#sitwym

[fleurywiththesave]

title: something in the way you move

fandom: men’s hockey rpf

pairing: leon draisaitl/matthew tkachuk

rating: explicit

tags: omegaverse, nontraditional alpha/beta/omega dynamics, heavy angst, hurt/comfort, angst with a happy ending

summary:

Paul doesn’t beat around the bush. “We’re going to acquire Leon Draisaitl.” Matthew almost chokes on his own tongue. “We’re what?”

[fearlessonthecoast]

There's an evil night air, the stars don't shine tonight, night. There's something in the way you do. There's something in the way you push me closer, further. Break me just enough. Your lies always seem so true. There's nothing left for me to lose. There's not one thing I can do to change your ways. But I can't sit back and take the lonely days. When our eyes meet, I can only see the end. And tonight the rain pours again. But tonight I'm gonna lose it all. Playing with fire, I was the first to fall. Heart is sinking like a cannonball. Baby, kill it, what you waiting for? Something in the way you move. There's something in the way you do it. Something in the way you move. Oh there's something in the way you move. Something in the way you do it. Something in the way you move, oh.

Something In The Way You Move by Ellie Goulding

[fleurywiththesave]

something in the way you move? ☺️ any scene you want

Oh man, so many possibilities! Let's go with this section of chapter 4, in the middle of the conversation Matthew initiated about Leon's suppressants (a Matthew POV scene):

Leon doesn’t look reassured. If anything, he looks sick.

“I’m not supposed to,” he says. His voice is shaky and anxious. [If it isn't already abundantly clear, if there's an opportunity to make one or both of these boys shake or tremble or show any physical manifestation of their emotional hurt and pain, I will seize it with both hands and shake it until it falls apart.]

“Not supposed to what?” Matthew asks.

“Tell anyone.”

“What, about the meds? Did some asshole in Edmonton tell you that?” Leon nods, though he looks a little unsure about Matthew’s use of the word asshole. That’s probably going to take awhile to undo. “Well, fuck them. They’re not the boss of you anymore.” [I have used almost this exact sentence in at least three fics and I guarantee I'll do it again. Google Docs wants to correct my grammar each time, but it's not the boss of me.] Matthew pauses for a minute, running over what Leon just said. “So none of your teammates there knew about this?” Leon nods again. “But they never noticed that anything was off, even though they knew you were an alpha? Who were you scenting with?”

“I wasn’t.”

“Yeah, I know you said you didn’t have an arrangement there like we have,” Matthew says. “But didn’t anyone try to scent with you after you’d presented? Didn’t anyone figure it out?” [They did not, because they suck, and Matthew is going to spend the rest of his life relishing any opportunity to make the Oilers pay.]

Leon furrows his brow and Matthew has a sinking feeling that he’s not going to enjoy hearing whatever is coming next.

“I wasn’t allowed.”

“You weren’t allowed to what? To scent with anyone?”

“To be around the team.”

Stupid language barriers. Matthew really should have downloaded Duolingo when he first found out that Leon was coming. That’ll be his New Year’s resolution this year, so they don’t have to stumble through conversations that can’t possibly mean what they sound like. [This is a bit of a throwaway line, but Matthew is definitely going to download Duolingo and not tell Leon about it until he can fumble through something incredibly sweet and romantic in heavily accented German.]

“For dynamics stuff?” Matthew asks, because anything else would make even less sense.

“For anything.”

“Leon, what are you talking about?” His voice is practically a squeak and it’s certainly not giving cool calm and collected, but he has no idea what Leon is saying.

“Alphas are a liability,” Leon says simply, and it sounds like he’s reciting something he’s heard many, many times. [Because he has. It's one of the first things management said to him and one of the things they repeated the most.] “The Oilers took a huge risk keeping me after I presented, they couldn’t also risk me interfering with the rest of the team or their bonds. I had to stay away from them and they had to stay away from me.” [In my brain map, the Oilers were pretty explicit with Leon about their (ghastly) expectations of him, but the effect on the rest of the team was more indirect and insidious. No one sat all of them down as a group and outright said alphas are bad, stay away from Draisaitl off the ice. Rather, they saw how the coaching staff and a few select players started to cut him down and mistreat him, and they absorbed it and followed suit.]

