#this is so mean to the goalies i'm sorry georgi 😭😭😭

[moregraceful]

💘 for any Cuda/sharks pairing of your choice! Please and thanks!

THANK YOU for giving me an platform to be weird about the Cuda goalies... I can't believe this is my first Cuda fic on main all year, lmao. I wish this team could be normal.

;;

Nikolai makes the North American boys host a party for the Captain, and for morale, at their house, which Georgi doesn’t really feel will help morale, but when he tries to get out of it, Daniil says, “oh, it’s not optional. Kolya said.”

Whatever Nikolai says goes, so Georgi brings his worst vodka, figuring if nothing else, he can make Ozzy do something reckless and stupid with it. Ozzy’s always up for a good time.

The party is fine. There are cows on one side of the house, and guys shooting golf balls into a field on the other side, and a lot of cheap beer, and the vets actually pull up even though they all have kids, and even the Captain comes and he sort of smiles when he walks into the backyard and they all cheer. It’s too cold to swim in the pool, but not too cold to hang out outside on beat up adirondack chairs that have seen years of wear from generations of hockey players. The sunset is nice, and Scott and Cole start a fire in the firepit, and Georgi wins multiple rounds of beer pong against almost everybody when he’s paired with Shakir, so it’s okay overall.

He can’t leave without one of the guys driving him home and Goosh is wrapped up in something incomprehensible with Ozzy, but which involves a baseball bat and wiffle balls, so he lets Eetu and Magnus set up another game of beer pong against him and Shakir.

Eetu and Magnus came to win, but that’s how it always goes with them and Georgi. They’re a matched set against Georgi, often, threads of frustration and jealousy leftover from the beginning of the season woven into how they talk to him, even though he’s back and forth between San Jose and Wichita now. Georgi, only called up when one of them is injured or Magnus is called up, and they still treat him with a kind of detached disdain, their tone a little mean, and he can’t always understand what they’re saying, even when he knows the words.

He wishes the three of them were better friends. He’s on the outside looking in with them, pressing his face against the glass like in games when he’s a back up, wishing he was part of whatever they have, wishing he was the third in their set, wishing that when it was Eetu and Magnus against the entire team, Georgi could stand with them.

God knows he wants to chase his teammates with a switchblade most games. He would have thought they would find common ground with him there. But they don’t seem to like him, really. It's really the core, beyond the jealousy and frustration: they don't like him like much at all.

Eetu and Magnus are good at beer pong, because they’re goalies, but Georgi is just as good at them, better even, because Shakir gets bored of how mean the three of them are to each other, and walks off, leaving Georgi alone. He mutters something in Bashkir as he leaves, something that Georgi is pretty sure means, “you’re all morons.”

Georgi wins. He expects them to fuck off, but Eetu and Magnus are clearly in a dangerous kind of mood, because they challenge Georgi again, this time with George's vodka.

Georgi pours the entire bottle evenly across all the cups. Magnus takes a sip and chokes. “Holy fuck,” he wheezes. He hands the cup to Eetu to taste and Eetu makes a face when he smells it.

Robbie, ever the good host, left several bottles of cranberry juice by the beer pong table, so Georgi pours cranberry juice too, to soften the blow. They play again.

A switch flipped somewhere, Georgi’s competitiveness crossing wires against his discomfort with not fitting in, making him unsteady and anxious, and Magnus and Eetu get the upper hand quickly. Georgi starts losing, badly, and while Magnus and Eetu are drinking their fair share of his fucked up vodka and clearly feeling it, Georgi’s down full cups midway through the game and wobbling. He feels bad, and sad, and Eetu and Magnus are chirping at him in Swedish so he doesn’t understand and can't respond, and mostly now he wants to go find Shakir and make him take him home. Losing's only fun when the other guys are having fun with you. 

He lifts an arm to throw the ball and then drops the ball when he realizes he’s drunk enough to vomit. “I need to sit,” he says. “Forfeit.”

