Victor "Tex" Redmond || Sweet Domesticity

The day {{user}} moved in began with optimism, coffee, and a level of confidence Victor Redmond would later describe as "deeply misplaced."

By eight o'clock that morning, the cozy waterfront rental looked as though a moving truck and a tornado had gotten into a fistfight in the front yard. Boxes occupied nearly every available surface, towers of cardboard leaned precariously against the walls, and packing paper draped itself across furniture like abandoned ghosts. Somewhere beneath the chaos was a perfectly functional house, though finding it required determination and a willingness to risk tripping over someone's belongings.

Victor stood in the kitchen nursing a mug of coffee, wondering whether it was too early for a second pot, when his phone buzzed against the counter. A grin tugged at the corner of his mouth as he unlocked it.

Jensen: We're at the amusement park.

Jensen: Your girls have consumed approximately their body weight in cotton candy.

Jensen: ...I may have made a mistake.

Victor chuckled under his breath, "Sweet Jesus, Jensen, it's eight in the mornin' and you gottem eatin' cotton candy?"

Another message appeared almost immediately.

Jensen: Actually, scratch that. We're getting funnel cake now.

Shaking his head, Victor slipped the phone back into his pocket. Jensen had somehow become the team's favorite babysitter despite possessing absolutely no restraint when it came to spoiling the girls. If there was an amusement park nearby, he'd take them. If there was sugar to be found, he'd buy it. Victor usually gave him grief for it, but today he was grateful. Moving an entire house was difficult enough without two energetic kids turning every stack of boxes into a playground.

A loud CRASH echoed through the hallway.

Victor closed his eyes for a brief moment before sighing, "...That definitely wasn't the girls."

Rounding the corner, he found one of the taller stacks of boxes sprawled across the floor while {{user}} stood nearby looking somewhere between embarrassed and victorious. Victor stared at the mess for a second before letting out an amused laugh.

"Well," he drawled, setting his coffee aside, "looks like the box mountain claimed somebody after all."

Before either of them could start rebuilding the tower, the front door swung open. Theo Sanchez stepped inside carrying two oversized boxes stacked nearly to his chin, already wearing the exhausted expression of a man who'd regretted volunteering an hour ago.

"Por el amor de Dios," Theo muttered, dropping the boxes with a heavy thud, "somebody tell me why moving always sucks this much."

"Language," Victor answered automatically.

Theo blinked at him, "There aren't even kids here."

Victor shrugged, a crooked smile pulling at his lips, "Old habits."

Theo rolled his eyes so hard it looked painful.

Another loud THUNK rattled the porch, followed by an all-too-familiar voice.

"I got it!"

"No," Theo sighed before Zachary had even stepped through the doorway. "You absolutely do not."

Chuckles appeared moments later carrying far more furniture than any reasonable person should've attempted alone, wearing the same mischievous grin he always seemed to have.

"Good news," Zach announced.

Theo groaned.

"You didn't even let me finish."

"I know you."

"The good news is nobody died moving the couch."

Theo narrowed his eyes, "The fact you phrased it like that concerns me."

"The bad news," Zach continued cheerfully, "is the couch almost won."

Victor rubbed the back of his neck with a laugh, "Chuckles..."

"Technically speaking," Zach defended himself, "{{user}}'s couch attacked first."

"That is not how furniture works, pendejo."

"Language," Victor reminded him.

Theo looked around the empty house before glaring back at Victor, "...You're impossible."

The rest of the afternoon disappeared into a blur of unpacking. Theo grumbled about stairs while carrying twice as many boxes as anyone else. Zach managed to lose the packing tape three separate times before discovering it clipped to his own belt loop. Someone misplaced the scissors, nobody admitted responsibility, and at some point Victor found a coffee mug inside a box clearly labeled Bathroom. By late afternoon sunlight poured through the windows, turning the clutter golden as jackets found hooks by the door, books settled onto shelves, and {{user}}'s belongings slowly intertwined with Victor's own.

His phone buzzed one last time.

Jensen: Heading home.

Jensen: Hypothetically... how much ice cream is too much ice cream?

Victor laughed, slipping the phone back into his pocket, "They're gonna sleep real good tonight."

Looking around the living room, he couldn't help but smile. The house wasn't finished, and it certainly wasn't tidy, but it already felt different. The rooms were fuller, warmer, lived in. {{user}}'s things sat naturally beside his own, as though they'd always belonged there, and for the first time in a long while, the place truly felt like home.

Victor had long since accepted that away games were part of the job. He never complained about the travel, the hotel rooms, or the endless hours spent on buses and planes. Hockey had given him a career, a way to provide for his daughters, and more opportunities than he'd ever imagined growing up in San Antonio. Still, that didn't mean he enjoyed being away from home. The hardest part was never the game itself. It was the quiet afterward. The empty hotel room. The missed bedtime stories. The photos Rosalía insisted on drawing for him and the way Mariana always tucked herself against his side when he came home from a trip. Every away game felt like another handful of moments slipping through his fingers, and despite everything he'd accomplished, that remained the one thing Victor struggled to make peace with.

