#if you like hockey and you want to support the new woman's league please get in on this!!!!
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I'm so excited about the PWHL and the Minnesota team color is purple which is correct and right. I can't wait to become obsessed with Hockey again like I was when I was a kid ;-----;
#pwhl#if you like hockey and you want to support the new woman's league please get in on this!!!!#they stream on Youtube for free and there are only 6 teams right now so it's super easy to pick a fav!!!#(You should pick MN)#as soon as their jersey's come back i'm buying one#IF it comes back as just the Minnesota one but also whenever they're able to fully brand the teams#(this is the pwhl's first season)#(There was a game on Saturday in MN at the excel center and it broke records for attendance)#(And therer were so many little girls there looking so so so thrilled)#(AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH)#editing tags to add: SCREAMS#this was meant for the main blog but i was excited!!!!!
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Leftovers - Part 3 - Nandor the Relentless x Reader Fanfic
Read Parts One and Two: Masterlist
Summary: The gang goes to a roller derby bout. Things evolve between you and Nandor. Guillermo is still jealous and Nadja adores you.
A/N: I hope the tone of this part holds up with the first two parts. There are some more serious parts here. Thank you SO FRICKIN MUCH to everyone who has commented and sent me asks. You guys are lovely and I appreciate you.
Warnings: Some mild smut at the end, Same as previous chapters--blood drinking, vampire/human relationship, power differential, reader is described as being short and a roller derby player
---
Guillermo sits with his hands folded in his lap and a fragile smile on his face.
“How am I...adjusting? I’m--it’s--fine. I’m fine.”
The camera crew sits with him for a long moment of pointed silence. Guillermo shrugs, shakes his head, denying unspoken comments until he finally breaks.
“He gave her the upstairs bedroom. But I’m...everything’s fine. I just have to keep paying my dues.”
He goes back to dusting the fancy room, muttering under his breath, “Just keep paying my dues…”
---
“Knock, knock!” Nandor sing-songs, rapping his knuckles on the door frame of your new bedroom.
You look up from a stack of partially unpacked boxes. Guillermo helped you arrange everything. Breaking your lease without a penalty and getting all your stuff packed and moved over to the house. He did it all with nothing beyond terse civility despite your attempts at friendly conversation. You would really like to be friends with the only other human in the house but it doesn’t seem likely.
“Hey, Nandor,” you greet him with a hesitant smile. You’re still unsure of how you should behave. He doesn’t seem to expect you to be subservient like Guillermo. But something tells you not to push him either. He still hasn’t promised not to kill you in the end despite spending the last couple nights snuggling you like a human teddy bear inside his coffin.
He enters and perches on the edge of your new mattress, “Do you have everything you need? The bed seems...cozy.”
It’s really obvious to you that Nandor isn’t used to making small talk. At least not about human things. You wonder why he’s making the effort.
“Yeah, thanks. The room’s great. Are you sure I shouldn’t take Guillermo’s room and let him have this one? He’s been around a lot longer…”
“What, the closet under the stairs? Absolutely not, it smells in there. Can’t have my food smelling bad, yuck!” he grimaces in distaste.
You’ll have to find some other way of extending an olive branch to Guillermo…
“Hey, maybe you could...not call me food?” you suggest hopefully.
Nandor sighs and mutters under his breath, “So sensitive…”
With a roll of your eyes you turn back to your boxes. Nandor watches you plop down on the floor and resume digging out your things. After a moment, he comes over, kneeling behind you and practically engulfing you in his giant cape. His arms wrap around your middle. You can feel his long fingers through your shirt as they spread out over your stomach. He presses his face into the back of your neck and inhales your scent. The embrace should be unnerving and terrifying but you find altogether different sensations stirring in your lower belly.
“Why, my mortal?,” his whisper raises goosebumps along the nape of your neck. “Does it upset you to be reminded of how intoxicatingly delicious you are to me? Shall I pretend that your blood pulsing beneath the thin surface of your skin does not call to me?”
His lips are tracing over your skin now and you can just feel the sharp brush of his fangs. Your eyes drift closed and you lean back into his chest, entirely overwhelmed by his magnetism.
“Um...Nandor…” you whisper.
“Yes, my little human? What do you want?”
“You…” the word falls unbidden from your lips and you immediately wish you could swallow it back down.
His chest rumbles with a laugh that vibrates through you.
“You want me, mortal?”
You force yourself to clear your thoughts, scooting forward and breaking the embrace as you reply, “You...you have to wait until next week to feed from me again. Remember?”
He reaches out and ghosts his fingertips along the twin puncture wounds on your throat.
“It will be worth the wait.”
---
You jog down the curved stairway dressed for tonight’s bout with your gear bag slung over your shoulder. Nadja, Laszlo and Nandor are assembled in the front hallway getting ready to go out hunting and assigning last-minute chores for Guillermo.
“My mauve, brocade gown needs washing, Gizmo. I had a real squirter last night…”
“And don’t neglect the dusting in our crypt, old chap…”
“Guillermo, remember to pick up the candlesticks when you go out--oh! Hello, my human,” Nandor pauses when he sees you at the base of the stairs and you feel heat creep up your neck under his stare. Your mind flashes back to an hour ago when he’d held you in his arms and you’d felt the touch of his lips on your skin, so close to a kiss.
“Do you need anything from the store? Guillermo is going out,” he asks.
Guillermo smiles at you but it’s more of a display of teeth and you rush to shake your head, “Oh, no thank you. I’m heading out myself. My team has a bout tonight--”
Nadja squeals in delight and claps her hands, “You are doing a battle tonight, darling human? Oh, Laszlo let’s go watch the puny human fight. It will be such fun!”
You shake your head in amusement but Nadja’s enthusiasm is infectious even if you worry she’ll be disappointed once she sees what roller derby actually is…
Laszlo’s eyes trail down your body, taking in your black and purple sleeveless jersey and the black capri leggings hugging your hips and thighs.
“Do all the challengers dress in such a fashion?” he questions with a lecherous smirk. Nandor hisses and flicks him in the temple. “Ouch!”
You have to laugh.
“Actually, some of them wear booty shorts…”
---
“Look!” Nandor turns to the camera gleefully holding up a t-shirt with the name “Smashley Glowers” stamped in block letters on the back. “We can purchase a shirt with my human’s alias written upon it!”
He turns back to the attendant behind the merch table, “How much for this garment, peasant?”
“Uh--he’s just joking, heh,” Guillermo steps in waving his credit card. “I’ve got it, master.”
“Thank you, Guillermo,” Nandor says, pulling the t-shirt over his embroidered tunic with a wide smile.
The vampires and Familiar make their way to the bleachers beside the track. Your league plays in an ice hockey rink during the summer months. The track is carefully taped off on the floor and players glide around doing warm up drills: knee-taps, sprints, spins, plow stops and backwards toe stops. Then they turn around and do it all over again in the opposite direction. The crowd buzzes with energy and all four vampires feel it roll over them in a seductive wave.
Nandor turns to Nadja and Laszlo and whispers, “We probably shouldn’t kill any of these humans. I don’t think the mortal would like it…”
Laszlo looks put out but Nadja just nods absently as her eyes track the skaters.
“Yes, fine,” she says. “We can pick something up on the way home…”
Colin Robinson stands with a smug smile, “Lucky for me I have no such limit on my feeding habits. I’m gonna go mansplain the rules to that referee. Catch you later.”
“Look at our human, Nandor! She is very adept at the roller shoes,” Nadja gushes.
Nandor side-eyes her with a muttered correction, “My human… Yes, she is a fierce combatant.”
Soon enough an announcer’s voice comes over the sound system introducing each team. As your name is called Nandor and Nadja stand to cheer and even Colin Robinson lets out a tepid “whoop” from across the room where he’s started feeding off the merch attendant.
The bout gets rolling and you take your place with the other blockers, forming a line of defense that will hopefully be impenetrable. Or at least give your jammer enough time to make it through the pack and start scoring points.
The other team’s jammer approaches, juking to the outside of the track but you anticipate the play and hop to the left, meeting her on the inside and throwing your hip to check her out of bounds. Distantly you can hear a familiar accented female voice rise over the crowd.
“DID YOU SEE THAT!? GOOD JOB, HUMAN!”
The game flies by in a rush of adrenaline and joy and before you know it you’re slapping hands with the other team and skating over to join your spectators.
Nadja runs up to meet you, pinching your cheeks in her enthusiasm, “Smashley--a gruesome name for a brutal warrior woman. You were very impressive!”
“Thanks, Nadja,” you smile, feeling your chest lift with pride. “We lost, but I’m glad you liked it.”
Laszlo joins you with his characteristic smarm, “An excellent diversion, mortal. Tell me, are any of these women available for...private lessons?”
You narrow your eyes and look to Nadja to gauge if he’s joking or not. Nadja only shakes her head in exasperation.
“Remember what Nandor said, my love,” she croons. “No eating the mortal’s friends.”
Well, that’s...thoughtful, you guess.
Nandor glides in to join you with Guillermo on his heels. When you see the shirt he’s wearing your face lights up with a broad smile.
“You got my shirt?!”
Nandor preens, looking pleased with himself.
“Of course, mortal. I had to show my support for my champion in the ritual combat. Plus it looks really cool.”
You laugh and shift your weight on your skates, looking at him smiling down at you as butterflies wiggle in your stomach. What even is this? You have a crush on your vampire captor?
Nandor’s eyes take in the sheen of sweat across your forehead and your lips parted with the exertion of your work out. The warmth of your stirred blood pours off of you and he bares his fangs hungrily.
---
“It’s going to be a long week,” Nandor says into the camera later that night. “I drained three humans tonight and I’m still thinking about how sweet her blood would be after the passion of roller derrr-by battle.”
---
But the week does pass and as dawn approaches one morning, Nandor drifts into your room and stands in the doorway silently regarding you for a long, unnerving moment.
“Prepare yourself, human,” he commands, his voice low with authority. “For tonight I will feed from you after I awake from my slumber.”
As you watch him glide back to his crypt, a lump of anxiety forms in your stomach that doesn’t go away all day.
---
“The master wishes to see you,” Guillermo says from the doorway of the library where you’ve been quietly falling apart for the last hour awaiting Nandor’s summons.
You take a breath and square your shoulders before standing.
“Thanks, Guillermo,” you murmur as you pass him, laying your hand on his shoulder with a squeeze. Guillermo doesn’t reply but his face isn’t unkind.
Nandor is waiting for you in his crypt, casually draped over an Edwardian style couch beneath a brilliantly illuminated painting of himself as a human Ottoman warlord.
“It’s time, mortal,” he announces, beckoning for you to join him on the couch.
Though you’ve known this was coming and it’s part of the bizarre deal you struck with him, you still feel awash with trepidation.
“In here?” you ask with a doubtful look at the fine surroundings.
He shrugs, “You have somewhere else in mind?”
“I sort of...set things up in my bedroom…”
You lead him to your room, casting an apologetic glance to the camera crew as you shut the door behind you. Nandor smiles when he observes your preparations. The bed is covered in bath towels and there’s a tidy pile of bandages, surgical pads, Neosporin and tape on your nightstand. You hover awkwardly by the door as he looks over your supplies.
“You’ve thought of everything,” Nandor grins and takes a seat on your bed, patting the spot beside him. When you don’t immediately move to join him he frowns, “You’re afraid.”
“Yes,” you admit, your voice breaking on the word.
“The fearsome Smashley Glowers is afraid of little old Nandor the Relentless?” he teases and your lips curve in a small smile.
With a deep breath for courage you cross the room and sit next to him on the bed.
“I’m not afraid of you, Nandor…” you explain.
“Oh…” he frowns, clearly disappointed and you roll your eyes at him.
“Just...that you might forget--” you stop and breathe through a tremor of fear, “--forget to stop.”
He shakes his head at your words even as you watch his eyes glaze over in blood lust. He draws his fingers through your hair, baring your neck to his voracious gaze.
“Just a taste,” he hisses, baring his fangs and wrapping an arm around your back to draw you in closer.
“A sip!” you insist, but he’s already leaning down to your throat.
Nandor’s hands hold you in place, one pressing on the small of your back, the other cradling your head. His gorgeous hair brushes against your jaw as he bends to meet your throat. You shut your eyes, breathing shallowly in anticipation of the pain and dizziness. It’s somehow worse now that you know exactly what to expect. His lips are just as soft and gentle, the sting of his fangs is just as acute, but now it’s not just an anonymous, terrifying creature of the night holding you and drinking you. It’s Nandor. A man who has held you in his sleep and kissed your forehead. A man who has cheered you on at roller derby and made you feel like a person and not...food. His chest rumbles against you as he moans in satisfaction.
“So, so sweet, my mortal,” he mumbles against your bloodied throat, adjusting his arms so that your body is pressed more tightly against him.
He bites into you again and the pressure on your raw wound draws a mewl of pain from your lips. He relaxes his hold, withdrawing from your neck with a few long strokes of his tongue.
“Are you alright, my human?” he asks.
You blink back at him, idly taking in the stain of your blood on his lips and beard.
“I’m...good,” you whisper.
He’s still holding you in his arms and his eyes are so big and bright and stunningly fathomless. Your neck stings and you’re lightheaded and his lips are painted with your blood but all you want is to find out what it would be like to kiss Nandor the Relentless.
So you do.
You reach up and push your fingers through his impossibly soft hair, twining your fingers at the base of his neck and pulling him down to collide your mouth with his. Nandor is entirely unphased. He takes charge of the kiss at once, cupping your face in his large hands and lapping his tongue against your lips. You taste the salt-coppery tang of your own blood as he licks into your mouth, tangling his tongue with yours with a low growl of delight. You’ve been fixating on his hair for the last week and now that you’ve touched it you can’t stop carding your fingers through his locks, letting your nails graze against his scalp as you do so. Nandor’s hands are not so focused. They roam over you, brushing along the pulse of your neck, skimming your shoulders, your spine, cupping your backside and squeezing obscenely, earning a surprised squeak from you. Kissing Nandor the Relentless, you find, is very, very nice.
As the kiss goes on, you squirm up into Nandor’s lap with a mischievous grin against his lips. You can feel his hardened length against your thigh and you shift against him experimentally, delighting in the gasp that falls from his lips at the friction. No, you don’t have a lot of practical experience. As Laszlo so charmingly pointed out on your first night in the house, you’re a virgin. But you’re no dummy. And you think about what it would be to have your first time be with a vampire...
Nandor breaks the kiss with a wide smile. He pushes you gently off his lap with a wag of his finger.
“Now, now, little one,” he admonishes with a laugh. “We wouldn’t want to spoil your flavor.”
---
A/N: Damnit, Nandor.
Tags:
@festering-queen @glitterportrait
#nandor the relentless#nandor#nandor x reader#nandor the relentless x reader#nandor the relentless imagine#nandor imagine#wwdits fanfic#wwdits#kayvan novak#smut#chelsfic#vampire x human
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Quick Guide | Carolina Hurricanes: Meet The Team - Opening Night 2019-20
New season means a new quick guide to the roster
2018-19 season
This took me a couple of days to put together so please appreciate it
Want to know how to pronounce a players name?
Click this link!
*All gifs made by me*
Forwards:
☞ Sebastian Aho™️ #20
Yes there is another “Sebastian Aho” from Sweden but he’s usually in the AHL (Bridgeport/Islanders)
Born: July 26, 1997 (22 years old/Leo) from Rauma, Finland
6′0, Centre, 35th overall CAR 2015
Nicknames: Fishy, Seabass, Sepe, Sebu
He’s the face of this franchise and the only player on this team that the Canadian media knows about
Is being held against his will in Raleigh because he wants to play for Montreal if you don’t know the actual story MTL sent him an offer sheet that he signed because he wanted the money and knew Carolina could pay it, but you know how Habs twitter can be.
Possibly the messiest Hurricane
Who’s my daddy?!
Spirit animal is a lion, hear him roar
Avid coffee drinker
Baby face
Painted a picture of his cat one time
☞ Ryan Dzingel #18
Born: March 9, 1992 (27 years old/Pisces) from Wheaton, Illinois
6′0, Centre, 204th overall OTT 2011
Nicknames: Zinger, Dizzy, Dzingel Bells, D-pingel
Played with the Ohio State Buckeyes for 3 seasons, recorded the first hat trick in Big Ten history against Xichigan
Traded to CBJ Feb ‘19, signed with CAR as a free agent summer ‘19
Might need glasses, he squints like that ^ a lot
Golfs... A L O T
Wants to produce for the team so he can stay here in Raleigh and make it his home ♥︎
Jeep guy
Looks uncomfortably similar to Tripp Tracy
UNC fan
☞ Warren Foegele #13
Born: April 1, 1996 (23 years old/Aries) from Markham, Ontario
6′2, Left Wing, 67th overall CAR 2014
Nicknames: Foegs, Foegdaddy
Best friends with Andrei Svechnikov and Dougie Hamilton
Duke fan
Accidentally broke Osh*e’s collarbone but TJ and C*p fans will claim he tried to murder him
Spirit animal is a tiger, also hear him roar
Very easily scared
Duke fan
☞ Erik Haula #56
Born: March 23, 1991(28 years old/Aries) from Pori, Finland
6′0, Left Wing, 181st overall 2009 MIN
Nicknames: Hauls, Haulsy
Moved to Minnesota in 2008 to play hockey in boarding school
Played for the University Of Minnesota Gophers for 3 seasons
Signed with MIN in 2013, was picked up by the VGK in 2017 as a free agent in the Expansion Draft, then traded to CAR summer of 2019 (for Nic Roy & draft pick)
Suffered a pretty bad knee injury in the 2018-19 season
CAKE
Got married this past summer ♥︎
Currently living in Calvin de Haan’s old house
☞ Jordan Martinook (A) #48
Born: July 25, 1992 (27 years old/Leo) from Brandon, Manitoba
6′0, Left Wing, 58th overall 2012 PHX
Nicknames: Marty, Marty Man, Marty Party
Signed with PHX/ARI in 2012, traded to CAR in 2018 (for Krüger)
Raw chaotic dad energy
Doesn’t like corndogs and has a very high pitched scream
His wife gave birth to their first son last season before he got his downstairs fixed in the offseason
LETS GO SVECH
Spirit animal is a dolphin because he has a great impression
There is so much more I want to put on here but you should really just follow his Twitter
☞ Brock McGinn #23
Born: February 2, 1994 (25 years old/Aquarius) from Fergus, Ontario
6′0, Left Wing, 47th overall 2012 CAR
Nicknames: Ginner, Brock McWinn, McPing, the new Mr. Game Seven (that one is kind of a joke though), Big Cock Brock
Single handedly defeated evil not only once but twice on April 24th, 2019, earning him the nicknames “Brock McWinn” and the new “Mr. Game Seven”
Has two brothers who also play professionally; Jamie (NHL) and Tye (AHL) McGinn
Co Owner of the Roanoke Rail Road Dawgs with his brothers and father
His daddy is Bob
Has a high probability of burning his whole house down
Used to be a fighter, but he didn’t fight anyone last season
Thor
Was 3rd in the league with most MsS Post (10) in the 2017-18 season earning him the nickname Brock McPing
☞ Martin Nečas #88
Born: January 15, 1999 (20 years old/Capricorn) from Nove Mesto na Morave, Czech Rebublic
6′2, 12th overall 2017 CAR, “He plays, like, Centre”
Nicknames: Neči, Marty, Nacho, Marto
Your 2019-20 ****** ****** winner
He’s here to fix out PP units, quote me on that
Little hockey stick chain ^
Is known for falling while scoring
Is it avocado or avocaydo?
Hidden talent: Belly dancing
Almost killed the entire team with a golf club last season
Don’t mess with him
Just won the Calder Cup with the Checkers :)
☞ Nino Niederreiter #21
Born: September 8, 1992 (27 years old/Virgo) from Chur, Switzerland
6′0, Right Wing, 5th overall 2010 NYI
Nicknames: El Nino
Was the highest drafted Swizz born player until Hischer in 2017
Signed to the Islanders in 2010, traded to Minnesota in 2013, then traded to Carolina in January 2019 (for Rask)
Was about to take a nap when he was traded
Just when canes fans almost lost hope, Nino showed up and saved our season
When he came to Carolina, someone gave him sweet tea and he really liked it
Was voted best dressed by a couple teammates
Loves the surge
Supports women’s hockey
☞ Jordan Staal (C) #11
Born: September 10, 1988 (31 years ago/Virgo) from Thunder Bay, Ontario
6′4, Centre, 2nd overall 2006 PIT
Nicknames: Stallsy, Jordad, Gronk
Arrested at his brother’s bachelor party
Won the Stanley Cup with the Penguins in 2009
Jordan is the youngest out of the other brothers (Eric, Marc) in the league (NHL) 3rd brother is the youngest and is now a coach
Signed with PIT in 2006, traded to CAR in 2012 (for 8th overall pick, Brandon Sutter and Brian Dumoulin)
Named Captain in the 2017-18 season, became Alternative Captain in 2018-19, is now Captain again in 2019-20
Great at dad jokes
☞ Andrei Svechnikov #37
Born: March 26, 2000 (19 years old/Aries) from Barnaul, Russia
6′2, Right Wing, 2nd overall 2018 CAR
Nicknames: Svech, Mother Russia
Svech is ready
“Just win every game”
Wears #37 because that’s what his brother, Evgeny Svechnikov (DET), wears
Russia = Cold, Raleigh = Hot
Apparently his biggest talent outside of hockey is… magic?
Best friends with Warren Foegele and Dougie Hamilton
Likes to shovel the ice during practice
Me?
Terrible at golf..
.. I mean like really bad
☞ Teuvo Teräväinen #86
Born: September 11, 1994 (25 years old/Virgo) from Helsinki, Finland
5′11, Left Wing, 18th overall 2012 CHI
Nicknames: Turbo, Teukka
Shortest Hurricane
Began with CHI in 2014, traded to CAR in 2016 (along with Bickell for 2nd round pick)
Won the cup with CHI in 2015 (Along with van Riemsdyk)
Has the worst sense of smell ever
I mean come on.. pumpkin? toothpaste?
I could keep going with this I don't know what’s wrong with his nose
Most likely the messiest Hurricane
Would dump Sebastian on the side of the road after 100km
Gets scared REALLY easily
His sisters plays hockey over in Finland (and is pretty good at it too)
☞ Lucas Wallmark #71
Born: September 5, 1995 (24 years old/Virgo) from Umea, Sweden
6′0, Centre, 97th overall 2014 CAR
Nicknames: Wally
My daddy!?
His spirit animal is… a horse?
^ He enjoys watching horse racing
*Straight face* “Snacks!? Candy!?”
