oliver ekman-larsson and mikkel boedker and their scandanavian connection for hobeaulife! (or... yinzling? is that your new url DONT CHANGE THINGS ON ME)
keeping in mind that i don't actually know them (but they're pretty!!!)
“I love this place,” Oliver announces, “it’s beautiful, and wonderful, and welcoming.”
“You mean - Ikea. You’re talking about Ikea,” Mikkel says.
“Yes.” Oliver spreads his arms as if to indicate all the brightly-coloured wooden shelves, see-through cabinets and eight thousand permutations of what a chair looks like. “My homeland’s representation!”
“Uh....huh.” Mikkel likes Ikea; he’s sitting on a couch, and it’s a pretty nice couch, to be fair. Weirdly orange and kind of a funny shape, but nice.
“Don’t you feel at home here? It’s so perfect and Swedish!”
“Oliver,” Mikkel sighs out, rubs a hand over his face. This might be the seven thousandth time he’s told Oliver this. Since last month. “I’m Danish.”
“Okay, well...” Oliver frowns, considers this, “you’re now an honourary Swede!” He grabs a plastic spoon thing sitting on a table nearby and taps Mikkel’s shoulders solemnly, “by the power invested in me by my Swedishness, on this Swedish-enough ground, I hereby bestow upon you the honour of being an honourary Swede! You may now kiss the Sweden.”
“I don’t even - just - what?” Mikkel says, and then he decides to interpret that as kiss the Swede, and grabs Oliver and kisses him. Oliver grins at him afterwards, kind of swooning.
“God, I love Ikea,” he says, all dreamy and happy. “Let’s come here like, every weekend.”
If there was one thing that you could change about your life, what would it be? Probably just where i live lol
Who has had the biggest impact on your life?
my best friend, don't know where i'd be without her.
One place that you have always wanted to visit
There's a few. Pittsburgh since I was little because it's the home of my favourite hockey team (no duh), British Columbia, New York and Ireland. Hahaha :)
Where do you think you will be 5 years in the future?
Not here. but I don't know
What are your top 5 favorite songs?
Right now it's .. In Too Deep - Sum 41, Kickstart My Heart - Motley Crue, All Over You - The Spill Canvas, Placeholder - The Story So Far, After Midnight - Blink 182
Favorite candy?
I'm not sure, I'm not the biggest candy fan ever, but probably these gummy gator things idk they're awesome
Most memorable moment from your childhood?
Uhhhhhhhhhhhhm... I'm not sure lol
What is your favorite book and why is it your favorite?
Right now, Monument 14 by Emmy Laybourne, probably because it was the last one I read :P But I found it really amazing. I also really loved Dark Angel and Soulmate (And anything else) by L.J Smith, and.. okay don't get me started on books.
If you could have anything in the world right now, what would it be?
Money ahahahahaha
Name something in your life that makes you genuinely happy
Music, hockey, guitar, books, tv shows, movies.
Describe your favorite hockey related memory
Watching the 2009 stanley cup finals. At school that day I told my teacher that I was excited for Penguins to win the cup and he said that wasn't going to happen, and then it did and I was so fricken happy. Or back in the days when I was a Colorado Aves fan, when I was like 3 (haha I got that from my cousin, I wanted to be just like her and she liked Colorado) but my dad turned on a Pittsburgh Penguins game (with Toronto I think) and from that day forward I said that "I like Penguins in hockey now" a lot haha :)
My questions
1. What did you think of the last movie you watched?
2. If you could spend a day with anybody famous who would it be?
3. If you could learn a language other than English (not French), what would it be?
4. Xbox, PS3, PS2, Game Cube, Wii, Phone, Computer?
5. Favourite ice cream flavour?
6. What is your top 3 songs right now?
7. Have you ever broken a bone?
8. What sports do you like? (Playing or watching)
9. What is your favourite colour?
10. If you could time travel to any time period, when would you travel to?
11. What is your favourite tv show?
I'm so uncreative guys I'm so sorry
FIVE. FIVE. i really shouldnt be surprised we got to this point.
--
Sidney doesn’t mind being alone. It’s always been that way. He doesn’t know what he’s missing out on - he tells himself that the dull curiosity that’s always in the back of his mind will go away someday.
Then he starts to wonder. He meets Geno, this intertwining trajectory to the top that meets up with Sidney’s. And Sidney starts to wonder how Geno might fit with him, but he tells himself it couldn’t work, because to work, Geno would have to want him back, and Sidney has made a career out of a refusal to accept impossible or unachievable, but for this, he has to admit that this cannot be his.