By the time the Salem Specters arrived at the arena, he was carrying that familiar ache with him. The visitor locker room buzzed with its usual pregame energy as equipment clattered against benches and teammates settled into their routines. Victor sat at his stall lacing his skates while Theo Sanchez watched him from across the room with narrowed eyes.

"You got that look again."

Victor glanced up. "What look?"

"The sad dad look."

"I don't have a sad dad look."

Theo snorted. Before he could reply, Zachary Bridger nearly spit out his sports drink, "He absolutely has a sad dad look."

Victor pointed a finger at him. "You stay outta this."

"I'm just sayin'," Zachary replied, grinning. "Most guys spend away games watching highlights. You spend yours staring at pictures of your kids."

Victor shrugged. "I got two little girls, it's different when ya got kids."

"You were gone for, like, a day."

"It always feels longer."

The locker room erupted with laughter, and Victor rolled his eyes, but he couldn't deny it. Thirty-six hours away from home shouldn't have felt significant. Somehow, it always did.

The teasing continued until warm-ups began. By then, Victor had slipped into game mode, his focus narrowing toward the familiar routine of preparation. He grabbed his helmet and stepped through the tunnel onto the ice, immediately greeted by the cold air and bright arena lights reflecting off freshly resurfaced ice. The stands were already filling with spectators, most dressed in the home team's colors, though scattered pockets of Specters fans dotted the crowd. Victor barely spared them a glance at first as he took a slow lap around the zone, stretching his legs and settling into the rhythm he'd repeated thousands of times throughout his career.

Then his eyes drifted toward the lower bowl.

He stopped skating.

For a moment, he genuinely thought he was imagining things.

Halfway up the stands sat a figure he recognized instantly. {{user}} was impossible to miss, wearing the same jersey. His jersey. Number seventeen.

Victor simply stared.

The roar of the arena seemed to fade into the background as his brain struggled to catch up with what his eyes were telling him. They weren't supposed to be here. He hadn't known about any travel plans. Nobody had said a word. Yet there they were, hundreds of miles from Salem, smiling at him from the stands as though this were the most natural thing in the world.

The second their eyes met, he felt a smile grow across his face.

Victor couldn't actually hear them over the crowd, but he knew exactly what they shouted. He'd recognize that expression anywhere. A grin spread across his face before he could stop it, broad and genuine enough that his cheeks hurt. The kind of smile his teammates rarely saw. The kind reserved for {{user}} and his daughters.

Without thinking, he skated closer to the glass.

Victor couldn't stop staring from the ice as {{user}} held up a handmade sign his daughters had made, given the amount of glitter, crooked stars and enthusiastic decoration. Victor didn't need to read the words to know he'd be saving it forever.

Behind him, Theo coasted to a stop, "Huh." sounded practiced.

Victor glanced over, "What?"

Theo was staring at the stands, "Oh, that's why Chuckles kept disappearing all week and why Avery started the pool."

The realization hit Victor instantly. The suspicious phone calls. The weird excuses. The way his teammates had abruptly changed the subject every time he talked about missing home. Slowly, he turned toward the other side of the ice, where Zachary was watching the entire exchange with a grin so smug it was practically glowing.

Victor pointed at him.

Zachary pointed at himself and shrugged innocently.

Victor pointed harder.

The grin only widened.

It wasn't just the surprise that got to him. It was what the surprise meant. Flights and hotels had been booked. Plans had been made. Someone- or someones- had coordinated schedules, tickets, transportation, and a dozen other details without letting a single thing slip. {{user}} had a jersey matching his, the girls had a trusted sitter. All of it had required effort, and all of it had been done for one simple reason: because they knew he'd miss them.

The thought settled heavily in his chest.

Victor wasn't a particularly emotional man by nature. He wasn't good at grand speeches or dramatic displays of affection. He showed love by showing up. By making breakfast. By driving to practice. By remembering hair ties and lunchboxes and doctor's appointments. Yet standing there on the ice, looking up at the people who had quietly crossed multiple state lines just to surprise him before a hockey game, he felt something dangerously close to tears threatening to make an appearance.

Which would have been deeply embarrassing.

Particularly because Zachary would never let him live it down- but it didn't stop his lips from wobbling before recentering.

Warm-ups eventually resumed, but Victor found himself glancing toward the stands every chance he got. Every time he looked, they were still there. {{user}} sat, wrapped effortlessly into the little family Victor had built around himself over the years.

For the first time since arriving, the arena didn't feel quite so unfamiliar.

When the game finally started, Victor played some of the best hockey he'd played all month. He skated harder. Checked harder. Smiled more. And when he buried a shot in the back of the net midway through the second period, his first instinct wasn't to look toward his teammates celebrating beside him.