Deal with it
Showed up to a U12 and U18 team practice to work on skills with kids
Owns a pug named Lovis
Defense
☞ Joel Edmundson #6
Born: June 28, 1993 (26 years old/Cancer) Brandon, Manitoba
6′4, 46th overall 2011 STL
Nicknames: Crop Top King, Eddy
Won the cup in 2019 with STL and partied in a crop top
True Canadian, ate poutine out of the cup
Traded in September 2019 to CAR (along with Bokk for Faulk and draft pick)
Going to strengthen our PK I promise
Finally, an enforcer
Forgot to take his skate guards off during his CAR preseason debut in front of 18,000 people
Is a barbie girl, living in a barbie world
☞ Haydn Fleury #4
Born: July 8, 1996 (23 years old/Cancer) from Carlyle, Saskatchewan
6′3, 7th overall 2014 CAR
Nicknames: Fleurs
Beat his little brother Cale (MTL) during his NHL debut
Best friends with Trevor van Riemsdyk
Has the cutest dog named Kobe
Won the Calder Cup along with Nečas :)
If you want to giggle watch this
Has the worst witch cackle you will ever hear
Apparently the best golfer on the team
Big Duke fan
☞ Jake Gardiner #51
Born: July 4, 1990 (29 years old/Cancer) from Minnetonka, Minnesota
6′2, 17th overall 2008 ANA
Nicknames: Gards
Played for the University of Wisconsin for 3 seasons
Traded to TOR in 2011, signed as a free agent to CAR in summer 2019
Has the cutest baby
Denied several offers from other teams mtl to play with us instead
Hands down had the best Halloween costume two years ago
☞ Dougie Hamilton #19
Born: June 17, 1993 (26 years old/Gemini) from Toronto, Ontario
6′6, 9th overall 2011 BOS
Nicknames: D-Ham, Doug the Thug, well his real name is Douglas so I guess Dougie is technically a nickname
Tallest Hurricane
Both of his parents are Olympians, brother also plays professional hockey
Started with BOS in 2012, traded to CGY in 2015, then traded to CAR in 2018 (Last remaining player from the huge Hamilton, Ferland & Fox for Lindholm and Hanifin trade)
Best friends with Andrei Svechnikov and Warren Foegele
Porche guy
Grew out a mullet because his hair salon couldn’t take him as a walk in
Jack Edwards complained that he was wearing a number retired from the Whalers so he taped a 6 over the 1 in 19 to make 69
Goes to children's hospitals dressed as woman characters
Lowkey shootout king
Floss
Another Duke fan
Wears the same blazer to every road game
☞ Brett Pesce #22
Born: November 15, 1994 (24 years old/Scorpio) from Tarrytown, New York
6′3, 66th overall 2013 CAR
Nicknames: Pesh
“I play defense bro”
Played for the University of New Hampshire for 3 seasons (2 of those seasons with van Riemsdyk)
Pretty ^
Wears 22 for his dad
He’ll break your ankles
Fortnite squad
Brought his wonderful brother on the mentors trip
Allergic to cats
☞ Jaccob Slavin (A) #74
Born: May 1, 1994 (25 years old/Taurus) from Denver, Colorado
6′3, 120th overall 2012 CAR
Nicknames: Slav-o
The second ‘c’ stands for captain
Faith and family
Played for Colorado College for two seasons
Adopted a beautiful baby girl with his beautiful wife
Has an instagram for his two dogs
His daddy is “Robert”
Not afraid of snakes at all
☞ Trevor van Riemsdyk #57
Born: July 24, 1991 (28 years old/Leo) from Middletown, New Jersey
6′2, Undrafted
Nicknames: TVR, Riems
Agreed to terms with CHI in 2014
Won the cup with CHI in 2015 (along with Teräväinen)
Was picked up by the VGK in the 2017 expansion draft
The next day traded to CAR (for 2nd round pick)
James van Riemsdyk (PHI) is his older brother
Played with the University of New Hampshire for 3 seasons (2 of those seasons with Pesce)
He’s too tired to be scared
March Madness
Best friends with Haydn Fleury
Pride representative for the team
Goalies
☞ Petr Mrázek #34
Born: February 14, 1992 (27 years old/Aquarius) from Ostrava, Czech Republic
6′1, 141st overall 2010 DET
Nicknames: Mrazzle Dazzle, St. Petr
Moved to Ottawa at age 17
Signed with DET in 2014
Was HUGE for them during the 2015 playoff run
Traded to PHI in Feb ‘18, signed as a free agent with CAR in July ‘18
Stylish
He had custom hats made for every player on the team
Always has Peter Griffin in his helmet design
Signature move: Poke Check
☞ James Reimer #47
Born: March 15, 1988 (31 years old/Pisces) from Morweena, Manitoba
6′2, 99th overall 2006 TOR
Nicknames: Optimus Reim, The Statue, Reims
Debuted with TOR in 2010, traded to SJS Feb ‘16
Signed with FLA as a free agent summer ‘16, traded to CAR summer ‘19 (for Darling and a 2020 6th round pick)
Has two kids
Really good swimmer
You may recognize this famous goalie meme, that’s right, that's him
Optimus Reim helmet art
He looks so much like Weston from Love Island USA
Honorable Mention
☞ Julien Gauthier #44
I’m including him because everyone expected him to make the team as he did phenomenal in the preseason (playing all 6 games) but due to cap space (and our horrid pp units), he was sent back down.
Born: October 15, 1997 (turning 22/Libra) from Pointe-aux-Trembles, Quebec
6′4, Right Wing, 21st overall 2016 CAR
Nicknames: Goat, Gauths, Jules
Big boy
Bilingual (French/English)
Cute accent
His uncle played 554 games in the NHL (Denis Gauthier)
Both his father and grandfather were professional bodybuilders
That explains his muscles
The best thighs in the league (not up for debate)
Also won the Calder Cup this past season with Haydn Fleury and Martin Nečas
Head Coach
☞ Rod Brind’Amour #17
Roderick Jean Brind’Amour
Born: August 9, 1970 (age 49 years/Leo) from Ottawa, Canada
6′1, Centre, 9th overall 1988 STL
Nicknames: Rod the Bod, RBA
Played with Michigan State for one season
Started with STL in the playoffs of ‘88, traded to PHI in ‘91, traded to CAR in 2000
Captain of the 2006 CAR Stanley Cup winning team
Played 20 seasons, 1,484(GP) 452(G) 732(A) 1,184(P)
Became head coach for the 2018-19 season
First year as HC broke the team’s 9 year playoff drought and brought them all the way to the ECF
Is known for his extreme workouts
Still in better shape than 98% of the league
Could very well still lace up and play better than 80% of the league
Lives rent free in W*lson’s and Reirden’s heads
Gives the best post-game speeches
President & General Manager
☞ Don Waddell
I really just wanted an excuse to put this gif in here
Coached the 1998 DET Stanley Cup winning team
Named Pres. & GM of CAR in May ‘18
Owner
☞ Tom Dundon
Lives rent free is Habs fans minds
Estimated net worth is $1.1 billion?
Majority owner of TopGolf (55%)
Chairman of the Alliance of American Football
Purchased 52% of CAR in January 2018 for $420million
Likes to hang around team/fan events
Stays in the same hotel as me lol
#Sebastian Aho#Ryan Dzingel#Warren Foegele#Erik Haula#Jordan Martinook#Brock McGinn#Martin Necas#Martin Nečas#Nino Niederreiter#Jordan Staal#Andrei Svechnikov#Teuvo Teravainen#Teuvo Teräväinen#Lucas Wallmark#Joel Edmundson#Haydn Fleury#Jake Gardiner#Dougie Hamilton#Brett Pesce#Jaccob Slavin#Petr Mrazek#Petr Mrázek#James Reimer#Rod Brind'Amour#Don Waddell#Tom Dundon#Carolina Hurricanes#Meet The Team#Roster#aria gifs i guess
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Field of Dreams
Here we go! No 2 in the fics I owe @nomadicpixel and @theycallmebecca. Nomad asked for Steve and a relationship that is new and my brain said how about a little enemies to lovers everyone? Not to worry it all works out in spectacularly happy fashion--but before that Y/N has a PR disaster to sort out and really, he’s a hard guy to forget, even if he is a little stubborn about Brooklyn. ^_^
Part 1 of 2. And obviously the tweets I’ve made and embedded here are not real, do not belong to any real account.
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“Y/N have you seen this?”
Your harried Media VP, Stephanie, uncharacteristically dressed in a rumpled suit and no make-up, barges into your office, trailed by your harried looking PA. It’s 7 am, mid-morning in LA, and you are jet-lagged; bleary eyed and something that passes for awake after two precious weeks at your New York research labs. They were heaven, but now it’s back to routine, back to the long days that keep Fleur in Bloomberg’s list of Ones to Watch.
“What is it?” you ask, setting your latte down and rising to your feet just as the pair screech to a halt just before your desk.
From the look of things ‘routine’ will not be today’s best adjective. Steph, a night-owl through and through, is never here this early. Her face is flushed and her eyes red as she waves a piece of paper covered with a screen print in your direction. “It’s a mess is what it is. And how you should respond I have no idea.”
No idea?
Steph can finagle her way out of PR jams that reduce grown men to tears. “Respond to what?” With a sense of doom you take the paper from her outstretched hand and quickly scan the contents.
‘Not shoot O’Malley twice? What the ever-loving hell?!
Steve Rogers—THE Steve Rogers—finally gets a twitter account and the first tweet he sends six months later trashes the Dodgers baseball team?!
Your Dodgers.
“Why is he @CapRogers?” you ask, more than a little stunned as Steph looks on.
Her face is pale and her fingers shake. No coffee yet this morning. Mary, your brilliantly practical PA, settles on priorities and quickly hands her a steaming cup. “Captain America was already taken.”
Of course. It’s his first ever tweet and the one he’s pinned and everyone has already followed him. No way any soul on Planet Earth has missed this missile. You scan a few of the 50,000 comments. They range from the politely encouraging <welcome Cap!> to the crassly supportive <F*ckin A!> to the downright militant <Get your own team pal>
Oh god. What a perfectly shitty time for this. Fleur’s new board are well pleased that its initial public offering has gone viral but are still a little wary. Six months of thirty-six hour days and you are secure beyond your wildest dreams: number 25 on Forbes’s Top Thirty under Thirty; lauded in all the trade reports for your business acumen; working hard to turn your chemistry degree to more ground-breaking organic lines.
It’s been tough but satisfying.
Buying the Los Angeles Dodgers has been your one gift to yourself.
It has not been without its bumps. A women in Major League Baseball’s old boys club has ruffled feathers amongst the owners and grey-haired stodgy boardrooms around the world. You’ve heard it all. The back-biting and the snide sideswipes. The outright misogyny. The threatened egos. What does she think she’s doing? What does she know about baseball? Who does she think she is?
Oddly, the one group that hasn’t groused about the change has been the Dodger’s staff. You’ve kept their pennant chasing front house crew. Let the manager and coaching staff stay undisturbed. Got to know the players and their families. You love them. And they are beginning to cautiously love you back. The team is your baby and while your instinct is to not let anyone give them stick, some battles aren’t worth taking on. Especially from a national icon.
“We didn’t move them, perhaps we don’t need to be too direct,” you point out, hopefully passing the paper back.
“No way,” Steph shakes her auburn head. “You are Fleur and Fleur is you. It’s too critical a time. Besides, if you don’t publically speak out the team might take it as a slight and the True Blue sure will. He’s too visible a figure. You’ll have to respond and support LA, show that you are in their corner.”
You groan. She has a point. TrueBlue are the diehard LA fans--a colourful and vocal lot—southern California through and through, and they are proud to have a woman owner. You owe it to them.
Well then. You smooth your skirt and sit back down again, flip up your Macbook lid, hurriedly type a few pithy lines. Steph comes around the back of your desk and scans them over your shoulder, bites her lip while reading. “You sure it’s what you want, the pointed ref…?” but you nod firmly. She said direct and this is that.
“Ok…”
There’s a satisfying whoosh as it flies out into the Twittersphere.
Two weeks and a lifetime in business later you pause to smooth down your red evening dress, set your shoulders back and stride forward into the barrage of cameras as you reach to shake the President’s outstretched hand.
It is her inaugural formal State Dinner. Like the rest of your homeland you are pleased and proud she chose Justin Trudeau of Canada to be the first. He is confident and always on point, a neighbour with an aligned agenda and you incline your head, almost as thrilled to meet him as her. The handshake is brief. He jokingly asks in French if you will have the Canadien’s hockey game up on your phone as it isn’t even Spring Training yet (he has read his briefing book), and you laugh, saying that Los Angeles is your home now. The Kings are King.
The resulting laughing group photos are snapped and Steph, you’re certain, will be wildly pleased.
After half an hour of polite chat with several CEO’s you know, a quiet gong sounds and you, like the other luminaries, search for your seating card along the white expanse of silver and china-decked dinner table.
Mme. Y/N Y/N is written in gold on elegant white card. Right next to a name that makes your stomach plummet through the floor.
Captain S. Rogers
Of course the White House has invited prominent expat Canadians. Of course it has invited Americans Justin would like to meet.
Oh god.
You reach for your water glass just as the gold lattice chair pulls out.
“Miss Y/N.”
A pair of inhumanely blue eyes wait for some acknowledgement and you nod, just a fraction, wondering how in the world you will navigate this. Was it a joke by the President’s Chief of Staff? Some kind of not so subtle message? Or, more worrying, a comment that your pointed retort was not officially appreciated?
“Captain.”
The medal-garnished superhuman in a dress Army uniform takes off his cap and sits down. Blushes faintly. Runs a hand through perfectly trimmed blond hair and awkwardly clears his throat, making a blandly positive comment about the weather and décor.
The flowers? Really? Who thought this was a good idea?
You do your best: asking after the Avengers’ latest escapade, the health of Agent Hawkeye who is known to have been banged up, the adjustment of his friend. You are CEO of a multinational beauty empire, formal events with strangers go with the turf, and so you are relieved to note the pleased surprise in Captain Rogers’ eyes. Not everyone supports James Barnes’ parole. You’d have thought that that will break the ice but as soon as the appetizer plates are whisked away he turns to his left and engages Canada’s Junior Minister for Defense in a discussion about NATO that lasts until dessert.
What the?
Beside you, the US Consel for Montreal looks suitably embarrassed, but there is nothing either of you can do. You pound back a few flutes of champagne and another quite good Whiskey Sour as the speeches arrive with coffee and dessert. By the time the music starts up and the room applauds Justin’s smooth waltz with the President you are ready to make an escape, get something out of this mildly disastrous night by pigeonholing the head of Lauder for a little competitors chat, when a fresh-faced aide with Maple Leaf pin taps your silk-clad shoulder.
“Madame..”
“-oiselle,” you correct automatically.
“Le Premier-Ministre serait honoré d'avoir une danse. »
Of course you will. You rise and follow the young man onto the dance floor, accept Justin’s outstretched hand and proceed spend a delightful ten minutes flirting with one of the handsomer and more chatty leaders in the world. Thank heaven. As the cameras click you banter back and forth, relieved you took so much time on your wardrobe. A sleek but stylish chignon. Marcasite studs. Louboutin heels and fall of red silk slashed to just above your knee. You look good. Tomorrow’s morning tweet of you both will likely get thousands of views you think, when a low voice comes off from your left.
“May I cut in?”
“Of course, Captain.” Justin bows and drops your hand and you are swept up into the arms of the last person you thought would dance.
“Captain Rogers?” My word his chest is broad. You take a deep breath and dare to look up into those eyes. They look a little pained but hopeful. “Are you---?”
“Apologizing. Yes.” He quickly nods his head. “Look, I’m new at this. Never tried the social media thing before and I kinda..forgot..about the bigger repercussions.”
“Evidently.” You take a breath, watching his brow furrow and quickly thinking of what to say. “You are of course entitled to your opinion but blanket statements of where things belong are unfair to the players today. As their owner I have a duty to support them.”
“I know. Look I didn’t mean to be hard on those guys.”
The blue eyes droop. He looks abashed and a little like a puppy taking an expected scolding and so you relent, search for something positive to say. “They’ll recover. If LA is good at anything is it definitely bouncing back, Captain.“
“Call me Steve.”
“Steve.” He’s nodding, looking a little more confident. As he leads you (surprisingly smoothly for one so big) around the floor you start to relax a little. Chat about dancing as a lost art. Admire the cut of his uniform and the straight line of his jaw. He is, if anything, more handsome up close and personal, although there is just the faintest twinge of anxiety still in his face. A Man of Out of Time. Yes..and still adjusting to the world he’s landed in.
Maybe you could be generous and try an olive branch.
“Brooklyn are still as famous today as they were then,” you say, squeezing the hand that holds onto yours. The other at your waist is warm. “The first team to break the colour barrier. Nine World Series titles. Cy Young pitchers and All Star MVPS. You can be proud of all that they did. ”
A sunshine smile warms his handsome face. “I am! Of course I am. Jeez, they were so much a part of our life Buck and I scrimped and saved every penny we could just to get into the nose-bleed seats. 75 cents was lunch for a week. If we couldn’t find it, we listened on the radio. Everyone did. Young and old, rich and poor. They played their games on Sundays so that working stiffs like me could go. It was the only day we had off: a ticket and beer money was a treat.”
You’re seriously starting to enjoy yourself, listening to him reminisce. This is a veritable soliloquay. “Ebbet’s might have been shaped like a bandbox but it was a right-handed slugger’s dream. McPhail was a genius. Ladies’ Days for ten cents. Half price if the temps’ got too high. I miss it so. Hot wood slats and popcorn and warm beer.”
“The best.” You grew up with baseball too. The crazy cement white elephant that was The Big O where the Expos played. Gary Carter and Bill "The Spaceman" Lee. Hot, steamy summer nights near Montreal’s broad lazy river.
But you’ve made the switch—LA are your boys now.
“Dodger stadium is baseball’s beautiful showplace now,” you explain. “We have tried to honour Brooklyn’s spirit—playing to win always and keeping the park accessible. There is even a pop-up museum to them.”
He stills and you fall just slightly behind the beat. “A pop-up museum?”
“Yes. It has old jerseys and ticket stubs and photos of the team. It will run until the fall.”
Steve looks far from impressed. “That’s all? Nothing permanent? No one’s set up a display to stay?”
You stiffen a little in his big hands, beginning to be a little frustrated. “We do own the trademark. There are statues to Jackie Robinson and "P. W." Reese where the Brooklyn Cyclones play today.”
He snorts derisively. “Heck that’s mnor league. And Coney Island. Doesn’t count. Ebbets Field and Flatbush were their heart and that’s all gone. They’re an ugly old apartment complex now.”
A frustrated silence falls. Some how you’ve fallen into it again and you can feel your ire rising. He isn’t the only fan who’s had a team be traded. Business is business. A team has to have support at the gate or it isn’t sustainable. Some, like Brooklyn, move to greener pastures. And some are forced to fold.
You stop on the edge of the dance floor and pull back, looking him squarely in the face. There’s a muscle jumping in his cheek and annoyance deepens the french flavour in your accent. American icon or no, you’ve had enough with his pity party.
“I miss the Expos just as much as you do Brooklyn. My team was traded, too. But I do try to be more balanced about reality. I don’t go round trashing the Nats or complaining that Washington has no memorial for them. At least your Dodgers kept their name!”
Steve blinks and a press camera clicks.
You both drop hands when the music ends and retreat--him to the bar, and you to ladies room.
Insufferable. Stubborn. (Gorgeous) Man.
You try to put the experience behind you, get on with work and cheering on your team, but of course the world conspires to interfere.
LA clinches their pennant run but the photo of you and Captain America looking daggers at each other tops the front page of every newspaper the next day.
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this article has been copied & pasted in its entirety in case there’s a paywall. however, please try to read the article from the link first so that the journalist & newspaper staff get their wages. thank you.
April 28, 2019, 3:11 AM CDT By Alex Berg
The first time JayCee Cooper walked out onto the platform at a women’s powerlifting competition, everything else fell away: her years-long internal struggle over her gender identity, her decision to leave men’s sports when she began transitioning, her doubts that she would ever feel safe if she returned to competitions.
When she stepped out in front of a hundred people in the gym in Fort Collins, Colorado, last September, all she focused on was the barbell, which she hoisted off the ground. And then she heard the cheers of the crowd: “Come on JayCee!” She had found not only a sport, but also a home.
“In a world that wants to take away our power and strength,” Cooper, 31, said recently by phone from her home in Minneapolis, “powerlifting is a way to gain that strength back and feel powerful and feel ownership of our own lives. It helps us find strength within ourselves and helps us find strength within our bodies.”
Cooper signed up for more competitions, but, to her astonishment, USA Powerlifting, the sport’s biggest federation, told her that she could not compete in the women’s division because of her gender identity.
In an email, USA Powerlifting said she was denied because she had a “direct competitive advantage” over the other women who were competing.
“It took me aback,” Cooper said. “I didn’t want to put myself into a situation where I obviously wasn’t welcome.”
Cooper’s story received national attention after she posted about it on Instagram in January. She drew support from fellow powerlifters and Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., who slammed the ban on transgender women competitors as “discriminatory” and “unscientific.”
It was just the latest in a growing number of battles over the place of transgender women athletes in competitive sports.
As transgender women have become more visible and sought to participate in women’s sports, athletic organizing bodies have grappled with how to respond, and critics of their inclusion have grown increasingly vocal, as well.
In March, tennis legend Martina Navratilova apologized for calling trans women “cheats” in a Sunday Times op-ed in which she wrote that “letting men compete as women simply if they change their name and take hormones is unfair.” Weeks later, marathoner Paula Radcliffe told BBC Sport that it would be “naive” not to institute rules. In an interview with Sky News in April, Radcliffe said that if trans people were permitted to compete without regulations, it would be “the death of women’s sport.”
For transgender people watching this issue play out, the debate — often based more in bias and assumptions than in science — is dehumanizing. Those who seek to exclude transgender women from sports sometimes imply that the athletes are adopting their identity to gain an edge in competition, a suggestion many find offensive.
“They don’t understand what it means to be a trans person,” Chris Mosier, a competitive runner and cycler and the first known transgender athlete to make a men’s U.S. national team, said.
“The folks who are improperly reporting on this are making it seem like cis men are pretending to be women to dominate sports,” he added, referring to people who are assigned male at birth and identify as men. “I can say that the amount of discrimination, harassment and challenges trans people face in their everyday lives would never be offset by glory.”
‘IT’S BEEN A ROLLER-COASTER’
Before becoming a powerlifter, Cooper lifted weights as part of her training for other sports. As a teenager growing up in Clarkston, Michigan, she was on the U.S. junior national curling team, competed in track and field in high school and rowed in college.
But she never felt fully comfortable on those all-boys teams.
“It’s been a roller-coaster,” Cooper said. “One of the reasons I stepped away from curling was that I wasn’t being my authentic self, and I was super depressed, and I needed some time away to figure out what that meant for me.”
Four years ago, she began hormone replacement therapy as part of her transition. She now identifies as transfeminine, which she sees as a more expansive identity than simply female.
Cooper first came across powerlifting in high school, but didn’t decide to compete until last year while recuperating from a broken ankle, and she was struck by the sport’s simplicity and supportive atmosphere. In powerlifting, athletes are divided into categories by sex, age and weight, and they compete in three types of lifts: squat, bench press and deadlift. Each movement is a test of static strength, force and focus.
“The barbell for me has been a very empowering way to be in my body, which is politicized every waking second, connect with it, and feel like I’m achieving something,” Cooper said.
“It’s a very almost spiritual feeling in the sense that I’m carrying all of this trauma with me and I’m literally focusing all of that into the barbell. In that moment, I get to control what’s going on.”
