slapshot-to-the-heart
Hockey Players Are Himbos
Kay (she/her)//23//California//time for the triumphs and defeats, the epic highs and lows of sharks hockey//Masterlist
1092 posts
Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.
Last Seen Blogs
0w0whatisthis
Art??????????
dutch-and-flemish-painters
Dutch Painters
letsgogethigh
Let's Go Get High
bootsandspurs
Boots&Spurs
Note
It's your friendly pinch hitting summer exchange fic writer. I wanted to let you know I'm well on my way with your fic, and just wanted to confirm that 1) Tyson Jost is okay. 2) an OC is preferred. And 3) a happy ending? I can't imagine an angsty bad ending with Tyson - that would probably break my heart 💔
But I have an open weekend, so plan on getting this out for you as soon as possible. 💙
Omg I’m already so excited to read it!! Yes I love me some josty, that sounds great. And OC is totally good! I tend to write that way too. And very agreed, sad Tyson would break my heart. Looking forward to seeing what you rustle up!
7 notes
·
View notes
Text
Just a lil next day reblog :)
say my name - m. tkachuk
Happy to have jumped back into writing this summer with my entry for @antoineroussel ‘s summer fic exchange!I may have left it until the last day, but I’m proud of what I was able to put out. I was given the lovely @ahockeywrites to write for, so here you are! I was having trouble figuring out what to write about for a while, but the Ratthew news over the pas few weeks really got me inspired. I hope you all enjoy!
word count: 3.5k+
Matthew Tkachuk wasn’t the kind of guy who liked to let things go unsaid. He didn’t beat around the bush, because why would he? It didn’t make sense. If he saw something, or thought something, or felt something, what good would come from keeping it inside? If he noticed something at practice, he told Coach – if it was one of the rookies or younger guys, he’d bring it up with them directly, take them out for coffee after practice or offer to look over video with them. He wasn’t the captain, not really, but as much as the prospect of being one of the team’s ‘elder statesmen’ made him want to tear his hair out, he wanted to do what Gio had done for him. Pay it forward, if you will.
He didn’t keep things bottled up with the team, and for the most part, he didn’t keep things bottled up with Cat. Keeping things from your significant other, especially feelings things, was a recipe for disaster, and not something Matthew had any inclination towards. Sure, Cat might have been the one to ask him out after they’d spent a week wordlessly flirting at each other from across the café they both frequented, but Matthew had been the first one to say ‘I love you.’ It was only three months in, which for some people might not seem like any time at all, but for Matthew started to feel like a lifetime as soon as he realized how he felt about her. For him, it wasn’t the way some people described it, where it hit you like a bus one day and knocked you clean off your axis. For Matthew, he just started wondering how he missed the blaring red lights trying to get him to realize how deep his feelings ran for her. It took seeing Cat making breakfast in his kitchen one morning after she spent the night, somehow managing to get the bacon and omelettes perfect but burning the toast to an absolute crisp. But at that point, Matthew wasn’t sure how he was ever able to not love her.
Catriona MacDaniel was the opposite, as much as she was loath to admit it. It’s not that she ever purposefully hid what she was feeling or tried to be difficult to read. She just never felt the need to bother people for things she thought were trivial. She was first generation Irish-Canadian, and, in the words of John Mulaney, “the thing with Irish people is I’ll keep all of my emotions bottled up, and then one day, I’ll die.” In Cat’s humble opinion, truer words had never been spoken. Her and her older sister Aisling were as close as two people could be, but it took even her weeks to pry out that Catriona had a boyfriend, and another month and a half before she would actually let Aisling meet him. But Matthew had managed to steadily chip away at Cat’s unintentionally-prickly exterior, and after two years as a couple and six months of living together, she would freely admit to anyone who asked that with the probable exception of her family (aside from her younger brother Conor, who happily fulfilled his given role as family pest) Matthew Tkachuk was the person she loved most in the world.
Keep reading
#hockey fluff#hockey smut#hockey imagines#hockey writing#nhl imagines#nhl writing#matthew tkachuk writing#matthew tkachuk
211 notes
·
View notes
Text
say my name - m. tkachuk
Happy to have jumped back into writing this summer with my entry for @antoineroussel ‘s summer fic exchange!I may have left it until the last day, but I’m proud of what I was able to put out. I was given the lovely @ahockeywrites to write for, so here you are! I was having trouble figuring out what to write about for a while, but the Ratthew news over the pas few weeks really got me inspired. I hope you all enjoy!
word count: 3.5k+
Matthew Tkachuk wasn’t the kind of guy who liked to let things go unsaid. He didn’t beat around the bush, because why would he? It didn’t make sense. If he saw something, or thought something, or felt something, what good would come from keeping it inside? If he noticed something at practice, he told Coach – if it was one of the rookies or younger guys, he’d bring it up with them directly, take them out for coffee after practice or offer to look over video with them. He wasn’t the captain, not really, but as much as the prospect of being one of the team’s ‘elder statesmen’ made him want to tear his hair out, he wanted to do what Gio had done for him. Pay it forward, if you will.
He didn’t keep things bottled up with the team, and for the most part, he didn’t keep things bottled up with Cat. Keeping things from your significant other, especially feelings things, was a recipe for disaster, and not something Matthew had any inclination towards. Sure, Cat might have been the one to ask him out after they’d spent a week wordlessly flirting at each other from across the café they both frequented, but Matthew had been the first one to say ‘I love you.’ It was only three months in, which for some people might not seem like any time at all, but for Matthew started to feel like a lifetime as soon as he realized how he felt about her. For him, it wasn’t the way some people described it, where it hit you like a bus one day and knocked you clean off your axis. For Matthew, he just started wondering how he missed the blaring red lights trying to get him to realize how deep his feelings ran for her. It took seeing Cat making breakfast in his kitchen one morning after she spent the night, somehow managing to get the bacon and omelettes perfect but burning the toast to an absolute crisp. But at that point, Matthew wasn’t sure how he was ever able to not love her.
Catriona MacDaniel was the opposite, as much as she was loath to admit it. It’s not that she ever purposefully hid what she was feeling or tried to be difficult to read. She just never felt the need to bother people for things she thought were trivial. She was first generation Irish-Canadian, and, in the words of John Mulaney, “the thing with Irish people is I’ll keep all of my emotions bottled up, and then one day, I’ll die.” In Cat’s humble opinion, truer words had never been spoken. Her and her older sister Aisling were as close as two people could be, but it took even her weeks to pry out that Catriona had a boyfriend, and another month and a half before she would actually let Aisling meet him. But Matthew had managed to steadily chip away at Cat’s unintentionally-prickly exterior, and after two years as a couple and six months of living together, she would freely admit to anyone who asked that with the probable exception of her family (aside from her younger brother Conor, who happily fulfilled his given role as family pest) Matthew Tkachuk was the person she loved most in the world.
Matthew didn’t usually keep his feelings inside, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be incredibly unobservant at times. (Brady would probably say most of the time, and he’d probably just shorten that to ‘dumb.’) Sometimes, people would have to point out something that he should have realized all along. Not with hockey. Never with hockey. He could run drills in his sleep and overanalyzed every minute of play like his life depended on it. But with the feelings things, sometimes he couldn’t have been more oblivious if he tried.
