you're on your own, kid !

.𖥔 ݁ ˖⋆ ˚❆ gabe anderson ! mid to late twenties. bisexual. nhl player. captain and left-wing for the new york rangers. former first-overall pick. impulsive, over-worked, funny, affectionate, surprisingly thoughtful. looks like stephen kalyn. full character bio. heated rivalry verse.

guidelines !

banned faceclaims: minors/anyone under the age of 21/just turned 21. those who have requested not to be used. deceased fcs. known abusers, racists, homophobes, zionists, etc. anime/animated faceclaims.

this is a semi-selective blog. as a new blog, i'm trying to establish connections but still reserve the right to choose who i write with for my own comfort!

i am 27 years old. i will only write with muns and muses that are 21+. if you are under 21 or a minor, please do interact with me -- you will be blocked. if you don't have your age anywhere on your blog, i will not write or interact with you.

no godmodding.

please do not interact if you are a smut only blog. i'm not comfortable writing smut and will only write fade to black. this may be subject to change but not likely.

on that note, banned plots include: incest (full, half, & step), dub-con/non-con, racism/homophobia/zionism/transphobia/xenophobia/etc, anything taboo, etc. i'm okay with abuse as a plot point so long as it's not either my muse or use your muse that's inflicting it and it's handled carefully and/or it's part of a character's backstory.

please do not message me to plot if we haven't written before! i am more than happy to plot once we've established a dynamic! i am a very shy and anxious person and it makes me very uncomfortable unless a connection has been established.

please keep in mind that mun does not equal muse.

i write single spaced with small text. a lot of formatting is overwhelming to me.

---

they place him with marcus linderoth and his wife, astrid. initially, there's a small part of gabe that thinks living with the captain is humiliating. he's eighteen, he was just drafted first overall, he's got money for the first time in his life -- he doesn't want the added supervision.

within two months, he's eating astrid's cooking, letting their daughters decorate his snapbacks with stickers and paint his nails.

marcus never acts impressed by gabe's draft status or his skill or anything else about him. that is one of the first reasons gabe starts to trust him.

his father calls after nearly every early game. not always to criticize, though with james even praise sounds like criticism. marcus also picks up on this early. he is the first one to tell gabe that it is okay to let james go to voicemail.

as a rookie, gabe plays like he is trying to justify the rangers choice on every shift. he doesn't pace himself. he doesn't play with patience. no quietly solid games. he wants the beautiful goal, the huge hit, the impossible pass through traffic, or nothing. when it works, he looks like the most exciting young player in the sport.

when it doesn't, he turns the puck over in dangerous areas, takes offensive-zone penalties, and spends the next shift trying to punish himself for it by hitting everything that moves.

he throws up in the bathroom before his first game at madison square garden. then, he goes out and scores a goal that ends up on every highlight reel for the rest of the season.

---

his reputation for fighting starts almost immediately. initially, this isn't a problem. at first, it makes him exciting. analysts call it "old school hockey". it makes him seem exciting. a star winger with skill, swagger, and an edge. hockey loves a young player that is willing to bleed for his team.

the issue is that gabe isn't always fighting for his teammates. sometimes, he's just looking for somewhere to put the anger.

his first fight happens within his first ten games. he does not win. he is younger and angrier than he is skilled at fighting. he ends up with a split lip and a swollen cheekbone.

the fans love it. the broadcast keeps showing it over and over, the moment he drops the gloves and launches himself at the other guy. commentators talk about how he's already standing up for his teammates.

marcus waits until they are home that night before he says anything. gabe doesn't listen.

by christmas, he already has more fights than the coaching staff expected him to have his whole entry-level contract.

his anger has no subtlety his rookie year. the team learns to tell the difference between gabe being fired up and gabe being somewhere dangerous inside himself.

vets around the league initially respect him. but as the season wears on, some players start realizing how easy he is to bait. it becomes strategy to get under his skin because an angry gabe is more likely to take himself out of the gabe. "keep anderson talking" becomes the sort of thing teams put in pregame scouting reports.

teammates start pulling him out of scrums before they become fights. sometimes, gabe listens.