To lower her testosterone levels, Cooper takes spironolactone, a drug that is also used to treat high blood pressure and can mask steroid use.
USA Powerlifting, which follows rules set by the World Anti-Doping Agency, requires athletes to apply for an exemption to compete while taking the drug. The group has granted exemptions to powerlifters who have taken spironolactone to treat acne or polycystic ovary syndrome, Larry Maile, USA Powerlifting’s president, said.
As part of her medication exemption application, Cooper provided documentation that her testosterone levels have remained under the International Olympic Committee’s accepted limit for two years. (USA Powerlifting falls under the International Powerlifting Federation, which adopted the IOC’s guidelines that allow transgender women to compete in women’s divisions provided their testosterone is below 10 nmol/L for at least 12 months.)
But in December, Cooper’s exemption request was denied. She was told she could not compete in the women’s division of powerlifting because she had a “competitive advantage” as a transgender woman, according to an email exchange obtained by NBC News between Cooper and Dr. Kristopher Hunt, the chair of USA Powerlifting’s committee that reviews applications for medical exemptions.
"Male-to-female transgenders are not allowed to compete as females in our static strength sport as it is a direct competitive advantage,” Hunt said in one email to Cooper.
Pressed for clarification, he wrote a follow-up. “The fact that transgender male to female individuals having gone through male puberty confer an unfair competitive advantage over non-transgender females,” he said.
In a phone interview, Maile defended the decision and said the organization’s policy of barring transgender women — as well as transgender men who take testosterone — was not new, though it was not posted on USA Powerlifting’s website until this winter after Cooper applied for the exemption. Maile said that the IOC’s guidelines ultimately give organizations the discretion to make their own decisions about fair play. To reach the decision, he said USA Powerlifting researched the physical differences between men and women in terms of muscle density, connective tissue and frame shape.
“We’ve been referred to as bigoted and transphobic and a whole lot of less kind things, but it’s not an issue of that for us,” Maile said. “It’s an issue that we have to consider dispassionately and make our best judgment collectively about what the impact on fair play is for us, and that’s the basis on which we’ve proceeded.”
He added that powerlifting “is really unique, because we’re a high strength and low technique sport” — so the physiology of the competitors is particularly important.
Cooper doesn’t buy that argument, noting that women’s bodies come in all shapes and sizes, which may confer advantages for different sports.
“You look at a WNBA player, they’re pushing 6 feet versus someone doing gymnastics who’s 5 feet tall,” she said. “Their bodies are built completely differently. That’s what sports are about.”
‘THE SCIENCE IS IN ITS INFANCY’
The policies governing transgender athletes vary by sport.
The NCAA has policies similar to the International Olympic Committee and does not require athletes to undergo gender-confirming surgery, while USA Gymnastics does require it under some circumstances, according to research compiled by TransAthlete, a database of professional, recreational, college and K-12 sports’ policies on trans athletes.
Others aim to be more inclusive. USA Hockey, for example, offers options for nonbinary athletes who do not identify as male or female, as well as guidance for trans athletes.
While opponents of inclusion point to the “bigger, faster, stronger” argument as the basis of their fear that transgender women are taking over women’s sports, there are few examples of trans women who’ve excelled at a national or world level, according to Cyd Zeigler, co-founder of OutSports, an outlet that reports on LGBTQ athletes.
The scientific research on transgender athletes is in the early stages, and there is disagreement among experts about how to determine fair rules of competitions.
“There’s no simple or even complex biological test you can apply that tells you who’s a man and who’s a woman,” Roger Pielke Jr., director of the Sports Governance Center at the University of Colorado, said.
In the absence of such a test, testosterone levels are often used as a proxy to determine whether trans women are eligible to compete in women’s leagues. There is evidence that transgender women who are on hormone therapy have lower muscle mass and less aerobic ability than they did before, said Joanna Harper, a scientist who studies gender-diverse athletes and advises the International Olympic Committee. In a 2015 study she published on trans women who are distance runners, Harper, who is a trans woman and runner herself, found that after being on hormone therapy the women were running more than 10 percent slower.
But testosterone is an imperfect metric. Even among cisgender men and women, there is variance in the amount that is considered normal.
To deny Cooper “the right to compete based on ridiculous fear is completely unfounded,” Harper said.
‘TRANS LIFTERS BELONG HERE’
At the Minnesota State Championship in February — a USA Powerlifting meet where Cooper hoped to compete — almost a dozen athletes and 20 people in the audience protested her exclusion, according to Maxwell Poessnecker, a transmasculine-identified lifter from Saint Paul, Minnesota. Flanked by signs and wearing T-shirts that said, “I support trans lifters” and “trans lifters belong here,” the athletes stood on the lifting platform without competing to show their disapproval of the policy, Poessnecker said.
From little leagues to the Olympics, questions over transgender inclusion will continue to surface. Advocates who say concerns about “competitive fairness” are often rooted in gender stereotypes and scientific research is lacking believe policies should be as inclusive as possible.
“It’s hard to call anything model when it requires an individual to be tested and questioned,” said Breanna Diaz, a powerlifter and co-director of Pull for Pride, a charity deadlifting event that benefits homeless LGBTQ youth. If athletes “have a sincerely held gender identity, that should be sufficient,” she said.
Cooper, who co-directs Pull for Pride, hopes to use her experience with powerlifting as a way to drive the conversation about trans athletes.
On May 9, USA Powerlifting’s national governing body will meet to discuss its transgender inclusion policy.
“I really do love this sport,” Cooper said, “and it’s not fair to genetically eliminate an entire group of people.”
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Fictober18 #22 - “I know how you love to play games.”
This is today’s entry for fictober. I’m going to try to post a short story every day during October based on a quote provided by the organizer of Fictober18. All stories will be from Arrow based on the Olicity Fandom.
Today’s quote is “I know how you love playing games.” An AU where Felicity and Caitlin go see the Starling City Rockets hockey game and take a special interest in some of the hockey players. Also available on AO3.
Ever since Felicity moved to Starling City from Las Vegas a couple of years ago, her roommate had been bugging her to go to a hockey game. Las Vegas didn’t have a hockey team when she was growing up so she knew nothing about hockey other than Caitlin loved it. So, when Caitlin suggested for the third time that week that they try for tickets for Saturday night’s game, Felicity caved.
The Starling City Rockets were the team to beat this year, the city was abuzz with excitement. An excitement that Felicity was now in the middle of. Felicity and Caitlin had just taken their seats after getting some beer and chips. Caitlin really should have mentioned the snacks earlier, it would have gotten her here sooner.
“Great, we made it before puck drop. In case you are wondering we are going for the guys in red.” Caitlin pointed at the ice.
“Haha. I’ve watched enough games at home with you to know that. I Googled the team today, Oliver Queen, the captain is quite the womanizer.” Felicity took a sip of beer.
“Felicity Smoak, look at you reading the gossip pages. I thought you had no interest in that kind of thing.” Caitlin laughed.
“I don’t. It’s just when you Google Starling City Rockets all these pictures of Oliver Queen appear, each with a different model. That guy gets around, it’s just an observation.” Felicity defended herself.
“Or maybe he just has his picture taken a lot.” Caitlin turned to look at Felicity. “#15 is Barry Allen, we grew up together. He speaks highly of Queen. Says he’s a class act. That the papers get wrong. I tend to believe him.”
“Woah. Sorry, I didn’t mean to attack your friend’s friend.” Felicity smiled teasingly at Caitlin. “Clearly, Barry would know way more than me. The only thing I feel confident saying is Oliver Queen is not hard on the eyes. I hope he’s as good at hockey as he is good looking.”
“Well, if you’d like to meet him in person. I have an open invitation to after game drinks thanks to Barry.” Caitlin said hopefully.
“Let’s see how the game goes. You might be able to persuade me.” Felicity smiled turning her attention back to the game.
*****
By the end of the second period, Felicity was hooked. Jumping up, screaming at the refs. As the buzzer rang she turned to Caitlin. “I’m going to run up to get something, you need anything?”
Caitlin shook her head. “I’m just going to text Barry to tell him congrats on the goal. I’ll also let him know that we might see him for drinks later.”
“There’s no might. I’m in.” Felicity smiled, heading up the steps.
Felicity came back with Starling City Rockets jersey for her and Caitlin. Queen for her and Allen for Caitlin. Caitlin was shocked. “Hey, we have to support our team. Before you ask, I only had the one beer.”
“I’ve created a monster.” Caitlin laughed as she slipped on her new jersey.
“It’s just that I never really paid attention to what was going on before. But now,” Felicity smiled. “I love it!”
“I don’t know what’s come over you but I love it.” Caitlin smiled.
Felicity jumped up cheering. “Did you see that? Queen scored his third goal! That seems impressive. Is it impressive?”
Caitlin laughed. “Yes, it is impressive. It’s called a hat trick. You can congratulate him at the bar.”
Felicity wasn’t sure if she’d have the nerve to talk to Queen at the bar. She’d never been great talking to guys, clearly, this guy liked models. At 5’4 no one would ever mistake her for a model.
*****
The Rockets ending up winning 6-2. It was a very exciting game, Felicity enjoyed part of the happiness in the crowd. They stopped in the bathroom to freshen up before heading out. Felicity looked at herself in the mirror in her oversized jersey, jeans, hair in a ponytail. She pulled the tie out of her hair, used the water from the tap to help straighten it out. Finally, she replaced her red lipstick. It matched the jersey but she still wasn’t sure. She turned to Caitlin as she exited one of the bathroom stalls. “Do you think we should wear our jerseys?”
“Oh, we are definitely wearing our jerseys! The boys will love them.” Caitlin washed her hands, then reapplied her lipstick. “Plus, we look super cute.”
*****
When they walked into the bar it was packed solid with fans who were screaming over the loud music. This wasn’t Felicity’s usual scene but Caitlin was so excited and she was high on adrenaline from the win.
Caitlin led the way through the crowded bar. Felicity held onto her friend’s purse strap to ensure she wasn’t lost in the crowd. Just when Felicity started to feel claustrophobic, they were led into the VIP section.
A tall thin guy approached them as soon as they entered. “Caitlin so nice to see you. So glad you made it to the game.” Then he turned to Felicity. “You must be Felicity, I’m Barry Allen.”
“Nice to meet you,” Felicity smiled, nervous to meet a hockey player in real life. “Congrats on your win and your goal, I cheered.” I cheered? Felicity could kick herself.
Barry smiled at them both. “Thanks for your support. You look good in red.”
“Oh, the jerseys were Felicity’s treat. Check it out.” She turned to show Barry his name on the back of her jersey.
“Wow!” Barry was practically beaming with pride. He turned to Felicity, “does yours say Allen too?”
Felicity shook her head, turning to reveal Queen on the back of her jersey. “Well, it’s good to know I have at least one supporter.” Said a voice that clearly wasn’t Barry’s. Felicity began to blush. Oliver Queen was right behind her. She wasn’t sure she could turn around. Mini freakout happening.
“Oliver Queen, so nice to meet you. I’m Caitlin Snow and this my friend,” Caitlin tugged Felicity’s arm forcefully to turn her around. “Felicity Queen, I mean Smoak. Her last name is Smoak.”
Felicity forced herself to look up at Oliver Queen. Yup, he was even better looking in person. “Hi.” She said so softly he may not have heard her.
Oliver smiled. “Can I get you ladies a drink?”
“Two beers please,” Caitlin spoke up. Felicity nodded. Oliver left to get the drinks. Caitlin turned to Barry. “Can you excuse us for a quick second? Promise we will be right back.” Caitlin led Felicity away from the crowd. “What is up with you? This could be your chance. Forget about my slip. You look amazing, you are a smart and unbelievable catch. You should let Oliver Queen know that.”
Felicity smiled at her friend. “You really are the best, you know.”
Caitlin chuckled. “I know. Now go help Oliver with the drinks.” She gave Felicity a friendly push toward the bar.
*****
Felicity got the bar just as Oliver was turned with the drinks. “I thought, thought I’d help you.” Felicity managed to stumble over her words. “Great game tonight. I know how you love to play games. Not play games, games. Hockey games, I mean. You got the hat trick.”
Oliver smiled. Felicity Smoak was adorable and so real. She was unlikely any of the women he met in his profession. She was just lovely. “Yes, I got lucky scoring a hat trick at the game you were at.”
“It was actually my first hockey game ever. Caitlin had to explain it all to me. But I really enjoyed it. Thank you for the hockey game and the beer.” She took a sip of beer to stop saying embarrassing things. There something about this guy that made her want to talk but yet unable to talk at the same time. So many feels.
“You are very welcome, I’m glad you enjoyed the game. I hope you come again.” He handed Caitlin her beer before taking a sip of his own. He turned back to Felicity, “Do you want to sit over there where it’s not so loud?”
Felicity nodded, following him to a table a little out of the way but still with eyeshot of Caitlin and Barry.
Oliver pulled out a chair for her to sit. “So you know, I’m a hockey player. What do you do?”
“Oh, I’m the CEO of Smoak Consolidated.” Felicity wasn’t sure if she should have told him that. Her grandmother always told her not to tell men how smart she was. She claimed that’s why Felicity was still single.
“Wow. That’s really impressive. I’ve heard of your company. You make the spinal implants, right?” Oliver suddenly realized this woman was out of his league. But he wanted to try anyway. It just felt right talking to her. “Does your company take outside investments? I run a few charities, I’m always looking for a worthy cause, I have to say I was already thinking about your chips. They really are a miracle. It’s truly an honour to meet the woman behind them.”
“Wow. Thank you. I’m surprised you heard of my company but equally flattered. Yes, the chips cost a great deal of money to produce. I keep trying to lower the cost so they are affordable to the everyday person but so far I haven’t been able to do that. We should talk when you have time, I know you travel a lot. I can tell you some ways you may be able to help.” Felicity felt lightheaded. He seemed impressed, genuinely interested in the chip.
“Why don’t you give me your phone, I’ll give you my number.” Oliver quickly typed his number in then handed it back. “We are on the road for the next week starting Saturday. But I can meet you tomorrow or when I get back. I understand tomorrow is short notice.” Oliver really hoped she said yes to tomorrow. First, he’d set up his investment then he’d ask her out. He didn’t want it to appear as the two were connected.
Felicity quickly looked down at her phone. “I can do a late lunch at two o’clock if that works for you? Yikes!”
“Yikes?” Oliver couldn’t help but ask.
“Yes, I apparently have a nine am meeting tomorrow. I should get going. Do you mine coming downtown for lunch? I really have to run.” Felicity stood up, looking around for Caitlin.
“Hey,” Oliver grabbed her hand. “I’ll help you find her.”
“Thanks.” Felicity looked at him with relief. “I’m sorry, I just realized I need to review a report before the meeting.”
“No apologies necessary.” They began walking through the bar still holding hands. Felicity hadn’t pulled away which made him smile. “There they are.” Caitlin and Barry were playing pool.
“Thank you so much, Oliver. I’ll see you tomorrow. I look forward to working together.” As she turned to leave she noticed they were still holding hands. Felicity blushed, Oliver released her hand.
As he watched her walk over to Caitlin and Barry. He was already thinking of ways to keep Felicity Smoak in his life.
To be continued tomorrow :)
Hope you enjoyed. I’m going to tag a few people. Let me know if you want to be tagged or untagged!
@mindramblingsfics @memcjo @mel-loves-all @wherethereissmoak @green-arrows-of-karamel @spaztronautwriter @wrldtravler @tdgal1 @vaelisamaza @oliverfel4 @lucyyh @swordandarrow @smoaking-greenarrow @it-was-a-red-heeler @miriam1779 @coal000 @blondeeoneexox @laurabelle2930 @loutendiena @oliverandhisqueen @crys4728
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The Last Obstacle
Awesome! You've got me in the spirit of writing Winter Olympics AUs, and there's nothing else in my head. Thank you very much … (yes, I'm looking at you @katnissdoesnotfollowback ggg)
Our nation's sport hero, Marcel Hirscher, won his first Olympic Gold Medal this week, and yesterday his second, and my country went crazy.
In the last couple years Marcel won about everything a person can win in the Alpine Skiing World. He tied the record from legendary Marc Girardelli (5 time overall world cup winner), winning the world cup six times in a row, and this season he heads for No. 7. He won world championships, and world cups, and established his place as Austria's most successful skier just this year, with 55 wins in world cup races (and still counting). Everything that was left was Olympic Gold, and now he reached this goal as well, even though it was the combined event and not one of his dominant disciplines (slalom and giant slalom).
Now he can go relaxed into his last discipline, no more pressure of "taking this last obstacle", and maybe is even able to write history again and win 3 of 5 possible disciplines. Only Janica Kostelić (Croatia) in 2002 did that before.
So of course (!) I somehow have to Everlark this one. It's just short, but there's potential to be more. Let's just keep in mind that I have about ZERO idea what I'm talking about in here, so if the details don't add up to the actual procedures, locations etc. of the Winter Games and the Skiing Circuit I'm very sorry and we will simply call it creative liberty.
Many, many, many thanks to wonderful @xerxia31 for beta reading once again. I cross my fingers and toes and everything else for Canada's Hockey Gold! ;)
Sorry for the long note. Let's start the story. Hope you enjoy! :)
And last but not least: Congrats Marcel! We're very, very proud of you! :)
The Last Obstacle
A Winter Olympics Alpine Skiing AU
The clock reads 2:34 and he should be asleep.
Easier said than done when he's used to curling around another person and said person is nowhere to be found.
At first he tries to simply turn around and go back to sleep, but the missing presence makes falling asleep impossible. Ten minutes in he sighs and gives up. He has to go look for her or he will toss and turn the rest of the night. And that's not beneficial when he has his first competition the next day. His day will start at six, Johanna Mason - speed champion of the Norwegian women's team, and a good friend of his - promised to help him out with a short downhill training run. He needs every minute of rest.
He slips into his clothes and has the foresight to check his phone.
Materials chamber. Go back to sleep if you read this. Will be back soon. Love you.
The message dates about an hour back.
Peeta smirks, grabs his heavy coat and sneaks out of the room. If his head coach finds him out of bed he will have his head, but he simply can't help it.
The Olympic Village is more or less deserted. Sporadically, he glimpses another person, but no one familiar crosses his path. By now he knows the way to and from their material chamber (which is actually more of a material hall) in his sleep. In the last two weeks since he and his crew arrived here - together with 55 pairs of skis alone for him to work with - he must have walked it a hundred times.
The huge overhead lights are turned off. Only one of the smaller worktop lamps is illuminating the space.
Peeta steps into the doorway but stops short when he discovers that his girlfriend isn't the only person in the room and retreads again.
Henry Everdeen, head of the alpine service team, stands together with alpine head coach, Haymitch Abernathy, looking intently at the dark haired woman in front of them, who's their daughter and niece respectively. She's bend over a pair of skis and inspects them like an artist studies the Mona Lisa.
"You're certain?" Henry asks, and in the way he speaks Peeta can tell it's not the first time the question has slipped out.
"Absolutely," his daughter answers, her eyes still fixated on his skis while her palm carefully brushes over the waxy surface.
"If you're wrong about this, sweetheart, he'll lose tomorrow." It's Haymitch's turn to argue, his eyebrows knitted together.
Katniss leaps up, her silvery eyes throwing daggers at the two men in the semi darkness beside her. "Temperatures are below point zero. The wind constantly blows particles of powder snow on the track's ice, which makes the snow dry. But weather forecast says the sun will make sporadic appearances. Too much low-fluor and they will slow him in the gliding parts. You know I'm right about this!"
"But-"
"No 'buts'!" she interrupts her father gruffly. "This is my area! I know what I'm doing, I take responsibility for it!"
The two men stop their arguing and simply nod. Katniss turns back to the skis, inspecting them again.
Insiders in the ski circle call her the Whisperer. Peeta knows a huge part of his success is only thanks to her and the team behind him. Katniss Everdeen is a genius when it comes to preparation. She has a sixth sense or something similarly creepy when it comes to this. And Peeta's very thankful for that. You can be the best skier in the world, but when the equipment doesn't work you've got no chance to win.
Ten years ago, when Peeta had only just started in the A league of the alpine ski sport, the national ski association in cooperation with his material supplier introduced him to the father-daughter duo, among others to choose his team from. At that time still Assistant Coach Abernathy advised him to get them on his team. To this day Peeta remembers Haymitch's words: "This is my brother in law and my niece. I grew up with him and have known her since she plopped out of her mother. You won't find two more loyal and caring people in the world. Your team will be your family, boy. They will laugh with you, and celebrate with you and, yes, even cry with you. They will know you inside out. And love and loyalty will decide your success in the end."
Long hours spent together, meticulously working on the perfect quality, the preservation, the consistency, made Katniss and him grow closer. They became fast friends, constantly puzzling over new ways to improve and support his driving style with the material.
The year he first won the big Crystal Globe, the first overall title - his fourth year in the ski circuit - the whole team celebrated into the early hours of the morning. When it was time to finally call it a night, Peeta walked Katniss to her room and kissed her for the first time.
He wanted to leave it at that for the time being, but she had other ideas and dragged him into her room. Not even the apocalypse would have been able to make him reject her in that moment, he was head over heels in love with her.
The rest - as they say - is history.
Peeta won the World Cup every year since, expanded his trophy collection with World Championship medals in all colors, with several big Crystal Globes and quite a few small ones for slalom and giant slalom. He won Sportsman of the Year three times in a row and got a ton of sponsorship contracts. But only a single silver Olympic Medal.
He’s never been in better physical condition than now, even though training this summer ended with a broken ankle on day two. But he had the best team of doctors, therapists and trainers behind him, and they worked out another training schedule. With almost two months less of traditional ski training than his competitors Peeta returned to the world cup three events in - only to win his first race back and nearly every single one following.
"Go and pester Rye," Katniss' words to her father and uncle bring him back to the present. She carefully slips a brush over the surface of his ski. "He's still working on the boots. Peeta told him he needs more support at the ankle, and brother dearest is still trying to figure that one out."
Only at the last moment Peeta's able to hold back the snort, but the small smile curling around his lips is unstoppable. He knows his brother has figured out the minor problem with the boot a couple hours ago. They tested it together, and it never fitted better. He's sure everything Rye's working on now is the finishing touch. Katniss just wants to get rid of Henry and Haymitch.
The two men take the hint, wish her a good night and leave shortly after.
"You should be asleep."
Her voice vibrates through the stillness of the night. Not once does she stop her work on the ski.
"You, too. How long have you known I'm here?" Peeta replies, amused and finally steps into the material chamber.
"Please," she huffs, exchanging the brush for a bottle of powder. "I heard it when you stepped into the building. It was like a stampede entered. It's still a miracle how you can be so graceful on skis when off of them your footfalls can wake the dead."
"It's a gift, love," he winks and leans back against a worktable beside her, arms crossed in front of him.
"Or a curse," she deadpans, still focused on the equipment in front of her. One side of her mouth twitches slightly.
He can't hold back his laughter, effectively stopping their banter. For the first time she straightens up, now a smile gracing her features.
"Go back to sleep, Peeta. You need the rest. I will be done shortly, I promise," she implores him, her voice soft.