---
It was one of the Flames’ biggest charity events of the year, a fundraiser benefiting Alberta Children’s Hospital held at some ballroom downtown that Matthew couldn’t remember the name of. The crisp March air drifted through the open doors leading to the balcony, Matthew longingly looking out at the sparkling lights of Calgary below them. He didn’t usually mind these things, especially not when it was all going towards such a good cause, but that didn’t mean there weren’t places he’d rather be than trying desperately to stay awake as he listened to some business executive who never played a day of hockey beyond Junior B drone on about ‘quarterly income reports’ and ‘how hockey’s gotten so soft since your father’s days, Matthew.”. He sipped his champagne, mumbling a perfunctory “mm?” every once in a while as his eyes flitted across the room, hoping he could catch someone’s eyes who would pull him out of the conversation by making up some pseudo-emergency.
He came back to the conversation just in time to hear his name. “Sorry, could you repeat that?” Matthew said, clearing his throat.
“I was just wondering where your lovely wife had gone off to,” the man asked expectantly.
Matthew blinked a few times, confused, before realizing that he must be talking about Catriona. “Cat? I think she’s waiting in line at the bar for a refill.” After a few second’s pause, “She’s not my wife – I mean, we’re not married. We’ve been dating for,” he did the math in his head, “two years. Our anniversary was last month.”
The man shook his head in apology. “Sorry for that, I must have gotten you confused with your friend Johnny.” Johnny had gotten married not that long ago, but Catriona and Meredith didn’t really look much alike, so Matthew wasn’t sure where the confusion had come from.
“You’re good, no problem,” he muttered.
“Maybe you’ll be next though, eh?”
Matthew shot the other man a tight smile. “We’ll see.”
Maybe you’ll be next. The words played on repeat in Matthew’s head the rest of the night, when Cat came back from the bar with their drinks, when he was spinning her around on the dance floor, when he got his car from the valet and absentmindedly pulled out a twenty fto tip her. Did he just say that because he genuinely messed up? Did he see something? Did someone say something? It wasn’t like him and Cat had never talked about it before. They had, enough to know that they weren’t opposed to the whole idea, but that neither saw the need to be rushing down the aisle anytime soon. He could see things with Cat lasting…but marriage? That kind of forever, till-death-do-you-part commitment? That he wasn’t a hundred percent sure on.
Catriona could tell on their ten minute drive home that Matthew was in his head. He was quiet on the ride back, not ignoring her by any means, but he wasn’t really there, like there was something on his mind that she couldn’t exactly figure out. She had gotten good over the past few years at reading him – she didn’t know if there was anyone apart from his mother who could do it quite like her – but this was different. He was distracted, but it didn’t really seem like something was bothering him, and he didn’t seem overwhelmed. He just seemed…different. A little distant, but he opened her car door like he always did, and let her into the bathroom first so she could do her semi-elaborate skincare routine like he always did, so she put a pin in it, hoping she’d remember in the morning.
---
It was the middle of May – the Flames had just beat the Stars to win the first round of playoffs, and had two days until the Oilers would descend on the Saddledome for the semifinals. Matthew was on the phone with his mom, who was flying out the next day with the whole Tkachuk family in tow. “You’ll be coming back to St. Louis whenever the season wraps up?” Chantal may have said it like a question, but Matthew knew that she wasn’t really asking.
“Mhm,” he confirmed. “Give it probably a week or so for me to finish things up here and say goodbye to the guys for the summer.”
“And how long does Cat think she’ll be able to get off of work for?” That was one of the things Matthew loved. It wasn’t even a question with his mom, or with the rest of his family. He loved Catriona, so they did too, and had welcomed her with open arms from the moment they met her for the first time.
Cat was a software engineer, her company offered generous benefits and time off but Matthew knew she’d have wanted to stay longer if she were able. “She thinks two weeks, probably sometime late June or early July. And I might fly back out for a week or so later in the summer just to get some more time with her.”
“WHIPPED!” Matthew heard Brady in the background of the call. “I’m on speaker?” he asked, sighing.
He could imagine his mom shrugging her shoulders. “I’m making dinner, my hands aren’t free. Brady, don’t make fun of your brother.”
“You’re one to talk, Brady,” Matthew said. “I love my girlfriend, so sue me.”
“Eh,” Brady said, “I know you two live together and all, but I think she might like me more than she likes you. Wouldn’t blame her.” Matthew could hear their mom whacking Brady with a towel.
Matthew just rolled his eyes. Honestly, that was one of the many wonderful things about Cat. She had the ability to make everyone around her feel so important, like they were the only person in the room. Whether it was him, his family, her friends – which she had a lot of, because she had such an infectious personality everyone wanted to be around her – her little cousins, who Matthew had met the summer before when they had flown out to Ireland for her family reunion. It was an hour and a half car ride from the airport in Dublin to her grandparents’ country house outside of Kilkenny, but Matthew’s eyes never left the scenery the whole drive there. Catriona had always been close with her grandparents (well, as close as you could be with an ocean and 4100 miles separating them) and he knew that she was nervous about introducing him. Especially doing so in what wasn’t exactly a low-stress environment, with twenty MacDaniels running around the property. But the whole family loved him the instant they saw how happy he made Cat, even if her grandfather Rory couldn’t understand for the life of him how Matthew made a living by hitting a piece of rubber on ice.
“Anyways,” Matthew said, trying to get back on topic, “Cat’s going to pick you up from the airport, we can get lunch together somewhere after morning skate’s finished. Sound good?”
Chantal hummed her agreement, a soft beep in Matthew’s ear letting him know she had taken him off speaker. “How are things going with you two?” It wasn’t like his mom needed to know every minute detail of their relationship, but she liked being given the occasional update.
“They’re going well. Really well,” Matthew replied. He paused for a minute, but Chantal could tell there was something he still wanted to say. “Something happened a few months ago. We were at a charity thing for the team, and someone I was talking to thought we were married – I don’t know if he got Cat confused with someone, or thought he saw a ring or what. It was a one-off comment, he probably didn’t mean anything by it, but I can’t stop thinking about what he said and I don’t know why.”
“Was it actually the fact that he said something that got you all in your head? Or was it what he said that got you thinking?”
Matthew wanted to slap himself on the forehead. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of that. “Um, well, probably the second.”
“Are you thinking of proposing?” Matthew could almost hear her smile over the phone.
He shrugged. “I don’t know.” Matthew almost wanted to look around the living room, make sure that Catriona wasn’t anywhere within earshot, before he realized that it was noon on a weekday and she was at work. “I think I want to, but…Mom, I’m scared.” His voice wobbled as he perched on the edge of the couch.
“Do you not know if she’d say yes?”
“It’s not that,” he swallowed, “because I’m almost sure she would. I think I’m just a little scared of what it all means, you know? Like, what we’ve got going is good. It’s really good. I love her more than I’ve ever loved anyone, and I know she loves me, and I think I’m worried that changing anything about what we have would, I don’t know, burst our bubble?” Once the words started flowing, Matthew didn’t think he could have stopped them if he wanted to. “I guess I’m just convinced that if I propose, the other shoe’s going to have to drop eventually. I’m just scared that we’ll get engaged, buy a house, start trying to settle down, and then I’ll get traded to Carolina, or Montreal, or God-knows-where, and she’s going to realize that this isn’t what she thought she was signing up for. She deserves stability, Mom, she deserves everything she’s ever wanted, and that could be taken away from her at any point. I just don’t want to run the risk of being the one to do that to her.”
“But have you ever considered that maybe you’re all she’s wanted?”