He tries to take a step toward the low wall surrounding the backyard and miscalculates so badly that he nearly falls. Eetu and Magnus rush to catch him and they walk him over to one of the weird beat up loveseats and set him down. Eetu disappears into the house and comes back with water bottles, the nice ones that Brandon hates when people steal, while Georgi tries not to throw up in the weeds growing up against the chair.

Eetu uncaps Georgi’s water bottle and hands it to him. Georgi takes small sips until he feels less nauseous. He watches as Magnus guzzles his water and Eetu takes long, long drinks.

Georgi is outside looking in, always. He doesn't even drink the same as them. He sighs.

Eetu brushes Georgi’s hair back. He’s very gentle and that makes Georgi feel worse. “Georgi, what’s wrong?”

“I wish you liked me,” says Georgi. He doesn't know how to say it in English without sounding soft, so he says, in Russian, “I wish you two wished me well, like I do for you.”

Magnus looks confused. “We do like you.”

Georgi doesn’t know how to explain it so he just makes a face. “No.”

“Yes,” says Eetu firmly.

Georgi wishes Nikolai would rescue him, but the light above them has a blown out bulb and the sun has set, so it’s dark and Nikolai probably has his hands full trying to make sure Daniil doesn't steal a cow. He sighs again.

“Georgi,” says Eetu, more firmly. “We waited for you.”

Georgi makes another face, because they never wait for him, after games, after practices, never. “When?”

“Last game,” says Eetu. “In the shoot out, you remember, me and Mange, we waited by the glass for you ”

Georgi does remember that, but he didn’t think that counted. They greeted him briefly as he was coming off the ice, and then disappeared into the locker room while he got pulled aside by the trainers to check something. He had wanted to spend a moment longer with them – the familiar proud look Eetu had and the determined look on Magnus’s face were rarely directed at him – but Emi was worried about how he’d been skating on his knee and made him sit while she checked him, and by the time he’d been let go, they were wrapped up with the other Northern Europeans in the locker room, and ignoring him. That didn’t count as waiting, he thinks, but maybe for them it did.

He rubs a hand across his face, breathing heavily. “Okay.”

Eetu takes his hand away from his face. He kisses the palm of Georgi’s hand. Georgi’s breath catches. His heart hurts and he hates it. He hates how soft he feels, how tender and wanting.

Eetu scrapes his teeth against the rough pads of Georgi’s palm and kisses his hand again and again. Magnus runs a hand through Georgi’s hair and presses his thumb at the corner of Georgi’s eye, like he wants to draw out the wetness there. Georgi blinks and when Magnus catches whatever comes, he takes his hand away and puts his thumb in his mouth to taste it. He hums, pleased.

Fucking freaks, but Georgi can't say he’s not into it either. It’s actually his exact brand of freak, which hurts more, knowing they have something he didn't know about, but which he would be so good at, and love so much, and make better, with them.

“You don’t have to worry,” says Eetu.

“Show me,” says Georgi, closing his eyes.

Magnus kisses him roughly, both hands on Georgi's face, thumbs pressed against the corner of Georgi’s eyes to draw out whatever drunken tears are there. He lets go, kisses the corners of Georgi’s eyes, one than the other, humming again at whatever he tastes.

From inside the house, Jacob yells, “Mange, where are you?”

Eetu hauls Magnus back. He kisses Georgi, more gently than Magnus, but also he bites at Georgi’s mouth until Georgi opens up, and he pulls away immediately to kiss up the tear tracks on Georgi’s cheek.

“Mange!” Jacob yells again. “Come show Lindy that thing you showed me!”

Magnus pulls Eetu back by his elbow. They look down at Georgi, their bodies unreadable in the dark backyard. Georgi wishes he could read them. Georgi wishes he was part of them, whatever they are.

Jacob yells something in Swedish, echoed by both Oskar and Tristen. Magnus touches Eetu’s hip, and they leave Georgi alone. He can hear them raise their voices when they get inside, like they weren’t just kissing him.

