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you knew dating a professional athlete came with its highs and lows.
with dating will, being sucked into the hockey world for the last two years meant different things: weeks without seeing each other while he was on the road, flashes of hugs in various arenas and and sneaky kisses in front of teammates, sleepless nights celebrating wins in bars you can't even remember the names of.
but it wasn't always all bad. will playing professional hockey meant you had him all to yourself (or at least when you could tear him away from macklin) for four months in the off-season, when the schedule slowed down and your days filled with late, sleepy mornings, trips to visit family back on the east coast, and nights spent slow dancing in the kitchen.
what you didn't expect, however, when you started dating will: the boston college alum, usa development hockey team trained, very professional athlete, was his very committed hobby of baking like someone’s suburban mom. of course majority of the time, you loved it. his chocolate chip banana bread could only rival those of french bakeries, and your family was extremely easily charmed by his personalized dessert spread at their first meeting.
at times like this though, in the present moment, you wondered if his love for baking somehow rivaled his love for hockey.
you woke with a bang, some clatter in the kitchen and a subsequent whisper of a very familiar voice cussing, "oh shit."
glancing at the clock in your bedroom, you note it flashed 2:07am. you then realize your bed has a very severe lack of a certain 6 '0 blonde boy who's leg is usually slung around your body like you'll run, and it only takes you a few seconds with a quick whiff in the air to connect the dots as to where your boyfriend is. the kitchen, of course.
you pad your way out of your room to see a sight for sore eyes. flour everywhere. a total count of four bowls laid out on your apartment's kitchen island. and will, in nothing but his sweatpants, aggressively mixing some sort of batter like it wronged him in some way.
"william charles patrick…care to share why you chose to leave our bed to bake…." you glance at the bowl, the ingredients, the few chocolate chips that have somehow strayed and made it across to the room where you stood in the hallway, "cookies….at this hour?"
he startles like he forgot other people live in the apartment, whipping his head up to look at you.
“jesus y/n..” he presses a flour-y hand to his bare chest dramatically, “you scared the hell out of me!”
you scoff, crossing the room to stand next and point at him, “you’re the one committing crimes in the kitchen at two in the morning,” you mumble, stepping closer and flicking a stray chocolate chip off the counter into his face. “i think I’m the victim here, mr. martha stewart!”
he huffs out a quiet laugh, running a hand through his already messy hair and leaving a streak of flour in it. god, you loved his longer hair. you also hated how he barely had to do anything and it always looked so good, even flour-y and at two a.m.
you cross your arms, pouting. “so?” you prompt.
will glances down at the bowl like it might answer for him. “it’s stress baking.”
you stare at him.“stress… baking.”
“yeah,” he says defensively, already scooping another aggressive swirl through the dough. “it’s a thing.”
“you’ve also never baked at two in the morning before.”
“that’s because,” he says, pointing the spoon at you like he’s making a very important point, “i’ve never had a game that annoying before.”
you lean against the counter, watching him with a small smile. so that's what this was. just hours before, the sharks had lost a hard-fought game, one that will talked about all dinner about missed calls and dirty players.
“so the will smith, level-headed solution to that” you say slowly, “was cookies.”
“exactly, baby.” he smiles boyishly, sending you a smirk only made for when you know he's up to no good. "chocolate chip cookies, in fact." he then dumps an aggressively large handful of chocolate chips into the bowl.
“scientific.” you reach over and steal one from the counter. “very professional athlete behavior, will.”
“hey,” he says, offended, whipping the bowl away from you, “toff and macklin stress game.”
“that’s not even a verb.”
“well it should be.”
you laugh quietly at the silliness of the entire situation, the sound filling your warm little kitchen in your shared san jose apartment, and he relaxes a little at the sight of it.
for a moment then, in your half-awake daze, you just watch him, flour on his cheek, hair sticking up everywhere, shirtless except for a pair of sweatpants, determinedly mixing cookie dough like he’s about to gear up to go into overtime.
then he glances up at you again. “…you wanna taste test?”
you pretend to think about it for a moment.
“someone has to make sure the suburban mom of the nhl doesn’t poison us.”
will grins, taking you in his arms and scooping a bit of dough onto the spoon. pressing a messy kiss to your face, he feeds you.
you know he's getting his floury mess all over you, but honestly, at two in the morning, standing barefoot in your kitchen with your talented hockey player boyfriend turned self-proclaimed amateur baker,
you think this might be one of your favorite versions of him.