---
Matthew was sitting on the loveseat in his living room back in Calgary, spending a few days with Catriona before hopping on another plane back to St. Louis, when Brad Treleving’s contact popped up on his phone. Matthew took a deep breath, settling into the chair before picking up the call. “Brad?” he asked by way of greeting.
“Matthew. How are you?” Matthew knew he was just asking to be polite. If he was calling about what Matthew thought he was, the pleasantries wouldn’t mean anything.
“Uh, fine,” he said. “Back in Calgary for a little, but headed to Missouri at the end of the week.”
“Good, good to hear. I’m glad you’re getting to spend time with your family.” He spoke almost distractedly. “Well, Matthew, I’m going to cut to the chase. You’ve been traded.”
Despite the fact that really, if Matthew was being honest, he knew the call was coming didn’t stop him from feeling like he had just gotten the wind knocked out of him. “Oh.”
Brad continued. “We appreciate everything you’ve done for us up in Calgary, and I know you’ll be missed by the boys, everyone here in the front office, and the fans, but we felt it was in the best interest of the team for you to go elsewhere.” Ouch. In the best interest of the team for you to lose your top two players in a single offseason? Okay.
“Alright,” Matthew said gingerly. “Where…where am I going?” Please not Ottawa. Please not Ottawa. Please not Ottawa. He would never fucking hear the end of it if his little brother ended up being his captain.
“You’re going to Florida. Panthers, not Tampa Bay.” Matthew knew Brad had kept talking, thanking him again for how hard he had worked for the team, his leadership in the locker room, how Florida’s GM would be calling later that night, but he wasn’t processing any of it. All he could really grasp was how this was the exact fucking thing he told his mom he was afraid about, and how all the sudden he was being confronted with something he couldn’t run from, something he couldn’t even rationalize his way out of. He had no clue what Cat was going to say, what she was going to do, and that scared him to death.
He was broken out of his spiraling thoughts by the sound of Cat’s key rattling in the door. “Okay, I brought back Chinese, hope that sounds good,” she called through the half-open door. She kicked it closed with the side of her foot before lifting her head, her eyes meeting Matthew’s from across the room. Her expression changed instantly when she saw his face. “Matty, what happened? Is everyone okay?” She dropped the bag of food on the floor with an unceremonious thump, not paying any attention to the crunch of fortune cookies as they hit the hardwood.
“I, uh, I got traded,” Matthew said, fiddling with his phone. “They’re sending me to Florida for Huberdeau and some other guys, I think, I kinda tuned out as soon as Brad said they were moving me.”
Catriona felt like the breath had been stolen from right out of her lungs. “Oh my God. Wow.” She sat down next to him, squeezing herself into the spare space on the loveseat. “How are you feeling about it?” Catriona knew that Matthew loved his team, that he loved playing in the Saddledome. But for how well she knew him, she had no clue what was going through his head. Matthew had told her before the trade deadline that he had heard some rumors flying around about him getting moved, and for any hockey player without an NTC a trade was always a possibility, but she never thought she had to take the gossip seriously.
Matthew’s hand wandered over to hers, where he gripped it like a lifeline. “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “I’m not sure if I ever saw myself playing here for my whole career, but I think part of that was just because that happens for so few players, and I didn’t really have a reason to think that I’d be the exception to the rule. But I had a great season, I was starting to step into a bigger role in the locker room – I didn’t expect to be given the C next year, but I think we both thought it might happen,” Cat nodded, “so getting traded really wasn’t something that was at the forefront of my mind.” A solid minute passed between them in silence until Matthew spoke again, sounding much more apprehensive than before. “And I’m worried about what this means for us.”
Cat furrowed her brow. “What do you mean?”
“You have a job you love, your family’s here, your whole life is in Calgary.” She was starting to look concerned, so Matthew hastily continued. “I want you with me. Obviously, I want you with me. I want to be wherever you are. But it just seems so selfish of me to ask you to leave your home to come with me while I chase my dream, when who knows if we’d have to pack up and move states after a year or two?
“Matthew,” she said softly, “you are my home. This life, with you, this is my dream. Calgary is where I live, and of course there’s so many things I love about it here, but there’s nothing I can’t live without. We can fly back and visit people, I can FaceTime my parents. I can make new friends in Florida. Matty, I think you’re being too hard on yourself,” she added after a moment. “You’re pretending like you’re not losing anything or giving up anything either. You’re leaving guys who have become your brothers, a team and a city who’ve loved you since you were drafted. And don’t deny that Alberta winters have grown on you.”
Matthew gave a watery smile. “Negative ten degrees walking across the street to get coffee in March? I think Miami might have Calgary beat in the weather department.”
Cat laughed. “We’ll agree to disagree on that one. But see, Matthew, everything’s going to be okay. We’re going to be okay. Matthew, wherever you are, I’ll be there right beside you. We’re a team. I know you might think that this is unfair to me, but I promise I knew what I was signing up for when you asked me to be your girlfriend. I knew it wouldn’t all be playoff jackets and parties and getting to put on Santa hats and deliver Christmas presents to children’s hospitals. And when we moved in together, made that kind of decision, I knew how serious of a commitment we were making. I love you, Matthew. I want to be with you. Whether that takes us to Miami, or Boston, or if you find your true passion playing second-tier hockey in Slovakia, I’ll be right there by your side. Because that’s what you do for people you love.”
“How do you always know what to say?” Matthew asked, letting out a shaky breath.
“It’s a gift,” Catriona said softly, pressing a kiss to his temple before standing up. “Let me go plate up the food, I’ll be back in a minute.”
He squeezed her hand before she left. Suddenly, every apprehension he had had, every but what if vanished as the realization of what he had to do physically took his breath away. But this time, he wasn’t scared. He picked up his phone from the side table, went to Google, and typed in two words. Ones that if he was being honest with himself, he was ready for months ago, but hadn’t realized until now. Engagement rings.
#hockey imagines#hockey writing#hockey imagine#nhl imagines#nhl imagine#nhl writing#matthew tkachuk imagine#Matthew Tkachuk#matthew tkachuk writing
211 notes
·
View notes
Note
hi, it's your summer fic exchange writer again. had a few more questions for you. would you prefer the fic to be OC based or reader insert? and if there are any specific character traits you'd like the mc to have/not have ie her profession or hobbies. lastly, are you comfortable with smut being included in the fic?
Hi!! I typically write OC and find it easier to get into the story that way, so that would be great. Hobbies and job, go crazy as long as it’s legal haha. As for smut, I’d prefer nothing super explicit, but I’m definitely fine with sexual /content/ as long as it’s not described. So like, heavy making out where it’s clear that’s where the night/day is going, fair game. But full on smut? I’d rather not.
0 notes
Note
hi kay! i've received you for the summer fic exchange and had a few questions for the fic:
from tyson jost, Matthew tkachuk and mat barzal - who would you prefer reading about?
are there any tropes or anything you'd like to see in the fic? or anything that you'd prefer not to read about?
thank you!
Hi!!
I’m currently writing a Tyson fic myself (outside of the fic exchange) so I’d actually love to see someone else’s take on him! As for tropes, it would be neat to see an established relationship since mine is a friends to lovers, I love all that good domestic shit oops. Like some kind of conflict but resolves so it’s fluffy as hell? My bread and butter.