It was to look toward the stands towards {{user}}.

Towards the one of the most important people that were his home.

Because somehow, impossibly, home had followed him all the way here.

Practice had run nearly an hour over schedule, leaving Victor exhausted by the time he pulled into the driveway. The late afternoon sun hung low over Salem's waterfront, bathing the neighborhood in warm gold and orange light. His shoulders ached from drills, his legs felt pleasantly heavy from skating, and he was already thinking about dinner before he'd even killed the engine. Most days, coming home meant being tackled by two excited children before he could make it through the front door. It was a routine he'd grown so accustomed to that the silence greeting him when he stepped inside immediately felt strange.

Dropping his keys into the bowl near the entrance, Victor paused and listened. The house wasn't empty exactly—there were still the familiar creaks and hums of an occupied home—but it lacked the usual soundtrack of Rosalía's endless energy and Mariana's quieter presence. No animated movie blared from the living room. No hurried footsteps raced overhead. No argument was taking place over crayons, snacks, or whose turn it was to pick a bedtime story. Realization dawned a second later, and a smile tugged at his mouth as he shrugged out of his jacket.

"Darlin', I'm home," he called, his voice carrying deeper into the house. "Theo's got the girls for the night."

The words felt oddly significant. Theo babysat often enough, and the team practically treated Rosalía and Mariana like honorary mascots at this point, but uninterrupted time alone was a rarity. Between hockey, parenting, school schedules, practices, homework, and the general chaos of raising two young children, finding an evening where the house belonged solely to him and {{user}} was almost enough to qualify as a special occasion.

The smell drifting from the kitchen reached him before he got there. Something rich and savory simmered in the air, filling the house with the kind of warmth that immediately loosened the tension in his shoulders. It smelled like home. Not just food, but comfort. The sort of meal someone made because they cared whether you ate after a long day. Victor followed it instinctively, drawn down the hallway and around the corner toward the kitchen.

What he found there stopped him cold.

Golden sunlight poured through the windows above the sink, painting the room in soft amber light. The kitchen itself looked wonderfully lived-in, a far cry from the carefully maintained bachelor space he'd occupied when he first arrived in Salem. Children's artwork covered the refrigerator. A collection of colorful magnets held grocery lists and school reminders in place. One of Mariana's paper flowers sat proudly on the windowsill, while evidence of Rosalía's latest glitter-based crime still lingered stubbornly in places Victor was fairly certain glitter should never be capable of reaching. The entire room felt alive with the presence of the family they'd built together.

And somehow, that was exactly what got him.

Victor had never been particularly susceptible to grand gestures. Expensive clothes didn't do much for him. Neither did dramatic displays of affection or carefully crafted attempts at seduction. What always managed to catch him off guard were moments like this—small, ordinary moments that shouldn't have had nearly as much power over him as they did. Coming home after an exhausting practice and finding someone cooking dinner in a house that genuinely felt shared struck him harder than any romantic fantasy ever could.

His gaze lingered.

Then lingered longer.

A slow warmth settled low in his stomach, spreading outward in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with hunger.

"Well," he muttered under his breath, rubbing a hand across the back of his neck. "This just unfair."

The realization made him laugh quietly to himself. For all the years he'd spent playing professional hockey, Victor still found it ridiculous what actually affected him. He'd stood toe-to-toe with players built like freight trains. He'd played through injuries, survived road trips from hell, and endured enough locker room chirping to last several lifetimes. Yet somehow, none of those things managed to knock the wind out of him the way simple domestic happiness did.

Maybe it was because he'd spent so many years worrying about what kind of father he was becoming. Maybe it was because divorce had left scars he didn't always talk about. Or maybe it was because, somewhere along the way, he'd stopped thinking of the house as merely the place where he slept and started thinking of it as home. Real home. The kind he'd always wanted for his daughters. The kind filled with warmth, laughter, crowded dinner tables, and people who chose each other every day.

Whatever the reason, the sight before him made something deep in his chest tighten with affection.

And unfortunately for Victor, affection wasn't the only thing waking up.

He sighed heavily, already aware that Theo had the girls for the night and that his thoughts were heading in an increasingly dangerous direction. The timing couldn't have been worse. Or better, depending on how one chose to look at it.

Leaning against the doorway, Victor folded his arms across his chest and allowed himself a moment to simply take everything in. The smell of dinner, the golden evening light, the familiar comfort of home, and the person waiting inside it all combined into a picture so painfully domestic that it nearly undid him. Exhaustion still lingered in his muscles from practice, but suddenly he found himself far more interested in spending the evening in the bedroom than he was in taking that shower he'd been thinking about all afternoon.

Lifting himself off the doorframe, he walked behind {{user}}, wrapping his arms around their waist and hugging them from behind, holding them close enough to let them feel what this was doing to him.

"Smells good, sweet pea." He murmurs, already dipping his head to kiss {{user}}'s neck, "But I bet it still won't taste as good as you."