#“what can't wyatt johnston live without?” “joe pavelski.”

[hockeybot]

THAT PLAYER INTERVIEW, THO, THE ONE FROM TODAY WHERE THEY ASK HIM IF HE'S GOING TO BUY A HOUSE AND HE LAUGHS LIKE, YEAH, I GUESS I GOTTA

LIKE, he's 21 and lived alone for maybe six months now except is it really alone when he has all the rookies over all the time and my brain is going BRRR.

that prompt, wyatt buys a house, this is how he makes it a home one, tho, like, okay that is the most obviously me sentence ever written (x verb y, emotional hook full stop) but man, i have been watching those arwin critiques mansion youtube videos and i have so many thoughts about his potential house and what a disaster he would be trying to live in it on his own.

like, like,

everyone on the team would have such, opinions, about the best place to live, the neighbourhood and someone says the words "school zone" and someone else (tsegs) shrieks "JOHNNY ARE YOU PREGNANT" (the entire seguinette line go on a Skit, like, tsegs moaning WHAT DID I MISS and THEY GROW UP SO FAST and mush patting his back while wyjo just covers his face with his hands and prays that they don't start asking about the father. dutchy grins at him like he can read his mind).

(mikko has been on the team for about three days. wyatt tries really hard to not go up to him and say, i'm like, not actually pregnant. but mikko comes up to him and says, gravely, congratulations, on his way out. roope smirks at him.)

(roope had gone around with mikko to make introductions and called wyatt, 'our rookie, the kid' and when wyatt had protested, 'lian is right over there' and 'this is my third season,' harls had slid over, slung a heavy arm around wyatt's shoulders and crooned, 'yeah, johnny's a bigtime hotshot now, signed a big contract and everything.' into wyatt's red tipped ear.

lian, affable, had just waved.)

one of the finns (roope. it's always roope, but he's honestly just doing double duty for miro in Inscrutable Finn.) stops him outside and gives him a business card like, "this man will make you a sauna" and that's not a suggestion, that's a prophecy, that sauna will exist and this is before he even buys the damn house.

the thing is, he doesn't actually want like, a mansion, but when he counts up the bedrooms he'll need, the numbers keep going up and up.

takes tom to go looking and there's just, "why is there so much marble" wyatt moans, and "you could fit the entire team in this shower," tom says and they just, look at each other and try not to laugh too obviously while the real estate agent is still there. (facetimes delly to show him, wants to call logan but they're still exchanging awkward text messages only)

i will not write this, i really won't, because it'll take like 10k words to do justice but

wyatt hasn't spent most of his elc, didn't pay rent to the pavelskis despite offering again and again (Sarah had laughed at him and made Pav buy him like, furniture for his room, furniture he still has) so he has a little nest egg for his deposit, signs the agreement with more zeros than he's seen outside his contract, and has to sit down he's so lightheaded with the weight of five years pressing down on him.

it's summer when he moves in, between training and preseason and not having to try to convince too hard for tom to come back early with him, help him move boxes and unpack. every time he moves, his meager amount of belongings fill less and less of the space.

he doesn't expect to be lonely

tsegs suggests a dog, robo says cat and roope looks him up and down and says, maybe he should start with a hamster which. okay, wow. (wyatt can live without joe pavelski, okay, it's been two years and he's not dead yet - though maybe joe had come to stay in one of his woefully underfurnished guest rooms for a few nights already, that is besides the point)

WAVES HAND, the slow and not exactly sneaky campaign to get tom to move in, buys tom's brand of protein shakes that wyjo personally thinks is disgusting, etc, etc. I DON'T KNOW i don't have a plot and i don't wish to write this, i hope someone picks up the prompt tho, it would be so fun????

the thing is, wyatt's really bad at cooking for one. he can cook for a family of four or two young hockey players (roughly, this is the same amount of food) but by himself, he ends up staring confused at the still full pots after he's fixed himself a plate.

(calls tom, etc) and, maybe, it's not that late when wyatt suggests that tom sleep over, but they're health conscious elite athletes that should be on, like, routines or something so he pushes tom into the spare room closest to his own, already stocked with new toiletries in familiar brands.

(the finns are right, having his own sauna is awesome.)