0 notes
Text
EXPERIENCE SHARKS HOCKEY BABYYYYYYY
14 notes
·
View notes
Text
It’s giving sharkboy
MAT CUT HIS FUCKING HAIR???????? AND SPIKED IT?????????? BRO BLINK IF YOU NEED HELP
20 notes
·
View notes
Text
Hi, guys!
As you may know, I am Ukrainian. I live in Kyiv. I have lived here since I was born and I love my country with my whole heart.
I see a lot of misinformation under the tag "Ukraine". Most of it comes from American people, who try to explain the conflict in their own words. They can't. It's impossible to explain if you haven't lived here. There are too many influences on this conflict. You keep looking from an american perspective, which is not crucial in understanding the conflict.
For example, have you ever had you language forbidden? Like straight up forbidden by the law? It happened to Ukrainian language a lot of times thought our history. And who did it? The Russian Empire. And it's not the end of it. The genocides, the assimilation, the deportation. Have you even researched Ukrainian history?
You do not uplift Ukrainian voices enough. And you should if you care about what's happening. If you don’t do it, you're just doing a performance of your support and activism.
Lucky for you, I am a Ukrainian person! And I am DYING TO ANSWER YOUR QUESTIONS. I scored 191/200 points on my graduation exam in history, so you can suppose I know something about Ukrainian history.
If you stand for Ukraine, uplift Ukrainian voices. Educate yourself. Learn Ukrainian history. Ask Ukrainian people
43K notes
·
View notes
Text
THESE HOES ARE SO DRAMATIC I LOVE THEM WOW
4 notes
·
View notes
Text
In case you missed it!
you never called it what it was - m.tkachuk
Here’s my much-delayed, much loved Matthew Tkachuk fic! As I’m sure nobody could guess, the title’s from another Taylor Swift fic - what can I say, I’m predictable! I really do love this piece, and I hope all of you do too! As always, I read each and every comment and all the tags on the reblogs (please reblog haha,) and love them all and hearing from everybody in my inbox. So please let me know what you think! It’s not all angst, I promise.
word count: 5.8k+
warnings: some language, but that’s it!
It wasn’t that Alessa didn’t know what was coming, and it wasn’t like she ignored all the signs. It’s like they weren’t even on the same page to begin with. Relationships for her had never been no-holds-barred, jump into the deep end head first without much regard for how things could go down the line. But she had always considered herself good at reading people, good at knowing where things were going before she’d be caught off guard and taken for a goddamn fool for how badly she’d misread a situation. Until Matthew.
Things didn’t seem off at first. She had met Matthew through a friend of a friend, someone one of her coworkers had gone to school with who worked with the team. Or something like that. All Alessa knew that moment was that one mojito led to another, which led to her and Matthew stumbling through the door of her downtown Calgary apartment and into the bedroom as she feverishly unbuttoned his shirt as fast as her hands could go. Who wears a button-up to a birthday party at a club? she asked, but the thought left her mind the moment she pushed the shirt off of his shoulders and him onto her bed.
—
“I’m thinking of getting a dog,” Alessa said early one morning six months or so into their relationship, her hands absentmindedly combing through Matthew’s curls as the snow flurried outside.
“How come?” he asked.
“Someone to keep me company when you’re away,” she said, picking at the fuzz on the fleece blanket strewn across her lap. “I can only ask Amara out for coffee so many times before she stops enjoying the thrill of my presence.”
Matthew snorted. “Does your place even allow pets?”
“If they’re not massive, there’s a 50 pound limit or something.”
“I always liked dogs.”
—
The holiday season came and passed, March turned into April, and the Flames made their way into the playoffs just two points behind the Oilers, a fact she was almost positive Matthew would be griping about for years to come. Matthew had been invited to the All-Star Game but had been taken out with a concussion three days before, leaving him to try and sleep it off in his apartment, Alessa coming into the room every so often to update him on the score.
Two days before the start of the second round, with the team slated to fly out to Las Vegas to face the Golden Knights, Alessa found herself once again half-dressed in Matthew’s bed one night, a partially-drunk bottle of chardonnay they had been working on on his nightstand as her head rested on his chest. “When are you thinking of heading home?” she asked softly.
Matthew looked down at her. “Depends how long playoffs last, doesn’t it?”
“Obviously,” Alessa said, rolling her eyes, “but you know what I mean.”
“Probably a week or so after things wrap up? Gives me time to pack up, do whatever exit interviews they’ll have us give.”
“Unless there’s some sort of a parade,” she said with a smile, doing her best not to jinx things.
Matthew nodded. “Unless there’s a parade.”
Alessa adjusted her head, looking up at him. “When should I come down? Do you think it would be better to fly with you, or give it a few weeks?”
Matthew didn’t respond right away, but it wasn’t the “let me take a minute to think” type of pause, the “oh, I’m not sure, let’s talk about it,” type of pause. It was the “I hadn’t even thought about it” kind. Or worse, the “I don’t even know what you’re talking about” sort of pause. “Coming down where?”
Keep reading
#hockey imagine#hockey writing#hockey imagines#nhl imagines#nhl imagine#nhl writing#rat king#sharks lb#matthew tkachuk writing#Matthew tkachuk
135 notes
·
View notes
Text
you never called it what it was - m.tkachuk
Here’s my much-delayed, much loved Matthew Tkachuk fic! As I’m sure nobody could guess, the title’s from another Taylor Swift fic - what can I say, I’m predictable! I really do love this piece, and I hope all of you do too! As always, I read each and every comment and all the tags on the reblogs (please reblog haha,) and love them all and hearing from everybody in my inbox. So please let me know what you think! It’s not all angst, I promise.
word count: 5.8k+
warnings: some language, but that’s it!
It wasn’t that Alessa didn’t know what was coming, and it wasn’t like she ignored all the signs. It’s like they weren’t even on the same page to begin with. Relationships for her had never been no-holds-barred, jump into the deep end head first without much regard for how things could go down the line. But she had always considered herself good at reading people, good at knowing where things were going before she’d be caught off guard and taken for a goddamn fool for how badly she’d misread a situation. Until Matthew.
Things didn’t seem off at first. She had met Matthew through a friend of a friend, someone one of her coworkers had gone to school with who worked with the team. Or something like that. All Alessa knew that moment was that one mojito led to another, which led to her and Matthew stumbling through the door of her downtown Calgary apartment and into the bedroom as she feverishly unbuttoned his shirt as fast as her hands could go. Who wears a button-up to a birthday party at a club? she asked, but the thought left her mind the moment she pushed the shirt off of his shoulders and him onto her bed.
---
“I’m thinking of getting a dog,” Alessa said early one morning six months or so into their relationship, her hands absentmindedly combing through Matthew’s curls as the snow flurried outside.
“How come?” he asked.
“Someone to keep me company when you’re away,” she said, picking at the fuzz on the fleece blanket strewn across her lap. “I can only ask Amara out for coffee so many times before she stops enjoying the thrill of my presence.”
Matthew snorted. “Does your place even allow pets?”
“If they’re not massive, there’s a 50 pound limit or something.”
“I always liked dogs.”
---
The holiday season came and passed, March turned into April, and the Flames made their way into the playoffs just two points behind the Oilers, a fact she was almost positive Matthew would be griping about for years to come. Matthew had been invited to the All-Star Game but had been taken out with a concussion three days before, leaving him to try and sleep it off in his apartment, Alessa coming into the room every so often to update him on the score.
