#alexei mashkov knows from mental illness

[garden-of-succulents]

in love with the hurricane

Patater, 3k words, adult themes; discussion of suicide, homophobic language, violation of secrecy

(I wanted to fill my own prompt, but then realized I’d have to write out everything that I think happened the last time Tater shared insider information on Jack with Kent Parson. Which was… not good things, and affected their relationship a lot.)

Alexei’s reclining in bed after sex, one arm tucked up under his pillow and one around the man with his head on Alexei’s shoulder, feeling pretty good.  So of course that’s when Parson draws an experimental line down his pectoral and says, “I should swing by Samwell and see my man Zimms. His agent is leaving it pretty late, if he waits much longer to talk to management he’ll have to take whatever salary they give him.”

Kent Parson does this. Routinely, predictably, wind him up and watch him go; Alexei’s talked it over with his mother and come up with a very solid Rule of Parse. Any form of new or novel intimacy is going to make him lash out. Once he’s used to it he calms down; it’s when Alexei pushes somewhere he hasn’t gone before that Parson goes for the hurtful ammunition. Openly ogling or commenting on other men in front of him; flirting or getting handsy with women where Alexei can see; rubbing his hockey prestige in Alexei’s face; voicing his depression and self-hatred. The first time Alexei took his hand Parse had looked across the room and said, “Oh, he’s cute.”

Now Alexei’s brought Parse home, had sex with him in his own bed, and that’s rebounded back on him with the comment about Zimmermann. The reminder that this is the one Parse has been waiting for, the one Alexei’s known about since they first met; the one, presumably, he’d leave all his other lovers for.

It’s a bit more subtle than when a crazy-scared foster child gets moved in with a nice new family and wrecks their house, because they want to end the pain of suspense as soon as possible. I know you’re going to hate me eventually, so it might as well be now. More subtle because Parse isn’t a child anymore, and anyway Alexei hasn’t told him about this tell. If he tells, Parse might change or mask it.

It’s a behaviour that probably has chased a lot of people away. Of course it should; if Alexei weren’t cast-iron in a place that a lot of people are tender flesh, it would chase him away too, because Parse isn’t a child Alexei’s sworn to take care of, he’s an adult Alexei’s fucking recreationally. An adult who never wants someone to hate him before he’s given them reason, and therefore delights in giving reason. (“Delights” is the wrong word, but he’s not in the mood to be too deeply empathetic tonight.)

Alexei’s matured past the time when he would have loudly proclaimed, I’ll be the one who will love you no matter what you do. He’s learned not to swear that he’ll be the one who’ll never leave, no matter what. Kent Parson has a competitive nature; if Alexei threw a challenge like that in front of him, he would find a way to make Alexei abandon and betray him.

So with all this taken into consideration, he doesn’t rise to the bait. He counter-attacks.

“Aces management?” he rumbles, toying with Parse’s hair. “You think he is sign with Aces? I’m think he sign with us.”

“What, the Falconers? Lexi, I love you guys, but do you seriously—?”

“He is come to our morning skate on Tuesday,” Alexei says helpfully. “Laugh and joke with me, old guys. Well, we laugh. He smile. He is talk with Assistant General Manager, schedule meeting next week.”

Parse is very still for a minute, and then pushes himself up to look Alexei in the eye. He looks a little bloodless. “You’re serious." 

Alexei crosses his heart in reply.

"Shit,” Parse says, and pushes himself out of bed. His feet hit the floor with a thump and then he’s squinting around the bedroom floor for his clothes. Alexei turns on the bedside lamp to augment the moonlight coming in the sheers. “Fucking—god—”

A little clinically, Alexei thinks, He really did believe Zimmermann would come back to him. He’s wondered a little over the years whether Parson’s self-delusion really did go all the way down, or if it was just an act to push people away, get a rise out of them. It’s… well, it’s sad.

So he sits up and bed and watches as Parson struggles into his clothes, and then stands there, fully dressed, and meets Alexei’s eyes like he’s just realized that most people would be hurt or enraged or something by this response, by their immediate displacement in his priorities.

Alexei waves a hand. “I know when I tell you, you be upset, worry.” He pauses, then says, “I’m think you get different than what you want, from him.”

Parse shakes his head, and says faintly, “I have to try.” Then he licks his lip and says, “Look, I’m… I’m sorry. I know I’m being an asshole here.”

“You want apologize, you know my number,” Alexei says with magnanimous resignation, and Parson goes.