It's her pleading eyes that makes him give in. With a nod he pushes himself in a standing position. "Don't take too long, ok?" he can't help but say.
Katniss gives him another smile, leans in and kisses him quickly. Then she turns back to the skis and resumes her powder-brush-routine, immediately lost in the depths of her work again.
Peeta grins and leaves the material chamber. He's not sure if he'll fall asleep without her, but the warm feeling inside him will let him relax enough. Because once again he realized that him winning Olympic Gold isn't only his dream anymore.
And this clearly tops a sleepless night.
xXx
220 meters per run. 65 pairs of slalom poles. Steep incline between 33 and 45 percent. The poles stay horizontal or vertical to each other, allowing to either drive longer curves at a slower pace or quick swings at high speed.
The wind is a parameter today; gusts around 80 kilometers per hour constantly sweep over the hilltop and through the corridor where the flatter start goes into the steep slope.
Downhill this morning was a freezing hell. With temperatures sub-zero, gusts of strong wind and speeds over 120 kilometers per hour the windchill factor made the air feel like a cutting knife. He's a technical skier, the speed disciplines aren't his forte; nevertheless he had the run of his life, also thanks to the short training with Johanna this morning, placing 7th and giving him a nice advantage in the upcoming slalom run. Because that's where he dominates.
Haymitch is standing at the traverse into the steep slope; the crucial key point. How you master the course here decides about winning or losing. After every single one of the previous twenty-three racers he radioed the conditions and possible best approach to Finnick Odair, his assistant head coach, who stands beside Peeta now and waits with him to enter the starting gate.
All of this is circumstantial now. Fifteen seconds ago Norway's No. 1, Darius Joriusson, one of his biggest competitors, went into the race, but Peeta didn't even register that. He's visualising and recreating the course in his head, counting every pole, the distance between them, the long turns and quick transitions. He's in his own world, nothing can break his focus.
The track personnel radio the slope is clear. Darius crossed the finish line 56 hundredths ahead of the previous leader. Peeta doesn't know that; everything in him is concentrating on his upcoming run.
Racing Personnel give the go for his start. Time measurement is set to zero. Finnick screams encouragements to him. Peeta readjusts his goggles one last time, plants his ski poles into the snow, ensures once more he has a good grip to help him push out of the starting gate.
Everything fades to the background, every noise, every emotion. Peeta takes a last deep breath, flexes his muscles and jumps into the race.
45 seconds may define his fate.
xXx
He crosses the finishing line and his eyes immediately travel to the time screen.
Green.
His arms shoot up, he looks towards the sky and thanks every deity there is. He's in the lead.
He looks in the direction where the audience is going crazy. Up in the front and halfway to the right he spots a group of familiar people, banner raised and cheering loudly. A couple of friends and some members of his fan club. Madge and Gale Hawthorne at the center front, beaming at him, holding both thumbs up. They won their own Figure Skating Gold two days ago. He excitedly waves at them.
A moment later his skis are off and he steps into the viewing box of the current leader, shakes hands with Darius, who congratulates him and makes room. Members of his team hand him his jacket, hat and a bottle of water.
Peeta knows there's possibly only one more person who could endanger his win: Alexandre Cato. Everyone else is a speed expert, but the Frenchman is an allrounder. He competes in every discipline. Cato placed 5th at the downhill this morning.
Marvel Jakobs from Switzerland starts the race, and Peeta watches - admittedly, not really nervous yet - his progress on the screen. He knows Marvel's disciplines are Downhill and Super-G. When he crosses the finishing line the red 9 lights up.
Five more to go, and now it's Cato's turn.
"Rue," Peeta stops one of his service people. "Where's Katniss?"
The young woman points at the Service Sector behind them. "She's with your father and brothers at material check."
Ah yes, in case they used something illegal. The Olympic Committee has drastically tightened the rules on that. Katniss and his family would never leave this critical part to someone else.
"Get her here as soon as possible, please, okay?"
The girl smirks and nods knowingly.
The arena speaker catches his attention then. "And now Alexandre Cato starts the race." Peeta's eyes immediately focus on the screen in front of him.
29 hundredths is all the headstart Cato's got from the downhill run. But even 1 hundredth can be pivotal in the end.
First split: Alexandre is still 13 hundredths ahead.
Peeta starts to worry. Was his performance enough? Did the wind, which blew up so much snow he lost sight of the course for a couple moments, resulting in him only running on instinct and the mental image where the poles were placed, really make the difference? Would this mean "only" silver again?
Second split: Peeta’s heart leaps when the red '+0.14' pops up at the corner of the screen. Still, 14 hundredths isn't much.
For a second Peeta's eyes drift to the back of the area. How long does the stupid materials check take? A split moment later his focus is back on the race.
Cato is right before the last split. With a silent gasp he sees a moment later that it's shown in green. The last split time and the Frenchman is 18 hundredths in the lead again. Peeta's hand comes to rest halfway over his mouth, the other one crossed in front of him. Just to put it somewhere, tightly gripping his biceps.
The screen is not important anymore, he can see Cato himself now only a handful of poles away from the finish.
Three more poles. Two. One.
Peeta shuts his eyes tightly. Waits for the reaction from the audience.
Someone grabs him from the side, and by instinct he looks at the person. It's Rye. His lips form words, his face is full of excitement and joy. Finally Peeta registers what his brother is saying.
"He's behind! 23 hundredths, Peet! 23 fucking hundredths!"
The brothers hug tightly, Peeta not yet fully realizing what just happened. Over Rye's shoulder he sees Katniss hurrying away from the Service Sector in their direction. As the leader in the race he's not allowed to leave the viewing box, but sometimes Rye is actually pretty observant, and with a knowing smile he steps aside.
A second later Peeta has his arms full of the love of his life. Without a word exchanged she leans up at the same time he leans down and they kiss. Ignoring the cheering, the cameras, the people around them. Their hands frame each others faces, their fronts pressed together.
"You did it," she finally whispers against his lips when they come up for air.
"We did it!" he whispers back, his face nearly splitting in two from smiling so hard. Even Katniss, normally wearing a composed and stoic expression when in the public eye, can't stop beaming.
Cato steps up to the viewing box, smiling but visibly crestfallen, too; it would have been his first Gold Medal as well. Katniss steps away from Peeta to make room, wants to retreat into the background again. This should be his great moment. But Peeta wraps his left arm around her shoulder and keeps her beside him.
"Stay. This is your moment, too," he whispers, before he reaches out and takes Cato's offered hand. They shake, congratulate each other. The arena speaker announces the last three participants are about to enter the race, and the attention turns back to the actual race. The rest of the race is a mere formality, the leading guys from the downhill run have little to no experience in slalom.
Five minutes later it's official: Peeta Mellark had won his first Olympic Gold Medal. And he won it in a discipline he wasn't even sure he'd start in until he arrived at the Games. Now he can relax, look forward to the two more races he's going to participate in, and in both he's the dominating competitor.
He feels part of the pressure vanish. Even if he doesn't win anymore medals, this gold one will forever be that last obstacle he overcame.
xXx
After the flower ceremony, press conferences, meetings with sponsors - all in all heading from one appointment to the next - he somehow stands backstage and waits for the commentator to announce first place.
The moment the Olympic Gold Medal is put around his neck everything feels like a dream. When the national anthem plays he tears up, too overcome with emotion to even try to sing along.
Afterwards the team throws a party for him, but it's a relaxed affair. Everyone still has the upcoming races in mind. Yes, he won gold today, but that doesn't mean he can't strive for more.
For the better part of the evening Katniss and he are seperated. She has her obligations, too, after all.
A little past midnight he's finally able to call it a night. With a deep sigh he falls against the closed bedroom door. This day was exciting and exhausting in equal measure.
"Come to bed. You must be beat," a whisper reaches his ears, and with a soft smile he opens his eyes and sees her form between the sheets.
Five minutes later he's in his pyjamas and crawls into bed. Katniss scoots over, he wraps his arms around her. They intertwine their hands, his leg slips between hers; their movements in sync from years spent together.
For a couple moments they lie there in silence. It's Katniss who surprisingly breaks it. "You won Gold today," she whispers, he can hear the gleeful smile in her voice.
Peeta presses his lips under her ear. "There's only one more thing left to top this."
"Winning the other two gold medals?" she guesses, but feels him shaking his head. "Breaking Ingemar Stenmark’s all time record?" she tries again and turns around in his arms, now facing him. Again Peeta shakes his head.
Frowning she brushes some hair out of his eyes. "Babe, you’ve already reached every other goal there is."
Peeta chuckles and takes her face in his hands. "Last goal there is for me: To marry you. Have a family with you. Grow old together. Be happy. Everything else will just be a bonus."
Katniss' confusion melts away and pure love radiates off her. She chuckles and gives him a short peck.
"You're such a sap," she grins. "I already agreed to all of these things. I wear your ring, don't I?"
Peeta reaches out for the chain around her neck. Hidden under the collar of her shirt lies the delicate jewelry. When he asked her, she didn't even hesitate for a second to accept, but apologized immediately afterwards about not being able to wear it at work. She didn't want to destroy the beautiful ring by mistake, so they agreed she would wear it on a chain around her neck.
Somehow this turned into their precious little secret, silently agreeing they wouldn't tell anyone until the Games were over. This is a private matter between them, they don't need the publicity this would bring.
Until now.
"I want to make it official, Katniss," Peeta argues softly. "I want to tell people you're my fiancée. I want to brag, and strut around like a fucking peacock, and make everyone jealous with my breathtaking future wife."
She snorts once, but they don't say a word after that, simply look at each other. Her fingers brush through the hair at the back of his head, his thumb over her bottom lip.
Finally she leans in and kisses him. At first there's no hidden agenda behind the kiss, just an act out of love. A reassurance. A promise.
Although he's tired to the bones, Peeta feels lust rushing through him. His love for her is nearly overwhelming, and with a growl he deepens the kiss. Rolls her over so she lies underneath him, her legs automatically wrap around his hips.
"I'll allow it," Katniss whispers between kisses.
She leans in to press her lips against his again, but Peeta gives her a confused look. "What are you allowing, Katniss?"
She grins, wraps her arms around his neck and presses her center against his growing erection. He hisses, every muscle strained from trying to hold back to wait for her answer.
She pulls his face down to hers and whispers against his lips, "Everything, Peeta. I'll allow everything. The making it official, the bragging, the strutting around. Everything." Katniss kisses him then; no holding back now. It's the dirty kind of kiss; with a lot of tongue and teeth; with moans and growls in between. Once more she stops, and with a mischievous grin commands, "Can you please fuck me now, golden boy?"
Peeta chuckles and obliges.
He won Olympic Gold today. He can make history if he repeats today's success. He will forever be known as one of the greatest alpine skiers of all times.
But still, being with Katniss trumps everything else.
#LitLifeLovers stories#everlark#winter olympics everlark#alpine skier!Peeta#team member!Katniss#Peeta Mellark#katniss everdeen
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Tripping Over the Blue Line (26/45)
It’s a transition. That’s what Emma’s calling it. She’s transitioning from one team to another, from one coast to another and she’s definitely not worried. Nope. She’s fine. Really. She’s promised Mary Margaret ten times already. So she got fired. Whatever. She’s fine, ready to settle into life with the New York Rangers. She’s got a job to do. And she doesn’t care about Killian Jones, captain of the New York Rangers. At all.
He’s done. One more season and he’s a free agent and he’s out. It’s win or nothing for Killian. He’s going to win a Stanley Cup and then he’s going to stop being the face of the franchise and he’s going to go play for some other garbage team where his name won’t be used as puns in New York Post headlines. That’s the plan. And Emma Swan, director of New York Rangers community relations isn’t going to change that. At all.
They are both horrible liars.
Rating: Mature
Content Warnings: Swearing, eventual hockey-type violence
AN: Happy All-Star break and welcome back to Los Angeles, Emma Swan. I harbor no actual resentment to the city of Los Angeles, but I really don’t like the Kings for winning that one Stanley Cup, so.....As always, you guys are absolutely incredible and I can’t thank you enough for reading all these sports feelz words. Screaming the praises of @laurnorder, @distant-rose & @beautiful-swan forever and ever.
Also living on Ao3, FF.net & tag’ed up on Tumblr.
“Are you ok, Hook?” Roland asked, glancing back over his shoulder at Killian. Regina tugged on his hand lightly, muttering something under her breath about how they were on a moving sidewalk and he couldn’t just stop walking like that.
Killian hummed in the back of his throat, but didn’t actually answer Roland, just took a deep breath. Emma felt his shoulders move with the effort of it, his arm slung lazily over her own shoulders and she had a suspicion he was using her to stay standing up.
Roland’s feet moved quickly, barely landing on the sidewalk as he moved to keep up with Regina and Robin and the rest of the New York Rangers All-Star contingent, but he looked back at Killian once more, eyebrows pulled low with a concern that belied his six-year-old self. Although, Emma reasoned, he was wearing a Jones jersey.
Robin had grumbled about that for half the flight.
And it was so goddamn adorable that she’d almost entirely forgotten they were on a flight to Los Angeles and a weekend in the Staples Center and she had five fan events in two days and the odds of seeing Neal were almost astronomically high.
Almost. She almost forgot.
Of course, she was also a bit distracted on the flight by a surprisingly-terrified-by-turbulence Killian Jones. His eyes got wider every time they hit a particularly aggressive stretch of air or wind and he gripped her hand a bit tighter than natural, lips going impressively thin when he tried to take a deep breath in through his nose.
Emma’s eyes darted towards him, still a bit paler than usual and the back of his hair was sticking up unnaturally from all the times he’d run his fingers through it.
She never thought she’d be happy to be back in Los Angeles, but if it got Killian to breathe a bit easier, then, well, maybe Emma was happy to be back in Los Angeles. And maybe she was excited for All-Star weekend and the skills competition and a few days where she didn’t have to worry about insurance waivers or making sure they had enough facilities people to properly zamboni the Garden ice before the game or how she’d have to redo all the posters because goddamn Bobby Flay had cancelled on her two days before.
Fuck Bobby Flay.
The walking sidewalk ended and Roland hopped off it with as much enthusiasm as he could, bobbing on the balls of his feet impatiently when the whole lot of them worked their way towards the front of LAX and cabs and, God, everything in this stupid city was so spaced out.
“Hook?” he asked again, free hand finding its way to the side of Killian’s leg.
Killian grimaced, taking another deep breath and Emma reached her hand up to lace her fingers with his. His arm was still slung over her shoulders, but she was fairly certain she felt him relax as soon as her hand found his.
And maybe that was why she wasn’t particularly upset about spending an entire weekend in LA.
“Yeah, mate,” Killian said.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“You just did.”
Robin rolled his eyes and even Ruby looked passably amused, lifting her eyebrows when she finally pulled her eyes away from the phone that hadn’t stopped buzzing since they’d hit the tarmac. Roland huffed slightly, lower lip jutting out and Killian, finally, smiled, eyes lightening a bit as he mussed Roland’s hair.
And that worked a very loud groan out of Regina.
“What is it, mate?” Killian prompted, ignoring Regina’s frustrations completely.
“Well…” Roland started, stumbling over the letters. He turned back to stare at Robin who just nodded encouragingly. “Well,” he said again. “I had an idea for skills.”
“Yeah?”
Roland nodded, any trace of nervous energy replaced, simply, by energy. “Yeah,” he half shouted before rushing over the rest of his thought. “Imgoingtoweartwojerseys.”
Killian turned towards Emma and she shrugged in response, not quite in-tune with that particular brand of six-year-old enthusiasm. “Try again, Rol,” she said, not able to keep the smile off her face. “Just a little slower.”
“Ok,” Roland said, nodding almost exactly like Robin just had. “I wanted to wear Dad’s jersey on the ice for skills because I always wear Dad’s jersey to games, but you’re here too and so Gina got me a special jersey.”
“A special jersey?” Killian repeated and the tension was back in his shoulders, arm tightening just a bit around Emma. Or maybe it was just surprise.
It was definitely surprise.
It probably shouldn’t have been.
“It took forever to figure out,” Regina said, one side of her mouth pulled up despite her best attempts to sound frustrated.
“I don’t understand,” Killian muttered. There were cars in front of them and none of them moved. Ruby had stopped texting completely at this point.
“It’s two jerseys in one, Hook,” Roland explained, widening his eyes as if he couldn’t quite believe Killian didn’t just get it. “Yours is the front and there’s a ‘C’ and everything and then Dad’s is the back and it’s got my name on it and it was supposed to be a surprise, but you didn’t like the plane ride and I asked Dad and he said I should tell you.”
“Did he?”
“Yup.”
Robin almost looked smug and the pre-scheduled town car driver actually honked his horn, leaning across the passenger seat to if they were ready to go and none of them moved. Still. Until Killian did, arm falling away from Emma’s shoulders as he took three steps forward and crouched in front of Roland with a very specific type of look on his face.
He smiled, something ghosting over his face that looked a bit like disbelief, and Emma bit the inside of her lip. “Is it ok?” Roland asked, voice a bit quieter than it had been before. “I’m going to wear Dad’s for the game, but for skills…”
“Of course, mate,” Killian cut in, hands falling on Roland’s shoulders lightly. “You’ll have the best jersey of any of us.”
Roland beamed, nearly knocking Killian back on his heels when he leapt at him, arms flung around his neck and face pressed against the front of another team-branded t-shirt and Emma’s heart did something absolutely absurd.
This weekend was going to be good.
One of the car horns honked again and Regina’s entire face shifted, making Emma take a step back out of instinct when she noticed the woman’s eyes narrow and her shoulders realign as she walked towards the driver. No one honked again and it only took a few minutes to get them into cars and to hotels and respective rooms that, somehow, managed to be scattered across the entire floor.
“How did this even happen?” Emma asked Ruby, hoping, at least, their luggage made it to the right rooms.
“I have no idea,” Ruby answered. She was texting again, phone buzzing in her hand. “It’s the league, you’d think they’d just want us all organized by team, but that would mean we wouldn’t be forced into awkward social situations and I’m half convinced the big whigs up top actually enjoy forcing us to talk.”
“Aren’t we all supposed to be a united front this weekend or something?”
“Please,” Ruby scoffed, finally stuffing her phone in her pocket as she pulled out a room key. “The opposite. This weekend is like a chance for us all to prove our worth against other teams. Wait until you see the garbage the Flames try to pass off as a fan meet-up, you’ll never question how good you are at your job again.”
Emma made a contrary noise in the back of her throat, laughing softly as she tried to fish her own room key out of her back pocket. “Remind me of that when we get six people to show up later tonight.”
“Please. You’ll get ten. At least.”
“You’re a beacon of support.”
Ruby stuck the key into the lock of the door in front of her, pressing forward when the telltale click came, but she turned back towards Emma before she actually walked in, ignoring, what sounded like, half a dozen messages.
“You’re really going to be going be ok going back in there?” Ruby asked and she didn’t really need to be any more specific.
“Sure,” Emma answered quickly. Ruby twisted her eyebrows, staring at Emma skeptically. “No, really,” she promised. “I mean, you’re right, we’ll get some fans for the events and there’s a whole group of season tickets slated to be at skills and we’ve got that post-game thing at Tom’s Urban on Sunday. I’ll be so busy I’m sure I’ll barely even have time to think about anything except sticking to the schedule.”
“That so?”
“I just said it, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, doesn’t mean you actually believe it.”
Emma pressed her tongue on the inside of her cheek, leaning against a door that absolutely wasn’t hers. “I do,” she said softly, but there was a conviction in her voice surprised even her. It very obviously surprised Ruby.
“You’re happy.”
It wasn’t a question.
“Yeah,” Emma agreed, certain her smile was taking up three quarters of her face.
“Anyone tell you that you two are disgustingly adorable all the time, either? That whole holding your hand whenever we hit turbulence was like something out of a made for TV movie.”
“Oh, please,” Emma brushed off, ignoring whatever warning bells were going off in the back of her head that Killian wasn’t actually scared of turbulence. “This is your fault anyway. You and Reese’s came up with the set-up to begin with.”
“Nah, this is totally your fault, Em. And his too, I guess. You guys fought the set-up, you just couldn’t fight off each other.” Ruby scrunched her nose, making some kind of vaguely disgusted noise when she realized what she’d just said. “Jeez, now I sound like a made for TV movie. Look what you’re doing to me.”
Emma rolled her eyes. She was still smiling. “You, literally, give your girlfriend media leaks so she can alert the rest of her staff. That’s disgusting.”
“Whatever,” Ruby muttered, waving her hands through the air. “Seriously though, Neal hasn’t tried to talk to you? Like at all?”
“Nope,” Emma said and the frustration she’d expected at the inevitably of this conversation didn’t show up the way she thought it would. Her phone buzzed in her pocket and she’d never actually told Mary Margaret she’d landed, too wrapped up in Roland Locksley’s continued adorableness and trying not to actually breathe too loudly when Killian’s hand found the inside of her thigh in the back seat of the town car.
“Huh,” Ruby mumbled.
“Were you expecting him to? I mean he didn’t tell me he was taking my job until he showed up in my office with a box of his own stuff. I doubt he��d go out of his way to find out if I’m coming back for All-Star weekend. For all I know he doesn’t even realize I’m working for the Rangers.”
“Your name’s on the website,” Ruby pointed out as Emma looked down at her phone.
It wasn’t Mary Margaret. Although she should really text Mary Margaret. Or call Mary Margaret. And apologize. After she remembered how to speak.
Did you know that Los Angeles has the largest system of roadways in the entire country? Nearly 7300 miles.
Don’t remind me. That just makes me think of hours stuck in traffic out here.
There was a lead up to this, Swan. Let me finish the set-up.
That word though.
Swan.
Yeah, yeah, go.
This stupid city has the largest system of roadways in the entire country, but the only one I’m particularly interested in is the hallway between my room and yours.
Oh my God, you did not just text that.
The only way I could say it without actually laughing hysterically was by texting it. C’mon your place or mine?
You’re serious.
If you think I’m not going to take advantage of this entire weekend, you’re horribly mistaken. Fifteen minutes.
Emma bit her lip, that pack of butterflies she was certain always seemed to appear whenever he pulled out ridiculous lines or announced he wanted to spend an entire weekend in her hotel room making a return appearance in the pit of her stomach.
“You know,” Ruby said knowingly, smiling as she kicked back against her door. “I argued on behalf of this.”
“What do you mean?”
“Told Z there was probably no point in getting you your own room.”
“Jeez, Rubes. Why didn’t you take out an ad in Page Six too?”
Ruby shrugged. “It’s not like everyone doesn’t know. You think Robin and Regina are staying separate rooms? They’ve got like a suite or something.”
“They’re married.”
“Yeah and you haven’t taken those laces off your wrist since we came back from Christmas.”
Emma’s eyes widened and she didn’t even have a response, every argument dying on the tip of her tongue because, well, there wasn’t really anything to argue. She hadn’t taken the laces off her wrist since Christmas, had started tugging on them in between her thumb and forefinger whenever something particularly frustrating happened and she was terrified she was about to actually rip them in half when Bobby Flay cancelled on her two days before.
