“Sidney comes highly recommended,” Zhenya hears at the edge of his consciousness.

Turning to a witch to save a loved one's life is one of the riskier gambles a person can take, but it's one that's arguably noble and brave. Falling in love with the witch, though—now that's just foolish.

When he takes the checker job, Zhenya doesn’t do much thinking about where the Giant Eagle he works at is located. What really drives it home is looking up from the quinoa, brussels sprouts, salmon, and box of Captain Crunch cereal on his belt late one night straight into the eyes of Sidney Fucking Crosby. For malkinmecrazy. Inspired by all the random fan photos of Sid in grocery stores.

Zhenya rode the Pens charter plane with the rest of the media crew: Michelle and Sam and the ROOT team. He went to bed too late and woke up way too fucking early. “Good thing you’re behind the camera instead of in front of it,” Michelle said one morning. She had a donut from the continental breakfast. Zhenya had two. “You look like me, too, if you don’t have all that makeup,” Zhenya told her crankily.

It was hot, and Sid felt kind of weird about thinking it was hot. This guy was screwing himself on camera for money. That wasn’t really Sid’s scene. He closed the browser window. Fine for other people, but not his thing.

The only place he doesn’t feel alone is the moment after a goal at home. The rest of the time, all Zhenya can seem to feel is the ways he’s disconnected from everything else, English a yammering cadence he fishes scraps of meaning from like an exhausted prospector. I’m smart in Russian, he wants to tell them. I’m funny, in Russian. I’m all kinds of things.

It had started at a promotional event for the Pens at a sporting goods store. A little boy with bright eyes had handed his new skates over to be autographed and said, very politely, “Will you please sign it? It’ll be super lucky if you do, and I can skate really fast and score a bunch of goals like you.”

Zhenya is re-looping the hair elastic around Alina's braid when he becomes aware there’s someone standing in the doorway. He glances up, and his hands freeze in place. Sidney fucking Crosby is standing there, looking hesitant, with a half-empty water bottle dangling from one hand.

Forbes family reunions are an Event, capitalised and all. Sidney’s dying, and it’s mostly because his great aunt Patricia won’t stop asking when he’s going to bring a nice girl to meet them, while everyone within earshot sniggers into their drinks. She’s somehow the only one who doesn’t know Sidney’s bisexual, and that it could very well be a not-so-nice boy he brings home one day. So he’s looking around frantically for an excuse to A) assert his sexuality to his slightly homophobic great aunt and B) escape, when he spots it in the form of a tall, dark and handsome stranger walking into the backyard with his second cousin Keith.

The Penguins call him in early when it turns out that Evgeni Malkin is coming over from Russia - or maybe ‘fleeing’ is a better word for it. “Metallurg had his passport,” Therrien says over the phone. “And when they had to give it back so he could travel with the team, it’s likely that they took - ah, other precautions.” Magical precautions, he means. They’re practically sanctioned in the Superleague these days, though it’s not like North American hockey has any room to point fingers. Sid grew up a Habs fan; he knows from curses.

Sid strips to finance his hockey habit. Geno attempts to tip with hockey gear. Somehow, they make it work.

Zhenya nudges Gonch with his elbow. "Who is that?" he says in urgent Russian, jabbing his glove at the now retreating zamboni. "Who?" Gonch follows the line of Zhenya's gaze, blinks when it lands on the zamboni. "What, the driver? Him?" Zhenya nods vigorously, his eyes fixed on the zamboni. Gonch stares at him for a few seconds before answering with hesitation, "That's...Sidney."

The first time Geno sees Sidney Crosby he’s crying into Tanger’s shoulder as Sid learns how to walk again on the big screen.

"No," Beau says sternly. "Geno, I am not wearing that." "Boss's order!" Geno says gleefully. "Is Paul Martin jersey. Ginger d-man, very handsome. You like!" Beau takes the jersey and pulls it over his head reluctantly. He very much regrets accidentally telling Geno that he has a serious weakness for muscular redheads.

They met by accident, fate, Geno always says, three years ago.

Malkin’s table stays until closing time, still lingering over that bottle of Beluga when Sid comes out of the kitchen to start his nightly closing routine. He goes through the same checklist of jobs he does every night after the kitchen closes but before the bar does, tries to keep his mind on the tasks at hand, but he’d be lying if he said he didn’t notice Malkin’s gaze tracking his movements, if he pretended that he can’t feel the heat of Malkin’s eyes on him as he moves around behind the bar. Sid tells himself to keep his head down, but when he does look up, just to test his theory, Malkin doesn’t even bother to look away, just holds Sid’s gaze, direct and unblinking with just the tiniest hint of a smile. The thing is, Sid’s notoriously bad at this stuff. He’s never had any working gaydar that he’s aware of, and he’s been wrong – very wrong – about this kind of thing probably more often, in his life, than he’s been right. So he assures himself this is just another one of those occasions where he’s definitely reading something incorrectly, imagining things, because there’s no way the captain of the Pittsburgh Penguins is, whatever – checking him out. That would be ridiculous.