Parse doesn’t respond to his text a few days later, should I be wishing you congratulations? )) but he does call at the end of the week.

“Alexei,” he says warmly. “Thanks for picking up after what I did to you. That was an asshole move. I’m sorry.”

“I say I pick up,” Alexei says noncommittally, but Parse just rolls right on over him.

“Did I ever tell you what a great guy you were? You’re just so… tolerant. You’re so good to people that way. I’m so glad I met you, man. You’ve been a fuckin’ bright spot all these years.”

“Thank you,” Alexei says. “Party, I like you too.”

Parse laughs. “Party! I love that name. You do the best nicknames. It made me feel special, you know? I just… I want you to know how much you mean to me, Lexi.”

Alexei swallows an icicle, breathes deep, and says, “You want me to know, schedule next time I see you.  Maybe I take maintenance day when we play Stars in January?”

“Don’t, ah… let’s not schedule something yet, but I, ah. You gave me so many chances. More than I ever deserved. You know? You wasted so much time on a guy like me… I don’t think I’ll ever be able to repay that.”

“How did meeting with Zimmermann go?”

“Ah? Uh. Well. He’s got his own... stuff, you know, so I’m trying to take care of…”

“Parson,” he says, trying to make his voice gentle. “What is talk like this? Like you saying goodbye.” The silence on the line crackles, the sound of faraway breathing. The question on his tongue is an awkward one; he doesn’t know how to make it blunt enough without turning it ungainly, abrupt. But he asks. “What is plan here? You want to kill yourself?”

“Look, don’t worry about me,” Parson says. “You worry too much about everyone else, okay? It won’t, I’m not… I’m gonna fix things. Okay?”

“Because if you thinking suicide,” Alexei presses, “I can help, find ways to make you safe.”

“I don’t need your help,” Parse says harshly. “I’m fine. Leave it alone, okay? You’re not my mother. Or my boyfriend. Jesus.”

After he’s hung up, Alexei chews his lip for a couple of minutes, thinking.  He calls Parse’s friend Troy, gets his voicemail, leaves a text, and considers calling Vassily. He’s an Ace, so he might have a good perspective, except… Vassily is kind of an asshole, unsympathetic to Parse, and not smart about people.  No. Then he checks the time in Russia, and calls home to wake his mother up and run the conversation by her. 

“I would worry,” she replies. “A little because of what he said, more because he has tried before, and because this has been his reason not to for years.” And her judgment is the best he knows.

So he pours himself a glass of water, noting that when this is over he’ll have to take off his shirt and shower. He’s sweating with nerves. He calls Georgia Martin.

When he was sixteen, his friend Masha hanged herself in her closet with a length of rope, and it had been the end of the most helpless fight he’d ever had, because at the end of the day he couldn’t change what was in her head. Since then he’s learned a lot about his limits, about what he can’t do, about when he can only step back.

“‘Lo?” Georgia asked, gravelly with sleep.

“Georgia, is Tater,” he says. “I need the number of someone in Aces staff. Who works with players, every day. After hours, cell phone number. Is important. And urgent.”

She doesn’t say anything; he can hear her getting up, walking through the house, hear a computer booting up. As he waits he switches the phone to speaker so he can call up the notepad app.

“Andrew Waterhouse,” Georgia says, after some clicking and typing. “Assistant coach. Got a pen?”

“Yes,” he says, tersely, and types it out standing on the balls of his feet. He reads it back to her when she’s done, to make sure he’s got it right. “Thank you, George. I go call him now.”

“Welcome, Tater,” Georgia says, and as he hangs up he blesses her in his heart, but doesn’t stop. He just dials the next number.

“Mr Waterhouse,” he says, pacing up and down his kitchen when his call connects on the second attempt. “It’s Alexei Mashkov from the Falconers. I need to talk to you about Kent Parson.”

After a moment the man on the other end of the line says, “Okay?”

“Him and me, we have argument last week. He is in Providence. I say okay, you want to apologize, you call me.  Is normal. But also, I know he is expecting good news, thing he want very much for years.” He struggles to talk slowly, running his hand through his hair as he paces, wanting to get it all out as fast as possible but knowing he has to take time, marshal his English, make a case, be understandable. “Tonight he is call me. Not about argument, just, 'Oh, Lexi, you such good friend, appreciate what you do for me, want to say thank you for all these years’. Not grumpy like I expect. Is… elated? Calm? Peaceful? Mr. Waterhouse, my mother is suicide counsellor. I am knowing it is… he tell me before, he try sometimes, younger. Has not been for years because he is waiting for this good news. But I ask, did you get good news? And he says no, but…”

“Jesus Christ,” Andrew Waterhouse says. “You think he’s gonna kill himself.”