Two days before the start of the second round, with the team slated to fly out to Las Vegas to face the Golden Knights, Alessa found herself once again half-dressed in Matthew’s bed one night, a partially-drunk bottle of chardonnay they had been working on on his nightstand as her head rested on his chest. “When are you thinking of heading home?” she asked softly.
Matthew looked down at her. “Depends how long playoffs last, doesn’t it?”
“Obviously,” Alessa said, rolling her eyes, “but you know what I mean.”
“Probably a week or so after things wrap up? Gives me time to pack up, do whatever exit interviews they’ll have us give.”
“Unless there’s some sort of a parade,” she said with a smile, doing her best not to jinx things.
Matthew nodded. “Unless there’s a parade.”
Alessa adjusted her head, looking up at him. “When should I come down? Do you think it would be better to fly with you, or give it a few weeks?”
Matthew didn’t respond right away, but it wasn’t the “let me take a minute to think” type of pause, the “oh, I’m not sure, let’s talk about it,” type of pause. It was the “I hadn’t even thought about it” kind. Or worse, the “I don’t even know what you’re talking about” sort of pause. “Coming down where?”
“Missouri?”
“Why would you be coming to Missouri?”
Deep fear struck Alessa’s heart, the kind you could feel all the way from your toes to your teeth. “So we don’t have to go almost three months apart? To meet your friends, see where you grew up?”
Matthew sat up in bed, avoiding eye contact. “I didn’t think we were there yet?”
“What do you mean?” Alessa asked, confusion setting in. “You’ve taken me to parties with the team, I’ve met half of them, I met Brady when the Sens came over and popped into FaceTime calls with your parents. Why would I not come to St. Louis?”
“That’s a big step,” he mumbled. “I just wasn’t expecting it yet.”
Alessa ran one hand through her hair. “When were you expecting it then, Tkachuk?” Matthew winced at the use of his last name. It seemed so cold, so impersonal coming from her. “We’ve been together for almost a year. This isn’t the first time you’ve done this, you know. I kept trying to avoid it, make excuses for you, but I’m running out of reasons.”
This time, Matthew did seem genuinely confused. “What other times?”
Alessa sighed, looking over at him briefly before picking at a loose thread on the duvet. “I’ve only been to what, one or two team events since we started dating, even when we’ve gone you seem really reluctant to introduce me as your girlfriend, it seemed like you only did it when people really pushed you. You didn’t introduce me to your parents when they were up here for almost a week,” she noticed Matthew’s mouth opening, “and don’t say it’s because you thought I was going to be too busy at work, because I told you I had the time.”
“It would be one thing if we both acted like that,” she continued, “but I never did. You went with me to my best friend’s birthday party,” Alessa and Praveena had met on the first day of high school and had been nearly inseparable ever since. “You’ve been over to my parents’ house for Lunar New Year, you charmed my dad by showing him how to use that ridiculously expensive espresso machine my mom bought him for his birthday. We went out for breakfast with my little sister when she was home from university on Christmas break. Emily’s never liked any of my boyfriends before, but she liked you. I’ve always been proud of our relationship, proud of you, proud of us. I wanted people to know we were together, how excited I was to call you mine. It was fine that you never even called me your girlfriend on Instagram because I knew what we were, our friends knew what we were, you know what we were, but now I don’t even know about that anymore!” At that point she wasn’t even facing Matthew anymore, sat up with her back to him in his bed, her legs dangling off the side.
“I’m tired of you keeping me like a fucking secret, Matthew. I don’t deserve that, and I don’t deserve to constantly be second-guessing myself if the person I’m in love with loves me back, if he even gives a shit about our relationship in the first place.” Alessa Liao had never been a doubter. She knew she loved Matthew. She had known for a while; had told him for a while. It had just never struck her until now that he’d never said it back. “I love you, Matthew, but I can’t keep waiting around for you to figure out if you feel the same way.” She pushed herself off the bed and onto the floor, throwing her shirt on over her bra as she bent down to pick up her jeans.
“What are you doing?” Matthew asked stupidly.
Alessa rolled her eyes, but there was no warmth to the action. “What does it look like I’m doing, Matthew? We’ve been together for what, ten months? I just want to feel like you want this as much as I do.”
“And I do—” Matthew started.
“You can say that, and you might even mean it, Matty, but you haven’t been acting like it, and I don’t know how much more of this I can take. I love you,” she said, tugging on her flats and grabbing her purse, “but I don’t think that’s enough anymore.”
Matthew wanted to go after her, but it was as if his body was superglued to the bed. He wanted to move, but he couldn’t, his voice was caught in his throat as he heard Alessa walk out of his bedroom, down the hall and out the door, the slam echoing in his ears.
Matthew didn’t sleep much that night, tossing and turning and torn between wanting so badly to pick up the phone and call Alessa and not wanting to face what he was positive would be utter rejection. She had said she’d drive him to the airport before she had to leave for work, and a last-minute Uber and airport coffee didn’t have nearly the same comfort as it would have coming from her.
He put in his headphones and closed his eyes practically as soon as he had boarded the plane and taken his seat. Noah looked at Johnny, tilting his head over towards Matthew while raising his eyebrows. Johnny shrugged. Whatever was going on with Matthew, it didn’t seem like he’d be sharing. As soon as the bus stopped in Vegas, Matthew grabbed his key card, hopped off, and had fallen into bed before Noah even opened the door.
Alessa thought about watching the game that night, even turned on her TV, but turned it off almost immediately when she saw Matthew, mouthguard half-hanging out of his mouth during warmups, just one of his many quirks that had endeared himself to her over the past ten months. She turned it off, but her notifications kept popping up throughout the night. The Flames were winning, then they weren’t, then Marchessault tipped one in in the last minute of the third period, and there was no coming back from that. She sighed, pressing the heels of her hand up against her eyes, and shut off the lights.
---
Matthew was on a plane halfway to St. Louis by the time he opened his phone — he had coughed up the exorbitant Wifi fee — and opened up his texts. His mom was telling him about a dinner they had scheduled with some family friends for the next day, his dad was asking what time his plane would be landing, and Brady was trying in his own self-deprecating way to make Matthew feel better about the untimely exit by reminding him that the Senators hadn’t even made the playoffs since 2018. Maybe not the most encouraging thing for a captain to be saying, but it at least put a wry smile on his face.
Matthew felt awful about losing to Vegas, because, well, why wouldn’t he? They weren’t exactly a universally-loved team, and he was supposed to be a leader, not the guy who makes sloppy passes and takes stupid penalties that might have cost them the series. Nobody told him that, but Matthew couldn’t help but believe it. At least they didn’t get swept, and losing in six games wasn’t anything to be ashamed about, but that didn’t mean it was any easier seeing other teams playing for the conference final that he was supposed to have led the Flames to. The Golden Knights-Stars series was three games deep, the Stars taking a 2-0 series lead at home before dropping one to Vegas the night before Matthew left for Missouri.
He exited out of the texts, feeling a twinge in his heart when he saw his lockscreen. It was a photo of Bourgeau Lake from a weekend trip he and Alessa had taken in September, a few months after they had started dating and just before the start of the season. She was tired of having to look at Matthew’s boring default home screen every time he asked her to check the time or see who texted him, deciding that their first trip as a couple to one of the most scenic places in Canada was the perfect opportunity to grab a few pictures. Alessa was on the left side of the picture, on top of a rock by the lakeshore, her black hair tucked under a Roots beanie as she looked out over the water. Matthew didn’t think he’d ever seen anything so beautiful then, and the answer really hadn’t changed at all over the last two weeks.