---

gabe is photographed out within weeks of the season starting. at first the pictures are harmless: him laughing outside clubs he is definitely too young to get into with other young players, backwards hat on, arm thrown around a teammate.

fans eat it up. he's not only talented, he's fun, he's got personality. he feels accessible in a way a lot of hockey's young, polished stars do not. there are blurry phone photos of him singing along to pop songs, grinning at strangers asking for selfies.

he loves being recognized. he hates himself for loving it.

early on, marcus gives him his freedom. he tells gabe that he is an adult, that it's important to have a life outside of the sport, that one night out after a win doesn't make him unserious.

the problem lies in that gabe does not go out only after wins.

after losses, he starts staying out later. it is not immediately a problem. he can play a terrible game on a thursday, be photographed leaving a club at two in a morning, then score twice on saturday.

the toleration of this only goes so far.

nothing scandalous happens. he doesn't get in a bar fight. he doesn't miss practice or a game. instead, he is just an eighteen year old who looks very drunk the same night thousands of people paid to watch him lose.

the headline is some variation of: rangers rookie parties after ugly loss.

gabe hates it. he tells himself it's ridiculous. players go out. he doesn't owe fans a mourning period because he lost a hockey game.

none of that changes the fact that he went out specifically because being alone with the loss felt unbearable.

his dad calls seven times the next morning.

marcus makes him sit at the kitchen counter with water and dry toast while the television runs a debate segment about whether gabe has "the maturity to become a franchise cornerstone".

gabe is mortified. hungover. furious. he picks a fight with marcus over being treated like a child. marcus finally says, "then stop making me wonder if you're safe when you leave this house."

gabe goes silent.

by the end of his rookie season, gabe is known around the league as one of the players most likely to be out after a game. he buys rounds for people he doesn't know. he hugs teammates and strangers alike. he once spent twenty minutes helping a drunk stranger find her friends. the team jokes that he is everyone's best friend after midnight.

marcus comes to understand this: that sometimes gabe drinks until nobody expects him to explain why his hands were shaking after a game.

---

his reputation for hooking up begins alongside the partying. the public version is, again, fun and uncomplicated. the reality is: gabe wants closeness, but he is terrified of being known.

he hooks up with women fairly openly during his first seasons. models, influencers, friends of friends, girls he meets at parties. he is very open about not wanting commitment. he's charming, attentive, respectful, and good at making someone feel wanted for the length of a night.

he becomes known as a flirt because he is one. he likes attention, thrives on it really. he likes making people blush. he likes touching and being touched. he likes how easy it is to be desired when no one is asking anything deeper than surface level questions.

as a rookie, gabe is not ready to articulate his attraction to men. he knows, deep down, that he is bisexual, but he doesn't dare express it out loud.

parties blur the edges of that. he notices guys looking at him. occasionally, he looks back too long. he lets himself enjoy the attention until it becomes too real, then redirects it somewhere safer.

the first time he actually hooks up with a guy happens during his second season, after an away guy, far enough away from home that he can separate it from his real life.

it's not romantic. not some beautiful revelation. it's a hotel room in a city he doesn't know with his hands shaking with nerves underneath all of the bravado he tries to show.

the team knows gabe gets around (though, in those early years, they do not know about the men). most of the teasing stays light because that is the culture. nearly every attractive young player has some version of that reputation.

marcus worries less about that and more about how gabe refuses to let anyone get too close emotionally.

---

gabe is not viewed as a disaster his first few seasons. he's too productive, too magnetic, too clearly special for that. instead, he gets something more complicated: a reputation as a young man whose talent may be larger than his discipline.

everybody loves watching him. no one trusts him yet.

around the league, he becomes known as a player who can change a game in either direction. he might score twice and draw a penalty. he might also retaliate after the whistle and hand momentum away.

opposing broadcasters love to use the phrase "emotional young player" when they talk about him. analysts question whether he is coachable. scouts who loved his compete level before the draft start muttering that he needs to mature.

he becomes an easy player to use in moralizing hockey debates. talented but immature. passionate but undisciplined. the kind of star who needs to decide what matters more: fame or winning, the logo on the front or the name on the back.

gabe reads nearly every one of these articles. they all sound too much like james.