Killian had noticed – of course he had noticed – asking about it just before Emma had fallen asleep, eyes closed and half a dozen pillows under head. It had become a thing, spending game nights in that ridiculously large apartment just a few blocks away from Lincoln Center – slightly out of necessity since the loft was starting to look more and more like a wedding boutique than any actual sort of living space and also slightly out of want and if Mary Margaret had any sort of opinion on it, she’d been mercifully silent on the subject.
Emma told him about Bobby Flay, not even bothering to turn around to look at him and Killian’s arm tightened around her waist, fingers finding their way back to the laces and the back of her wrist. He laughed softly when he realized he’d left a trail of goosebumps in his wake and Emma had felt his smile when his lips found the back of her neck, sparking even more goosebumps.
She’d deal with an infinite number of goosebumps, however, just to make sure she heard that strangled way he muttered Swan under his breath when she shifted against him.
Ruby was still staring at her, arms crossed lightly over her chest as her eyes drifted back towards the laces that were nothing short of obvious in the short-sleeve shirt Emma had on. “Yeah, well,” Emma said, not even bothering to finish the sentence.
“Fuck Neal?” Ruby suggested.
“That works too.”
“And no one is selling you out to Page Six. Trust me, you’re not that interesting. You’re just serving as some sort of disgusting new marker for romance on this team. I mean, no big deal or anything. Also make sure you call Mary Margaret because she’s already texting me asking why you haven’t.”
Emma sighed, but she nodded, glancing at the number on Ruby’s door. She wasn’t anywhere near her room. “How come you’re all the way down here? I’m at the other end of the hallway.”
“Exactly.”
“What?”
“You think I was going to let them put me next to you during All-Star weekend when your boyfriend is captain of the Metro? Please. I made sure I was nowhere near that. In fact, no one is, so you’re welcome or something.”
“How did you manage to do that?”
“I don’t even know why you’re surprised by this, Em. I thought we’d just agreed to my ability to do anything. Especially when the league is involved.” Ruby flashed her another smile, that one that made Emma certain she could do anything when the league was involved, and kicked her door open. “You better get to your room anyway. Call M’s before Killian knocks down your door or something equally romantic.”
Emma didn’t have a chance to respond before Ruby’s door was closed and, well, she probably had a point.
Her phone rang before she even had a chance to hit Mary Margaret’s speed dial and Emma couldn’t quite fight off the smile on her face as she made her way down the hallway, room key still held loosely in her hands.
“How come you didn’t tell me about Bobby Flay?” Mary Margaret asked without preamble and Emma blinked once, surprised by this sudden descent into over-protective.
“Did I not?” Emma countered.
“Nope.”
“I’m glad he’s not catering our wedding,” David added and Emma rolled her whole head as the door to her hotel room unlocked.
“Oh my God, Reese’s did you put me on speaker phone to ask about Bobby Flay?”
Mary Margaret made a noise in the back of her throat and Emma knew the dismissal when she heard it. “You know Ruby told me,” she said. “Because Ruby answers her phone.”
“That’s because Ruby is always on her phone.”
“Tell Bobby Flay that we’re going to boycott his restaurant and his show from now on,” David added, voice sounding a little distant, like he was shouting from the other side of the loft.
“Is David in a cave?” Emma asked. She sank onto the corner of the bed, kicking her flats off while trying to keep her phone balanced between her ear and her shoulder. “And I highly doubt Bobby Flay will be particularly offended with your boycott. When’s the last time you could afford his restaurant?”
“Hey if that team of yours can hold onto its playoff berth and, you know, maybe win the President’s Trophy we can probably afford any restaurant in the city.”
“You’re a degenerate,” Emma accused, laughing as she fell back on the mattress. There weren’t nearly as many pillows on this bed and, for probably the first time in her entire life, that felt a bit strange.
“Tell Killian to score more goals.”
“That’s not really my job.”
“No,” Mary Margaret cut in, “your job is to tell your best friend when you’re having work troubles so that she can make more alcohol-based baked goods.”
“You’re both degenerates! Who knew you were hiding such debaucherous personalities underneath those shiny exteriors.”
“That’s just rude, Emma.”
“And it’s not like I haven’t had other things going on besides Bobby Flay. They’re trying to give away my date and that’s been a whole thing and Aurora’s only just starting to process the waivers for the kid’s from Henry’s house and we’ve got that fan event thing in front of the Staples later tonight. It’s just been a lot and you guys…”
“What?” Mary Margaret asked, voice softer than Emma was quite prepared for.
She took a deep breath and shut her eyes, making a face she was aware no one would actually be able to see. “You’ve got all that wedding stuff going on. I mean we’re closing in on final steps and paying things off and I didn’t want to load you down with more things because you don’t need to always be worried about me.”
“That’s my job.”
“No it isn’t.”
“Emma,” Mary Margaret said slowly, the sounds of the creaking couch in the background. “Of course it is. And not just because you’re under some misconstrued belief that you’re actually our kid or something. Because I want it to be.”
“Absolutely,” David added. He’d come back into the living room, voice perfectly clear in its affirmation and Emma bit her lip. She still hadn’t opened her eyes.
“But the wedding,” she argued, not entirely certain what she was arguing.
“Is going fine,” Mary Margaret promised quickly. “Better than fine. Your dress should probably get altered soon, but other than that, it’s almost easy. You don’t have to think that there isn’t a place for you in that. There is. Always.”
There was a noise on the other end of the phone and Emma knew David had grabbed it off its likely resting place on the coffee table. “And we’re totally not going to invite Bobby Flay to the wedding anymore.”
“Was that a part of the plan before?” Emma asked, shaking a bit from the force of her laughter.
“It could have been if he wasn’t an ass about your game.”
“Good to know.”
“They’re trying to bump you?”
Emma shrugged, the top of the hotel-provided comforter scrunching underneath her. “I don’t know. There’s a couple of tours, you know like bands and stuff, that they’re trying to book because it’s a free day and that rarely happens in March. So, I don’t know, they might try and bump me and Mer’s been trying to fight them off and we’ve been ok, but it’s All-Star weekend and no one seems particularly interested in answering my increasingly desperate e-mails.”
David and Mary Margaret sighed in unison on the other end of the phone and the other side of the country and the irony of having this conversation while she was back in LA for the first time wasn’t lost on Emma.
“It’ll be fine,” Mary Margaret said, but the promise didn’t ring completely true.
“We’ll see,” Emma said flippantly, determined not to give in to the gnawing idea that this wouldn’t actually work. It had been sitting in the back of her head for the last few weeks. She’d done a good job of ignoring it – helped a bit by Mary Margaret’s eternally optimistic outlook and the laces around her wrist – but it was still there and, eventually, she’d have to deal with.
She just had to get through All-Star weekend first.
Emma rolled her head to the side when she heard the knock on the door, her breath catching audibly in throat loud enough that both David and Mary Margaret asked if she was ok.
“Fine, fine,” Emma said quickly, almost jogging to the door when he knocked again. “Impatient assh…” she muttered under her breath as she swung the door open, but she didn’t get the chance to finish the thought.
Killian moved before she was entirely ready for it, head ducked and eyes bright and Emma’s whole body tightened at the sight of it, even if he was still wearing team-branded. And then he noticed the phone, still pressed against her ear, and he could probably hear Mary Margaret on the other end, practically shouting what’s going on at her.
He closed his eyes lightly and pressed his lips together, tugging them back behind his teeth as he dragged his eyes back up to Emma’s.
She made a face and Killian didn’t blink, just rested both his hands on her hips and waited. “Uh, Reese’s,” Emma sputtered, groaning slightly when she realized just how eager she sounded. “Listen, I, uh, I’ve got to go.”
And Emma might have been on the other side of the country, might have been secretly avoiding her two best friends because she’d been worried she was somehow intruding on their wedding plans, but she could still practically see the light bulb go on over Mary Margaret’s head.
“Oh,” she said slowly and knowingly and a few other adverbs Emma would have remembered if Killian’s hand hadn’t found its way under the edge of her shirt already. “Right. Yeah, yeah, right. Go. Go.”
“But let us know how tonight goes, ok?” David asked and Mary Margaret’s sigh was nothing short of deafening.
“Let her go, David,” she said. She had her hand on his shoulder – Emma was certain of it. “She’s got stuff to do.”
Killian's eyebrows shot up at that, smirk settling on his face and Emma let her head fall forward, landing on the front of his t-shirt. He kissed the top of her hair, hand tightening a fraction of an inch.
“What was that?” David continued. “Wait, wait, Em is there someone in your room?”
“I’ve got to go,” Emma repeated, not entirely sure what else to say. Killian had stopped even trying to hide his laughter, the sound ricocheting off the walls of her hotel room and into that back corner of Emma’s brain that had, just a few moments ago, been worried about half a dozen different things.
“Hey, Killian,” David shouted.
“You’re not on speaker phone.”
“Whatever.”
“I’m hanging up now.”
“Bye Killian.”
The line clicked and Emma pulled her phone away from her ear, tossing it onto the bed before turning back to Killian to find him staring at her like she was the goddamn sun. “Sorry, sorry,” she mumbled. “Reese’s thought I was dead and she was texting Ruby about it and then there was wedding talk and they want to bump my game…”
She hissed in the air she suddenly couldn’t quite breathe, grimacing and squeezing her eyes shut so she couldn’t see the inevitable look on Killian’s face. “Wait, what?” he asked, the thumb of his left hand finding its way underneath her chin until Emma had to lift her head back up.
He didn’t look confused. He looked concerned.
“Apparently three different bands just announced spring tours and they want to open at the Garden and there’s been some talk I might get bumped.”
“To?”
Emma shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
“No one’s told you?”
“It’s All-Star weekend. And it’s not entirely certain yet, but I’m kind of steeling myself for it. I mean they’re going to take a concert over a charity game every single time, no matter how many GD commercials they pump out on local stations every night.”
“Fuck that,” Killian muttered and the intensity in his voice took Emma by surprise. He already had his phone out of his back pocket and his thumb was moving so quickly Emma was concerned he was going to inadvertently dislocate it.
“Hey, hey,” she said, tugging the phone out of his hand. Killian made a noise in the back of his throat and her free hand found its way to his cheek, brushing over the stubble on the side of his jaw. “It’s ok. You don’t need to rescue my event. I can take care of it.”
“I’m not doubting that, love.”
“No?”
“Of course not.” He pulled back slightly, staring at her in a way Emma couldn’t quite ever remember being stared at and he smiled before he spoke again. “You can do anything, Swan.”
The hotel room suddenly felt a bit smaller than normal, air just a bit thicker and Emma blinked twice before she trusted herself to say anything. And then she didn’t say anything at all. Because she still wasn’t all that great at emotions, but she had laces around her wrist and Killian kept staring at her in that very particular way.
So she didn’t say anything.
She kissed him instead.
And she appreciated his quick intake of breath almost as much as she appreciated the way his hand tightened again, tracing across skin and moving towards her back like he was trying to make sure every inch of her body hit every inch of his.
Emma pressed up on her toes and her fingers found his hair, pushing into the bottom of it and keeping him pulled against her. He didn’t argue, just made some noise in the back of his throat that seemed to shoot straight to her core.
They were moving – Emma could feel her feet shifting on the carpet, but they weren’t going the direction she assumed they’d move in. Killian’s hands tightened around her back again and her feet weren’t on the carpet anymore, toes skimming over it slightly when he spun her, body colliding against the door.
There was a vaguely sarcastic, slightly teasing comment just half a breath away, – something about having done this door thing before and maybe he wasn’t just obsessed with her hair – but that would have required her to have half a moment and she didn’t, not when Killian’s hands inched dangerously high, pushing her t-shirt away with an enthusiasm that made her breath hitch.
He groaned when she moved, hips pressed up against his and the room moved. Or maybe that was the Earth.
And maybe Emma just loved her boyfriend a ridiculous amount.
No, Emma loved Killian Jones a ridiculous amount.
No matter what.
“I think…” Emma mumbled, shoulders moving quicker than normal when she tried to catch her breath. Killian widened his eyes at her, stunned silent at the idea that she’d actually start talking in the middle of whatever it was they were doing. He made up for it by trailing kisses along her neck and Emma’s head hit back almost painfully against the door.
“You were saying, love,” he said, muttering the words against her skin and there were those goosebumps again.
“You’re distracting.”
“That’s kind of the point.”
Emma laughed – or at least started to laugh before it became a different noise all together as soon as his teeth grazed over her collarbone. “You can’t do that,” she said, voice hardly sounding like her own. “I’ve got to get dressed up later.”
Killian hummed against her and she could feel the ends of his mouth tick up, hands moving towards her legs and the backs of her thighs when he bent down slightly. She moved without instruction or suggestion, calf wrapped around the back of his and his chest moved a bit quicker than normal when Emma fingers twisted around his belt loops.
“We could move,” Killian said.
“You’re the one who started pushing people up against doors and attack-kissing while they were on the phone.”
“I did no such thing. In fact, if memory serves, I actually stopped while you were on the phone. You were the one trying to end the conversation, love. Why do you think that was?”
He did something ridiculous with his eyebrows, eyes going wide until all Emma could think about was blue and maybe they had some time before whatever schedule she’d already forgotten.
It was a very big hotel, full of NHL players and front office and people who had plenty of things to do that weekend, except, it seemed, the person on the other side of the door and they both made a noise when the first knock came.
“God damnit,” Killian sighed and the second knock came just as quickly as the first. “We need to find an island.”
“An island?”
“Mmm hmm. Somewhere by ourselves where people won’t demand we get ready for instructional outings at the worst possible times.”
“Maybe you'll learn something.”
The third knock was joined by a shout from the hallway and Roland Locksley sounded a bit more impatient than Emma had ever heard him. “Emma,” he yelled, sounding like he was throwing his entire body against the door. “We’ve got to go. The car is already back!”
There was laughter behind him – Robin not even trying to disguise the sound of his own voice – and Killian rolled his eyes, taking a step away from Emma and running a hand through his hair. “That’s probably not going to work,” she said, nodding towards that one piece in the back that refused to actually go down.
“Ah, well, Locksley can cope. This was his idea anyway.”
Emma nodded, pulling the bottom of her t-shirt down until it almost looked presentable. “It was both your idea, don’t try and pretend like it wasn’t. And don’t try and act like you don’t want to go. It’s a planetarium.”
“I think the technical term is observatory.”
Emma rolled her eyes and while she didn’t particularly appreciate being interrupted, she might have been excited as well – agreeing to the idea as soon as Killian and Robin had brought it up at the restaurant two days before, something about making sure Roland did something educational when they were in LA.
And she’d never been to Griffith Observatory, even after living in this stupid city for nearly three years.
She hadn’t mentioned that to Killian. He probably knew.
“I know you’re in there too, Cap,” Robin said, kicking the door for good measure. “C’mon, Gina’s already downstairs trying to placate the driver so he doesn’t leave without us.”
Emma sighed, stepping back into her flats as Killian swung the door open. And Robin had a look on his face that practically screamed he knew what had been happening in that very large hotel room just a few minutes before. “Fix your hair,” he said, nodding towards Killian. “Gina will notice otherwise.”
He walked away without another word and Emma couldn’t quite hold in her laugh. “An island, Swan,” Killian muttered, tugging her out into the hallway. “We’re going to get an entire goddamn island and no one’ll be able to interrupt.”
It wasn’t bad.
It was, in fact, bordering almost excruciatingly close to downright endearing – Roland tugging the whole group of them through exhibit after exhibit, determined to see the stars and they did, after all, have a schedule to stick to and tickets to a show and Emma bit her lip when Killian’s hand found hers as soon as the lights went out.
He didn’t let go of it when the lights came back on or when Roland stared at them with wide eyes and a slightly open mouth, stunned, it seemed by a twenty-minute presentation about the entire universe.
And he didn’t let go of her hand in the car ride back to the Staples Center, Emma’s teeth practically working their way through her entire lip at that point.
“It’ll be fine, Swan,” Killian said softly, squeezing her fingers and his thumb looped through the laces on her wrist.
“I know,” she answered and it wasn’t a lie. It would be fine. She’d planned and had all the right permits and there’d be fans and Killian and Robin would smile and pose. They’d sign autographs and there’d be enough photos to warrant an album and Emma could send it to the season-tickets later that night.
It would be fine.
It was just getting out of the car, however, that was proving to be a bit difficult. And Emma had never considered herself much of a coward before, a determination to prove everyone wrong fueling her for most of her life, but all she wanted in that moment was the island Killian kept talking about, or maybe a few more hours in that observatory with her eye pressed against a telescope and the stars in front of her.
She didn’t want to see the Staples Center ever again.
That didn’t seem to matter. They’d stopped in front of it and the driver was clicking his tongue impatiently in the front seat and Emma still hadn’t moved, lip bleeding now.
“You know it’s illegal to lick a toad in the city of Los Angeles,” Killian said suddenly, turning towards her and ignoring whoever was tapping on the window. It was Ruby – Emma could barely make out red nails through the slightly tinted glass.
“What?” she asked and he smiled at her.
“Yup, super illegal.”
“Can something be not super illegal?”
Killian shrugged. “I mean I don’t think stealing gum from one of those corner stands in midtown is illegal.”
“Yes it is.”
“Semantics.”
“Did you steal a lot of gum when you were a kid?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Swan. We lived downtown, getting into midtown would have required public transportation.”
“Yuh huh. How often would you say you snuck onto the uptown one?”
He moved his eyebrows quickly and his fingers were still wrapped up in hers. “At least once every two weeks, more often when we got older and a bit more determined to break the rules. They only caught us...twice?”
“Was that a question?”
“Ah, well, either way it wasn’t a lot.”
“I don’t know about that. I bet Mr. Vankald knew the entire time. He probably just trusted that you guys would look out for each other.” Something passed over Killian’s face and the smile wasn’t quite as light as it had been a few moments before, something serious hanging onto the end of it that Emma couldn’t quite name. She tried another route instead, twisting in her seat until her knee hit against Killian’s and her free hand worked its way back in his hair. “What time are they getting here?”
“Not until tomorrow. Early though, so they can get organized before skills.”
Emma hummed in approval and the knocking on the window was banging now – from more than one fist. “I love you,” she said and Killian’s eyebrows shot up his forehead quickly.
She didn’t say the rest of it – that she knew he was trying to distract her with facts about Los Angeles so she wouldn’t worry about the Staples Center or this entire, stupid city or that he wasn’t quite as nervous about the turbulence as, she suspected, he was nervous about being captain of the Metro and being an All-Star in front of his entire family.
Later. She’d tell him all that later. When they bought that island. Or, she hoped, when one of them found their way into each other’s hotel room.
“I love you too, Swan,” Killian said, head falling forward until his hair fell close to his eyes. “More than anything.”
And he’d never said that part before.
Emma’s mouth was still hanging open, eyes a bit wider than normal when Ruby gave up on banging completely, swinging the door open and sighing loudly when she saw the sight in the backseat of this town car.
“Jeez,” she muttered. “There’s another human in this car, guys. Sorry, Doc.”
“It’s alright, Ms. Lucas. Not the worst thing that’s happened in the backseat of one of my cars.”
“Oh my God,” Emma mumbled and even Killian looked a bit scandalized at what had happened in the backseat of Doc’s cars. “Alright, alright, we’re coming. How’s it look out there?”
Emma tried to get a look at the crowd – but she couldn’t see anything over the Kings signs in front of her and the sea of black and silver that had taken over nearly every available space in the entire goddamn square.
“Oh, fuck,” she sighed, tugging on the ends of her hair. “What the hell is this?”
“This is why I was trying to get you out of the car,” Ruby said, pushing the door closed as soon as Killian was next to Emma. “He’s….”
Ruby didn’t get to finish.
She got interrupted by a voice Emma hoped she wouldn’t hear once during All-Star weekend or ever again if she was being honest. “Goddamnit,” Emma said under her breath and Ruby rolled her eyes.
“Los Angeles is home to the largest boulder ever transported,” Killian muttered in her ear, hand falling on Emma’s back. “Like three hundred tons or something absurd. It’s at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.”
“You don’t know its exact measurements?” she laughed, glancing over her shoulder to find him grinning at her. Ruby’s eyes were probably going to get stuck mid-roll.
“Three hundred and forty tons. It took eleven days to move.”
“I knew you knew.”
Killian nodded, eyes moving above Emma’s head when the voice shouted her name again and he didn’t move his hand. If anything he took a step closer to her, arm brushing up against her shoulder and Neal looked like his eyes were going to fall out of her head.
She shifted her shoulders, shaking her hair off and her fingers ghosted over the laces on her wrist before she could stop herself.
Neal’s eyes got wider.
And Emma didn’t move at all, just licked her lips quickly and stared straight ahead, wondering why she’d been worried about this in the first place.
She, quite simply, didn’t care.
“I was hoping you’d be here,” Neal said, taking a step forward like he was going to hug her before thinking better of it. Although that might have been because of the combined force of Emma, Ruby and Killian’s glare.
“You were hoping I’d be here?” Emma repeated. “At my own event?”
“Wait, what?”
Emma waved her hand through the air in front of her – Neal’s gaze distracted for half a moment when he stared at her wrist. “This is mine,” she said, nodding towards the small patch of blue and red in the one corner the Kings hadn’t apparently seized control of. “Or it’s supposed to be. What the hell is going on Neal?”
“Wait, wait, back up. Where are you working now?”
Emma took a moment to glance meaningfully at Ruby – I told you and Ruby just shook her head, glaring even more intently at Neal. And it was only then that he seemed to notice the NHL All-Star standing behind Emma, head snapping back when he saw Killian and the placement of his hand. “Killian Jones?” Neal asked, sounding as if he was surprised to see him there.
“So they tell me,” Killian answered quickly.
“Ems, do you work for the Rangers?”
She nodded slowly, tongue pressed against her cheek in frustration. “Yup. And you’re fucking up my event, Neal. I’ve got seventeen different permits that promised me exclusive use of the square tonight. What the hell is all of this black and silver?”
“Well, it is our arena, Ems.”
Emma huffed at the ancient nickname and the look on Neal’s face – that knowing stare that seemed to tell her this is how it is and she���d seen it enough in Vancouver when he told her she worked too hard.
“I’m more than aware whose arena it is,” Emma shot back and the fans had noticed Killian now. They were moving. “Jesus,” she muttered. “Can you guys do something about this?”
“Sure,” Ruby answered, turning on the crowd before they’d even made it halfway across the square.
Killian squeezed his hand, fingers moving around the curve of her waist and Neal appeared to have gone into cardiac arrest. “Each spring the Getty Museum hires goats to help manicure its lawns, which seems like cheating, but they do.”
“Thanks,” Emma said softly and Killian nodded once, humming in the back of his throat before leaving a vaguely stunned Neal Cassidy in his wake.
“What the hell was that?” Neal asked.
Emma turned towards him – finally getting a good look and she wasn’t entirely certain what she saw. He looked tired, bags under his eyes and a nervous twitch to his hands that she only just realized hadn’t stopped since he walked over to them. He had a tie on, but the sleeves of his shirt were pushed up and there was a pinch in between his eyebrows that looked like he was trying to figure out what to say.
She knew what to say.
And that was a pleasant surprise.
“Get your people out of here, Neal,” Emma hissed. “I’ve got permits and permission and this square is mine for the next two and a half hours. At least.”