Alexei swallows and says, “Yes.”

“Do you know when?”

“No, sir.”

“Okay.” The man on the other end of the line takes in a deep breath. “Okay. I’m gonna act on this, okay? Right now. I appreciate you calling me.”

“Thank you,” Alexei says. “Please go fast.”

Waterhouse calls him back the next day to thank Alexei, to say Parse is “being taken care of”. Whatever it means, Parse is out for three games due to “undisclosed injury”.

So it’s with some trepidation that Alexei answers Parse’s call the day of the second scratch, and it’s quickly justified.

“You cocksucker,” Kent Parson spits. “I was fine. I know you’re the one who fucking told them. I should call your GM and get you locked in a fucking mental asylum.”

“Party,” Alexei says tentatively. “Good to hear you alive.”

“Don’t you fucking buddy me. You’re not my friend. A real friend wouldn’t have gone fucking over my head and—”

Alexei holds the phone away from his ear so he can think. He’s not a complete stranger to this form of ingratitude; Masha was an expert at it, and bullied him into keeping silence he regrets now. And the other thing is—he’ll put up with a lot from Parse, but this isn’t a little thing. This is a firehose of venom, and it’ll hurt both of them if he lets it continue.

He does the kind thing by removing Parse’s ability to hurt him in a way he’ll regret later. He hangs up.

I am sorry you are angry, he writes. For not believing you and breaking your secret. I understand if you need to be angry with me. But I am ok if you are alive to be angry. Hope one day you maybe forgive me.

“Mama,” he says later, when he’s told her the whole story, “I want to stop losing friends this way.”

“I know, little kitten,” she says, as warm as her fingers curling through his hair. “But you did good by him, all right?”

Alexei holds onto that. Sometimes he watches Aces games, once they get their star winger back, just to reassure himself that Parson is alive. He holds those things like compresses over the aching void of the man’s absence in his life.

They play the Aces again at the very end of the season, and Parse on the ice is a shitshow—so out-of-control and utterly heedless of his own safety that it terrifies Alexei, the way he’s been since he came back to the ice even though Andrew Waterhouse assures him the Aces are “on” his mental health issues. On the ice, he barely spares Alexei a glance.

The week beforehand, though, Parse had sent him a little funny email, just a macro of Alexei’s least-favourite ref and a joke to his disadvantage, and the note, “Found this on Twitter.” Tears had pricked Alexei’s eyes as he recognized it as the olive branch it was. He’d sent back pictures of his neighbour’s cat doing her morning patrol.

The night after the game Parse leaves the arena with his team, but he texts Alexei, Still want to meet up during the summer? I have some apologies to make.

For a minute Alexei just rests his phone against his lips in a silent prayer of gratitude. Then he summons back up the energy to reply, only if u r teaching me still to surf!!!!

#patater #alexei mashkov #alexei mashkov knows from mental illness #alexei mashkov loves kent parson a whole fucking lot #bpd kent parson #kent parson #stuff i wrote

[garden-of-succulents]

I'M GONNA TALK SOME MORE ABOUT TATER'S LESBIAN MOMS. I had the original idea back in October, and then I decided I was going to do it for my Swawesome Santa, which I thought was super secret like Yuletide, so I clammed up about it since then. So I actually put a fair amount of work into researching the idea, but the fic turned into this monstrously huge unwieldy outline with 14 separate plot-important scenes at its smallest, and like five different emotional arcs, and I couldn't do it, so I wrote Leave Your Lovers Like Campfires instead.

So now I'll just cut it down to one aspect, which is Tater's moms Sasha and Galina. Even just cut down to one aspect, in bullet points, without weaving in the other plot threads, this post is three thousand words long. /o\

I read what I could find in my libraries on social and LGBT history in Russia, but resources in English are honestly pretty limited and I know I'm making shit up here. MY APOLOGIES TO ACTUAL RUSSIANS. But for what it's worth, the books I found most useful were Lesbian Lives in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia by Francesca Stella, Cracks in the Iron Closet: Travels in Gay and Lesbian Russia by David Tuller, and Putin Country: A Journey Into the Real Russia by Anne Garrels.

Content notes: Homophobia, being closeted, coming out, mental illness, and suicide.