---

gabe gets his first suspension in his second season. talk around him begins to shift from he's young to this may just be who he is.

an opposing player takes a borderline hit on leo, the rangers' goalie, then says something to gabe during the ensuing scrum.

gabe snaps.

he keeps swinging after the fight has already been won, after the officials are trying to separate them, after the crowd's exhilaration has shifted into uncertainty.

public opinion splits immediately. some fans love it. others think he is out of control. sports shows run montages of every fight and bad penalty of his young career.

gabe treats the suspension like exile. he trains excessively, barely speaks to anyone, and becomes convinced the team is better off without him.

he avoids marcus because he can't stand the thought of disappointing him too.

the organization sends him through the standard public apology process. gabe stands in front of cameras looking miserable and composed and says all the right words.

what the public and the media don't know is that he spent most of the night before the apology pacing his room, convinced this was the moment everyone stopped loving him.

---

by the end of his second season, the league has settled on a narrative for gabe. he is talented. he is fun. he is loyal. he's a headache. he could be one of the best players in hockey. he may be too immature to ever become the kind of guy the rangers need him to be.

rangers fans are fiercely protective of him. away fans use everything against him.

reporters start asking marcus variations of the same question: how do you manage gabe anderson?

---

his third season is not suddenly clean or easy, but it is the beginning of the shift into who he is today. he doesn't stop partying, never fight again, heal from james, come to terms with his sexuality, and transform into captain material overnight, but something changes.

he starts the season noticeably more controlled on the ice. he still hits hard. he still mouths off. but he starts learning that the most humiliating response to an opponent trying to bait him is scoring on the next shift instead.

there are games where everyone sees the old reaction flicker through him -- the shove, the chirp, the clenched fists -- and then he skates away.

marcus knows how much effort it costs him.

the first time gabe walks away from a player trying desperately to provoke him, then scores less than two minutes later, he looks to the bench immediately. marcus just nods at him.

gabe looks absurdly pleased for the rest of the night.

his most meaningful fight that year is for marcus. it is not uncontrolled, it is terrifyingly precise. when the fight is over, the first place he looks is towards the tunnel where marcus has disappeared with trainers.

marcus, of course, tells him that he didn't have to fight. gabe answers, quieter than usual, that yes, he did. marcus doesn't argue with him. he understands this one was different. it was gabe loving someone in the only language hockey had once taught him.

---

he starts partying less. he still loves music and expensive alcohol and crowded rooms, but he's less interested in being seen.

though he moved during the offseason, he starts showing up at the linderoth's home on nights when he doesn't want to be alone.

---

marcus is not just gabe's captain. he's the first father-figure that gabe loves without fear being the primary emotion attached to it.

their relationship is a significant part of why gabe can eventually accept the "c".

it's not perfect, by any means. gabe rebels as much as he leans. but it shapes who gabe becomes.

marcus doesn't begin considering gabe as his successor because he suddenly becomes perfect or starts acting like a role model. he considers him because he knows that, underneath all of the mess, gabe cares deeply about the game, the team, and every person in that room with astonishing intensity.

gabe is the player who notices when another guy is spiraling and drags them out for breakfast before practice. he's the one who refuses to let reporters pile onto leo after a soft goal, redirecting every question toward himself. he's the one who stays with a teammate at the hospital after they take a puck to the face even though gabe hates hospitals. he's the guy who drunkenly makes bad choices on a saturday night, but still shows up to a charity skate on sunday afternoon.

marcus sees that gabe' best and worst instincts come from the same place: he feels everything too deeply and has no idea what to do with it.

---

at the end of gabe's fourth season, when marcus begins privately discussing retirement with management, he is asked who he believes should have the captaincy next.

there are safer choices. older players. quieter players. guys who have never been suspended or photographed stumbling out of a club or built a league-wide reputation for impulsivity.