#puckthiswrites

Pat's not retired. But he's also not playing. And while he has friends on several teams... There's only one TK. No matter how much that yappy Zegras kid tries to make himself be just as fucking annoying, that doesn't make him anything to Pat.

Not even by slipping into Pat's DMs (seriously, what the fuck?) and sending him some stupid song. Pat's pretty sure Zegras isn't hitting on him, isn't telling Pat that he's the man Zegras needs, but... Pat still sends him the middle finger emoji and tells him to tell it to Drysdale - he may not be playing, but he still watches some games. Flyers games, mostly. Almost exclusively.

Pat then sees some tweet explaining the song and... it doesn't mean anything, him adding it to his playlist even though it's not his kind of song. It doesn't mean what the people on the internet think it means.

Part of him is still a Flyer, sure. But mostly, a large part of him still thinks about TK and his stupid face. Not that he'd admit that. He doesn't even text Teeks - there's no point, TK's phone is rarely on him anyway. And they had their shot. Sort of. Almost. Not quite.

Still, the day after game six, Pat gets on a damn plane. Hat pulled down over his greasy hair, wearing boring clothes. He's unrecognizable. Sleeps through most of the air time, startles awake when he lands on somewhat familiar soil.

Customs sucks more than it did when he still played, but he manages to get through that without insulting anyone too obviously.

The Uber takes too long, and the driver keeps trying to fucking talk to him. Pat mutters something about visiting friends and then tries not to vibrate out of his skin until he steps out of the car.

It's even worse when he rings the doorbell to a place that he barely even recognizes, and it's straight up terrifying when the door starts to open.

"Hi, what..."

When TK goes quiet, Pat smirks.

"Go Flyers."

I wanted to write a Matthew who just... was more focused on hockey than on relationships, who learned just enough at Catholic school to want his first time to be special, who didn't make it about internalized homophobia but instead wasn't going to sleep with someone he didn't want to bring home to his family eventually.

Leon being the slutty bad boy was a choice in contrast, because while I think Leon is absolutely a romantic, he could either lean into romance or avoid it entirely after getting his heart broken a few too many times. Plus, he has that Romance Hero vibe where he comes across as grumpy at first, but he's hiding a big heart underneath.

Writing a Leon who isn't already falling for Matthew was a fun exercise, because while he is intrigued by Matthew on several levels (hockey, looks, the banter, and Matthew telling him no)... Leon is determined not to have feelings for anyone. As they go to the Tkachuk home, Leon keeps having these little moments in which he's so charmed by Matthew. I purposefully added the little details like Leon getting a little too into Matthew's freckles and dimple (finding out all of these new things about someone he had a lot of preconceived notions about), and noticing that Matthew was nervous and trying to put him at ease - but still trying to bring out that snarky side too. And Leon falls a little bit in love when Matthew makes him laugh in bed.

Of course, Leon would wanna fuck at the Tkachuk house. There's something intimate about a childhood room instead of the anonymity of a hotel room - and there's a part of Leon that wanted to make sure Matthew was somewhere he felt safe. That and he's a horny fucker who likes the idea of sneaking in right under the great Keith Tkachuk's nose to fuck his son. I love this bad boy Leon, you don't even know.

And then they're done and Leon gets back to his routine of leaving after, of not letting himself make this into something that it's not. The ring is a complete surprise to him, and he doesn't know what it means right away, but then Matthew is kicking him out and that hits him in the ego. He spends most of the flight back fiddling with the ring where people can't see him and trying to put it together.

Buying a chain to wear it on is an impulse he can't quite push down. The ring matters, and Leon isn't going to throw it in a drawer somewhere. It's too important for that. Matthew's gotten under his skin and Leon doesn't know how to deal with that. It's why he lashes out when Matthew calls the ring meaningless. It's not meaningless to Leon - not anymore, and maybe it never was.

The next time, Leon finally gets to say what he wanted to say the whole time. His own first time wasn't great and he can't stand the thought that he might have done anything like that to Matthew. Matthew, who's so special. Matthew, who immediately wants to fight Leon's first - and yeah, Leon's lost the battle. He's falling. He's fallen.

Initially, I was going to write Leon's do-over, with an uncertain Matthew figuring out how to fuck someone, but the story kept stalling there. It just didn't quite work for me - and because I know that the friend I wrote it for likes it better when Leon tops, I deleted a part of the scene and gave Leon his moment to talk about his own regrets. Most of the story so far was about Matthew's feelings and Matthew's hopes and fears and regrets - and giving Leon his moment too actually made it work so much better. It feels like another chance for them, and because it isn't a first this time, they both get to be more comfortable with each other - they have something to build on. And that just seemed like a better metaphor for the relationship they're starting to build here.

A part of me wonders if I should have ended it there, but since I love a bit of humor, I felt like I had to include a scene where they revisit the childhood room to really make it come full circle. Back in St. Louis, back in the exact same location but they've both grown so much since then (plus torturing Brady is a bonus, you know there's a point where he overhears or Matthew and Leon forgot to lock the door).