So. Tater's moms are Alexandra Yakovna Mashkova (Sasha) and Galina Ivanovna Fedorova (Galina). They were born in Ulyanovsk around 1970.

Galina comes from a hockey family. (No relation to Sergei Fedorov, though.) The men in her family were like ALL ICE HOCKEY ALL THE TIME--her grandfather was part of the first generation of Soviet hockey players, and played for a professional club in Moscow for a couple seasons; her uncle played in the Soviet Championship League. Her dad, although excellent, did not make it quite so far as his brother, and became a hockey coach and coached his sons in hockey.

Galina WANTED to play ice hockey, but it was the 70s and she was A Girl, so what can you do. In the 80s, though, women's field hockey started being a thing, and she nagged her father relentlessly until he agreed to coach a field hockey team in the summer.

Just about that time, Sasha was a 16-year-old ballet dancer who'd just failed several important auditions, and whose ballet instructor admitted that she might have given Sasha slightly overinflated ideas of her balletic potential. In a fit of rage Sasha quit ballet, saw a bunch of girls playing field hockey, and walked over to ask if she could join them.

Look, you know this story: slender, slightly reticent newcomer to hockey meets far-too-serious beefy hockey nerd who has to teach them how to deal with a little physical contact. They meet for early morning practices. They learn to appreciate each other's strengths and differences. They bond as people. They fall in l o v e.

And then Sasha graduates and moves awa--wait, what?

Galina doesn't know what she was expecting. She was kind of wilfully hoping the future would never come and they'd just be teenage girls playing hockey and getting grass stains and kissing in the bushes forever.

But Sasha graduates and moves away. She breaks up with Galina. Galina's heartbroken. She starts working at the same factory as her brother, keeps playing field hockey, wins a few tournaments, and won't tell her family why she cries when she hears Sasha got married.

Sasha goes to university, to medical school, becomes a doctor. She marries a fellow med student partly because she can have sex with him without gagging, which is more than she can say for most men, but more importantly because it gets them preferential student housing.

When Sasha does a psychiatric rotation, one of the cases a fellow student brings in for supervision is a homosexual man in a deep depression after his long-term boyfriend broke up with him. Their supervisor listens to a long-winded analysis of just what dysfunction caused the man's homosexuality, then snaps, "You're on the wrong track. Whatever makes these people like this, it isn't pathological, and it's a waste of time trying to change it. Focus on his depression instead. Get him functional enough to go back to work and find another lover he'll be happier with."

So she has that to chew on.

When medical school graduation rolls around Sasha and her husband add "arguing over where to move and what work to do" to the other things they bicker over all the time, and divorce. He fucks off somewhere. Sasha accepts a surgical residency back in Ulyanovsk.

Galina's family caught her kissing another girl (look privacy is hard to come by) and threatened to tell her coworkers if she did it again, so she is not on good terms with them. She moves out into shared workers' housing.

Sasha moves back in with her parents and goes to work as a surgeon.

Sasha and Galina... reconnect. *wink wink*

So. This.... is the part where it's important to remember that these are the women who raised Alexei Mashkov.

This is the crucible in which was formed a man willing and able to pick Kent Parson up with one arm like a naughty kitten and cuss him the hell out.

This is a family made of solid fucking steel

These are women who looked at each other in the 1980s and went, "You. You are what I want. I don't want anyone else but you. You... and a couple children."

"But how would they make that work?" you ask

Well

they are just

that

metal

So Sasha goes to a medical colleague who owes her a couple of favours and says, "I want you to artificially inseminate me."

"You could just get pregnant the regular way," he says.

"I could punch you in the face," she says, and he's a good guy (and never suggested he should inseminate her the usual way) so he agrees and she doesn't punch him.

She tells her parents that she's pregnant and doesn't like the father and anyway he's unimportant, pay no attention to the sperm donor behind the curtain, look a baby.

UNRELATEDLY: This is her good friend Galina! Galina lives in an apartment building whose heat just stopped working, and it's December. You don't want Galina to freeze to death, do you? She's going to be living in my room now. Okay thanks!

Anya is born in the spring of 1989, just as the political and economic situation is going to shit. But for Sasha and Galina the upside is, everyone is way too freaked out about everyone else to care about hunting down lesbians. (Lesbianism was never illegal; male homosexuality is decriminalized in 1993)

Sasha's six months pregnant with Alexei when Galina's job just literally stops paying wages and gives all its workers crystal vases in lieu of actual money, and they maybe wouldn't have chosen to have another baby so soon if they knew just how bad it was going to get, but, well, shit happens, they don't die, and Alexei is 57cm long at birth so not everything went wrong.

