#snickfic

This is really hard because I’m very fond of this story. It’s probably the most personal thing I’ve written in this fandom (#2 is “The Biblical Sense”) and I’m happy with how it turned out, so I love all of it. (Now you’re all trying to figure out how a story about oviposition is personal, well 😏 🐙) Probably this is my favorite bit:

Zhenya would be a father soon, and maybe he wasn’t ready, but who was? Was anyone ever ready to become a parent? Sid would help him when he stumbled, and they would do their best, the two of them together. They would make a family.

But maybe also:

Everything would change, but Sid would be with him, changing with him.

11: What do you like best about this fic?

I have never heard of bathtub fic before, so I’m just assuming it’s a fic that… takes place in a bathtub? Leave me to my delusions if not. 

One minute Matt is digging through his bag for his keys after practice, and the next thing he knows he’s in a bathroom with sea-foam green wallpaper, his pants and the edge of his shirt soaking wet because he’s in a tub, a full, occupied tub, and someone is cursing in French in an achingly familiar voice. 

It’s Flower across from him—younger and skinnier and shocked, but still recognizably Flower. 

The water sloshes over the side as Flower tries to scramble to his feet—which, Matt would too if their situations were reversed and a stranger had just dropped in on him in the bath—but Flower loses his balance and Matt’s heart lurches into his throat. He has a sudden vision of Flower cracking his head open against the porcelain and giving himself a(nother? another concussion? or just a—) concussion, and grabs for him before he can fall. His skin is warm against Matt’s hand as he drags him back down, and Matt lets go as soon as the thought registers.  

Flower stares at him, eyes huge, and he’s so young, he can’t be more than a year or two past the draft. Matt was never that young, he doesn’t think. He can’t have been. 

“Sorry,” he says, babbling as his nerves overtake him. He can usually feel a jump coming, but not this one, and all the water sloshing around is making him decidedly nauseous. “I’m sorry for scaring you, I don’t really have control over this. I promise I’ll get out of your hair soon. Just, please, can you stop moving for a minute? I think I’m going to be sick.” 

“Who the fuck are you?” Flower asks, breathing hard, but at least he’s stopped trying to get out. He’s got his legs bent up in front of him, and Matt stays on his side of the tub and keeps his eyes on Flower’s face.

It’s a question with a lot of answers. He is—was? his mind whispers. Will be?—a teammate and a friend and a partner. They have history between them, in the shape of Flower’s fingers on Matt’s hips and the weight of the Cup as he passed it to him, and Flower is (is, is, always present tense) one of the most important people in Matt’s life. 

And Matt is the guy who took Flower’s job and his team and his city. That’s who the fuck he is. 

None of that is now, though. None of that is here, and it’s impossible to fit what they are (were, will be, have been) down into a single introduction. Still, Matt has to try, at least if he doesn’t want Flower calling the cops on him. 

He’ll tell Flower they’re teammates, he decides. That’s most of the truth, and anyway, everything else is too complicated: a tangle of emotions and history that he can’t get into, not with this Flower. Not when he can’t even pick up the phone to call his Flower. 

Still, when he opens his mouth, that’s not quite what comes out. 

To be fair, Peter grew up with a whole lot of secondary male models as well, which… really doesn’t improve things at all. XD

4,348 words | Sidney Crosby/Evgeni Malkin | Complete | Teen & Up  | AO3

3, favorite line of narration:

Tie between these two:

True power never needed to shout, he had told Loki once, and yet Loki could remember him shouting time and time again; had he felt powerless then?

and

He had lost him too often to mind finding him again.

The first because I like the idea of Loki recognizing a bit of Odin-hypocrisy but in a more sympathetic light, having that realization that Odin wasn’t all-powerful and was in fact often overwhelmed, and was maybe at his harshest when he felt least equal to the situation; the second because I just love Thor and Loki being brothers so much.

5, hardest part to write: