Chapter Text
“Okay that is not how you play fetch,” Brad said, standing at the door to Bergy’s closet.
Bergy convinced him to dog sit for Wilson while the team was on a roadtrip and Brad was staying back home with an injury. There was actually not that much convincing involved per se; Bergy mostly just asked ‘hey do you mind looking after Wilson while I’m gone, he likes you more than his regular dog sitter’ and as was the case with 90% of the questions Bergy asked him, Brad said ‘yes of course’ without missing a single beat.
Except, as it turned out, Wilson had some very peculiar ideas about how fetch worked.
He dropped the ball to bark once now, standing his ground square in the middle of the closet, asking Brad to hurry up and get his ass over here. At which point of course, he was going to take the ball and run off to some other place in the house and raise hell to make sure Brad followed after him.
Really, this was no way to rest an injured ankle.
More importantly, he was pretty sure when Bergy asked him to stay in his house to look after his house he didn’t mean it as blanket permission to investigate every corner of the place, and especially you know, his closet.
But Wilson was not to be deterred. Putting on his best puppy face, he whined, threatening to tell his father tales of the awful mistreatment he received at Brad’s hands the moment Bergy was back.
Brad imagined Bergy’s face, the disappointment in his eyes as Wilson huddled close to him and said j’accuse! with wide betrayed eyes, pointing a paw at Brad.
He grit his teeth. That would not do.
“You win,” he said as he walked into the closet. “You better run fast or I’m gonna come and get you!”
But Wilson, that pesky hellhound masquerading as a Maltese Poodle mix, took this as an opportunity to surprise Brad once more, picked up his ball and threw it deep into one of the lower shelves.
“Oh give me a break,” Brad said.
Satisfied with his throw, Wilson merely barked happily in response.
Brad crouched in front of the shelf to retrieve the ball.
Maybe this was fetch after all.
Just.
In reverse.
President Obama had called him a little ball of hate but he was getting beat in a battle of wits by a dog. And not a large dog at that either.
The ball had landed on a neatly folded pile of clothes. It was covered in spit which meant the hoodie it was lying on now also had dog saliva on it, which--God, dog sitting was a lot more difficult than Brad imagined.
He ran a hand over the garment to inspect how bad the damage was and then he frowned at how familiar the texture was.
Huh.
But that made no sense.
Mostly to convince himself that he was making up things, Brad took the hoodie out.
And then he stopped. He blinked, once, twice, pinched himself, looked at the tag.
None of those things changed what he was seeing.
That was Brad’s hoodie. Not only that, but it was his favorite hoodie, a soft gray Bruins one that was half a size too large for him and always made him feel warm and safe whenever he put it on. He had whined and complained for a week when he lost it, even offered a get-out-of-a-chirp free card to the teammate or member of staff who would give him a lead on its whereabouts, but to no avail.
And it was...somehow tucked away into an obscure corner of Bergy’s closet all this time? Bergy had smiled and sympathized with his plight back then, but said nothing. What plausible explanation could there even exist for how it made its way all the way here?
He was still pondering this mystery when his eye caught the garment that was previously right below the hoodie on the shelf and was now exposed to sight.
A Bruins home jersey, the 63 peeking out mischievously on the arm.
Brad recognized it the moment he picked it up. The autograph in scrawny letters on the spoked B was unmistakable. What must have been a year ago he had made this bet with Bergy, but mostly with himself, said he would give Bergy his game worn jersey if Bergy scored a hat trick. Bergy, being Bergy, proceeded to do just that in the next game and Brad made a big deal of presenting him with his reward, knowing of course that it was bullshit. There was literally no reason Bergy or anyone on the team would care for his jersey. He knew it was Bergy’s good nature and kind heart that made him smile as he accepted the gift, thought it must have ended up in the hands of some charity or a fan a long time ago.
And yet here it was, folded neatly and tucked under Brad’s favorite and previously missing hoodie.
Still half convinced he was in a fever dream, he crouched back down and dug further. Under the jersey was a t-shirt, a t-shirt he’d forgotten ever existed but his nonetheless, and under that yet another one, all his.
Then he blinked, once, twice, pinched himself, knocked on his head.
None of those things changed what he was seeing. Hard as it was to believe, Bergy literally had a small tower made of Brad’s missing clothes.
“What is the meaning of this?” he asked Wilson, who was taking in the scene with calculated disinterest.
Wilson shook his head as if to say isn’t it obvious?
“Oh come on!” Brad replied with disbelief.
It wasn’t obvious at all. Sure, he liked Bergy, and sure Bergy liked spending time with him, laughed and smiled twice as much when he was in Brad’s company than any other time, but that didn’t mean anything. It meant they were friends. Besides Brad was about as subtle as a freight train and as he had told himself on multiple occasions, surely Bergy picked up on it by now and if he had liked Brad back, surely he would have said or done something. Surely there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for what his clothes were doing here. There had to be.
Right?