(Galina is 181cm tall. Sasha is 185. His height was not exactly a surprise.)

So, social order basically collapses in 1991, the year Alexei is born. A lot of shit happens, but then there's a tiny ray of unexpected good: Sasha's father starts speaking Hebrew again.

Nobody in Sasha's generation learned Hebrew, but when her father was very young, he went to secret Hebrew School, and although he never taught his children, he held on to what he knew. And when the 1990s came around, he started speaking Hebrew to the two grandbabies who were living in his apartment.

And then Anya and Alexei started speaking it back.

So like, look. There's cluelessness and general plausible deniability, and then there's your daughter raising her children with her lesbian lover under your roof for six years. It is quite likely that Sasha's parents knew what the fuck was going on.

And they didn't know fuck about LGBT rights or anything like that. They didn't take some enlightened stand. They just listened to their grandchildren playing hide-and-seek in Hebrew and knew that they had to find the good in this as it came.

(Incidentally.)

(Do you know how useful it is when you and your siblings speak a language that your parents don't?)

(ALEXEI knows how useful it is.)

In 1995 Sasha, who was back to working as a surgeon and doing research, got a job with a Swiss medical research company that just opened up a branch office in Moscow, so she, Galina, and their children moved there. They visited Sasha's family over the years, of course, but Alexei considers himself "from" Moscow, even if he was technically born in Ulyanovsk.

Growing up, Sasha was "Mama" to the kids, but Galina (who was "unemployed" a lot of the time and looked after the kids while Sasha worked) was "Auntie". To most people who knew them, Sasha and Galina came off as sisters.

Galina taught the kids how to skate as soon as they could stand, and gave them hockey sticks to help keep their balance. She was their first coach, opponent, and goalie. Girls' ice hockey teams sprung up in Moscow in the 90s, and Anya was on a few of them. Alexei played against his mother and sister for years before he was old enough to go on a team with other boys.

In Moscow, Sasha and Galina started actually making LGBT+ friends, and within the confines of their living room or country house, they had people who fully understood what they were to each other. Their children grew up with gay, queer, and trans "aunts" and "uncles". One of Alexei's earliest memories is accidentally making a chair tip over because he wanted the absolutely beautiful feather boa hanging off the back of it. (After he finished crying and was done being soothed, they did give him the boa to play with, but admonished him to ask before grabbing.)

After a hiatus of a few years, Andrei was born in 1998. His Hebrew isn't nearly as good as Anya or Alexei's, since they taught him their version of the language. He plays right wing in hockey.

It wasn't actually evident early on that Alexei was going to be OMG AMAZING at hockey? Like, he was very good, but there's a difference between "very good" and "NHL scouting wants to talk to you." Even at 14, 15, he looked like he might just be another excellent player. But then at 16 he hit a growth spurt and absolutely blossomed, and people who'd known him for years were saying, "Whoa, who the fuck is that?"

So for most of his childhood, Alexei planned on being a businessman, not a hockey player

He wanted to be like a guy who lived in their apartment building, who was an expert in industrial machinery and travelled to China a lot.

English is Alexei's fifth goddamned language, because after Russian and Hebrew, he learned a little German (Sasha took him to Switzerland on a business trip once), and then a few years of Mandarin in school

and then the pro hockey scouts came a-fucking-round and someone from the NHL tells Tater that they've got their eyes on him

and his response was like

"Fuck fuck fuck, this means I have to learn English, don't I."

IN SCHOOL THEY TOLD HIM LANGUAGES GOT EASIER THE MORE YOU LEARNED THEM

HE WANTS HIS MONEY BACK ON THAT PROMISE

So Tater knew he was gay from about age 13

And if he had known back then that he was going to be a serious contender for the KHL/NHL... oh boy, that's actually something he debates with himself.

If he could go back in time, would he really distance himself from the LGBT+ community? Would he make himself more palatable, cultivate the background of a classic Russian hockey hero?

Is that even possible when the mother who was absolutely essential to him becoming the player he is is the one who isn't related to him by blood?

Does he really want to take back the teenage friends he met who questioned themselves and their sexualities, who followed him home and met his parents and looked at Sasha and Galina with something like hope dawning in their eyes?