“Ems,” he said softly, staring at her like he’d never seen her before. He hadn’t. Not like this. It kind of felt like adrenaline or a livewire shooting through every single one of her veins and Emma didn’t say anything else, just crossed her arms over her team-branded t-shirt.
“You’re really in New York now,” Neal continued. He took that step forward again and Emma backed up, instincts taking over immediately.
“Obviously,” she said, pointing at the NEW YORK RANGERS emblazoned across her shirt.
“But not PR.”
“Again, obviously. Community relations, fan experiences and events.”
“You have a card?”
“You looking for proof?”
“No,” Neal laughed and Emma resisted the urge to punch him. “Just always good to have those kinds of things in case you want to meet up this weekend.”
“I don’t.”
“Why?”
Emma made a face, glancing towards the crowd of Rangers fans she’d wrangled in Los Angeles and she could hear Roland already sparking something that sounded a bit like a We want the Cup cheer. And she wasn’t sure how it happened, but Killian turned when she did and that felt a little instinctual too, eyes meeting over the top of someone who’d camped out for several hours for a photo op.
He smiled at her.
“Huh,” Neal muttered. “Really?”
“You’re not asking any actual questions,” Emma sighed, pulling her gaze back to him. “And I really do have an event to run, so unless you have something to say, I’ve got to go run photo ops.”
“Are you two...a thing?”
“A thing? What are you twelve?”
Neal laughed again and shook his head. “You’re different than you were in Vancouver,” he said. “Different than you were even when everything went down here.”
“When you took my job.”
“That’s not what happened.”
“Whatever you have to tell yourself.”
“How long?” Neal asked. Emma rocked back on her heels, holding her hands up in confusion.
“Real questions,” she answered, half shouting the words at him and she could feel Killian’s eyes on her when her voice picked up.
“How long have you and Jones been dating?”
Emma groaned loudly, staring up at an improbably blue sky and clouds that were almost too puffy to actually be real. “Oh my God, you’re doing this now? Get your people out of my event!”
“You know there was talk around the league that he’d started something.”
“Jesus Christ.”
Ruby was staring now too and even Roland had stopped shouting about the Cup. Regina had taken over – voice making its way to Emma’s ears when she tried to reorganize the line, telling Mulan to start taking photos again.
Neal didn’t stop.
He was still talking and Emma was only half listening, the pad of her thumb running up and down her laces.
Oh. That might have been the first time she’d considered the laces hers. That was a change of pace. It was probably because he’d said more than anything in the backseat of a town car.
“It’s true,” Neal pressed, taking another step towards her. “It’s been all over the league, people started talking about it when he hit that slump. You know just after Christmas?” Emma didn’t trust herself to nod. Neal, however, didn’t seem to care. “I guess someone from the Isles saw him leaving the arena with someone and, well, you know the league Ems. It spread from front office to front office.”
Emma did know the league, but she’d never heard anything like that – had never been part of some sort of cross-country rumor and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard a rumor about a player’s relationship status when she was in LA or Vancouver.
Something was wrong.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Emma said. Neal didn’t look convinced. It was probably because she didn’t sound very convincing.
“Have you been with the Rangers all season?” he asked and she recognized the change in approach almost immediately. He was trying to make her comfortable.
“Yeah, since August. Are you going to get your people out of here or not? I know you can’t do anything about the decorations, but we’re supposed to be Rangerstown’ing and that’s difficult when people are screaming about Kings players a few feet away.”
Neal shrugged and Emma’s vision nearly went red, eyes narrowed and lip held tight between her teeth. “I can’t, Ems,” he said, not even sounding remotely apologetic. “We’ve been here almost all day. We’ve got players coming.”
“I’ve got players here! Already! They’re taking pictures right now.”
“I don’t know what you want me to do.”
“Of course you don’t,” she sighed, grabbing her phone and maybe there was a restaurant they could go to who wouldn’t mind twenty-five screaming Rangers fans.
“You really don’t have a card? There’s some time before skills tomorrow, maybe we could get coffee or something.”
“No,” Emma said, hardly even pausing long enough to let him finish the question.
“You busy?”
“No, I don’t want to.”
Neal took a step back at that, staring at her like he’d just been shocked and Emma heard Ruby’s heels coming back towards her. “We should probably get out of here, Em,” Ruby said, sounding a bit resigned to the situation and the general awfulness of the entire Los Angeles Kings organizations. Or, at least, its PR director.
“There’s a pizza place around here,” Emma muttered, staring at the map on her phone. “We could do something with that. New York angle. Get Mulan to take pictures.”
“And if they don’t let us in?”
“Buy fifteen pies and we’ll sit on the goddamn street.”
“Perfect.”
Neal made a noise, something that was probably supposed to sound like approval and Emma stuffed her phone back in her pocket. “Bye Neal,” she said, turning on him before he could even open his mouth to answer.
“You alright, love?” Killian asked as she soon as she came up to the crowd.
Emma nodded. “Did you hear the pizza plan?”
“Ruby’s already on the phone with them I think.”
“Efficient.”
“Ah, well, you’re in charge so…”
“Those compliments, you’ll have me thinking you believe in me or something.”
He beamed at her, arm slung over her shoulder. “Good.”
It all worked.
The pizza was...acceptable and no one would be able to tell that it was bordering a bit closer to the shitty side than it was to the actual edible, New York-style pizza side when they saw it in the gallery Emma hoped Mulan was putting up at that very moment.
She was a bit distracted.
She was back against the door.
“You think it went ok?” Emma muttered, groaning slightly when her head hit against the door as she pulled away to talk.
“Swan,” Killian sighed. “You’re interrupting some of my best work here. And, yes, of course it went better than ok. You planned it.”
“And replanned it.”
“And replanned it,” he repeated, smiling at her when he brushed her hair back behind her ear. His fingers lingered there for a moment before trailing down the side of her neck and the collar of her t-shirt and Emma had never considered a future where she could ever feel something while wearing team-branded, but she did.
“It was fantastic, Swan,” Killian continued and she made some kind of impossible noise when he nipped against her ear. “And tomorrow will be fantastic and Sunday will be fantastic and then, eventually, you’ll kick whatever stupid pop band wants to book the Garden on your day off the calendar and the game will be fantastic too.”
“Don’t forget Casino Night,” Emma added, falling back on laughter and sarcasm so she could keep ignoring whatever was happening to every single inch of her body.
It was a lot.
And Killian was still moving against her neck.
“Of course Casino Night,” he agreed, making her squirm when he laughed against her skin. “Obviously.”
He moved again, pulling her away from the door and Emma wasn’t entirely certain how they managed to stay on their feet when they were a mess of limbs and lips and bumping knees, but she eventually felt her legs hit up against the bed. She moved her hands up the front of his t-shirt, forcing herself to look up at him and Emma’s legs bent of their own volition, sinking onto the corner of the bed.
That was good. If she was sitting she couldn’t fall over.
He just smiled at her. Self-confident idiot.
“Where’s Roland?” Emma asked, a bit more breathless than she wanted to be.
“With Robin and Regina.”
“And Ruby?”
“Probably in her room down the hall, determined not to walk in on this.”
Emma laughed, smile inching across her face and Killian widened his eyes as he stepped in between her legs, nudging her forward until she was halfway up the bed. “And this is?” Emma prompted.
“Swan.”
“It’s a genuine question. I just don’t want to get interrupted again.”
“We won’t.”
“You sound awfully certain.”
His hand worked its way back up her side, palm flat across her stomach and Emma twisted slightly underneath him. “I am,” Killian said simply, tugging his shirt off over his head and tossing it in the corner where Emma’s flats had landed at some point.
“And enthusiastic.”
“That too.”
“How are you so certain?” Emma asked, canting her hips up when Killian hovered over her. He made a noise in the back of his throat and she wasn’t certain if it was because of her or the question or the idea of being interrupted again.
Killian squeezed his eyes shut, shaking his head. “Because I told them not to come down here. That’s why.”
“What? Really?”
“I mean I didn’t go into detail about what we’d be doing when we weren’t getting interrupted, but I think I managed to get my point across.”
Emma blinked once and her mind raced back to the square outside the Staples Center and that rumor and who could have seen them walking out of the Garden together and Killian pulled back again, staring at her with a kind of nervous energy that didn’t belong in a room where he wasn’t wearing a shirt anymore.
“Swan?” he asked. “Are you alright?”
“Fine.”
“Emma.”
“That’s not even playing fair.”
“Open book.”
She scrunched her nose and rolled her head back and forth on the vaguely pitiful pillow under her head, whining slightly when Killian rolled back to his side of the bed. “Just...thinking.”
“About?”
“He said there was a rumor going around the league.”
“Who? Your PR guy?”
Emma groaned at that and Killian smiled at the face she made, a mix between disgust and frustration that he could even bring himself to call Neal that. “He said there’d been talk about how you were seeing someone for the last couple of months. Someone from the Islanders saw us leaving the Garden or something.”
“And?”
“And they’re blaming your skid on me.”
“I’m out of the skid, Swan,” Killian argued. “The Post called it a ‘goal-scoring streak’ heading into the All-Star break. Goals in the last five games and into the top-five.”
“I know your stat line.”
“Then you’ll know the PR guy is a liar. It’s fine, love. You weren’t the reason for the skid and you won’t be the reason when I skid again. It’s just the game, that’s how things work. The only thing people will remember is when we win.”
“There’s that confidence again.”
“Eh,” he sighed, propping his head up on his hand. Emma reached forward slowly, trailing her finger across the top of his left hand and she could hear his breath hitch when she traced over scars and the spot where that bruise had been a few weeks before. “Not always.”
“Like on planes with turbulence?”
“Open book,” Killian repeated, leaning forward so quickly that Emma wasn’t even entirely certain he’d kissed her forehead.
“Why? I mean you made fun of Scarlet to no end for freaking out over the turbulence. What changed?”
Killian took a deep breath and stared at a loose strand of string in the comforter underneath them. “Because I haven’t been to this weekend in years, always brushed off noms and came up with a reason not to go and Liam’s never seen me play in one of these games. At least not in person.”
“Why’d you decide to come?”
“Because you’re here,” he answered immediately and Emma knew her mouth dropped open again. She should probably stop being surprised by these kinds of things. “And you don’t need to be saved or rescued or any of those slightly antiquated ideas, but the idea of you going to LA this weekend alone kind of made me go cross-eyed. So I said I’d go and told Liam and El and they were thrilled and I spent the last month trying to ignore that nagging sense of not good enough in the back of my mind.”
Emotions.
They were doing emotions again and Emma didn’t do emotions. She did action. She did replanning events she’d spent the last four weeks organizing. And, at that moment, in the middle of a pillow-less bed in an expansive hotel room in the center of downtown Los Angeles, Emma Swan was going to kiss Killian Jones until he believed he was good enough for everyone – but especially for her.
Because no one had ever wanted to make sure she wasn’t alone.
He made that noise and Emma closed her eyes, trying to burn the moment into her memory and her being and a slew of other overly emotional and sentimental adjectives and she gasped against his mouth when Killian started working against her jeans.
Her knee hit against his again and she should probably stop wearing t-shirts because they always seemed to end up threatening to choke her in moments like these and Emma tried to tug him forward, but there wasn’t anything to grab onto except belt loops.
It ripped in her hand or around her finger and Emma nearly dissolved into a fit of laughter right there in the middle of the bed.
Killian couldn’t even look appropriately scandalized, staring at the belt loop hanging over Emma’s finger with a sense of incredulity that just made her laugh all over again. “Eager, huh,” he mumbled.
“Oh, shut up,” Emma countered, flicking her finger against his bare chest. He winced dramatically, falling back on the bed with a soft thump that would have knocked off at least ten pillows in his bed back home.
Oh.
She called his apartment home. Not out loud or really any more than in passing thought while they were desperately trying to get each other’s clothes off, but it had happened and Emma didn’t move. She kissed him instead.
Or maybe he kissed her.
It didn’t really matter.
They got the clothes off eventually and Emma made some comment about the presumptive nature of his wallet – several different squares of plastic pressed in between bills – and he’d rolled his eyes and countered with uninterrupted, Swan before making sure that she couldn’t actually argue for quite some time.
She was warm and comfortable and the low hum of the air conditioner that they inexplicably had to use in the middle of February because it was LA and weather didn’t make any sense in LA, was practically lulling Emma to sleep in the background.
“Are you ok?” Killian asked softly and Emma’s eyes practically snapped open. She rolled her shoulders, smiling despite herself when he made a low noise in the back of his throat as soon as her skin hit his.
It was difficult to move with an arm draped tightly over her waist and Killian mumbled when the mattress shook as Emma flopped back over to her other side. “Why would you ask that?”
He couldn’t shrug, still laying on his side, but his eyes met hers and Emma realized almost immediately – and then she had to take a deep breath so she didn’t also immediately melt into the mattress.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said and the sincerity in his voice left little room for doubt. “You know that, right?”
“Of course I do,” Emma said and there wasn’t a trace of disbelief in the words. She did. She believed him and in him and because of him. And he’d come with her to Los Angeles.
Emma didn’t need a hero, but she might need Killian Jones just a little bit.
“I just….” he started, pressing his lips together to cut himself off and Emma lowered her eyebrows.
“What?”
Killian took another deep breath and he blinked before he answered, fingers reaching out until they found the back of her wrist. “I just, well, I’ve waited a very long time for this.”
“For?”
“Swan,” he laughed, but his smile didn’t quite reach his eyes and he still looked more nervous than Emma could remember seeing him. “I am happy.”
“Yeah? Good, that makes two of us.”
“Let me finish.” Emma nodded and tried to remember what oxygen was, blinking furiously when she realized her eyes had actually started to water. “I have waited a very long time for this,” Killian repeated and his voice seemed to work its way into every single inch of her, settling in the pit of her stomach like some flame that was trying to fight against the air conditioner in the corner of this hotel room.
“And I’ve never really been jealous of the rest of them or frustrated with the set-up. I understood why they did it and what they were all trying to do, but, uh, then you walked into the hallway outside the gym and everything changed and I was jealous of everything I didn’t have and everything I wanted and, you should know, Swan, I don’t care about anything anyone is saying in any front office, it’s not going to change anything. I’m not going to mess this up too.”
She didn’t move. She wasn’t entirely certain she was still breathing. And Killian still looked nervous, eyes darting down to that string again.
She was crying.
Emma could feel the tears, telltale signs of emotion and sentiment and how absolutely all in she was as soon as it started rolling down her cheeks.
Killian looked back up when Emma’s tried to move again, ancient hotel mattress creaking under her and he gaped when he realized what was happening. “No, no, Swan, God, don’t cry,” he said quickly, thumb brushing over the top of her cheek.
“You said the hallway,” Emma mumbled. It didn’t even sound like English.
“What?”
“The hallway,” she repeated. “You said I walked into the hallway and everything changed. I didn’t meet you in the hallway.”
“Ah, well, I was in the gym when you met Victor.”
“I thought that was you! When Ariel made you come over, I remembered…”
Emma snapped her mouth shut, jaw almost cracking with the force of it. Killian shifted again, hand falling back on her hip and the smirk felt a bit like cheating too. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“Swan.”
She groaned, rolling her eyes and the smirk intensified as if that was a thing smirks could actually do. “Your eyes are very blue. There. Whatever. I saw you move and I saw your hair and your blue eyes and I thought it was you when everyone was trying to set us up. It doesn’t matter.”
Killian stared at her, smirk becoming something a bit more genuine the longer he held her gaze. “You changed your outfit,” he said. “Between the hallway and the restaurant. You weren’t wearing that dress in the hallway.”
“How could you possibly remember that?”
“I wanted to know who you were.”
“Why? To make sure no one would mess up your weird team hierarchy?”
“No,” Killian said quickly and the smirk was gone and so was the smile and the only thing left was a seriousness that made Emma’s stomach clench. “No, you walked into the hallway and you didn’t look nervous, just kind of frustrated that Ruby was dragging you around making you shake hands with people. And I wanted to know your name.”
“Seems a little stalker-y,” Emma mumbled, but she was absolutely crying again.
“Romantic, love. Definitely romantic. I’m glad you’re here, Swan. I just….” He sighed again and they’d leapt back into sentiment with all the force of jumping out of a plane.
“What?”
“You, Emma,” he said and was certain she didn’t mishear the crack in his voice. “It’s you. Everything I was jealous of and everything I wanted and was absolutely certain I couldn’t have, it’s you.”
He’d called her Emma again.
Cheater.
She didn’t say anything – didn’t tell him she loved him more than anything or she was fairly positive he was it too, in some sort of crazy, overwhelming way Emma was certain didn’t actually exist for her, or that she’d seen his absurdly blue eyes and everything in the entire world seemed to flip.
She kissed him instead and he kissed her back and they fell asleep twisted together, a pretzel of limbs that wasn’t particularly comfortable, but neither one of them could seem to bring themselves to move.
#cs ff#captain swan ff#ouat ff#cs#csbb#blue line#all those la facts are real#especially the goat one
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I’m a pregnant roller derby athlete
Part one: Holy shit this is happening
Warning : I want to start out by saying this is me being honest. This is what I went through. It might not be popular or what other people went through, but this is what happened and how it made me feel and how I handled it. I’m here to share my experience so others don’t feel judged by expectation, so please don’t jump down my throat for my choices. Oh and ps, I also use tons of run-on sentences and speak in a stream of consciousness but here goes nothing.
Pregnancy has a million expectations on women and that’s part of what makes it difficult …because its not just the craziness of hormones and body changes, but also the set of parameters of how you should feel because that OH THIS IS ALL WORTH IT CAUSE- BABY. That makes me furious. It ignores my struggles and frustrations like I should be some happy robot housewife from the 50s. So without further ado, here’s my story of learning about my pregnancy.
I took the test shortly after coming back from our offseason. Balls and I always wanted kids, but we didn’t expect it to happen so quickly. Like, immediately quickly. Last weekend I was eating bloody steaks and drinking amazing wine and scrimmaging (not all at once, but you know). Went to the GP the next day- according to them no more of most of my favorite foods, and no more roller derby. It hit me like a train. I didn’t feel a shred of excitement. My identity was skating, it was playing the sport, coaching, and training with my best friends. I was now out of contention to skate at the world cup. (while its not impossible to return, the pressure of competing with that caliber of athletes post-nataly is unrealistic with my timeline and time off playing. I’ll do my best to come back but that pressure is unrealistic when also having a newborn). I felt loss, not only of control of my body but fear about what would happen to my strength, my skills. I work SO hard on skating, on my body, it’s a huge investment. It felt like that would all just unravel based on recommendations for pregnancy activity. I also felt guilt, like I was letting my team down being out so soon in the season. My due date is champs, that also means our coach (Balls) is out. While a baby was something we were looking forward to in our lives, the results of that test made me full of confusion. I felt an array of sadness, guilt, loss, expectation. I felt guilt for feeling sad about my pregnancy. HOW USEFUL IS THAT?
In the first day I got my act together and was like ok, this is happening, no turning back now. I told kitty first cause I knew she’d understand. It was hard for her too when she got pregnant. To me having a kid is exciting, but it’s not my main purpose in life, it’s not what I spent much my days thinking about. I wouldn’t say I was even broody. But I’ve heard these same feelings can creep up even when you have been obsessing, trying, and broody. It has never been the most important goal in my life. Maybe I’ll feel differently after the kid is here, but for now, that’s where I’m at. I have loads of aspirations that are just as important to me as parenting will be. I still feel that way. Kitty came over with some flowers and we cried a bit and worked on processing the info. It was nice to not feel alone, and she validated my feelings. She didn’t try to tell me it was all worth it, and that I should just deal with all the negative. We just.. talked about how crazy it all is.
I read this article recently by the nytimes that sums it up nicely in this quote.
“Becoming a mother is an identity shift, and one of the most significant physical and psychological changes a woman will ever experience… Most of the time, the experience of motherhood is not good or bad, it’s both good and bad. It’s important to learn how to tolerate, and even get comfortable with the discomfort of ambivalence.” Here is the link to that article, I highly recommend it. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/08/well/family/the-birth-of-a-mother.html
While all this was going on Balls got a message from Lexi to leadership that SHE WAS PREGNANT! With my permission he told her about my news and we talked. It was the first joy I felt about it. I was happy for Lexi, and Lexi seemed genuinely excited.... and also I wasn’t alone. I wasn’t disappointing everyone, and if I was, I wasn’t the only one to blame. We gushed about it and decided to tell the team straight away. I still felt pretty disconnected from the idea of this thing inside me, but these were the first glimmers of positive emotions I had. That made it easier to imagine, but it didn’t by any means overshadow everything else I was experiencing.
I decided to take some control after feel so much loss of control in my body and identity. In the next day I researched a million articles on playing in the first trimester of contact sports. Kitty anonymously “asked for a friend” on some of the derby moms groups about the situation and continuing to train. While I waited their response, I found that most of the articles pointed to studies based on car accidents, not actual sports. The info is sparse and generally says - relax, take this time to take it easy. Go for a walk or take a pregnant lady class. GROANNN. (Mind you while this was happening Serena Williams was busy winning the Australian open while pregnant. MY TOTAL HERO) I found that rugby guidelines were against contact, and hockey was ok with it into trimester 1, both were just club policy.
While waiting for the info from Kitty, there was one training session where I coached or just tried to avoid contact, I decided that felt so ridiculous. I didn’t have any morning sickness and was feeling really good - normal even, all things considered and was super keen to keep playing into my first trimester. In the next few days I got a response from an Angel skater that played playoffs 8 weeks pregnant, and continued on till her first trimester. I also heard from a close friend/old teammate from Madison that played through the first trimester for both of her pregnancies. Her midwife had advised her that it’s so small, and so well protected in your pelvis, that really only serious injury would be the thing that made it miscarry. (not normal bumps from skating). She skated (jammed even!) till 12 weeks with one and 9 weeks with the other, the second one she stopped due to fatigue. Seeing as how I had never had or seen anyone with a major uterine injury from playing, I made the choice to play.
I made the choice to keep playing, but at this point I was outed with many of my teammates. Balls was really supportive and let it be up to me. He has been really great about that in general, and it helps to have my partner not place any limitations on me. The response from the team was really great. I was really afraid people wouldn’t play with me since I had told them. I gave the option to not pair up with me and checked with people to make sure it was ok, in the end no one refused me. Gaz said something like “women have been doing stuff for thousands of years so if you’re ok with it, go for it” and other people said things along the lines of “your body, your choice”. I continued to play for another 2.5 weeks until I started to just feel so tired and bloated the idea of smashing into people sounded terrible. But those 2+ weeks, it meant so much. I had closure, I had control, I had the choice, and most of all I had SO much fun playing party roller derby with Brawling. I felt ready to partake in this next adventure, take on a new role in the team and in my life. Getting to chose my own risk assessment also was a really big deal for the loss in confidence as being labeled the pregnant lady. It just seems that all of a sudden you’re looked, and supposed to look at yourself, like this fragile flower “in my condition”. That makes me crazy and I’m focused on doing everything I can, pushing myself and smashing this pregnancy at my own personal Birth Champs in Nov.