“Leon.” It’s the only word that’s coming to him. He grapples for something else to say. “Leon. What?”

“What?” [Oh Leon, sweet boy. He really doesn't understand why Matthew is confused. It's all so obvious to him and so bewildering to Matthew.]

Matthew doesn’t know how much more he can take of Leon saying absolutely outrageous things like they’re par for the course and then being confused by Matthew’s shock. “You weren’t allowed to be around the team? For—for anything?”

“No, we had approved team events that I was allowed at,” Leon explains. “And we did social media stuff together sometimes.” [I see the social media stuff as one of the things that they did do on occasion soon after Leon presented and it dwindled over the years. So much of the cruelty in what the Oilers did to Leon was gradual, which is one of the reasons it's so hard for him to see how wrong it was. It's the boiling frog technique, ultimately.]

“But—but what about going out after games? Or hanging out together, or being around the omegas after losing? I know the meds affect that, but…fuck, Leon, what about your friends?”

Leon just stares at him. [Yes, I love one brief sentence to interrupt a flow.]

There’s no way. There’s no way that an NHL team explicitly barred one of their players — one of their best players — from spending time with his teammates.

“Leon, I’m sorry, I just don’t understand. You and McDavid are friends.” A flash of pain darts across Leon’s face when Matthew mentions McDavid and he wishes he could take it back.

“That was an accident. A mistake. He didn’t understand that he was supposed to stay away from me, when he first got there and it was all new. They gave him some leeway for a while because, you know. He’s Connor McDavid. He decided he liked me when we first met, so they went along with it for a bit. But they couldn’t just let it go on forever. It wasn’t safe. I didn’t understand all the rules right away either, but some of the older guys explained it.” [Leon doesn't have the language for it or understanding of it at this point, but he is tremendously traumatized by what Connor specifically did to him. Connor came onto their team with a huge amount of power from the jump, and it was a deep betrayal of Leon that he actively chose not to help him even though they had been friends in the beginning. Connor and Matthew didn't grow up all that differently -- neither of them comes from a family or an environment that vilifies alphas the way the Oilers do -- but Matthew's reaction to Leon's situation was immediate horror and an instinct to fix it while Connor's was to look the other way because hey, it wasn't hurting him. And he would never rock the boat of his own success/future for someone else's sake. Leon coming to see Connor as a bad guy in his story is quite important to his growth. And immensely satisfying for Matthew.]

Matthew stands up, then sits back down again. It feels like his arms and legs don’t fit right, like he’s being stretched in different directions. He wants to run very far very fast and also wants to lie down on the floor for a week.

“So…is that what you meant when you said you didn’t want to overstep, when I told you to come out with the team more?” he asks. “That you thought you shouldn’t be there because—because you’re an alpha?” [It genuinely never crossed Matthew's mind before that this is the root of the problem. When I first started thinking about this fic, I was planning to write it in only one POV. I switched to both because I had so much inspiration for both Matthew and Leon's perspectives (and so many specific lines that came to mind for both), and I'm really glad I did because I think a lot of the strength of the story comes from their wildly different perceptions of the same situation or information. Matthew doesn't understand Leon's past, Leon doesn't understand Matthew's present.]

It’s like he’s taken a sip of something that turned out to be straight vinegar. That’s why Leon was so standoffish about meeting the boys before the season started. Why he never joins in on group bonding, no matter how informal it is, and why Matthew has to practically drag him out by his hair to get him to come to dinner or drinks. And that…fuck, that’s why he thought he was going to get in trouble for Trouba targeting him in New York. [If there's one thing I can thank Trouba for, it's giving so many of us an easy background league villain.]

The last time Matthew was this nauseated, he was playing a hockey game with a fractured sternum. This might hurt more. [I LOVE THIS TINY PARAGRAPH SO MUCH. THAT'S ALL.]

