#also i'm lowkey convinced that matthew broke his fucking hand again

[msmargaretmurry]

I don’t know if this is a proper trope or anything but I would love to read your take on a matthew/leon normal person/still a hockey player au! or like, celebrity/still a hockey player au

i definitely think this is a proper trope! in general i'm not an alternate universe girlie, but i AM an alternate timeline girlie, so i love versions of this trope that are like, you know, the one thing that happened differently in someone's life that totally disrupted the course of their life, but then these two people are brought together by the universe anyway. this got a little long, i'm gonna put the rest under a cut, lol.

so with matthew/leon, because they both come from hockey families, it's not the hardest thing to invent scenarios where they wind up in each other's circles anyway. i wouldn't want to create whole new backgrounds for the non-hockey one, because i think they have both been so shaped by their backgrounds and their families. it's interesting to me to think about how the circumstances of their meeting dictates their relationship — if there's no rivalry, what is the draw? which isn't to say there isn't a draw, but you kind of have to come up with a new inherent conflict. i have said to many friends, and i stand by this, that i think if they were on the same side from the get-go they would've gotten along famously. but finding other ways to throw a wrench in the gears is fun! say the concept is, like, leon did soccer instead of hockey, still went pro, and for whatever reasons got banished to the deeply cringeworthy fate of playing MLS (sorry mls) (vamos united) — he's probably got a chip on his shoulder, and he probably wants to get back to the bundesliga, he probably does not even want to consider a long-term future with inter miami fc, which would make developing big feelings for the local hockey team's handsome rat man VERY inconvenient.

because i'm a sucker for angst and drama, my favorite version of this is when the non-hockey-player one originally did have big stanley cup dreams, but something happened to derail them, and so getting into a relationship with a hockey player means also confronting all those complicated feelings about loving someone who's living the life you wanted, and finding a new purpose for yourself. this would be fun either way for me — teen matthew's junior career was wrecked by an injury but he stays in the family business doing atheltic training, or agent stuff, or coaching or scounting or whatever, and that puts him into leon's orbit and sparks fly. (possibly acrimonious sparks, depending on what matthew's up to, lmao.) OR, teen leon's junior career was wrecked by an injury but going back home felt too much like giving up so he decided to stay in canada and go to university or something, lands himself a spot at a school in calgary, etc etc etc. i love a character who's a total sad sack and there's BIG sad sack potential in scenarios like this. <3

the most important thing to me, in fics like this, is that that even though one of them's not an nhl player, they're still the same person, character-wise. they've still got the pieces of that personality that led them to become an elite athlete, that intensity and drive and passion and swagger that in another life made them so successful and extremely annoying to play against. but how does that shape them in the non-nhl version of their life? does it make things harder for them, without that outlet?

anyway intermission is over so i need to go white-knuckle it through the rest of this hockey game. i know there's some fics of this trope in the matthew/leon tag already but imo there are INFINITE possibilities for this type of story so there can always be more!!