#stoot

according to the original hc we had stokes making a PowerPoint Presentation on "Reasons Why Dating an Aussie Is Blasphemy" - I reckon Patty on the other side would be doing the same to Timmy HAHAHAHA - i can imagine salty just calling stokes an old fashioned man and asking him to "keep up with the times! we're all global citizens!"

i can imagine jos going "well... shubman" SO CLEARLY in his sweet soft gentle voice too 😭 (also i love this let's have everyone be dating everybody) except stokesy and patto themselves who are "married to their work™️" - they will also become eventually canon duh!!!! but anyway coming back to this - POSSESSIVE JOS YES YES YESSS GIVE ME MORE GIVE ME MOREEEEEEEE SEEING HIM MORE FIERCE AND PROTECTIVE LITERALLY WOULD REWIRE MY BRAIN CHEMISTRY

(salty, if td finds out about that comment, he's gonna spank you as punishment so shhhhh)

on the other hand, for pat, maybe he feels this frustrated because he already knows he's lost mitch starc to joe root, maybe? like maybe they're not together yet but pat knows starcy has a huge crush on joe root and he's already been through the whole convincing with him but starc is not yielding, so he's hoping that at least tim, who's still his junior, would be easier to influence and educate. and pat would say that he'd ask bison to drop tim off the t20 side if he doesn't break up with salty effective immediately 100% out of pettiness

MY DARLING REGGIE <3 the implication that tim knows about them but didn't tell anyone? they've kept it private for how long now omg tell meeeee did hoffrat start dating 2022? 23? 25? because that'll be really interesting - i like to think at least for timphil they probably started dating end of the 2025 season - they spent the entirety of that year thinking the other person only sees them as a best friend and nothing else until the night of the finals celebration where they got too drunk and kept provoking each other like "we're best friends... but i really wanna kiss you on the lips... haha... unless" and then they did it and hoff saw them of course but he didn't comment on it because he had his own secret to hide 😭 (it was phil salt who saw them the next morning - timphil had passed out in the party room and in the wee hours of the morning, maybe at about 5 am when half the world was still asleep, joshy had to leave for england for the wtc finals immediately that day, and virat was seeing him off. salty was reeling from a massive hangover and was walking from the party room back to his hotel room to get some meds, when he saw virat tiptoeing and hoff bending down to kiss each other. on the lips. much like him and tim did last night. but he wasn't sure if he was hallucinating, an aftereffect of all the alcohol, so he took a picture of the two figures on his phone, and decided to revisit it later when he felt better. naturally he investigated it together with tim to get a second pair of eyes check, and both of them could make out that they were hoffrat, clear as day. tim proceeded to send joshy tons of poorly made edits of him and virat to his WhatsApp while reggie was still on flight, and when hoff lands, he knows they were caught. josh leaves a sinister "i saw everything you and tim did last night" as the only reply, and since then they got into an unspoken agreement of covering for one another)

PHEW NOW ANYWAY COMING BACK TO THE PRESENT, yes pat would be so dumbfounded because how on earth did he miss it?! of course hoff was dating virat! the signs were all there!!! josh trying his best to fly back to rcb year after year for the full tournament even if he was ruled out because of injuries, hoff not needing a hotel room in london anymore with the rest of the team because he suddenly had "family" there in an airbnb, the way hoff never tried to get under kohli's skin - god, how has pat lost his 2 best friends to the people who frustrate him the most?!

pat would give up once and for all because if there's one thing he knows about virat, it's that he wears his heart on his sleeve. and if there's one thing he knows about josh, it's that he keeps his business, including his emotions, extremely private. and as polarising as they sound, if josh felt confident enough to tell him this, and if virat was able to keep it under wraps for this long, it meant they were serious about each other and were willing to change things about themselves and meet one another in the middle. so, he would just defeatedly mutter under his breath "at least it's not another bloody pom" (josh would hear him anyway and then go gloat about it to starcy - well now that the cat is out of the bag he might as well tell people about him and virat - but mitch would just say "mate, anybody who saw the ipl in 2025 could smell you two being in a relationship from a mile away. pat is just daft sometimes." and josh would swat his stomach and say "not as daft as rooty who cannot feel the way you undress him through your heart eyes each time you see him on field")

okay idk why i built so much on this this was so random i hate you very muchs jis look what youve done to mes