Look I'm sad that Scratch is in pain but goddammit I could suppress the smile on my face over Derek Carruthers being The Worst
HE’S A DICK.
To be fair it has NOT been a one-sided battle between those two in particular. They’re both hunting for one another at this point, and Scratch has the size advantage AND he’s not in his early thirties. Derek’s hurting too.
Derek to Dan and Andy right now: FUCK ANGELOPOULOS WHAT A FUCKING ASSHOLE. HOW DARE HIS NAME BE SO IRONIC. DEVILOPOULOS.
Dan: I went to school with his sister. She was really nice. Met him when he was a teenager, signed his cast. Seemed like a really nice kid with a good head on his shoulders, nice family.
Hi I live in Edmonton and I feel you should know there is a street here named "Matheson Way".
Very briefly breaking vacation to state
a) this is an important fact and I appreciate you telling me it
and
b) there is a Carruthers St in Ottawa that I notice every single time I pass it (frequently), and if you don’t think that Derek doesn’t point it out every single time, well -- he doesn’t, actually, because now Andy points it out for the privilege of Derek beaming delightedly at him every single time.
For the prompt: Andy, Derek and Dan at Sens Casino Night.
Andy hates casino night. Not just because he’s bad at everything, though he is, or that he looks like a toothpick in a tux, though he does — for some reason the second he puts on a bowtie instead of a regular tie he looks way taller and way skinnier — but because Derek loves casino night, and every time they do it Andy’s concerned Derek’s going to remember how much he loves gambling, run to Vegas, and never come back. Andy’s just lucky Las Vegas doesn’t have a hockey team.
“Bowie, blow on my dice,” Derek says.
“What?” Andy asks. “Why?”
“It’s good luck when someone pretty blows on them,” Derek says, with possibly the sleaziest wink Andy has ever seen.
Andy glances over at the other people at the table, mostly Sens fans. They look amused but not like they think anything of it, like they expect this, like it’s just Derek joking around. Derek does have that reputation among fans, Andy knows.
“No,” Andy says. “Blow on your own dice.”
“Aw, you think I’m pretty,” Derek says, and that gets a laugh from the table, except Andy, who’s trying to figure out whether Derek made up the dice thing to be funny or if he’s being ridiculously superstitious here too, and Dan, who’s on his phone, probably with the Diver. “It doesn’t work if it’s your own dice though. Riley, blow on my dice.”
Dan rolls his eyes but pockets his phone before leaning over and blowing on the dice in Derek’s hand.
“Hey,” Andy says, frowning. “You can’t just get anyone to blow on your dice. And Dan’s a married man.”
The woman sitting next to him snickers.
“You can blow on them next time, Andy,” Derek says.
He rolls a six and a one, which is apparently great. Andy isn’t really good at craps, there’s too much to remember. He wanted to go to the blackjack table, but Sven and Gerard are already there, and five Sens at one table is probably too many. They’re supposed to spread out, mingle, make the people who paid for this feel like they got their money’s worth.
“Nevermind,” Derek says. “Dan, blow on my dice again.”
“Hey,” Andy says.
“Sorry Bowie, he’s good luck,” Derek says.
Andy scowls at him, because ‘and I’m your boyfriend’ isn’t something he can say at a table full of Sens fans.
Derek holds his dice out for Dan again, and Dan obligingly gives them a blow. And that’s a stupid word. Blow. It’s all — whatever.
“I’m telling the Diver,” Andy mutters at Dan.
“And once again he’ll laugh his ass off,” Dan says, then, under his breath, “What’re you even going to say? ‘Hey Lapointe, your husband blew air at my bf-slash-bff’s hands, you mad?’.”
Andy elbows him, and Dan just laughs, pulls out his phone again under the table, probably telling the Diver exactly what’s going on.
Derek wins again, whatever that means, which has him holding the dice out for Dan again.
“I have a —” Dan says, then, holding his phone up, “Marc.”
Andy sees two guys at the table roll his eyes, and he’s not sure whether it’s because Marc’s a Hab or not. He hopes it’s because he’s a Hab. He really hopes it’s because he’s a Hab.
Dan walks away from the table, phone already at his ear, the way it so often is, and Derek slides the dice under Andy’s nose. “Blow?” he says.
“No,” Andy says.
“Bowie,” Derek says.
“Wait for Dan if you want good luck,” Andy says, crossing his arms.
“Andy,” Derek whines, but Andy stands firm.
Derek quickly loses every single chip he won, and he blames it on Andy refusing to blow on his dice, but Andy thinks he should blame it on being crappy at betting, and says so.