Georgi leans over and puts his head in his hands, breathing heavily, trying to force the tears back in. He can hear the old guys talking by the fire, their conversation much less slurred than anyone else at this party, Cole and Scott laughing gently at Nathan, and Radim’s steady chuckle. He’s glad they didn’t see, but part of him wishes they did, wishes they had stopped it.

Shakir finds him a little later. He always knows where to find Georgi, knows when Georgi’s upset. Georgi wishes he could take Shakir everywhere.

Shakir sits down next to him. “Georgi,” he sighs and puts an arm around Georgi, resting his head on Georgi’s back. He smells like White Claw and milkweed, like he too had been hitting golf balls into a field.

“Can we go home?” says Georgi.

“Yes,” says Shakir. He presses a kiss between Georgi’s shoulder blades and stands up. “I’ll call Nikita. Come.”

They get up and walk around the side of the house so no one has to see Georgi’s been weak and crying over men who don’t like him like he likes them. 

Nikita picks them up ten minutes after Shakir calls him, and Georgi sits in the backseat, listening to Shakir distract Nikita from how much of a mess Georgi is, mocking him fondly, engaging him effortlessly, long years of familiarity born in a town on the East Coast, a friendship and a bond built in the minor leagues that won’t be broken easily. Georgi wants that too.

So embarrassing, crying like this when he’s drunk. Like a teenager who can’t hold his alcohol. Magnus and Eetu making him cry, and watching him, and kissing him. And he’s going back to Wichita soon, he’s sure, and that’s what they’ll remember about him when he goes, drunk on a bench in the dark, wanting them when they don't want him back.

It’s a hopeless thought, but, he thinks, at least Magnus and Eetu got to taste him before he leaves again. 

[princesstillyenna]

Tilly tilly tilly tillly,,,, is there a GC!verse igor and if so 👀👀👀👀 also unrelated but I was watching a video today of Georgie joining Henke in being one of only 2 goalies in the last 50 years to get 50+ saves on ther bday and 🥺🥺

I mean... TECHNICALLY THERE IS... because everyone EXISTS there right??? BUT if I write igor into the GC verse then it will absolutely be to write him in as polyamorous, and then to write myself in as a self insert to be dating his gorgeous other half anna. Soooo there's that. (seriously, she's incredible, also I cannot wait for news of their baby WHICH I PREDICTED IN FEBRUARY)

Also, georgie is SO UNDERRATED AND I AM SO PROUD OF HIM. That's a super obscure fact though. And I love really obscure facts...

More about georgie under the cut

So, I have FEELINGS about aleks going to colorado (yes, he is an aleks not a sasha, and that is how he spells it, it's confusing because it's my bestie's name, but sorry bestie, you have to share with georgiev). He is SUPER introverted, like the most introverted introvert ever to introvert and I feel like the Avs can be KIND OF BOISTROUS at times and idk how well he's going to cope with that.

BUT, he is also a certified horse girl™️ so he can definitely bond with EJ over horse girl facts, as long as EJ promises not to be too... MUCH ok. because that's A LOT. And aleks is SO PRECIOUS.

Also his instagram is SUPER SAD idk why it makes me feel that way, but it does, because it's basically either photos of him, photos of him with filda (chytil) or photos of him with his mum. And like, god aleks, I just want to give him a HUG you know except HE WOULD HATE THAT. If you ever meet him IRL and you a super exuberant american fan and you wish to HUG HIM, please don't, it seems like that would make him really uncomfortable, and he'd put up with it for you, but also, he'd hate it.

So yeah, there's that. Aleks Georgiev in a nutshell. I'm hoping Frankie will protect him and let him hide behind him in social situations? IDK... He really wasn't doing well on the Rangers because Igor WON'T DO THAT because Igor is too busy trolling people... because he's a troll. (god I love him)

Gonna miss Georgie so much 😭