Isn't it just cowardice to want to take back his friendship with the lesbian who killed herself anyway? It's painful to look back on all those midnight hours convincing Masha not to commit suicide tonight, telling her to at least wait until morning, and he will always regret that it wasn't enough. But what would he do without the knowledge that came from finally pouring out his troubles out on his mothers' laps, Galina's knowledge of informal suicide counselling and Sasha's knowledge of psychiatric care? She died when he was 15 and left a handprint on his heart, but also an initiation into the mysteries of survival when queer and mentally ill. And for better or worse, his knowledge of that life-or-death struggle has come in useful in his life.

He can't say for sure that anyone in the Russian hockey world knows his mothers are lesbians. No one's ever said so. But his great-uncle, Galina's brother, who's now a League official, definitely knows; since he made the KHL, Galina's younger relatives have slowly come out of the woodwork, wanting to simultaneously condemn his mother and claim him, the professional hockey player, as family. He could drive himself crazy wondering: Who knows? Was the KHL so happy to let me go when I was 20 because of it? Do I not get picked for Team Russia because of it? What am I imagining, and what is real?

He would love to publicly acknowledge Galina as his mother, position himself as the heir of her line of hockey players, of wisdom, of knowledge. As a teenager he made the deliberate choice to stop calling her "aunt". Now it's "Mamochka" when it's just the two of them, fiercely refusing to let himself be distanced from her, from his parents' marriage.

The biggest reason he hasn't come out is Anya, who lives with her husband and two children in Chelyabinsk. She coaches girls' hockey; one of her players made the Olympic women's team. She gets a lot of prestige over having such a famous, skilled brother. If he came out as gay, that would be one misfortune; but if someone traced his family back and showed that their parents were gay, why, then it's practically hereditary, and then who would let her coach their little girls? And to some degree that's just a threat she lives with, an inevitability she knows is waiting for her, but... it's an underlying tension of the family. They know they have very real things to lose, if their secrets come out.

So yeah, Alexei moved to Providence right around the time anti-LGBT legislation was coming out in Russia (2011). After a lot of hemming and hawing, he finally went to George to say, "So here's the thing. My parents are lesbians, the mother who isn't legally my mother is in the habit of breaking the law by telling gay teenagers not to kill themselves, and I'm very worried." George, lesbian extraordinaire, was very nice and reassuring and set Tater up with an excellent immigration lawyer.

Alexei's been trying to convince his parents and Andrei to move to Providence continuously since moving there himself. He's bought a nice big house! IT'S SO EMPTY, LOOK AT ALL THIS SPACE, IT NEEDS FAMILY TO FILL IT.

Sasha's the most resistant--she doesn't speak English at all, fears not being able to research or practice medicine in the USA, and doesn't want to leave her friends and family behind.

(Well, technically Anya is the most resistant--it's just not an option for her. Her husband is a nuclear engineer with a security clearance so high he just can't get its American equivalent. She's staying with him in Russia. Period.)

Galina spends months at a time in Providence, especially during regular season and playoffs. Alexei loves it. It's not about being lazy or helpless, for him, it's about being loved, about coming home from practice to her soup, about going out with her to the movies. Sometimes she goes to NYC or Boston to teach or attend workshops on "queer resistance" and "guerilla lgbt advocacy" and to network with other LGBT+ Russians. He worries about her, but to be honest, the part of her that's a fighter kind of relishes the idea of getting in trouble with the authorities and being rescued and publicly acknowledged by her amazing wonderful homosexual son. Yes, she worries about Anya, but... of all the family, she's least sympathetic to Anya's position.

Andrei's still a teenager. Once his brother brought Kent Parson to their Moscow apartment and, when Andrei wasn't looking, got him to go into Andrei's room and sign his Kent Parson poster. It was... mortifying, but also awesome. Andrei thinks he's maybe straight or maybe pan? He doesn't know. He is pretty good at hockey though, and his brother is trying to convince him that he wants to play ECAC hockey, maybe for Brown University. Jack Zimmermann isn't much of a salesman for his old league--but if Jack gets Tater to introduce Andrei to the new Samwell co-captains, this kid has a much stronger chance of deciding he wants to move to the USA and play there.

Actually, if Alexei could have anything in the world, he'd introduce his now very old grandfather to his lesbian rabbi in Providence. But he's not so sure that's within the range of possibility, given his grandfather's health.

So

That's Tater

And his moms

#stuff i wrote #alexei mashkov #i don't know field hockey that well #but whatever position it is where you're very tall and you team up and knock people down? #that's what his moms played together #forbidden hockey lesbians