone-chilling cold that seeps into kbc most nights. a cold that makes it even harder to recover when kess twists his ankle

winning feels like pulling teeth, josh's goals don't outweigh the bitter taste of his +/-, and the city's already starting to toss in the towel when something in december clicks.

maybe it's norry, maybe it's benny, maybe it's the selfie gmka asks them all to get into on the plane back from seattle before the news breaks next morning. but suddenly they're on a tear, on a heater, on a warpath that charges through the east coast at full swing, highlight reel goals and highlight reel saves and highlight reel soundbites from annoying hockey podcasters calling them a wagon team. that first win against edmonton, kess shouts at the tv so loud it makes all three kids jump and scamper away. little did he know that was just the start of something bigger, something brighter, something lighter

kess starts skating again, and on that first drive back to keybank together, the two of them in the front seat of kess's hideous suv with kess belting along to his workout playlist, it starts to feel like something's there. butterflies, maybe. honeymoon phase, something like that. sparks, definitely. the whole damn team is on fire, the whole city is on fire

the drives back, when they're both sore head to toe and bruised in ten new places and grinning like mad men, feels like driving home, for real this time. for the first time since tucson. they're winning and josh is scoring and kess is ragdolling men into the boards and they get back to see their kids curled up around the main heater in the living room. there's breakfasts and optional skates and dinners and a ten game win streak that revives the keybank from the dead

there's a legion of guys named josh set out to save the city of buffalo, which kess finds extremely funny and makes sure to show josh all the memes he sees every morning when they're eating breakfast, no matter how many times josh tells him to just text it instead of shoving the screen in his face. (kess will never text them, because that means he has to wade through all the messages from josh that he's read but forgot to reply to) during practice and in the locker room, kess refuses to shut up about the fact that the pats are first in the east, but he buys with his own money and wrangles ranger with his own hands into a goofy allen 17 jersey to match socks' maye 10 jersey

josh pokes his head into adams' office on his very last day. the walls are cleared out and the desk is polished clean, devoid of all the posters and framed jerseys and giveaway items crammed onto every surface, upholding 5 years and change of a legacy that will forever be viewed as an ugly black stain. he shakes adams' hand, tells him thank you for taking them both, and thinks about his dad when adams pats him on the shoulder. toronto is close by, and half of kess's family is across the border. maybe they've gotta plan a visit sometime, a weekend stay longer than the short stint they'll get in january. kess's eyes glittered when he took josh on a tour around boston, and josh thinks he wouldn't mind seeing that light in him again

and maybe kess isn't back to form, not quite yet. maybe he's still fighting himself and edmonton and arizona and utah for that first point in royal blue and gold, fighting through the lingering pain every night when lindy throws him on ice to ruin the lives of the opposing top liners who keep pushing owen around, but each night is a step further into the tunnel, a step closer towards the white dot at the end that gets brighter every day.

this is such a good question i really had to sit on it. i would just say "everything" if that wasn't such a boring answer but seriously everything i know about them (and everything i learn about them) makes me love them more. so this is a very long list of the most endearing kessdoan facts, that i also think are good insights into their personalities and their relationship

this unintentionally turned into a kessdoan primer minus the timeline stuff LMAO but seriously they have so much stuff out there about them please get crazier about them it can't just be me

az/uta called them king and prince :')

kess was the trade target, and josh was a late add-in. kess knew ahead of time he was getting traded, so MAYBE POSSIBLY he suggested josh come along with (kess: "i joke that i dragged him to buffalo")

obviously them raising their pets together, which i made an effort to plaster all over my two kessdoan corkboard posts. it's actually so fucking cute to me that puppy hank loved playing with socks and ranger but the cats were having none of it LMAO it reminds me a lot of them, bc josh loud, bright, extroverted and kess shy, awkward, introverted

josh decorated their house in utah, and his mom came to help them decorate the place in buffalo. i think this detail reflects how kess is insecure about how he moves around and never has a stable home, going from edm -> az/uta -> buf, whereas josh is way more comfortable settling regardless of where he is (kess: "i want to stay in buffalo so bad")

josh visits kess in new england in the summers (note: josh takes hank on vacations with him, and hank doesn't do well in the arizona heat. hank loves kess and new england CONFIRMED)

kess backseats and josh does all the work. kess will pay for groceries, furniture, pet items, etc. and tell josh what to make or how to build it or where to put it, and josh goes along with it. (josh: "i don't know how well i [built] everything, but it's been a blast so far") perhaps kess is bad at ikea furniture?

josh thinks kess's sense of style sucks

kess is all in on watching every sport, but josh dgaf

kess is easy to ragebait, josh is extremely laidback

kess loves rap/edm, josh loves pop girlies (notably sabrina carpenter). they're both shower singers and karaoke guys, but josh is super embarrassed by this and will deny it when brought up (neither of them are really country guys WHO ELSE CHEERED!)

kessdoan tried really hard to get cools (logan cooley) to move in with them because he was lonely without his family and always over at their house anyway, but they were traded before he could move in permanently :( the three of them have a group chat together, and kessdoan usually refer to each other as "one of my best friends" instead of just "best friend" because cools is the third best friend

and then of course there's the hockey related stuff, how they're perfect foils in the meta sense cos josh was drafted 2nd year of eligibility in the 2nd round, kess drafted 1st year of eligibility, 6th round. josh is an nhl son from the south, kess is an echl son from the north. also playstyle: josh is an offensive winger with a strong forecheck, kess is a defensive dman with an insane shot. kess was the trade target but his injury recovery dragged him down, josh was the add-in but he's been the sabres' best winger. and josh says kess is lazy during practice and warmups but he's one of the grindiest guys on the sabres, etc etc this could go forever

[EDITED BONUS EDITION: kess is terminally online, and josh is probably terminally offline]