Sidney is starting to get a reputation amongst the Pens for being the go-to guy for free childcare. Or, five times Sidney babysat and one time someone babysat for him.

By the fourth time Crosby has hung up on him, Alex has to admit that this has gone from funny to, frankly, a little hurtful.

In which Sidney Crosby goes for a walk one day, and somehow most of the NHL ends up worshipping a defaced Winnipegian brick. It's all Jonny Toews' fault.

By the fourth time Crosby has hung up on him, Alex has to admit that this has gone from funny to, frankly, a little hurtful.

“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Patrick had a letter written on his wrist when he was born, small and even in black pen-print. Well, technically it started to show up a day after he was born, like a bruise that takes time to settle in. Patrick doesn’t remember, obviously, but his parents will tell him whenever he asks, how small it was and how it just... faded in, a little ‘J’.

Geno will always love his country. Even if it doesn't always love him back.

Sidney’s wedding day doesn’t go quite as he’d planned. When he’d bothered to imagine it at all, he’d thought of a nice June wedding in Nova Scotia, outdoors with the sun streaming down. He hadn’t imagined this hurried affair on the tarmac on a rainy and unseasonably cool day in early September, a month after his twenty-fifth birthday.

On the government's classified mutant register—and on the NHL's records—Sidney is listed as Sidney Patrick Crosby, Nova Scotia, Canada: Class Two. Death visions, skin contact required.

Ninety percent of everyone's problems could be solved by a robot that just texted NO to hockey players on a regular basis. Unfortunately, Sidney didn't have a robot.

“Geno? Are you okay? Physically,” Sid asks, which is good, because Zhenya doesn’t think he can put into words how he’s feeling emotionally. He imagines saying, The person I’ve loved for ten years finally took me to bed last night, but it turns out he didn’t want to, and now I can read his mind. No, thank you. “Feel fine,” Zhenya answers. “Even head feel fine.” And suddenly he realizes how fucking odd that is: he was concussed, and the room is brightly lit – he should be hiding under a blanket right now. He narrows his eyes and asks, “Sid, why head feel fine? What happen to concussion?” Sid takes a halting step closer to the bed and says, “Our bond, it’s—it’s a healing bond.” “Holy mother of God,” Zhenya breathes. So. They’re definitely not breaking the bond, then.

Sid didn’t introduce himself in the hallway, and he certainly doesn’t assume that people know who he is. So it would only be polite to thank Malkin again, this time more personally. He could write him a letter. An email? No, a letter.

He saw the horn poking out from the pony's head, golden and straight and somehow delicate-looking despite the empty tuna can hanging off of it. The unicorn horn. "The fuck," Sidney said out loud, his eye skipping from the horn over the greyish-white body to the graceful gold-toned hooves.

RainyForecast)

Magnitogorsk doesn’t hold much for him. He stares down the barrel of his future there: toiling away at a factory job, living and dying streets away from where he was born. He rubs the water-smoothed stone in his pocket, and thinks of the thunder of the waves. He knows that staying here will kill some essential part of himself. And so, he leaves. For PatriciaKoiFish, I hope very much that you like it :)

AU: Sidney Crosby is a foster kid growing up in Nova Scotia. Geno Malkin is a Russian transplant. They play hockey. And also have sex. I claim to know very little about the junior hockey league and even less about Canadian Childrens Aid Services.

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.

Shadows are falling and I've been here all day It's too hot to sleep and time is running away Feel like my soul has turned into steel I've still got the scars that the sun didn't let me heal There's not even room enough to be anywhere It's not dark yet, but it's getting there - Bob Dylan