“I miss anything?” Dan asks when he comes back to the table.
“Your lineys always bicker like this?” the woman sitting beside Andy asks.
“Pretty much,” Dan says, and Andy goes from scowling at Derek to scowling at Dan.
So I just reread Derek/Andy for the first time in a while and I've gotta ask: was Andy the first guy Derek had ever been with? I know Derek said "I don't usually like guys" and that his whole thing is "Girls and Andy", but I feel like Derek was surprisingly assertive for not having been with any other guy. Like, I would not have given a handjob even if drunk. Or asked to blow my best friend with confidence if I had never done it before
Derek’s the kind of person that, once he’s decided he’s doing something, even if it was a sudden whim, he’s doing it 100%? (Like, non-sexual example: Andy’s his first serious fluttery in love relationship, and he goes ALL-IN. You will be BURIED in flowers– oh shit you’re allergic. And like, obviously all-in timewise too. Derek went from a guy who regularly hooked up and never dated past high school to settling down with someone he plans on spending his life beside with complete alacrity).
And that all-in mentality is magnified when he’s drunk. He gets an idea in his head, it’s going to happen. This has lead to…a lot of regrettable actions, including things with Andy at the time, but obviously now Derek wouldn’t take it back for anything.
Which was a greater surprise for Derek's family: Derek dating a guy or the love of Derek's life being blushing, shy Andy?
Honestly a) Derek brings home a guy and b) Derek brings home anyone he’s serious about kind of ties in surprise.
It makes sense that it’s Andy, in hindsight? That he’s quiet, because if Derek dated someone loud they’d just talk over each other all the time – Derek needs someone to listen to him. That he’s someone they already know Derek trusts. That they trust.
Derek’s kind of been serious about him from the start, before they were anything, brought him home to meet the family, and yes, as a friend, but Derek didn’t generally do that, was typically flitting other places, not bringing friends home.
There is some very brief surprise, but mostly a lot of relieved happiness when Derek confirms he’s serious about Andy: they honestly couldn’t think of someone better for Derek. He makes him more serious when he needs to be. He understands Derek’s career (obviously). He makes Derek ridiculously happy.
Andy is basically insta-adopted into the Carruthers clan. Honestly, he already was when he was visiting as a friend, but now the Carruthers are all ‘NO TAKEBACKS’.
Another Humboldt fill, for the prompt: I would love anything where Andy is embarrassed by Derek
I went extra: Andy embarrassed by MANY CARRUTHERS
If Andy wasn’t positive he’d be found, and then mocked, he would be hiding right now.
Maybe he can turn it into a game? Grab some of the kids from the backyard, tell them they’re playing hide and seek?
“Andrew,” Derek wheedles, and Andy can jump into the hall closet or he can give into the inevitable.
He stays where he is, again, only because he knows Derek will look for him, and then find him, and then make a lot of jokes about coming out of the closet, and Andy will still have to play the Newlywed game with the Carruthers.
*
It starts out fine. Andy was worried about sex questions coming up, but half the people at the table are related by blood, so that’s probably something they don’t want to know about one another. Andy doesn’t want to know it either, or for anyone else to know, but he;s aware he’s a little more…private about that stuff than most people, and especially the Carruthers, who are all over-sharers about everything.
Him and Derek get the lead early — it’s easy to know about stuff like favourite food or TV show or what their pet peeves are when you not only live with them, but work together, spend basically all your time together, and Andy starts to feel okay about it, wonder why he was reluctant in the first place.
It doesn’t last, of course.
“What does your partner find most annoying about you?” Adam reads, and Andy just…blanks. Obviously there’s got to be something, but Derek isn’t a complainer — well, he is, but Andy can’t think of any habits or anything Derek’s complained about.
He scribbles down ‘won’t do karaoke’, because that was Derek’s most recent complaint, when Andy sat out and watched a good chunk of the Senators, lead by Derek, butcher song after song. Derek somehow wasn’t the worst. That, Andy thinks, went to Sven, though he also thinks Sven was singing badly on purpose, and knows very, very well that Derek wasn’t.
‘Nothing’, Derek flips over with a flourish, and the entire table boos.
Andy slinks down in his chair.
“But that one’s good too, Bowie,” Derek says. “You’re so good at this.”
“Oh my god,” Ivy says. “Kick them out.”
Adam starts chanting it, and everyone else picks it up, three Carruthers and their significant others in perfect unison.
“You’re just jealous,” Derek yells over them, the baby brother he always reverts to around his siblings, and kisses Andy’s flaming cheek.