It wasn’t like he and Alessa hadn’t talked since their fight. Okay, well, Matthew was counting asking her ten days ago how she was doing (fine) and her saying she was sorry for the loss against Vegas (it sucked, he said, but he’ll get over it) as talking. Maybe that was smart, maybe it wasn’t, but what he was sure of is that he’d be even worse off if he had no clue what she was thinking, what was going through her mind. And it wasn’t like there were that many people he could ask about her even if he wanted to, and that was really his fault. He knew she had met some of the other partners of guys on the team, but none that he knew of that she was close enough to go to with something as difficult as the potential breakdown of her relationship, and while he’d met a few of her friends — and liked them all — he didn’t have their numbers, and Instagram DMing Praveena to ask if Alessa was doing okay seemed more than a little weird.
By the time the plane had touched down in St. Louis and Matthew had hefted his carry-on down from the overhead bins, the sun had begun to set. Matthew flicked his phone off of airplane mode, seeing a text from his dad telling him he’d be waiting at the curb outside of baggage claim. He ambled down the walkways and across the terminal, passing Starbucks after Starbucks until he reached his flight’s baggage carousel, grabbing his suitcase. It was kind of weird, if you really thought about it. He had his apartment in Calgary, his old bedroom in his parents’ house, and the two bags he schlepped between them in the off-season. Calgary had become home for him, but there was nothing quite like being back with his family. His sister would be back from college in a few weeks, he could eat his mom’s homemade food and get to see friends from high school who couldn’t make the trip up to Alberta during the year.
His dad popped the trunk as soon as he saw Matthew approaching, stepping out of the driver’s side before clapping him on the back as he lifted the bags into the car. He started talking Matthew’s ear off as soon as the key turned in the ignition, but even Keith’s promise that his mom was making lasagna — his childhood favorite — wasn’t enough to take his mind off of what he had left back in Calgary. Who he had left.
A week and a half and one brief text conversation with Alessa later and Matthew was no better. Sure, he’d settled into a routine of sorts. Wake up late, video games or TV till noon, work out with Brady for a few hours. He met up once or twice for lunch with some friends who still lived in the area, drove half an hour away in search of a decent frozen custard. None of it worked, because none of it distracted him from her. And the worst part is that he was starting to realize that Alessa had been right all along. None of them — his friends, his family, anyone — asked about her, where she was or why she wasn’t with him, because none of them knew the whole story, how deep his feelings actually were for her but how he was too much of an imbecile to realize it before things started to fall apart.
No one knew, but people could tell something was off. Brady could tell he was checked out, his mom knew that he barely talked to her for more than a few minutes at a time when she’d usually have to cut him off to get a word in edgewise. Maybe they chalked it up to another early postseason playoff exit, or maybe they thought it was something deeper. He’d tell them in his own time, was the thought, whenever that came. If it ever came. It did, eventually, but not how he expected.
---
“So when are you coming back?” Matthew asked, looking back and forth between his phone, where his sister was on FaceTime and the leftover pasta he was eating for lunch. With his parents out with friends and Brady on a date with his girlfriend, he had been left to his own devices.
“Uh, two weeks?” Taryn said, grabbing her phone from her nightstand. “Finals are next week and then mom and dad are coming out to help me move out.”
“How have your classes been going?”
She looked at him funny. “Matthew, I have my last class tomorrow. If they weren’t going well, there’s not a hell of a lot I can do about it now.”
“Yeah,” he said, wincing. She was right. “Yeah, duh. Stupid question.”
Taryn ran her hand through her hair before squinting at the screen, opening and closing her mouth a few times as if she’d thought of something to say and decided against it. “What’s wrong with you, Matty?” Her voice was soft; Matthew couldn’t remember the last time she’d talked to him like that. “I’m worried.”
“That obvious, huh?” Matthew said, letting out a humorless laugh and setting his now-empty plate on the coffee table. Taryn was way sharper than him and far more observant, and he should have known she would pick it up.
She nodded. “That obvious.” She looked quickly back at him. “It’s a girl, isn’t it?”
Matthew’s jaw hung open. “How—?”
She shrugged. “You’ve played hockey since before I was born, you’ve never been this torn up about getting knocked out of the playoffs. Rules out that. Nothing weird’s going on back home because Brady would have absolutely gossiped to me about it if there were, rules out anything with friends or family. Not a lot of options left.” She shifted herself up to a sitting position on her bed. “So spill.”
“What do you want to know?” Matthew asked.
“Everything,” she replied. “If this girl’s got you acting like this, she’s gotta be something really special.”
A soft look came across Matthew’s face. “She is. Okay, well her name’s Alessa Liao, we met at a team thing, one of her coworkers grew up with an assistant athletic trainer for the team. She’s an architect, even outside of work her sketchbook is filled with all these amazing drawings or buildings around towns and ones she wants to design, and landscapes and coastlines and they’re some of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. She’s an amazing cook, I was over at her apartment once and she was trying to teach me how to fold the pork dumplings she used to make with her mom and grandma, and she laughed when I would mess up but showed me again and again until I got it right.” He paused for a moment. “She’s way smarter than me and the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met.”
“Do you love her?”
He nodded, leaning against the cushions but avoiding Taryn’s eyes. “Yeah.”
She sighed. “Did you ever tell her?”
“No.”
Taryn took a deep breath in. “How long were you two together? How come you never told us about her?”
“Listen, Taryn, I’m not proud of how I acted, but—”
She cut him off. “No, you don’t get to make any more excuses. What. Did. You. Do.”
“We got together last summer, when I was back in Calgary for some team stuff. We were together—have been together? Whatever, a little over ten months. She seemed to think,” he chose his words carefully, “and she was right, that I was a lot more reluctant to put labels on things than she was. I brought her to one or two of the team events, but I didn’t introduce her to people like ‘Hey, this is my girlfriend Alessa, please take lots of pictures and plaster them all over social media so people feel entitled to critique every little aspect of our relationship and who we are as people.’ She was in a few photos on my Instagram, but it was mostly Stories or group shots from parties with the guys. Nothing to indicate we were together”
“Ten months…” Taryn was doing the math. “Mom and Dad have been up like twice since then, you’re telling me they never met her?”
Matthew winced. “No. Well, she was in the background of a FaceTime call once, she introduced herself but she didn’t mention that we were dating and I didn’t exactly…offer up the information.”
She rolled her eyes. “Okay, so you barely brought her around the hotshots and community events, she never formally met our parents. So who did know about her?”
“Brady met her when the Sens were up in Alberta a few months ago, we went out to breakfast. Like I said, she’s been to some parties with the guys, at people’s houses and out at restaurants and clubs and stuff. Some of her friends, I went to her best friend Praveena’s birthday party in January. But other than that, not many.”
“And have you ever thought about how that might make her feel?” Taryn was speaking as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, and as soon as her words hit Matthew’s ears, he realized they were.
“Bad? Ignored?”
“At the very least,” Taryn said, clearly annoyed. “She probably felt like you didn’t give a shit about her, that you didn’t take your relationship seriously, like you were ashamed to be seen with her for some reason. If you never gave her a reason — a real, actual reason — then she’s probably going to assume it was something wrong with her. Like there’s something about her, who she is or how she acts or what she says that made you treat your whole relationship like some dirty little secret you were ashamed to make public.”