Im still skating at training, just no contact anymore. The next step in my journey was the whole” fake injury for the rest of the league until my scan”, but I’ll explain more of that experience in my next blog post. Part 2: The “secret” struggle. (Oh and ps - these were my feeling in week 5-7. Things are way different now at week 16.. I have lots of blog posts to catch up on cause those early days prescan were full of hard times. Things are really really good now, but i think it's important to record the journey as it was.)
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y'all are the ones acting like parse is a main character instead of an occasional antagonist, jesus. let the woman draw her characters.
OMG my first anon hate (?). I thought for sure the day won’t come but NO. I am stoked. STOKED
Thus, I’m nothing if not bound to make this post extra long for you, my dear anon hater, because u my numero uno!
First off, no one claimed Parse was the main character, and the author has made it explicitly clear.
But what you’re implying in this statement is that fans are not allowed to care about development of side characters? Which is extremely problematic to me for several reasons:
1. Fans are actually allowed to make value judgments about a particular body of work. Interpretations of the comic isn’t left to the author alone.
Say, if the author says, oh this is my main character, you should be focused only on this, does this negate the fact that some other characters were written and are available for the readers to read and interpret? Surely Ngozi isn’t the first author to experience backlash from fans clamoring for more about a particular character they hadn’t intended to be big/discussed in the first place? To the uninitiated, it has in fact happened, and it’s what they call a breakout character, my dear anon.
What’s that you say, fandom had actually, repeatedly voiced their opinion in choosing which character they like, even though such character hadn’t intended to be the main character? Why yes, yes it had. I believe this leads back to the principle of modern/postmodern literary criticism, in that the work is believed larger than the author. To simplify Roland Barthes, the death of the author is the birth of the reader, and the work is open to interpretation regardless of the author’s express intent to guide such interpretation. I’m allowed to critique this work because it simply is available for me to read and critique. My interpretation isn’t less valid than that of the author, and of course, I’m allowed to care about whichever character I like, inasmuch as in this case, it is my critique of how Kent was underutilized in this body of work. I am allowed to do that.
2. So now, regarding Parse being the occasional villain, gather round y'all new Check Please fans and let me tell ya: there was a period of time in between the Check Please updates where the introduction of Parse brought outrage. Outrage of the angry tears variety. But it was also the time Parse could have been so much more than your “occasional villain.” After all, at that point, Bitty’s story didn’t have to be intertwined with Jack’s– he could have a story much much larger coming-of-age story than that; but Jack’s story will always be intertwined with Kent and vice versa.
Around the time Kent was introduced, he was immediately a threat to the burgeoning love story of the “protagonists,” but more importantly than that , his introduction brought question to where the series was heading. Obviously from the very beginning, we had the boy-meets-boy, boy-annoys-boy-and-then-they-fall for each other cliche rolled out for Bitty’s future. But then Kent came along, and see, at this point in time, Bitty, the “protagonist” (and let me get back to the dubious quotation marks later) still hasn’t had his story set as a future pie-baking WAG sidekick of a coming out story of a professional athlete. Jack could have been just a pitstop to his larger bildungsroman arc, and Jack could have had fixing it up with Kent and his still unresolved issues about his insecurity and anxiety, as his own arc. Or so I hoped. Those were some exciting new times, my friends, because the possibilities! Jack and Bitty could have ended up together after Bitty resolves what he wants in life and Jack could have resolved his personal vendetta first! Or Kent could have been someone Jack needs a heart-to-heart talk to, and maybe Jack could be Bitty’s first love but not his last! Not that these things could have ever happened, because after the “talk” happened in the previous update wherein Jack dismissed Kent as unimportant, it’s all pretty much the same boring coming-out cliche with Kent eventually being treated as the Horrible Successful But Obsessed Ex who should forever pine while cuddling his many accolades and plotting Jack’s career’s demise, and Jack’s issues were pretty much handwaved and cured so.
But why should I care about Kent then, and how he’s treated by this comic? Because it’s supposedly an LGBT story and a story which supposedly cares about coming out in professional sports, but it only has two (2) queer professional athletes as characters, and it treats one (1) out of two (2) horribly, horribly wrong. Lest you forget, there has been no professional hockey player to come out as they were active in the NHL; the last openly gay pro player to come out had been stabbed to death jesus fuck. Here are some of articles about sexism and homophobia in hockey, and even though You Can Play has done good work and many a player had said they would support an LGBT teammate, not one has come out. Nada. Not even in retirement. This sexist, homophobic locker room culture stems as far back as juniors, and maybe even further than that. This is the culture that would have been engendered in Jack and this is the culture that Kent Parson would have been playing in at, nonstop. In all likelihood, if there was an LGBT hockey player in the league, and statistics would point to YES, then someone has done all their hockey education perfectly until they got drafted, maybe through Juniors, as Kent did, and someone would have been choosing to hide like Kent does, which they don’t make lightly. Kent Parson’s story is closest to an LGBT pro hockey athlete that you can get, and this comic punished him by falling in love with someone who buddyfucked him and refused to talk to him after he got drafted above him. He was made an “occasional (love story) villain” in the last update, and so the closeted athlete was vilified, whose story was marked as irrelevant.
My dear anon, as a member of the LGBT community, and a closeted one at that, allow me to be salty over this.
And why do I care about how cliched this love story is? It’s because it’s condescending to me and to closeted people who should not be made as bad examples because they have little to no wiggle room to express their sexuality. This isn’t an LGBT story, but as a friend of mine said, (lol yeah), a story that a straight person thinks what it’s like to be gay. It’s straight-up patronizing and does not make a positive difference to people who really are in our situation. Instead it endorses more stereotypes to the narrative that choosing not to broadcast one’s sexuality is a lesser way to live.
And sure, Ngozi or any author is allowed to write what they want to write, there’s no contesting that. But allow us to criticize what we don’t appreciate, allow us to be offended where we are actually offended. We’re allowed this too.
3. As it is, the main character’s stories to me are uninteresting.
I can go on and write more on this, tbh, but basically, I find that spitting on a closeted character’s story arc is frankly insulting so that he can stand as a foil to the ~feel good~ coming-out romance that the author has concocted. Because that’s the only ideal way to live right, straight people?
In any case, rally on your pitchforks and torches, but I don’t find Bitty compelling. Yeah I went there.
One of the first things people learn for, like, writing 101, was to give your protagonist a concrete, specific goal at the beginning of your story, as this is the thing that develops the plot and the standard upon which the character is evaluated at the end of their arc: do they achieve their goal? if yes or no, how are they changed because of it? Story structure varies whether the story is genre-specific or under literary fiction, but it’s universally acknowledged that protagonists have to be compelling, even though they’re not likeable. And Bitty as a POV character and a protagonist? Has baking pies for sure, but to quote Community Season 3, you are not allowed to have ‘baking things’ as your identity. He had one, for sure, when he was just trying to stay at the team, but I don’t see much there now, except to achieve their #GayGoals of coming out as the Jack’s beau in his gay success story (and maybe declaring a major). But then again I don’t really find that fascinating.
But again, that’s just my opinion.We’re allowed to, yeah?
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DGB Grab Bag: Happy Wonder Woman, Sad Bryce Harper, and How to Win the Right Way
Three Stars of Comedy
The third star: "Please don't die" – That's a really polite chant. Being a hockey fan just makes everyone 20 percent more Canadian.
The second star: Lynda Carter – Yes, Wonder Woman. This is the time of year when random celebrities start showing up to support the remaining teams, and it's easy enough to dismiss them as PR stunts. But Carter seems like a diehard – especially when she's taking sides in the Capitals' fan blog wars.
The first stars: Ryan Zimmerman and Max Scherzer – They're baseball players for the Washington Nationals, but they've gone all-in on the Capitals' run. Like, really all-in.
As an added bonus, Nationals' star Bryce Harper is also a big hockey fans so this is probably a great team-building exercise for the whole… oh. Oh no.
Be It Resolved
Capitals fans, we need to talk.
But maybe not right now. Because with the Caps taking the ice tonight with a chance to capture the first Stanley Cup in franchise history, we're going to talk about what should happen if they win. I completely understand if you want no part of that discussion. Feel free to skip this section entirely, and then come back if and when they close out the series. Do a CTRL+F right now for "obscure" and keep going. No hard feelings.
But the Capitals are probably going to win. That's not a knock against Vegas; it's just basic math. Teams that go up 3-1 in a series win an overwhelming amount. And even factoring in the Capitals' historically awful performance when up 3-1, they still have a better than 50 percent chance of closing this out.
So it's probably going to happen. We're mere days and quite possibly hours away from a world in which the Capitals are Stanley Cup champions. And normally, this is where Caps fans would be told to act like they've been there before. But you can't, because you never have.
So I'm going to tell you how to act: However you damn well please.
That's it. It sounds simple, and it is. But I promise you that the second that Alexander Ovechkin's hands touch the trophy, you're going to start getting lectured by other fan bases who want to rain on your parade.
You're going to hear from Penguins fans about how you still have four more Cups to go to catch up to them. You'll hear from Flyers fans who say you're only halfway to their total, and from Islanders fans who say you're only a quarter, and if you're under the age of 35, you'll just have to take their word for it. You'll hear from Devils fans. You'll hear from old school fans in places like Detroit or Montreal who have lots of Cups, and from new fans in places like Carolina or Anaheim wondering what took you so long. God help us, you might even hear from a Rangers fan or two.
I want you to listen to me very carefully: Screw those people.
You have earned this. It's been 44 years of misery, from being the worst expansion team ever to the league's most notorious playoff chokers. If you stuck around for all of it, or even most, then this is your moment. You have endured more of Those Games than just about any fan base in pro sports. But one more win, and it's bonfire time for all those memories. And when it happens, you get to react however you want.
If you're the gracious sort, then fine. If you want to run through the streets, do it. If you want to cry, nobody is judging you. If you want to return a few shots at anyone who's spent years taking them at you, by all means.
And if anyone tells you that you're doing it wrong, or that you're too excited over one title in 44 years, or that there's some cutoff you have to reach before you're allowed to feel as happy as they once did, tell them to get bent. Laugh in their sad little faces. Flex. Spike the football. Literally. Go out right now and buy a football, then spend the days after a Caps win running up to random fans of other teams and spiking it right in front of them. Preferably into the birthday cake their child was about to blow out the candles on.
There are no rules. After 44 years, you deserve at least that much. If the fun police try to show up, flip over their cars and set them on fire and then keep going. It's basically The Purge for Washington fans until October, because nothing will matter except that the freaking Capitals finally won the freaking Stanley Cup.
(Unless they don't, in which case you should probably never watch hockey again.)
Obscure Former Player of the Week
Garth Snow was fired as the Islanders GM this week, ending a 12-year reign that had been in jeopardy as soon as Lou Lamoriello was put in charge of hockey ops. That's got to be frustrating. Snow probably feels like repeatedly punching somebody. This week's obscure player is Andrei Trefilov.
Trefilov was a Soviet goaltender who'd played for Dynamo Moscow and made international appearances at the Olympics and Canada Cup. He was a long shot pick by the Flames in the 12th round of the 1991 entry draft, the 261st selection out of 264 made that day. It would turn out to be a decent gamble, as Trefilov made his way to North America in time for the 1992-93 season, spending most of it with the IHL's San Diego Gulls. He made a single appearance for Calgary that year, making 34 saves in a 5-5 tie against the Canucks.
He'd spend two more years doing spot duty with the Flames, playing a total of 17 games before becoming a free agent in 1995. He signed with the Sabres, where he played a career-best 22 games while backing up reigning Vezina winner Dominik Hasek during the 1995-96 season. That was also the year that saw him accomplish the two things most fans might remember him for: Starting the last ever game at the old Buffalo Memorial Auditorium, and getting pummeled by Snow during a bizarre line brawl.
(This is of course the infamous Matthew Barnaby fakeout brawl, which we previously broke down here.)
Trefilov spent one more year in Buffalo but only appeared in three games. Early in the 1997-98 season, he was traded to the Blackhawks, where he played seven games over two seasons before being dealt to Calgary, where he played four. That was it for his NHL career, which spanned seven seasons but only included 54 actual games. He played another year in the IHL and five more in Germany before retiring. He appears to have since gone into business as an agent.
Debating the Issues
This week’s debate: The Stanley Cup will be in the building tonight in Las Vegas, and a Capitals win would mean we'd see Gary Bettman perform his annual presentation duties. If he does, should Golden Knights fans boo him?
In favor: Yes. Hockey fans should always boo Gary Bettman. This isn't a hard question. Boo him, Vegas.
Opposed: But just because everyone else does something doesn't mean you have to, too.
In favor: But sometimes it does, because despite our differences, some things are integral to the human condition. Everyone eats. Everyone sleeps. Everyone boos Gary Bettman on sight. What are we even debating here?
Opposed: OK, but can we at least agree that if there was ever a time when cheering Gary Bettman would be appropriate, this is it? He's the reason the Golden Knights are in Vegas in the first place. If you're a Vegas hockey fan, and you've enjoyed all the ups and downs of the last year, Bettman is the guy you have to thank for it. Booing him would seem like a weird way to do it.
In favor: Oh well. Sometimes life takes us in expected directions. Boo the man.
Opposed: Imagine trying to explain that to a Vegas fan. Hey everyone, here's the guy who became the first commissioner in major pro sports history to believe in your market enough to put a team there. He shrugged off the countless naysayers who said it would be a disaster. He made sure you had at least a decent chance at being good in year one. And then that first season ended up being far better than anyone could imagine. And now you're supposed to boo him?
In favor: Yes. Yes you are.
Opposed: But why? Seriously, why do hockey fans do this? There have been times where it made sense, like when Devils fans in 1995 thought Bettman was actively working to move the team to Nashville, or when Carolina fans booed him immediately after the season-long lockout. But why does he get booed in Pittsburgh, even though he helped steer the team out of bankruptcy? Or other non-traditional markets that he's stood by? Or even Original Six markets like Detroit that he's never done anything but support? Is there any point to all of this?
In favor: Gosh, you mean other than the constant lockouts, the almost total lack of progressive solutions to the game's many problems, the decision not to go to the Olympics, the mishandling of concussions and CTE, and the steady stream of condescending media appearances in which he can barely disguise his contempt for his customers? Yeah, once you get past all that I guess there's no reason at all.
Opposed: OK, but again, most of those haven't impacted the Golden Knights. Their fans have never lived through a lockout, and it's not their job to worry about the problems of the past. They've just enjoyed one of the best seasons in the history of any sport, and it's because of Bettman. They should be looking forward. They're the new guys.
In favor: Yes, they are. And when you're new somewhere, it's a good idea to take a look around and figure out what the customs are. Real hockey fans boo Gary Bettman. You want to be one of us, you know what you have to do.
Opposed: That's silly. You're asking a team that has pregame knight fights and laser shows to be bound by tradition?
In favor: Not tradition—respect for your fellow fan. We boo Bettman because it's our only chance to express our frustration with how this league is run. Many of us have been fighting this fight for decades. You come along, and everything is perfect in year one. OK, great, many of us are very happy for you. But you're part of a bigger picture now. And here's a chance to show the world that you're hockey fans, not just Golden Knight fans.
Opposed: And if they do, will the rest of you forgive them for the Twitter account?
In favor: We'll consider it.
The final verdict: Vegas fans are under no moral obligation to boo Gary Bettman. But you'd impress the hell out of the rest of hockey fans if you did.
Classic YouTube Clip Breakdown
Tonight could be Gary Bettman's 25th Cup presentation, and it's fair to say that some have gone better than others. But by now there's a pretty standard process: Bettman arrives, makes a half-hearted joke to the fans who are booing him, he congratulates the losing team, talks way too long about the winning team's owners, calls over the captain, and then forces him to awkwardly pose for photos instead of just handing over the Cup and getting on with it. Typical stuff.
But it wasn't always that way. So today, let's conclude our recent bout of 1993 playoff nostalgia by heading back to Bettman's very first Stanley Cup handoff. We've done a different version of this moment years ago, but this clip is a better and longer version than we had back then, which makes it feel worth revisiting on its 25th anniversary.
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It's June 9, 1993, and the Canadiens are facing the Kings in Game 5 of the Final. We're in the final minute of the third period, but I don't know the score because back then it wasn't on the screen at all times. Does anyone else get a form of low-level anxiety when they watch old clips that don't have the score bug? Just me? Great, good to know.
Whatever the score is, it's clear that the Canadiens have this one in the bag as nobody really cares what's happening on the ice. The fans are on their feet, and Bob Cole is (of course) killing it with his countdown call. The clock hits zero, and the celebration is on.
Wait, I'm confused, this is a 1993 Montreal Canadiens playoff game, why is it ending after regulation?
We get our first view of a little guy in a suit who'll become a recurring character for this clip. That's Denis Savard, the future Hall-of-Famer who's in his third season with the Habs and 13th overall. He's not the player he once was, and has been scratched for much of the playoffs, but everyone still loves him and this is his first Cup, so it's a big moment.
We also get a shot of Wayne Gretzky congratulating Habs coach Jacques Demers and then giving him his stick, presumably so the Canadiens can secretly measure the curve like a bunch of dirty cheaters.
That leads to the handshake line, which just kind of happens organically in the Montreal zone instead of at center ice. The Kings only had 19 shots in this game, so they probably just wanted to see what the Montreal end was like.
We get another shot of Demers carrying around Gretzky's stick. He's probably wondering why it has Doug Gilmour's blood all over it.
Ron MacLean interviews Patrick Roy, who doesn't really say anything interesting, and then moves on to Demers. Hey, quick question: why isn't Demers in the Hall of Fame? He coached 1,000 games, won a Cup, is the only coach to ever win the Jack Adams in back-to-back years, and once tried to fight Herb Brooks. That's good enough for me, let's get him in.
Bettman is introduced, and you'll notice the crowd doesn't boo. Montreal: not real fans. Who knew?
Roy is announced as the Conn Smythe winner and Bettman grabs a microphone, at which point MacLean interviews Savard. That's right, there was a time when Bettman's pre-presentation ramble was treated as background noise, not something that had to be the focus of the entire broadcast. Call me crazy, but I feel like that was a good system.
It does cost us a good look at one important moment here, though, as we miss the part at very beginning where Bettman tries to speak French. You'll have to trust me when I tell you that it was one of the funniest moments in modern hockey history. He shows up, pulls out a tiny piece of paper he tries to hide in his palm, and proceeds to pronounce each word phonetically while clearly having no idea what he's actually saying. As someone who got through high school French classes with the exact same method, I respect it.
Bettman only talks for about 30 seconds before calling the Canadiens over to get the Cup, which is funny because it's clearly quicker than MacLean was expecting and causes Savard to bolt away mid-interview.
We didn't know it then, but this was the very last time we'd ever see two things that had long been Stanley Cup traditions: The Canadiens winning, and the trophy being presented to the whole team at once. Bettman hands off to captain Guy Carbonneau but is quickly surrounded, and has to Homer Simpson his way out of the crowd. It wouldn't be until next year in New York when Bettman and Messier would establish the one-on-one captain handoff template that's still used today.
There's a funny moment during the skate around the rink when Roy goes for the Cup and Patrice Brisebois ends up playing keep away like he's holding a toy over his little brother's head. Roy responds to this bout of mild adversity by immediately quitting the team and demanding a trade.
We close with the team photo, and maybe my favorite moment of the whole clip: Demers just bolting right to the front of the group. He's practically stiff-arming trainers out of the way to get there. If that doesn't get you in the Hall of Fame I don’t know what does.
And that's it—Bettman's first handoff. Not bad for a rookie. In fact, I think we can learn from it. So whether it's tonight or in a few days, Gary, consider going old school. Keep it short, skip the photo poses, and escape quickly. And also, maybe work in a second language. I hear the guy you'll be handing off to may know some Russian.
Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you'd like to see included in this column? Email Sean at [email protected] .
DGB Grab Bag: Happy Wonder Woman, Sad Bryce Harper, and How to Win the Right Way published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/
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‘Saskatoon Likes Me’: The Canada Letter
This week brought two bits of good fortune my way: meeting Jada Yuan and my third trip of the year to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, “the Paris of the prairies.” Saskatoon is the only Canadian destination on The New York Times’s list of 52 Places to Visit in 2018, and Jada is writing about all of them within the span of a year.
When I arrived at the Delta Bessborough, one of a string of castlelike grand hotels built by the railways that are a Canadian signature, Jada was in the lobby bar. It was too early for drinks. Rather, she was writing about her trip through Chile’s Route of Parks in Patagonia, a previous stop.
Jada said that the people of Saskatoon were enthusiastic when it came to offering tips about how to spend time in their city. Tuesday evening we met with several hundred of them at the Remai Modern, the city’s spectacular new art museum on the banks of the South Saskatchewan River for a sold-out New York Times Subscriber Event. I moderated, and part way through, Charlie Clark, Saskatoon’s mayor, joined Jada on the stage for some questions.
Here are highlights of our conversation, edited and condensed:
How do you pack for a year on the road?
Let’s say that I packed a lot of stuff that I now would not pack. At the beginning I sent home maybe 13 pounds of stuff and then I sent home more stuff and it’s down to a pretty bare minimum of things. So basically I excised anything cute out of my wardrobe, which was really painful. And then I went back to New York and I bought a few cute things. It’s really hard to live without color.
I guess you don’t pack a tiny Swiss Army knife which got confiscated on my way here at the La Guardia Airport, which had made it through three months of travel. That was interesting because I have not known LaGuardia to be particularly vigilant.
As a woman, do you have specific concerns about traveling alone?
It’s a fine balance during this experience of going around the world to keep watch of my own safety but also be open to new experiences. Generally what helps is that most of the people I meet up with are women or, I think, are sympathetic groups. But it doesn’t help much for the love life.
Do you try to act like a local?
I’m walking around with a sporty backpack and a camera around my neck. I don’t look super in with the in-crowd.
But I want to find things that aren’t in the guidebooks, that aren’t typical tourist hangouts even though sometimes those are fun. In Colombia, in Bogotá, I went to the most over-the-top restaurant that I’ve ever seen in my life. Even if it’s a tourist trap it’s a great tourist trap. So go to those things.
I do find that when I get in trouble safety-wise, it’s always because I’m trying too hard to be a local.
There’s just sort of a wariness that you have to have as a tourist that I think is important to keep.
How much did you know about Saskatoon?
Zero. But when I got this job the most congratulations came from Saskatoon. You guys went on my radar immediately. When things were kind of tough in some places I just kept thinking: Well, Saskatoon likes me.
Has the trip ever been lonely?
Sometimes I can lean on having social media as a crutch. So if I do get lonely I will log on to Instagram and reply to people, and things like that.
The first time that I felt actually lonely was when I was driving around a beautiful rain-forest park in Chile and I had no cell signal. There were a few moments when I was climbing the volcano by myself and thinking no one knows where I am and they can’t even locate me by GPS.
A friend who was supposed to come and meet me couldn’t come at the last minute. So not being able to share this beautiful thing that I was seeing with anyone really felt lonely in the moment.
Where do you suggest that your friends visit? (From an audience member):
Chile is a pretty great starter South American country. There’s a low likelihood of getting sick and the landscape is really beautiful. La Paz, Bolivia, is one of the most unique places I’ve ever been. It has this great Indigenous culture, it’s actually a majority Indigenous country. You can get to this unbelievable landscape of the salt flats from there which is like nothing I’ve ever seen in my life.
