I think a lot about Quinn by himself in Vancouver, Jack and Luke together in New Jersey.
Quinn being so glad his brothers have each other because it gets so lonely and he'd rather be the one to deal with rather than one of them.
Traded to Minnesota where Kirill has Zuccy and Matt and Brock have each other and Nick and Marcus are together now and there's a lot of reasons to think he'll be by himself here too but Brock, Kirill, Matt, and everyone else all seeing that and going no. It doesn't have to be that way anymore. You're not going to be lonely here.
And I'm always a sucker for Jack and Luke not having realized how much life had been sucked out of Quinn until it starts coming back. Because sometimes that stuff happens slowly and you miss it.
He starts sounding happier on phone calls and takes photos with his new team where he's smiling and it's real and full.
And oh. He's so happy there.
A little wilted flower that's healthy and bright again after someone took some time to take care of it right.
And I do just imagine the Wild getting Quinn and watching him those first few days and basically going, 'Man, it's been a long time since you've been in kind/good hands, hasn't it?'
And yeah.
yeahh, YEEAAAHH. quinn of course thrilled that luke gets drafted by the devils, because thatās their mf baby brother, and now thatās one less thing for quinn to stress about when it comes to luke joining the nhl, because he knows jack will make sure luke is okay, and now they both have someone he trusts looking out for them š„²š„²š„² but also it somehow does make him feel more alone, because now itās luke & jack together, closer to their parents, and then just quinn all the way west in vancouver, separated from them by distance and time zones. and then when things start going poorly with the canucks, itās even more lonely, and quinn is glad itās him that has to bear that but also. itās a lot to bear, and it sucks, and he wishes things were different.Ā
and then ohhhh yeah i mean. i could probably write a novel and a half about how much more alive and happy quinn looks in minnesota. like heās actually enjoying the game again, and gelling with the team, and even if it doesnāt really make a big difference in how often they see each other, the distance from his family is less and that means something. and the wild welcoming him into their group and trying hard to make him feel included and cared about as more than an asset, ohhhhhhhhhhhhhĀ
iām also a huge sucker for āno one realized how bad things were for the guy who never complains about how bad things areāāquinn having gotten good at hiding the cumulative effects of everything, or at least coming up with a convincing enough lie, and the thing is that jack & luke do know/notice that things are going badly in vancouver, both as observers and in the things quinn does tell them. but they might not necessarily see the slow-rolling effects, how steadily itās wearing quinn down, until suddenly that weight isnāt there anymore. the difference being enough that they canāt believe they didnāt notice how bad he was doing (and quinn perhaps not having noticed, either).Ā
and UGH even the wild noticing?? like obviously quinn is a great player and nothing about that changes, but the degree to which he unfolds (even if that progress is slow), itās likeāthis isnāt just shyness, because this is more than the person they understood him as when he got traded. quinn being genuinely, noticeably happier to everyone involved š my wilting flower in recovery!!!
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Got sad thinking about something today. The Hughes brothers are like the biggest brothers to ever brother. They are so proud of each other and would yap to everyone about how any of them is amazing. They are also so so so protective. "How did Luke get injured ?" - "I won't answer to this question." Or sums.
But it must have been hard growing up with all those expectations. A famous mother, a famous father. They never had something for just themselves.
Quinn got to do all the things first then Jack then Luke. Quinn was first to get drafted. Then Jack then Luke. All in the NHL with so much pressure. But at least Jack had Luke. Quinn was alone in Vancouver. Then he was Captain and it was finally something he had for himself and would have for a while. It was also so much more pressure. Jack and Luke were so proud of him, who wouldn't ? Their big brother is a Captain. But then the pressure was too much because hockey in Canada is awful if you are alone and too nice. He gave back the C and went to Minnesota. Back to being "just" a Hughes. (We all know he is more than "just" a Hughes, one or the best D in the NHL, an amazing skater, ... Quinny.)
The press always asking their parents "who is the favourite child ?" (I can't get over Jim saying so fast "Jack" that one time tbh)
The OG happened. No Luke which sucked. Quinn had the OT goal against Sweden and then Jack the one against Canada. They once again shared something together.