When Sid goes down during the game against Capitals he knows the verdict long before the doctors tell him. With the rest of his career at stake, as well as the potential of a healthy life after retirement, he’s running out of options. When Sergei Gonchar reaches out with a questionable offer, Sid has a difficult time refusing.

When the Pittsburgh Penguins’ captain Evgeni Malkin complains about his lack of date for Valentine’s Day on social media, Sid can’t help but think that he could fix that problem easily. Well, if he was someone other than a grad student. He just didn’t expect his friends to actually make it happen.

Lots of people watch Geno. Like most people, really, at least let their eyes linger for a few seconds. For starters, he’s six foot three with a penchant for thick-soled combat boots and carefully sculpted hair arrangements that together can easily add 5 inches to his overall height. Then there’s the eyebrow ring, the purple streak through his dark hair, the smudged eyeliner, and typically, the tightest pants Geno can pour his fabulous if-he-does-say-so-himself ass into. All of those would be enough, any given day, to make people stop and stare. But today he’s also the guy most of North America watched in Prime Time last night, kicking ass and taking names as he as he swiped the Men’s Singles Gold from the clutches of that whiny fucking sore loser, Plushenko. So. Yeah, lots of people are watching him, but Sidney Crosby is not lots of people. He’s Sidney fucking Crosby.

“Hello.” Zhenya looks up, and there’s a small boy on the other side of the counter. He smiles so wide that Zhenya can easily tell that he’s missing one of his two front teeth—kind of like Sasha but more adorable—and he’s got dimples in his round cheeks. In which Geno is a chocolatier and Sid really loves the truffles his son keeps buying for him.

“Are you?” Taylor asks unexpectedly. “Am I what?” Looking up from the stove, Sid finds her watching him with an odd look on her face. “Happy.” It should be an easy question to answer.

There are a lot of things Sydney doesn't say. Sasha hears them all anyway.

“We were playing a pickup game on a rink in my hometown and I high sticked him in the face and knocked his front tooth out. I thought he was going to be so angry but he looked at me like he wanted to hold out his bloody tooth to me and propose.”

It’s 10 pm, and Sid is ready to scream.

This is an AU about a dick piercing.

Jordie is a totally supportive brother, which is why he's hiring Jamie a stripper.

Sid is almost 18 when he moves to Pittsburgh for a job--and the gay scene.

At 27, Sidney's divorced, sharing custody of his daughter with his ex-wife, and has a reputation for renovating historic homes. He's just doing what he loves, but an audition tape he doesn't remember submitting to HGTV lands him a job offer in Pittsburgh. A few years later, it brings him the client that will change his life.

All Leon wanted were some easy recipes, and instead he got this guy, this – Matthew Tkachuk, alias tkachukycheese, YouTube channel owner by bi-weekly afternoon and dietician who works a lot with school classes by normal profession. Matthew holds up a potato peel broken in two pieces. “And just remember, if it doesn’t work out perfectly, that’s fine. It’s all about practice and trying and enjoying the process. Perfection isn’t a prerequisite for being liked. Just look at the Oilers."

Auston’s ex-girlfriend didn’t need to warn him off. He’s never met a girl who was so obviously, so completely, so spectacularly out of his league as Mitch Marner.

“Most of the time, curses aren’t specifically or intentionally cast,” Alex explains. “It takes a lot of supplies, and time, and energy to set a curse. Most magic carriers won’t do it; it’s not worth it.” “If it’s not a curse…” “It’s a mutated spell.”

When it happened, Zhenya didn’t realize that it meant anything. Now, he had the distinct impression that he and Sid were in a fight — but could you even be in a fight with a coworker that you sometimes had sex with? Originally written for day 17 of Kinkuary 2022 (tentacles), but definitely not posted in time.

Nolan flips to his messages, but as expected, it’s mostly just unoriginal openers—who’s going to respond to sup, honestly—and unflattering dick pics. He rolls his eyes and goes back to the profiles. He comes across one guy, just a scant two miles away, who actually has his face in his profile picture, which is a refreshing change. He’s cute, longish dark hair with a sneaky smile, and his name is Travis. Nolan has never started a conversation with anyone before, but again: antsy and horny. He debates for an embarrassingly long time over what to say and finally settles on something simple. And dumb, probably, but the magic of anonymity is that he doesn’t really give a shit. And at least it’s miles better than a dick pic of a soft dick, which Nolan didn’t know was actually a thing until he got more than one. The bar is low, is what he’s saying here.

Auston would never have thought of going to the ballet on his own.

Tyler Seguin is a very good wedding planner. Which is why he’s not freaking out that Jamie Benn of the Dallas fucking Stars is sitting in his office.