Geno doesn’t see Sidney as a challenge. It’s not that he thinks Sidney is waiting for someone to come along and fix him; it’s that Sidney has accepted the way he is. Geno sees him, and he wants to go to Sidney, unwind and untangle and undo, until he can lay Sidney out, all calmed and still. Sidney fumbles through social things, gets more and more worked up, and Geno wants to hold his hand under the table and urge him to slow down, take a breath, not worry. He starts giving in to the impulse; Sidney smiles like some part of him has been hoping someone will do this for him, and he has a lifetime of gratitude saved up, and it lights up his eyes.
Sidney melts for him, when Geno kisses him.
They almost fit together. There are parts of them that do, Sidney’s anxiousness to Geno’s patience, Sidney’s sweetness to Geno’s appreciation for it. Something’s missing, though; Sidney doesn’t know how to ask for those kinds of things, the ones he has no name for and would be able to imagine if it was given to him. But he’s happier now; Geno seems to be too, with someone in his care. It also kind of feels like they’re waiting for something, though.
Max. They’re waiting for Max. They’re waiting for their whirlind that comes into their hotel room and outright announces his intentions, with a smile they’ll come to recognise, confidence and bravado underlined by a pure hopefulness. They’re easy and content, and then there’s Max, who takes something already beautiful and finds a switch to throw that lights it up with thousands of glowing lights. He coaxes Sidney beyond his limits and encourages Geno, and everything is louder and brighter and more vibrant because of it.
And Max - he’s a dreamer crossed with a doer. Sidney’s afraid that’s a dangerous combination, but how could anything that brought James to the ever be dangerous. James is sweet and lighthearted and he keeps Sidney from worrying, he gives Geno a break from being in charge, he’s Max’s calm and gentle place. He blushed furiously when Max told him “we all have a thing for you,” and it was the details that calmed him. It was the here’s where you’ll sleep between us, here’s where Geno likes to kiss you, here’s where you hold Sidney’s hand, here’s where Max makes you laugh more than you ever have before, it was moving in and fitting in, and then he felt that he belonged.
Jordan, though.
Sidney was swept up in all of this, because first there was Geno, then Max came along, and he brought in James, and sometimes, Sidney sits in the locker room and remembers the same feelings of enchantment he had when he met Jordan. Even now that Sidney’s living something impossible, Jordan still feels like something that could never happen.
“I see how you guys are,” Jordan says, so quiet, “is there any chance you’d want me?”
Geno chose Sidney. Max said they needed him. James was spotted by Geno and brought in by Max. Jordan, though - Jordan says could you want me, and it’s Sidney who says yes.
The way they fit together - it feels impossible. It’s so many factors that it shouldn’t be possible, but it’s a constantly-changing mix of pairs, and there’s always someone. Sidney finally feels like he can count on this, that they’re here, they’re staying, and nothing will happen.
Then they lose Max.
Max heard the trade rumours first. He didn’t tell any of them, because they would worry, and he’s afraid something would happen to them in the meantime, if the idea of losing someone would tear them apart. He puts off telling them until it’s finalised, and then, then there’s only a few days until he’s gone.
He doesn’t know what he’s going to do until the morning he leaves, when he wakes up and just looks at the four of them sleeping, Geno curled around James, Jordan against Sidney’s back, and Max wonders if maybe four will be easier for them, more stable. When he leaves, he isn’t theirs anymore; he refuses to let them convince him otherwise.
Losing Max leaves them with an empty space each of them reach for, and Sidney wonders if this is somehow even worse than being left alone. It’s losing Max for himself, but also for Geno, for James, and for Jordan. Maybe if he was alone, he could move on, but Sidney feels like he’s lost Max four times over, because it’s not just his pain. It’s Geno a little quieter, it’s James distant, it’s Jordan more serious. This is how he realises they don’t each have just one single place they belong; this place is a complex web of fitting in and blending together, and it’s ripping apart the infrastructure and expecting it to somehow regenerate itself and stay standing.
“I miss you,” Max hears, and it’s the first time. His four - they dont say that to him. He told them to let him have a clean break, because he just - he knew, he couldn’t go back, that once he left, it could never be the same, and holding on would just keep him from ever healing.
Marc-André is the one that calls him and says this, and they’ve always been close, but now Max wonders if, for all he tried to see who his four wanted, he forgot to consider for himself.
After always having four people around, Max has been lonely; “I miss you too,” he says.
That season is quiet. For all the noise and movement on the ice, it’s quiet at home. Sidney’s afraid to examine them too closely, because now that they’ve been broken once, he knows that looking too much will show him all the cracks, things that could someday tear them apart.
“I’ve never been good at breakups,” James says, and Sidney hates how well this phrase describes them, because now that there’s been a break, he’s afraid the cracks it left will expand, widen, break up the very ground beneath his feet.
He used to be fine, with being alone. When James says this, Jordan reaches over and squeezes Sidney’s hand under the table, and Sidney still hasn’t quite perfected it, figuring out how to be madly in love with someone without feeling like he’s cheating the others.
Jordan gets traded.