So yeah. I guess they aren't meant to have something just for them. The only time it happened, Quinn became a stray and ended up in Minnesota surrounded by big hyperactive boys. (Which.... might have been the best thing to happen to him in years tbh.)
No idea what my point was. Maybe just they are platonic soulmates. (I was about to say codependants then I remembered the Minnycule and nope. THEY are worse than the Hugheses.)
you & me š¤ getting sad about the hughes brothers
(this one's kind of long so i put it under the cut)
i think about this alot. like sure, all three of them always say their parents didnāt force them into hockey, and jim & ellen always corroborate this. and iām sure to a certain extent, itās trueāi think hockey happened to be the most obviously convenient sport to get the boys involved in, and obviously jim & ellen have a lot of love for the sport that iām sure they passed on to their kids.
but also, think about the pressure of it all: you get into hockey at a young age, and because of who your parents are, hockey is a huge part of your life, and you have a lot of opportunities to become very skilled from a young age. and when youāre good at a sport early on, thereās so much pressure encouragement to stay with that sport and keep improving, and once you get involved at the club level, most people donāt just quit. especially when that might be the thing your parents praise you for the most, both directly and to other people. quinn in particular has talked about not being a super high performer academically (or at least, heās expressed he didnāt try very hard, and that he thinks jack & luke have greater strengths in that area). so youāre not getting loads of accolades school-wise, and doing well at hockey gets you attention and praise from the two people youāre biologically predisposed to desire it from the mostāwhy wouldnāt you throw yourself into that headlong?
i think in many ways, the hughes boys probably sublimated hockey as a āthemā thing simply by virtue of their parentsā achievements, interests, and encouragementāhockey isnāt necessarily not āsomething for just themselves ,ā but it was, to a certain extent, an inevitability. and especially when youāre siblings who are so close (and so close in age), and you share so much of that identity built around hockey, of course then you become each otherās competition and inspiration.
the mediaās influence doesnāt help either: each of them successively is expected to measure up to whomever came before, subject to constant comparison. like youāre just trying to share in this thing with your brothers, but all anyone will ever talk about is how you are or arenāt meeting the āstandardsā set by them. it never gets to be about just you and your accomplishmentsāand i think they all knew that would be the case, but the actual experience is always going to hit difference, no matter the preparation.
and then on top of the comparisons, thereās also that weird thing the media does about whoās the favorite, or whoās best at xyz, as you mentioned. i think sometimes they take it in stride and itās all good fun, but even if itās not meant to be seriousā¦imagine watching your dad ājokeā to the media that he prefers your brother over you? like on some level that has to hurt. thereās also the divide between who the three of them see as the biggest mommaās boy (quinn) vs. who they think is her favorite (jack). honestly thatās where a lot of my inspiration for tab 1 came from. like yeah, itās stupid, and itās all supposed to be in jest, but the fact that they all acknowledge that quinn tries hardest to be closest to their parents, but he isnāt ātheir favoriteā?? oof, is all i can really say.
anyway idk what my point was either lmao but thereās definitely a lot there to think about, many hurtful things to consider. i think the pressure they grew up with + relatively negligible age difference is part of why they do seem so codependent. like personally, i love my brother (though we are also 7 years apart), but if i was a professional athlete i donāt know thatād iād be flying back and forth to see him multiple times within a short time span. they definitely have something unique and particularly close.
my answers turned out really long (chronic yapper disease, etc etc), so i put them under the cut!! thank you for the ask, i had fun answering these :)
š Is there a fic of yours that broke your heart?
rubs hands together ooohhh man..... i'll be honest all of my fics break my heart a little bit bc that's the point :") actually i lied, the point is to break your heart š«µ
but i think of the ones i'm currently working on, it's the very first one i started that breaks my heart the most, mainly because it leans very heavily into the idea of being the person that just kind of gets forgotten a lot. like, there's the surface level things that people notice, the outward achievements and such--but being the person where it seems like no one really bothers to look underneath that, or the person who could just slip away into the background long before anyone realizes it. and all of this specifically in the context of being someone in the family who's expected to be reliable and responsible, expected to handle their issues without complaint...the person who gets overlooked specifically because they always have it together, but are only that way because there was never really a choice otherwise. being the person who sometimes just wants to grab people and beg to be noticed, to be loved, please, i'm right here, please
:''') that one is going to take a little bit to finish i think but i'm very excited about it
š Tell me about an up and coming wip please!
