#frida at least i know you've been PLENTY busy with the weewoo show and have NOT been pining away waiting for a response to your prompt 😂❤

[msmargaretmurry]

Mini fic 13. things you said at the kitchen table would be fun for matthew and leon, because another pair of my blorbos have several Important Scenes in the kitchen, so seeing how that setting is used for others is nice!

as i'm sure everyone has forgotten by now, eons ago i was doing this writing meme, and so many lovely folks left me prompts that i never got to because grad school destroyed my ability to write. but i am trying to get back in a creative groove so we're resurrecting it. so thank you for your patience/sorry about the wait i guess?? 😂 anway —

13. things you said at the kitchen table

“There you are.”

The kitchen had been so quiet that Leon jumps, looking up from his phone to see Matthew leaning in the doorway, eyebrows knit together with a frown. He’s bare-chested, barefoot, wearing the gray sweatpants that had been folded on top of Leon’s hamper, worn once but not dirty enough to put through the wash yet. There’s an array of teeth marks and mouth-shaped bruises down his torso, just starting to bloom with color. If he turned around, Leon knows, there would be a matching constellation on the back of his hip, disappearing under the waistband.

Leon tends to lose himself in the moment. Sometimes it’s a little embarrassing to see what he’s done afterwards.

Matthew tilts his head. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” Leon looks at his phone again, somewhere in the middle of a mindless scroll through Instagram, then sets it aside. “Yeah, just couldn’t sleep.”

“Coulda woken me up,” Matthew says, that cocky little grin of his tugging at one corner of his mouth. “I woulda tired you back out.” He’s crossing the room as he says this, ignoring Leon’s eye-roll, pulling out a chair to sit down across from him. Elbows on the table, eyebrows raised. The only time he’s stopped looking smug all night is when Leon had him gasping and panting and moaning too hard to look anything but desperate. Which is stupid, because his team kind of got destroyed earlier, but maybe his face is just kind of stuck that way.

Leon doesn’t really get Matthew at all. He likes him well enough — a surprising enough thing on its own, and one that Leon is still reluctant to cop to sometimes. But there’s something impenetrable about him. He always leaves Leon feeling off-balance. Something about the way he walks into every room like there’s no reason he wouldn’t belong there, including Leon’s kitchen. 

The sex is great, though.

Matthew hasn’t spent the night before, but not for any real reason. Just lack of opportunity. Leon usually likes sharing a bed when he has the chance. 

Matthew nudges his foot under the table. “Hey.”

Leon blinks at him. “What?”

“You sure you’re awake?”

“Yeah, I’m fuckin’ awake,” Leon says, and kicks him back.

“Well then act like it,” Matthew says, catching Leon’s ankle briefly between his feet. “Is everything okay?”

Leon opens his mouth to say yes, but then he takes a moment to consider the situation, and instead he says, “This is a little weird, isn’t it? You and me at the kitchen table?”

“Well, it’s not my fault we’re not still in bed.”

“Shut up, you know what I mean.”

“I think it’s mostly weird because it’s the middle of the night.” The way that Matthew’s curls fall in his face is distracting. Makes Leon think about how they feel tangled in his fingers. He’d be disappointed if Matthew ever cut his hair short. “You know I’m leaving at the end of the season, right?”

This startles Leon more than Matthew’s sudden appearance two minutes ago. “What?”

“Contract’s up. Bye-bye Calgary.” Matthew shrugs with an extremely measured amount of awkwardness. That— that’s why he’s so fucking confusing. Even his sincerity feels like an act sometimes. But even more than that—

“Why?”

“It’s too fucking cold, I’m homesick, and my coach hates me.”

“No, mean— really, he does?”

Another shrug. So helpful.

“I mean, why are you telling me this?”

“I’m trying to make you pay attention to me,” Matthew says. “Geez, why do you think I’m here?”

Leon raises his eyebrows. “You didn’t get enough attention earlier?”

A tiny grin. “No.”

“So where are you going?”

“Dunno yet.”

“Is that true or are you just not telling me?”

Another shrug. A slightly larger, smugger grin.

“You think I’ll miss you?”

“Nah. You’ve got Davo to keep you warm.”

“We’re not—” Leon ignores Matthew’s dancing eyebrows. “Seriously, why are you telling me this?”

Matthew kicks his foot under the table again. “Come back to bed. We’ve got, what, two games left this season? I’m trying to get the fuckin’ in while I still can.”

“So you’re going somewhere far away,” Leon says.

“Dude, you’re in Edmonton,” Matthew says. “Everywhere is far away.”

“I meant, like, out of the conference.”

Shrug. The temptation to reach across and hold Matthew’s shoulders still is so strong. Instead Leon just meets his gaze, trying for the umpteenth time to figure him out. It doesn’t work, so he looks again at the collage of bruises spilling over his collar bone. He’s changed, in the couple of years they’ve been doing this. His body used to be wirier, but now he’s starting to fill out like a grown man. Leon can feel it on the ice, when he hits him, and in bed when he fucks him. He used to be wilder, more immature, more willing to sacrifice the play to be annoying, but he’s honed that down to an art. Whatever team gets him is going to be blown away by what they find behind his reputation. And Leon— well. It’s strange to feel so acutely that in the grand scheme of things he’ll just be an anecdote in Matthew’s life. It doesn’t bother him, exactly. It’s just a strange little moment. He’d thought, maybe stupidly, that they’d be doing this for years to come. Battles of Alberta and all that. But somehow it makes a lot more sense this way.

“Come on,” he says, standing abruptly. He catches Matthew by the arm on his way around the table, pulling him along back toward the bedroom. Matthew shakes the grip off, but catches his hand instead. In bed, he kisses Leon like he means it, but there are a lot of ways to mean something.

#writing meme #matthew and leon #hockey for ts #frida at least i know you've been PLENTY busy with the weewoo show and have NOT been pining away waiting for a response to your prompt 😂❤ #anyway in my head this is spiritually in the in from the cold 'verse even tho i'm not sure if all the details match up