Matthew fell back onto the couch, hands covering his face. “I really fucked up, Tare.”
“And you’ve just now realized this?”
“No, but,” he licked his lips nervously, “what if it’s too late? I wouldn’t blame her if she never wanted to see me again, after how crappy and downright dismissive I acted.”
“So what are you going to do about it?” Taryn asked, the corner of her mouth twitching up like she already knew what his answer was going to be.
Matthew pushed himself off of the couch suddenly, jogging out of the living room and up the stairs to his bedroom. “I think I’ve gotta go to Calgary.”
Brady came home twenty minutes later as Matthew was shoving clothes, his passport, and a phone charger into a bag. “Oh, awesome, you’re back. Can you take me to the airport?”
“What are you on?” Brady asked. “It’s one o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon, why the hell do you need to go back to Alberta?”
“Gotta see a girl. I have to try and fix things with her, I’ll tell you on the way. Can you take me or do I need to call an Uber?”
Brady rolled his eyes. “Give me five minutes.”
Matthew booked a flight in the car, and fifteen minutes after leaving Brady pulled up, putting the car into park and looking over at his older brother. “Alessa’s way too good for you, you know that, right?”
“I know,” Matthew said, looking down at his hands.
“But she’s clearly a better person than you, and because of that, she might just hear you out when you go to tell her how badly you fucked up and what you’ll do to earn a second chance if she gives you one.” He looked at his watch. “You’ve gotta go if you want to make the flight. Good luck, Matthew.” Matthew gave him a tight smile back. He was going to need it.
He had a three o’clock flight to Dallas, an hour layover where he had to transfer terminals and go through passport control, only for the flight to be delayed by forty minutes. He sat at the gate, sipping a tasteless latté from some off-brand Starbucks in an attempt to get himself to focus on anything but what he was about to do. God, he didn’t think he’d ever been so nervous in his entire life. Because he’d never had so much to lose.
Matthew was in the middle seat, stuck between some elderly man who kept clearing his throat every thirty seconds and an eight year old who seemed to have missed the day in third grade when they talked about personal space. He kept glancing down at the flight map every thirty seconds, absolutely convinced that the more he stared at it, the quicker it would fly over Kansas, then Wyoming, then past Montana and eventually he’d be back in Alberta and back to Alessa. If she’d have him, that was. He’d taken much, much longer flights in his life, but the less than four hour it took from Dallas to Calgary passed like molasses.
He bounced on his toes the moment the wheels touched the tarmac, mumbling apologies and squeezing past everyone to get off of the plane as quickly as humanly possible. Pulling his phone out of his pocket, he called an uber. Some of the guys were still in town, but they wouldn’t get there as quickly as Abel in his Toyota Corolla and he didn’t need to hear from one more person how much of an idiot he was.
Twenty-five minutes later (well, twenty-seven if you were counting, technically, and Matthew was definitely counting) and the car pulled up outside of Alessa’s apartment building. Matthew nearly launched himself out of the Uber, mumbling a thank you to the driver as he frantically pulled his phone out to check the time. 10:37. Alessa usually got home from the office around 6, maybe a little later if she was grabbing drinks with a friend, and rarely went to bed before midnight. She had always wanted to be one of those people who got up at six to seize the day and go on a five-mile run before work, but she unfortunately just wasn’t built that way.
The lobby locked at ten, but before Matthew could try to think about how to get in without resorting to bribery, someone ambled through the door, their chocolate lab pulling them towards the park a block over. He slipped in, nervously hefting backpack onto his shoulder before reaching the elevators, pressing the button for the fourth floor. Muscle memory took him to Alessa’s door, and as he raised his hand to knock on her door he could have sworn his heart was beating loud enough the whole floor could hear it. There was one fleeting, terrible moment in the twenty seconds it took her to reach the door where Matthew thought about turning around and walking away, but he had made that mistake once and regretted it every second since.
“Matthew?” She said his name like a question, her brows slightly furrowing. “Aren’t you supposed to be in St. Louis?”
He nodded, rubbing his eyes. “I flew back as soon as I realized what a dumbass I had been. It just, I didn’t — it didn’t feel right without you there. You were right, you’re right about everything, and I know I haven’t done anything to earn it, but if you give me five minutes to explain what I’m doing here you can kick me out if you don’t buy it and I won’t complain, I swear.”
Alessa bit her lip, weighing her options. If she let him back through her door, she wasn’t sure she could ever ask him to leave again. But another part of her, a bigger part of her, wanted an explanation so badly she was willing to throw caution to the wind and ignore the warning signs flashing scarlet all around her. So she nodded, and Matthew let out a visibly shaky breath, scooting past where she was holding the door open and into her living room.
He sat down with an audible sigh, his bag thudding on the hardwood beside him. He was playing with his hands, looking between them and Alessa, who had migrated to the small couch across from Matthew’s lounge chair. It pretty much was his chair, she thought absentmindedly. He had claimed it from the first time he visited, saying he liked the worn-in blue velvet much better than any of the expensive leather couches the interior designer his mom had picked out had chosen for his apartment. She wondered if he had even realized where he was sitting. “I never should have left,” he began. “Let me just start there.”
“No you shouldn’t have,” Alessa said softly.
Matthew winced visibly. “I deserved that. But I needed to say it. I never should have left, and I never should have made excuses for why I acted the way I did.
And you deserve so much better and you could do so much better—”
“You’re right,” Alessa said, a little sharply, and with a little bitterness, but her eyes had begun to soften. “I could. But for some dumb fucking reason I can’t explain, I still don’t want anyone else.”
He let out an audible sigh. “God, it’s so good to hear you say that. I wasn’t sure I’d ever get the chance again.”
“I didn’t say that was it, Matthew,” Alessa said, holding one finger up. There’s more to the apology than just that, isn't there?”
“There is,” he said, dipping his head. “I knew as soon as you left my house that night that I shouldn’t have said it. That I didn’t mean what I said. I wanted to apologize, but I didn’t know where to start, and I was having a hard time seeing your side of things. I kept talking to you, texting you, calling you, because I knew that I didn’t want this to end, and I’m so fucking sorry that it took until I lost you — until I almost lost you — to figure out what you meant to me.”
“And that is?” She was choked up now.
“Everything. I think I knew it all along, but as soon as Taryn pulled my head out of my ass this afternoon I knew I needed to get here as soon as I could. Booked my flight on the way to the airport, ran to get to my connection, I’m not positive I didn’t elbow a kid to get off the plane when it landed here. I needed…I knew I needed to do something to show you. To prove that I knew how wrong and stupid I was and how I’d do anything to—”
Alessa cut him off, standing up abruptly, her eyes welling with tears. “I never needed a grand gesture, Matthew. I needed you.”
“And you have me,” he said, reaching out for her hands before thinking better of it and pulling back. “I want you, Alessa Xiuying Liao, for as long as you’ll have me. When I was in St. Louis,” he swallowed, “it felt like a piece of my heart was missing, and now I know that it’s because I wasn’t with you. Because you weren’t there. I want you there, Alessa, I want you laughing with my mom over coffee, or talking to my dad while doing the dishes or yelling at my friends to shut up while we’re in the car because you can’t hear what’s on the radio. I want to talk about the future and I want to mean it, really talk, like where we want to go on vacation over break or if we should get a dog or cat together or how many kids we want to have. And I know you’re apprehensive. Hell, I can’t blame you, I would be too if I was in your position. I know you want to see action, and you deserve that.”