well, i've been yapping at poor kay a lot about abo lately and i finally. finally figured out my plot line for that one so
this one is essentially an excuse for me to write touch starvation :) things are so bad in vancouver, and when quinn gets traded there's both this sense of relief (mainly relief) and regret, but also this sort of resentment, because pack dynamics were so bad by the time he got traded, and quinn did a lot to try and hold things together but it just wasn't enough. and when he gets to minnesota, it's clear that the team dynamics there are worlds better--and they're all so laid back and normal about stuff like suppressants and scent patches--and quinn likes that, wants to be able to be a part of that, but he just...can't. can't trust it, can't go through things breaking down again the way they did in van. so he does his best to isolate himself without being too obvious about it, waves off a lot of off-ice team bonding, because if he doesn't get close, then he won't fall into any sort of trust, and if he doesn't have that trust, then he can't get hurt. (he is an idiot). the problem being that pack bonding/intimacy/affection is a pretty big cornerstone of general health, and that's especially true for omegas. but quinn is definitely, absolutely doing fine. he is not clearly unwell in a way that everyone can tell but no one wants to mention. and if something happens on the ice that makes all of this very apparent......well, that would be unfortunate, wouldn't it?
i think i've been working on this one the most recently!! love me some good h/c and a little idiot who doesn't realize he is loved :))
I have not stopped turning over one of the answers of an ask you got and like it's giving me reallyyyy bad ideas of putting qh in the blender, especially after he looked so defeated today when avs won
Like he's so used to being the guy who everyone is dependent on, (lowkey even today that tying goal was all him doing a hail mary) and in general being the reliable guy, and he's so not used to actually looking after himself properly and indulging himself
he always has this haze of sadness that's bearing down on him, making everything heavier on his bad days but isn't that so normal hahaha, doesn't everyone just have some days where it's impossible to get out of bed or cook or do anything at alll, it's not like it's a problem and he still answers his (important) calls even if he skips the texting
and everything is fine when the hockey is good, it makes it easier to breathe, easier to go back to his empty apartment, eat whatever his team packed him, and sleep until practise the next day, and it's also kinda ok when the hockey is bad and it seems that all they do is lose, lose and lose, and he can't afford to have an off day because everything will collapse otherwise, and so what if he doesn't understand how 712 or kirill and zuccy or the folignos can laugh around even after the bad losses or how a trip to the bar can lighten the mood when it just makes him feel suffocated
but maybe he just needs a break and to sleep for a few days straight (actually) so his bone weary tiredness can finally go away even though he doesn't think that this tiredness is because of hockey and he's sure that jack and luke will understand if he doesn't call for a while and just sleeps through whatever this is and that the wild guys will understand if he doesn't respond because he's still kinda the new guy anyways and they won't have to worry
YES YES YES YES GOOD EXCELLENT (also iām super super curious which ask youāre talking about!!) i ran away a little with my hrpf hat on in this one, hope thatās alright haha
oh man yeah. like, all the hughes boys have hockey as such a central part of their lives that could be sooooo influential on their emotions; but i have to think that it affects quinn especially, in part due to oldest daughter/high performer syndrome, but also bc unlike jack & luke, who have each other, quinn doesnāt really have anybody whoās going to immediately notice and pull him out of it if he starts feeling really low. because he is the reliable one, the steady one, the one who doesnāt do big outward displays of emotion or even really talk that much. quinnās very much someone who i think works a lot off othersā energyālike, whatever their mood is, heās good at reflecting or managing that (see: oldest daughter syndrome).Ā
why would you worry about a guy who never really gives a lot of outward indicators that heās actually Not Fine? even quinn himself understands why no one would think to check in on himā¦but that doesnāt mean it doesnāt still hurt, sometimes. like he spends so much time noticing everyone else and getting ahead of their needs and emotions, but no one ever seems to do that for him (idk if this is the post you were referring to, but i touch a little bit on that in this wip for tab 4, in the bottom paragraph of the middle pic)
and quinn isā¦Not Fine, and sometimes he wonders if heās actually ever been Fine. it just feels like it takes more work for him to do so many of the things that everyone seems to manage, and he knows thatās probably not normal. so instead he gets really good at the few things that donāt exhaust him, and then thatās always a convenient distraction to throw out, and it always works. and then things are good when the hockey is good, and things are really good when the hockeyās really good. but when the hockeyās badāand especially when itās bad for an extended stretchāitās just. whatās the point. this is the thing quinnās supposed to be the best at and it feels like he canāt even do that right.
