#i told you i'd be crying about patrice

[mgrzelcyk]

man like. on the one hand, i never want to see bergeron retire—he is the heart and soul of this team—but on the other hand, i want nothing more than to see him go out on his own terms. i don’t want him to keep picking up single season after single season, continually risking injury, just for the pipe-dream hope of another cup or because he thinks the team needs him. he raised an entire generation of new bruins leadership in his image and no one will ever match him, but he should be able to retire in peace knowing that his legacy will carry on in the players he mentored.

[willysnylander]

Hello - this is a bit out of the blue but tumblr just served me the 🌹 snippet you shared for the marcheron curse au a few days ago thru the tag (which I follow) and it looks so delicious, I'd love to know more about it! As well as whether you have fic for them on ao3 👀 (can you tell that I'm a bit of a vacuum for the two of them heheh 😅)

hiiii!! sorry for the late answer (😅), but yes, i’d be more than happy to tell you about the fic!

so, of course, being a curse fic, this takes place in a sort of modern with magic au. it starts out with the bruins having just won a home game against the flyers (sorry, flyers fans, this fic is not exactly kind to you), and they’re all about to crash into the locker room to debrief and get to celebrating when patrice, one of the only players on the team who’s a magic-user, senses the presence of a curse hanging over the locker room. a bad one. there’s much panic that follows this, of course - assuming that the curse has been cast over the locker room itself, and knowing that curses cast over a location will just randomly attach itself to people who enter the space he gets the few players who went into the locker room ahead of him back over the threshold, blocks the entrance for the rest of the team, and after explaining the situation since most of the team is confused and concerned as to how he’s acting (brad most of all, naturally), gets someone to run and get one of the trained team mages so they can diffuse the curse.

only, they have a weird amount of trouble doing it. there are several tried-and-true methods that can diffuse any spell cast over a location, curse or not, as long as it hasn’t already attached to someone, but it takes a while for any of them to work when the team mages try them. eventually, though, the energy of the curse is gone from hanging over the locker room, so everyone figures one of the dissipation rituals must have worked and patrice can finally relax. and if he gets a weird, sickly feeling in his stomach as he’s saying goodnight to brad, a feeling that somehow seems like his inner magic trying to tell him something, well, he ignores it, because the curse is gone now, right?

but then, the next morning when he’s getting ready to leave for practice, brad doesn’t text him like he usually does. and when he gets to the garden, already a bit late because he’s been worrying about brad not texting him, he’s told that brad hasn’t shown up yet either, and suddenly, like his inner magic slapping him in the face, the odd feeling he got last night makes sense. the curse hadn’t been cast over the locker room - it had been cast on brad, but since the caster couldn’t get to him personally, they’d cast it in the locker room and let it wait to get hold of him. that’s why none of the team mages’ rituals worked, and the only reason they thought they’d worked was because the curse had latched onto its intended target.

and so patrice, now filled with horror at what a curse that had felt that bad against his own magic might be doing to his best friend, rushes straight back out of practice and to brad’s house, only to find him curled up on his bedroom floor, running a fever and seeming to be having horrifying hallucinations that have him crying and alternating between begging somebody to stop and telling them he’s sorry for something that patrice can’t figure out. panicking yet again, he calls linus, another of the team’s magic-users, and tells him what’s going on. after a break while linus confers with the team mages and patrice attempts to care for brad when he has a break of lucidity, only to start hallucinating again soon after, linus gets back to him… only to tell him that brad has been struck with one of the worst curses imaginable, one that leaves the victim hallucinating their worst fears until their body gives out from sheer terror - and one that has no known counter-curse or cure.

and so patrice is left in brad’s house, trying to keep him alive and as comfortable as possible given the circumstances while the team’s magic-using players and mages attempt to figure out a way to get rid of the curse. and all the while, patrice is left thinking about how the one guaranteed way to get rid of any curse, no matter how bad, is through true love’s kiss, something that’s so rare it’s barely even tried as a counter-spell.

he’s also left thinking about the fact that he’s been in love with brad for years, and wondering if it would be worth the heartbreak to try the cure if brad doesn’t love him back.

and to answer your question, no, i sadly don’t have any fic on ao3 for them yet (😔). i’m still relatively new to hockey, but i am working on quite a few wips right now, so hopefully this and other marcheron fics will be up on my ao3 soon!

thanks so much again for the ask, and i hope you’re doing well!! <3