“I’ll be fine,” he whispers, late at night, to just Sidney, “it’s - it’s Carolina. Eric’s there, and Jared’s been called up before, I won’t be by myself.” He doesn’t say it’s close, because so was Philadelphia.
Max can feel everyone he knows falling apart. Back at home, they’ve lost Jordan, and he knows it’s ruining them. Marc-André says they’re all quieter, that things aren’t okay with them.
“What about you?” Max asks. Terrifyingly, he’s falling in love with Marc-André over the phone and on video calls, with the way Marc-André is outright refusing to lose him, doesn’t care that Max was never his, misses him all the same.
“I’m okay,” Marc-André says. Max doesn’t believe him.
“Do you - want to be with them?” he asks, because sometimes, Marc-André would look at them across the locker room.
“No,” he says, and maybe - maybe Marc-André was only ever looking at him, because he says yes when Max asks if he’ll visit in the summer.
Max’s late goodbye present is Beau. When he hears Beau’s being traded to Pittsburgh, he knows that sunshiney, optimistic Beau will make Geno and James and Sidney smile again.
It’s what he wanted, but part of him still aches, when he sees them slowly coming together again. He could never let go completely, not after finding a place like that.
When Marc-André comes, though - Max learns. He doesn’t have to forget; he can hold on to what he remembers, but still move on.
Sidney starts to have terrible suspicions that he fell unevenly in love, and he misses them like he lost all of them at once - in a way, he did, because this is so different from the beginning. He’s sleepless at night, trying to understand exactly what time he wants to return to.
“I don’t want to do like them,” James says, and already he’s not. Neither Max nor Jordan cried, and James feels so guilty for hanging on too tightly, but maybe he’s not like them. Maybe he’s not strong enough to leave on his own, not selfless enough to let go.
Geno looks at Sidney and Beau and says “maybe we should do different, this time. Maybe no one alone.”
Guiltily, James wonders if they should have done that for Max, for Jordan.
James is traded, and Geno goes with him to LA.
“We’ll be fine,” Beau promises Sidney, “we’re together, they’re together. Max has Marc-André - everyone’s okay.”
Sidney wants to ask and Jordan? but Beau never knew him.
They could be okay. They could cling tight enough to each other, find the residuals of what they’ve lost. Maybe Sidney’s kept some of Max’s protectiveness, maybe Beau can remember Geno’s sweetness enough to replicate it, maybe they can see snatches of James, maybe they can put themselves back together with enough little pieces that it’s like they never fell apart.
Beau’s young, though. He’s young and a rising star, and Edmonton thinks he’ll fit in perfectly, offers him a roster where he can come into his own without the shadows of legends obscuring him.
Sidney knows he’s the one holding Beau back, so when Beau asks what to do, Sidney says go.
Jordan has never been able to move on. He’s been distracting himself as much as he can, but he can’t convince himself he’s okay when everyone who looks at him has worry on their face. He watches Max find someone new, Beau find them, Geno and James leave, Beau go away, and now, Jordan sees what he’s seen all along - Sidney.
It’s not that Jordan didn’t care about the other three like that. He loved them, he did, he loved them so much - but his gaze has always been on Sidney. Maybe Jordan could have let go, if not for Sidney. He could have missed them and longed for it all back, but resigned himself to moving on, but there’s Sidney. There’s always been Sidney, and Jordan’s been a wreck out here by himself ever since he left.
“Let me come home,” Jordan says, and Sidney cries.
“I fell in love with you,” he whispers, like it’s been a secret he has never known what to do with.
This is how it’s going to stay.
Geno and James are in LA, and it’s beautiful and sunny, there are moments when they know they’re not the same. “Thank you for never leaving me,” James says, and Geno wishes there was a way he could have done this for all of them, that they all could have clung to him so tightly.
Beau is in Edmonton, and he got out safe, he was in and out before he could fall in love, and he tells himself it was just for fun, just a cool story, but at the same time, he’s never been able to tell anyone, because it’s too big a part of him, he needs to keep it safe, remember when he was the key that saved them for a little while.
Max has Marc-André, and they’re separated, but sometimes, Max doesn’t even mind. Marc-André is holding on to him - maybe all Max ever wanted was for someone to point-blank refuse to lose him. Marc-André feels like starting over, walking back into the Penguins locker room and falling in love with someone different, but he still feels like coming home, like he’s been waiting for the do-over that would give him Max, all to himself. “I could never share you,” he said, when Max asked why he was never one of them.
Jordan and Sidney fit together perfectly. Jordan was only ever there for Sidney, and Sidney can be in love with him without being afraid. Maybe he’ll always have that twinge of guilt, loving Jordan so fully and completely when he couldn’t manage this intense depth for everyone else, but Jordan loves him like this too; they can be sinners together.
Each of them will wake up in the middle of the night sometimes, and the bed feels heartbreakingly empty in the cold dark.