Matthew pulled out his phone, tapping Instagram and scrolling to his drafts. He held it out to Alessa, who looked down at the photo. It was another from their weekend at Bourgeau lake last year; Matthew had agreed to take it at Alessa’s insistence that he actually had a wonderful smile even if he rarely showed it. Alessa had held the phone, Matthew’s hands wrapping around her waist from behind. Alessa was beaming from ear-to-ear. “I’ve had that in my drafts since the first flight over to Texas, but I wasn’t going to post it until I saw you. Until you said it was okay. I love you, Alessa, and I’m so sorry I ever let you believe anything less.”
Her breath caught in her throat hearing him say it, hearing him finally say it after waiting months not knowing if he felt the same way. He kept going. “I think at first, I let myself excuse it by saying I didn’t want you to be exposed to how awful and hateful people can be online. I’ve seen some of the stuff posted about other WAGs and it’s disgusting, and I never wanted you to have to see it or read it, or for it to make things harder for you at work. You’re an incredible architect and you’ve succeeded entirely on your own merit, and people should never think otherwise. But if I’m being honest,” he stuffed his hands into his jeans, “it was because I’m scared. I’ve never been in love like this before. I’ve never had so much to lose. And so I think I was worried that if anything changed, even something small, everything would come crashing down and I don’t know how I would have dealt with something like that. If I could have dealt with something like that. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, Less.”
This time, it was Alessa’s turn to reach out her hand. She wrapped her fingers around his hand. It was shaking, matching his breath as she looked at the screen. She read through the caption with lightning speed, a paragraph all about how much he loved her and how much she meant to him that was so romantic it would have put Shakespeare’s sonnets to shame.
There were still things Alessa didn’t know, so many questions left unanswered. But there was one thing she knew for sure, one thing that she never doubted, not even when Matthew left, not even when their only texts were one-sentence questions and even shorter answers.
It was Matthew. It was always Matthew. So she looked up at him, giving a soft smile, then back at the phone. And she clicked post.
#hockey imagine#hockey writing#hockey imagines#nhl imagines#nhl imagine#nhl writing#Matthew Tkachuk#rat king
135 notes
·
View notes
Text
TIMO FIVE GOALS MEIER!???? IN THIS ECONOMY???
28 notes
·
View notes
Text
inspired by @ghostyjosty ‘s cast of the Avs, Sharks discord presents:
BONUS
50 notes
·
View notes
Text
EXPERIENCE SHARKS HOCKEY!!
1 note
·
View note
Text
The idea that people are still reading this months after I’ve written it seriously warms my heart ❤️
champagne problems - n. mackinnon
And here it is! This piece has taken me almost three months, a pinterest page, and 72 pages on Google Docs. I’m so proud of it, it’s my favorite thing I’ve ever written and I’m excited for you all to get to finally read it. Special thank you to the lovely @brockadoodles who has tolerated me sending her paragraphs with zero context and offered so much support through this whole process. This is a 44k labor of love, so I’d love to hear your thoughts! Please pop into my inbox, tell me your favorite quotes and parts, reblog so others can see it, and feel free to message me!
word count: 44k
warnings: language
(strikethroughs won’t tag) taglist: @hockeyunits @avsfan95 @capsvsducks-blog-blog @jostful @linkingdolans @ggggmoneyyyy @just-sarah–things @laurenairay @mollymartin4 @drewseph93 @joelsfarabee @dreamer1430 @je-ne-regrette-rien @tridir10
you told your family for a reason/you couldn’t keep it in/your sister splashed out on the bottle/now no one’s celebrating
Nathan MacKinnon’s life fell apart on a Thursday night in Nova Scotia. His feet crunched up the gravel of his childhood home’s driveway, his hands stuck in his jacket pockets as his fingers turned the box, that goddamned velvet box, over and over as if when he hit a thousand turns everything would finally make sense. He should have known that would be too much to ask. He stopped on the porch for a minute; the lights were only on in the back of the house, the living room, because that was the plan, that was part of everything that had been set out for weeks. So he had a minute to collect himself. But God, he needed more than a minute. He needed all the time he could get to try and pull himself together before walking in the door for what was supposed to be a surprise, a party, a celebration to commemorate one of the happiest days of his life.
Nate brought his hands up to his eyes, wiping away the tears that had been freely falling for almost twenty minutes. He took a deep breath, then another, then a third, trying to steel himself for what was waiting for him on the other side of the door. He turned the door knob — there really wasn’t a reason to lock your doors in Cole Harbour in July, and Nathan wasn’t sure he would have been able to get the key in if it hadn’t been open — and stepped through the entryway, walking straight past the mirror on the hall tree. He didn’t want to see what he looked like. He didn’t even want to think about it. Nathan could hear everyone in the back room as they noticed his footsteps, could hear their shushes and giggles and poorly-concealed squeals of excitement. God, he was going to disappoint them so badly. They didn’t deserve that.
He made his way down the hall as slowly as he could, each step labored and more difficult to take than the last. Nathan could see their silhouettes on the wall as he turned the corner. He came out from behind the wall, his shoulders slumped, but it took everyone a moment to register that she wasn’t with him.
“CONGRATULATIONS!” Everyone shouted in unison, his sister popping the cork on a bottle of champagne she had bought just for the occasion. She had gone out to the NSLC that morning, and Nathan didn’t even want to think about how much she had spent on the bottle. It took about five seconds for everyone to start realizing that there was something very, very wrong. His mom peeked over his shoulder, as if Antonia would somehow appear out of thin air to set everything right again. Sidney was over by the sideboard, the plates of charcuterie abandoned as he looked with concern at his friend. And Livia, his best fucking friend in the entire world, who had hung up all of the decorations and brought her parents and taken a week off of work to be there to celebrate with him, was looking at him with as much pain as he had ever seen a pair of eyes hold. He knew, when he met hers, that there was at least one fewer person he was going to have to explain everything to. Livia had always been able to read him better than even his own parents. She already knew.
Nathan gave a tiny shake of his head, his mouth contorted, and he pulled out the ring box, the one that should have been empty but instead was filled with dashed dreams and forgotten thoughts of the future and a two-carat diamond ring he had agonized over picking out. His mom’s breath caught in her throat as the champagne foam spilled to the floor, his sister barely even noticing it when her eyes were locked on his with the type of expression of hurt and sorrow he swore he never wanted her to have. “It, uh, it didn’t work out,” he said, tapping the box against his opposite hand. “Antonia…She didn’t say yes.” The room was so quiet you could hear a pin drop before his mom walked forward, pulling her son into a hug. Nathan turned limp in her arms, collapsing into her embrace. He’d be crying if he had any more tears left. “I’m going to go upstairs,” he mumbled. “You guys stay down here, eat the food, drink the wine. Wouldn’t want it to go to waste.”
Keep reading
317 notes
·
View notes
Note
that teaser!! omg please give us more
ask and ye shall receive
“I never needed a grand gesture, Matthew. I needed you.”
0 notes
Note
FINISH THE FIC!!! (no but seriously dont overwork yourself, take all the time you need and just have fun writing it) But what was the inspiration behind it?
Inspiration was me listening to a certain miss swift’s ten minute all too well, getting to about two minutes in, and going “oh shit. This line would make a really good fic.” What line remains a ~mystery~ as its the title and essentially the premise for the whole thing, but a TRUE SHOCKER that I’m getting Taylor inspiration again.
0 notes