Ā it kind of makes him mad, even, that some of the other players can shoulder off the loss like that, because quinn canāt, because itās going to bother him and pull him down until they win again, until theyāre good enough again, until heās good enough again. but then he doesnāt even really have the energy to be properly mad about it, either, so it all just ends up making him feel worse overall. and basically the only thing that makes it feel better, or at least puts a pause on feeling bad, is hiding away in his bed for as long as he can get away with it
though personally, with the wild, just generally having a better team vibe than quinn had with the canucks by the time he leftāi like to imagine they do notice, at least eventually, because thereās normal quinn tired and then thereās whatever this is, quinn shucking off his gear post-game with this detached dispondence, basically ignoring what anyone is saying to him, like he canāt even hear any of it. and when they first got him, they sort of thought maybe thatās just how he was, but the thing is that theyāve gotten to know him better now, as a guy and as a teammate, and something just isnāt sitting right
cue the wild trying (with no small amount of failures) to coax him out of his depression hole, trying to figure out what heāll agree to and what he wonātāwhere heās willing to be dragged, who heās willing to hang out with, how much social prodding they can reasonably expect from him. just trying to get him out of his head a little, because it seems like a not-great place to be at the moment
......anon you had to know this would make me ramble :)) i do love wringing a guy through the depression machine, i love collapsing his worldview into "sad and tired" and making other people realize he's not okay :) it's one of my favorite pastimes, actually
oh man your answer for the š ask killsssss me!!! this is so real and heartbreaking and i hate the feeling of that!
but also another reason I'm very big up on any au where it goes to the extreme of hurtxcomfort, like qh keeping a secret because of health reasons (or your au of where he's outed and jack and luke didn't know!!) or I love myself a scene similar to the emergency plane landing scene in heated rivalry, where it's just a lot of panic and "omg is that person ok why won't anyone tell me" going on!! Like anything where he doesn't have to be in the role of sorting everything out, I love when luke & jack have to try and fill his shoes instead (and realising that it's hard and they can't and they wish they could go to their older brother with this problem but right now it's not possible because he is involved with the problem)
YEAH!! YEAH YOU GET ME!!!!
i think the other thing about the "š wip" (stored under #tab 1 btw, though there's not much there atm) is that it's all those feelings but also not being aware of them until something bad happens, and then the feeling of "oh, they...really forgot about me," and half the feeling of "maybe i should have said something, maybe i shouldn't have been so dependable" and half the feeling of "but i shouldn't have to. they should care about me anyway"
also YES YEAH i looooove a character who's normally so self-sufficient/reliable being put in a situation where they can't be that anymore, where they people they love have to step in and help carry them (metaphorically or literally) for a bit. and i love to write jack & luke in a situation where they 1) realize how much quinn puts up with/struggles with/goes through, often without anyone seeing it, because he's gotten so good at handling things on his own, and/or 2) get an opportunity to take care of him instead, for once, especially if quinn is overall reluctant to it, and they get to pull the younger brother card of "you would do the same for me" ... like they're all adults now, and yeah, j & l are younger and still figuring out some of the things quinn's already done, but they're not uselessly younger, and if they can put their heads together to figure out how to take care of quinn (without quinn's help), then they are going to do it!!
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yesss both good options! ended up going with "brother"
Quinn lets his head flop back to face his brothers. āāS it bad?ā he asks, because he has to know. Jack's not a very good liar, though somehow he usually seems to get away with it. Luke, on the other hand, is a fantastic liarābut neither of them are very good at lying to Quinn when it comes to things that are actually important.
The corners of Lukeās mouth tighten, and his gaze flicks to Jack. Itās funny, they make almost the same face when theyāre stressed.
āYeah, Q,ā Jack nods after a long, heavy pause, āItās pretty bad.ā
"locker room" was in too many sentences that are a little rough without context lmao