You can find a full audio recording of the event here. And when Jada’s account of Saskatoon is posted, it will also make its way into the Canada Letter.
Coming New York Times Subscriber Events in Canada include a session during Toronto’s Luminato Festival moderated by Ben Brantley, the chief theater critic. On June 21, he’ll be discussing political resistance by artists with members of the Belarus Free Theater following a performance. They’ll be joined by Maria Alyokhina of Pussy Riot. All the details are here.
Streaming
This month’s picks for Netflix viewers in Canada from Watching, The Times’s viewing guide, include Gary Oldman’s performance in “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” and, as legal recreational marijuana use nears in Canada, “How High,” a stoner comedy.
Centre Ice
The National Hockey League continues to deny that there’s any link between degenerative brain disease known as C.T.E. and repetitive, on-ice head trauma. Researchers now say their work shows that the league is wrong.
Trans Canada
—One participant in Toronto’s march and vigil for the 10 people killed in a van rampage on Yonge Street called the reaction of Torontonians “a testament to our unity.”
—Brock Crouch, 18, was snowboarding at Whistler, British Columbia, when an avalanche swept him away. He became a rare avalanche survivor, however, thanks to his friends.
—In Opinion, Damien Gillis, a documentary filmmaker from British Columbia, argues that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s support for a pipeline project to that province from Alberta has undermined all of the government’s environmental efforts.
A native of Windsor, Ontario, Ian Austen was educated in Toronto, lives in Ottawa and has reported about Canada for The New York Times for the past 15 years. Follow him on Twitter at @ianrausten.
We’d love your feedback on this newsletter. Please email your thoughts and suggestions to [email protected]. And if you haven’t do so, please subscribe to the email newsletter version.
The post ‘Saskatoon Likes Me’: The Canada Letter appeared first on World The News.
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‘Saskatoon Likes Me’: The Canada Letter
This week brought two bits of good fortune my way: meeting Jada Yuan and my third trip of the year to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, “the Paris of the prairies.” Saskatoon is the only Canadian destination on The New York Times’s list of 52 Places to Visit in 2018, and Jada is writing about all of them within the span of a year.
When I arrived at the Delta Bessborough, one of a string of castlelike grand hotels built by the railways that are a Canadian signature, Jada was in the lobby bar. It was too early for drinks. Rather, she was writing about her trip through Chile’s Route of Parks in Patagonia, a previous stop.
Jada said that the people of Saskatoon were enthusiastic when it came to offering tips about how to spend time in their city. Tuesday evening we met with several hundred of them at the Remai Modern, the city’s spectacular new art museum on the banks of the South Saskatchewan River for a sold-out New York Times Subscriber Event. I moderated, and part way through, Charlie Clark, Saskatoon’s mayor, joined Jada on the stage for some questions.
Here are highlights of our conversation, edited and condensed:
How do you pack for a year on the road?
Let’s say that I packed a lot of stuff that I now would not pack. At the beginning I sent home maybe 13 pounds of stuff and then I sent home more stuff and it’s down to a pretty bare minimum of things. So basically I excised anything cute out of my wardrobe, which was really painful. And then I went back to New York and I bought a few cute things. It’s really hard to live without color.
I guess you don’t pack a tiny Swiss Army knife which got confiscated on my way here at the La Guardia Airport, which had made it through three months of travel. That was interesting because I have not known LaGuardia to be particularly vigilant.
As a woman, do you have specific concerns about traveling alone?
It’s a fine balance during this experience of going around the world to keep watch of my own safety but also be open to new experiences. Generally what helps is that most of the people I meet up with are women or, I think, are sympathetic groups. But it doesn’t help much for the love life.
Do you try to act like a local?
I’m walking around with a sporty backpack and a camera around my neck. I don’t look super in with the in-crowd.
But I want to find things that aren’t in the guidebooks, that aren’t typical tourist hangouts even though sometimes those are fun. In Colombia, in Bogotá, I went to the most over-the-top restaurant that I’ve ever seen in my life. Even if it’s a tourist trap it’s a great tourist trap. So go to those things.
I do find that when I get in trouble safety-wise, it’s always because I’m trying too hard to be a local.
There’s just sort of a wariness that you have to have as a tourist that I think is important to keep.
How much did you know about Saskatoon?
Zero. But when I got this job the most congratulations came from Saskatoon. You guys went on my radar immediately. When things were kind of tough in some places I just kept thinking: Well, Saskatoon likes me.
Has the trip ever been lonely?
Sometimes I can lean on having social media as a crutch. So if I do get lonely I will log on to Instagram and reply to people, and things like that.
The first time that I felt actually lonely was when I was driving around a beautiful rain-forest park in Chile and I had no cell signal. There were a few moments when I was climbing the volcano by myself and thinking no one knows where I am and they can’t even locate me by GPS.
A friend who was supposed to come and meet me couldn’t come at the last minute. So not being able to share this beautiful thing that I was seeing with anyone really felt lonely in the moment.
Where do you suggest that your friends visit? (From an audience member):
Chile is a pretty great starter South American country. There’s a low likelihood of getting sick and the landscape is really beautiful. La Paz, Bolivia, is one of the most unique places I’ve ever been. It has this great Indigenous culture, it’s actually a majority Indigenous country. You can get to this unbelievable landscape of the salt flats from there which is like nothing I’ve ever seen in my life.
You can find a full audio recording of the event here. And when Jada’s account of Saskatoon is posted, it will also make its way into the Canada Letter.
Coming New York Times Subscriber Events in Canada include a session during Toronto’s Luminato Festival moderated by Ben Brantley, the chief theater critic. On June 21, he’ll be discussing political resistance by artists with members of the Belarus Free Theater following a performance. They’ll be joined by Maria Alyokhina of Pussy Riot. All the details are here.
Streaming
This month’s picks for Netflix viewers in Canada from Watching, The Times’s viewing guide, include Gary Oldman’s performance in “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” and, as legal recreational marijuana use nears in Canada, “How High,” a stoner comedy.
Centre Ice
The National Hockey League continues to deny that there’s any link between degenerative brain disease known as C.T.E. and repetitive, on-ice head trauma. Researchers now say their work shows that the league is wrong.
Trans Canada
—One participant in Toronto’s march and vigil for the 10 people killed in a van rampage on Yonge Street called the reaction of Torontonians “a testament to our unity.”
—Brock Crouch, 18, was snowboarding at Whistler, British Columbia, when an avalanche swept him away. He became a rare avalanche survivor, however, thanks to his friends.
—In Opinion, Damien Gillis, a documentary filmmaker from British Columbia, argues that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s support for a pipeline project to that province from Alberta has undermined all of the government’s environmental efforts.
A native of Windsor, Ontario, Ian Austen was educated in Toronto, lives in Ottawa and has reported about Canada for The New York Times for the past 15 years. Follow him on Twitter at @ianrausten.
We’d love your feedback on this newsletter. Please email your thoughts and suggestions to [email protected]. And if you haven’t do so, please subscribe to the email newsletter version.
The post ‘Saskatoon Likes Me’: The Canada Letter appeared first on World The News.
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‘Saskatoon Likes Me’: The Canada Letter
This week brought two bits of good fortune my way: meeting Jada Yuan and my third trip of the year to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, “the Paris of the prairies.” Saskatoon is the only Canadian destination on The New York Times’s list of 52 Places to Visit in 2018, and Jada is writing about all of them within the span of a year.
When I arrived at the Delta Bessborough, one of a string of castlelike grand hotels built by the railways that are a Canadian signature, Jada was in the lobby bar. It was too early for drinks. Rather, she was writing about her trip through Chile’s Route of Parks in Patagonia, a previous stop.
Jada said that the people of Saskatoon were enthusiastic when it came to offering tips about how to spend time in their city. Tuesday evening we met with several hundred of them at the Remai Modern, the city’s spectacular new art museum on the banks of the South Saskatchewan River for a sold-out New York Times Subscriber Event. I moderated, and part way through, Charlie Clark, Saskatoon’s mayor, joined Jada on the stage for some questions.
Here are highlights of our conversation, edited and condensed:
How do you pack for a year on the road?
Let’s say that I packed a lot of stuff that I now would not pack. At the beginning I sent home maybe 13 pounds of stuff and then I sent home more stuff and it’s down to a pretty bare minimum of things. So basically I excised anything cute out of my wardrobe, which was really painful. And then I went back to New York and I bought a few cute things. It’s really hard to live without color.
I guess you don’t pack a tiny Swiss Army knife which got confiscated on my way here at the La Guardia Airport, which had made it through three months of travel. That was interesting because I have not known LaGuardia to be particularly vigilant.
As a woman, do you have specific concerns about traveling alone?
It’s a fine balance during this experience of going around the world to keep watch of my own safety but also be open to new experiences. Generally what helps is that most of the people I meet up with are women or, I think, are sympathetic groups. But it doesn’t help much for the love life.
Do you try to act like a local?
I’m walking around with a sporty backpack and a camera around my neck. I don’t look super in with the in-crowd.
But I want to find things that aren’t in the guidebooks, that aren’t typical tourist hangouts even though sometimes those are fun. In Colombia, in Bogotá, I went to the most over-the-top restaurant that I’ve ever seen in my life. Even if it’s a tourist trap it’s a great tourist trap. So go to those things.
I do find that when I get in trouble safety-wise, it’s always because I’m trying too hard to be a local.
There’s just sort of a wariness that you have to have as a tourist that I think is important to keep.
How much did you know about Saskatoon?
Zero. But when I got this job the most congratulations came from Saskatoon. You guys went on my radar immediately. When things were kind of tough in some places I just kept thinking: Well, Saskatoon likes me.
Has the trip ever been lonely?
Sometimes I can lean on having social media as a crutch. So if I do get lonely I will log on to Instagram and reply to people, and things like that.
The first time that I felt actually lonely was when I was driving around a beautiful rain-forest park in Chile and I had no cell signal. There were a few moments when I was climbing the volcano by myself and thinking no one knows where I am and they can’t even locate me by GPS.
A friend who was supposed to come and meet me couldn’t come at the last minute. So not being able to share this beautiful thing that I was seeing with anyone really felt lonely in the moment.
Where do you suggest that your friends visit? (From an audience member):
Chile is a pretty great starter South American country. There’s a low likelihood of getting sick and the landscape is really beautiful. La Paz, Bolivia, is one of the most unique places I’ve ever been. It has this great Indigenous culture, it’s actually a majority Indigenous country. You can get to this unbelievable landscape of the salt flats from there which is like nothing I’ve ever seen in my life.
You can find a full audio recording of the event here. And when Jada’s account of Saskatoon is posted, it will also make its way into the Canada Letter.
Coming New York Times Subscriber Events in Canada include a session during Toronto’s Luminato Festival moderated by Ben Brantley, the chief theater critic. On June 21, he’ll be discussing political resistance by artists with members of the Belarus Free Theater following a performance. They’ll be joined by Maria Alyokhina of Pussy Riot. All the details are here.
Streaming
This month’s picks for Netflix viewers in Canada from Watching, The Times’s viewing guide, include Gary Oldman’s performance in “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” and, as legal recreational marijuana use nears in Canada, “How High,” a stoner comedy.
Centre Ice
The National Hockey League continues to deny that there’s any link between degenerative brain disease known as C.T.E. and repetitive, on-ice head trauma. Researchers now say their work shows that the league is wrong.
Trans Canada
—One participant in Toronto’s march and vigil for the 10 people killed in a van rampage on Yonge Street called the reaction of Torontonians “a testament to our unity.”
—Brock Crouch, 18, was snowboarding at Whistler, British Columbia, when an avalanche swept him away. He became a rare avalanche survivor, however, thanks to his friends.
—In Opinion, Damien Gillis, a documentary filmmaker from British Columbia, argues that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s support for a pipeline project to that province from Alberta has undermined all of the government’s environmental efforts.
A native of Windsor, Ontario, Ian Austen was educated in Toronto, lives in Ottawa and has reported about Canada for The New York Times for the past 15 years. Follow him on Twitter at @ianrausten.
We’d love your feedback on this newsletter. Please email your thoughts and suggestions to [email protected]. And if you haven’t do so, please subscribe to the email newsletter version.
The post ‘Saskatoon Likes Me’: The Canada Letter appeared first on World The News.
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Community Bulletin January 25
School News
» CNY Head of School Letter
Happy New Year! On behalf of the faculty and staff of Concordia International School Shanghai we extend a very warm welcome to our new families! At the same time, it's always great to see our returning friends back on campus after a break.
We invite all families to participate in the Chinese New Year celebration which takes place on Thursday, January 26th in the PC Ford gym at 10:00 am. It's a wonderful school tradition and a fun time to celebrate with our host country, China!
It's an interesting schedule this year as in the same letter we welcome you back, we also bid you safe travels for the Chinese New Year! Wherever in the world you find yourself, we pray God will continue to protect and guide you in your walk each day. It's great to be a Phoenix!
Blessings,
Mary Scott
» Save The Date for the 14th Annual Gala & Auction on March 11. Tickets on sale February 13 - March 3. Tickets cost 850 RMB each.
» Follow us on Concordia's Official WeChat Account.
Get the latest updates. New information will be sent out once a week. Scan the QR code.
» Singing Valentines 2017
Our Concordia High School Choirs have been singing about love on Valentine's Day for over 10 years! And once again the Concordia Singers, Collegium Men's Choir, Bel Canto Woman's Choir and Chamber Singers are preparing Singing Valentines that you may purchase and send to your friends, family and loved ones.
For 50-100 RMB you can choose a song to be sung to your "special someone" on the Concordia Campus during morning classes on Tuesday, February 14, 2017 from 8:15 – 11:15 AM. We have 5 song choices.....
♥I Can't Help Falling in Love With You by Elvis (sung by the Collegium Men's Choir)
♥Love Is An Open Door from Frozen (sung by Bel Canto Women's Choir)
♥I'll Be There by Michael Jackson & The Jackson 5 (sung by Concordia Singers)
♥Crazy Little Thing Called Love by Freddie Mercury (sung by the Chamber Singers)
♥Skinnamarinky Dinky Dink
Look for more information and order forms outside the Choir Room, M201. (Also attached here) The final day for placing orders will be Friday, February 11.
For further information please contact choral director, Meg Ideker at [email protected]
» Phoenix Shop
The Phoenix Shop is open Monday through Friday at the lunch hour, 11:30 AM-1 PM. Mondays and Wednesdays from 3-4 PM.
» School Uniforms
The Uniform shop is located in the High School basement off of the PE Commons and is opens from noon to 4 PM, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday For your reference, the uniform policy appears on the Uniforms website. Questions regarding uniforms should be directed to: [email protected].
Our Community
» The Admissions Office is receiving applications for the 2017-18 school year.
We encourage you to apply as soon as possible to help us plan for staffing and programs. If you intend to enroll your child in either the PS3 or PS4 classes, we advise you to apply by early March. Information can be found here about the application process.
» Sewing Classes will begin on Thursday, Feb 9.
If you would like to participate, stop by the sewing room on next Luther Hall in the Phoenix Commons.
» Towel & Blanket Drive
Do you love animals? Want to help bring comfort and warmth to rescue animals during this cold winter?
The HS Environmental Committee is holding a Blanket & Towel Drive. Drop off your unwanted blankets and towels in the box by the HS office.
On Saturday, Jan. 14th, there will be a day trip to the Best Friends Animal Shelter in Songjiang to bring these towels and blankets to the rescue animals there to help keep them warm and cozy. For more information about the Best Friends China animal charity, visit http://ift.tt/1J6tjGK.
Athletics & Arts
Season two sports are wrapping up with their final competition at APAC. To find up-to-date scores and watch live streaming go to http://apac-asia.org/.
The season two sports banquet will be help Tuesday, February 14th. If you have any questions, contact Chris Bishop.
PSO
» Bake Sale & Treat Sale
To All Bakers please note there will not be a bake sale class in January 14th. All bakers that were due to bake in Jan will be moved to February 14th. If you cannot bake then please email Maria Marquis, the PSO Bake Sale Chairwoman at [email protected]. Anyone who would like to bake or donate any bake goods for
» PSO Used Uniform Sales
Gently used Concordia uniform pieces are also for sale at all monthly PSO meetings. The uniform pieces cost 20 RMB each. If you have gently used uniforms you no longer need, please consider donating them to the PSO.
Visit PSO website for more information on our upcoming events, and learn how you can get involved.
Job Openings
» Open positions for the 2017-18 School Year
We are nearing the completion of hiring for next fall.
After Chinese New Year we will be introducing the new staff and who will be moving internally in more detail, but we are happy to announce that the following openings for 2017-18 have been filled:
HS Social Studies
ES ELL
ES PS4
Aquatics
MS Learning Support
ES K
ES Gr 1
ES Gr 2
MS Gr. 6 Math/Science
ES PE
Assistant Director of Activities
Assistant Head of School-Personnel
The remaining positions remain to be filled:
Family Life Counselor-final interviews underway
Administrator: HS Assistant Principal-contract offered
Curriculum & Assessment Coordinator
Director of Marketing-finalists identified
A growth position as an ES classroom teacher (grade level to be determined)
Support Staff openings:
ES Teaching Assistant or Grade Level Assistant (PRC only)
Accountant (PRC only)
For details on how to apply go to http://ift.tt/2h5eAnw
Opportunities
» Service Opportunity Hosting families "Service Through Friendship"
This program offers the opportunity to be a "Big Brother" to two of WILL Foundation boys for one or two nights. The boys will be paired. They're between the ages five and twelve. They could share a bed or enjoy camping-out on a rug. (Sleeping bags available.) But, be warned, they eat like bears Contact [email protected] Click here for more information. Thank you.
Looking for host families for the following dates:
Chinese New Year – January 27 – February 4. You pick your dates and boys. Very flexible.
Saturday February 17, 2017 2 PM until Sunday 10 AM 1 night
Friday February 24, 2017 3:20 pm until Sunday 10 AM 2 nights
Friday March 10, 3:20 PM until Sunday 10 AM 2 nights
Saturday March 18, 2017 2 PM until Sunday 10AM 1 night
Friday April 28, 2017 3:20 PM until Sunday 10 AM 2 nights
Saturday May 6, 2017 2 PM until Sunday 10 AM 1 night
Saturday May 20, 2017 2 PM until Sunday 10 AM 1 night
Club Sports and Community Sports Organizations
Below you'll find a list of clubs and organizations that offer a variety of sports activities to the community. If you would like for Concordia to consider adding a listing, please email the Marketing Department.
» Phoenix Swim Club
» Shanghai American Football League
» Shanghai Sluggers Youth Baseball
» Shanghai Thunderbirds Ice Hockey
» Sport For Life
» Active Kidz Shanghai
» Shanghai Griffins Basketball
» Century Park Football Club - Soccer Training
» Tuesday Night Co-ed Volleyball (starts after Chinese New Year)
» Shanghai Gymnastics
» Shanghai Chess Club Offers Classes at CCS
» Multisport
» Dulwich Earthquakes (Excellent Soccer Source)
Worship
» Please click here for information about Worship Services in Shanghai.
» Moms In Prayer International
Experience the joy of replacing anxiety with peace and hope by lifting up our children, teachers, staff and community with thanksgiving. Join other moms who meet twice a month on campus to seek guidance and wisdom for our children, our school and the Concordia community. Friendly to women of all languages. Please contact Michelle Wu if you have any question.
Classifieds
» Used 13 inch Viola for Sale
We are looking for people who are wanting my daughter's used 13 inch viola. She was using her viola very gently and is in excellent condition!!! Please let me know if you are interested.
Nobue Ko (Email: [email protected] Cell phone number: 13262250802)
Drivers & Ayis
When hiring ayis or drivers, please remember to check references and ask around the community for first-hand recommendations. Even in situations where ads are posted by Concordia families, please recognize that these ads are not vetted in any way by the school before posting. Although names and contact information of ayis and drivers are posted in the Community Bulletin, we do not affirm and/or affiliate ourselves with them.
Please check next week!
Reminders
» Carrying Copies of Passport and Visa
We have been informed by Public Security Bureau that policemen are being sent to different locations like supermarkets or streets to check people's passport and visa. We would like to remind our community that carrying a copy of your passport and visa in your wallet is recommended so you are fine if you are checked. Please note that the policemen will show you their working ID when they stop you. If they don't, please ask. If you forget to carry the two copies, they could take you back to their office. In this case, we suggest you contact your employer who can confirm your passport and visa information. They may also stop unaccompanied students so I would recommend that you review this procedure with them as well.
» New Residence Permits, Work Permits or Passports?
Whenever you or your family members receive new residence permits, work permits and/or passports, please be sure to send copies of your new documents to the Admissions office, in the Welcome Center (1st floor High School). Or, email soft copies to Admissions. Keeping your children's files up to date helps us keep in compliance with Chinese governmental regulations.
» Health Office Information
Concordia's Health Office has put together this useful list of emergency telephone numbers and addresses in both Chinese and English. Click here for the list or contact the Health Office for more information.
Flu Shots For information on Flu shots, contact the Health Office. Contact Jenny or Yukki directly.
» No Bicycles for Children Under Age 12 on Public Streets - Shanghai International Schools Association (SISA)
The following information regarding bicycle riding in Shanghai is shared in an attempt to be helpful to all its member schools. For safety purposes, the regulations in Shanghai allow for bicycles to be ridden on public streets only by children age 12 and above. This regulation is strictly enforced in Puxi, but is unevenly applied in Pudong. The immediate danger is that families may assume that local protections for bicycle riders may be the same as in their own country, but they are not. It is important to be aware that if a child under 12 is involved in any kind of accident on a public street or crossing, the parent may be held responsible. Sidewalks and bicycle paths along public roads are considered part of the public roads. In addition, as accident insurance is relatively new to China and there are not many precedents with these situations, your own accident or medical insurance company has the right to refuse cover in the event of violation of the local law. We hope that better understanding will result in better safety for younger children.
» Community Bulletin Objectives
The Community Bulletin conveys school and student-related information and supports community, volunteer and charitable organizations. The classified section and driver/ayi notices, are meant as a service to parents. With the exception of sharing information and offers from Concordia's official corporate partners, we do not support commercial ventures or for-profit organizations. The Community Bulletin editors reserve the right to omit submitted content deemed to fall outside the scope of the Community Bulletin.
» Parent Directory Privacy Policy
At Concordia, we are very protective of family information and data. The school emails only information that is important and directly related to the school and student issues. Internally, we carefully monitor what is emailed to parents and ensure it is appropriate. The use of email addresses from the parent directory for non-school related or commercial reasons is a severe misuse of the directory.
» Submitting Community Bulletin Items
The Community Bulletin is a bi-weekly newsletter. Please submit text in final format by Wednesday at noon in Arial font (maximum 100 words or 5 sentences in paragraph form with a headline) to [email protected]. Based on the schedule of the next bulletin, submissions may be included the week they are received or the following week. Any submission received after this time on the week scheduled for publication will be included in the next bulletin in two weeks. Submitted items may run for a maximum of two consecutive publications.
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