“Well, yeah,” Leon says. Matthew closes his eyes against the wave of dismay that sweeps through his chest. [I would be terrified to add up how many times I've referred to a character feeling something in their chest. Nobody tell me.]

“I’m not—I can’t—“ He stops himself to take a breath so he doesn’t give himself an aneurysm. “Leon. I don’t even know how to tell you how fucked-up that is.”

It’s the wrong choice of words. Leon hunches in on himself, looking ashamed and miserable. [See above: physical manifestation of emotional hurt and pain. Also, I think shame is one of the most important descriptors of Leon's state of mind for the whole first half of the fic. Shame over being an alpha, shame over what he sees as his weakness in handling it, shame over what he thinks he's done to others, now shame over Matthew knowing more of the truth. And him starting to release himself from that shame is so important to the second half.]

[fleurywiththesave]

follow up on the ask about something in the way you move :] you are too generous in letting me ask about anything i want, lol! i’m curious about so much.

did you make a list of any of the other alphas in the league? are any of them treated similarly by their teams to how leon was, or was his experience uniquely shitty?

a big one - any deleted scenes? when leon briefly thought back to how he got upset when matthew kneeled for him that first time i wanted so badly to know more! same thing goes for the first time he asks matthew to scent with him - the work he had to have done to build the courage for that!

oh and last but not least, i thought your trope inversion was so cool and well done. i’m really curious about an eventual heat for matthew - how did you envision heats in your verse?

you don’t have to respond to all (or any!) of these questions, i just took the opportunity to ask and ran with it. love your fic so much. <3

Oh my dear anonny, you have no idea how incredibly happy this made me. Like, the fact that this little world I created inspired so much curiosity and that you like the fic so much has me blushing and smiling like a loon. I'm beyond delighted to answer your questions, and you should always feel free to ask about anything you're wondering about! Especially with sitwym, which is my most beloved baby. I think you'll be hard-pressed to find a fic writer who wouldn't love the opportunity to talk with a reader like this.

Anyway, putting my answers under a cut because it got long, and I'm blowing you lots of kisses through the internet!

I don't have an exhaustive list of other alphas in the league, but there are only a handful, never more than one on a team at any given time, and Leon is by far the most high profile of them all (and the most high profile in at least the last couple decades). It's mentioned at one point that Evan is one of the few omegas Matthew knows who's played with an alpha long-term before, in Buffalo, and in my mind that's someone like Jake McCabe. Some other players I loosely have in mind as alphas are Dawson Mercer, Zach Aston-Reese, and Carson Soucy.

When it comes to Leon's specific experience, this was one of the most interesting things for me to think about while I was writing. I think that Leon's time with the Oilers was far at the extreme end of things, and the other alphas in the league aren't subjected to that level of cruelty, or such long-term abuse. What happened to Leon was a combination of a few different factors – the culture in Edmonton historically not being very welcoming toward alphas; the specific people in charge while he was there not liking alphas; and Leon's personal status as such a good player, someone drafted by the Oilers to be a star of the team, making them think that he had somehow betrayed them/his promises to them by having the audacity to turn out to be an alpha. And maybe if the most important people in the room had had more backbone than Connor, it could've gone differently, but nobody was willing/cared enough to stand up for him in the beginning, and over time, a lot of his teammates began internalizing what they were always hearing and actively participating in rejecting Leon and making his life hell. That being said, none of the other NHL alphas are getting a really high level of understanding or support, at least not from their teams as a whole – I see a lot of it being a kind of "don't ask, don't tell" situation, and individual teammates are more likely to be supportive than the broader team culture. So really, Leon has the whiplash of going from the worst team in the league for an alpha to what turns out to be the best team in the league for an alpha.

(It's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment, but there's a single sentence reference to Jeff Skinner in the game in Edmonton. He overlapped with ERod and Jake McCabe in Buffalo for a few years, so he came to the Oilers from a much more typical NHL environment as far as alphas go, and he's pretty shocked to discover the difference. And not in a good way.)

As far as heats go, I think it's actually not too different from a more traditional take on the trope. A healthy omega usually goes into heat once or twice a year, it lasts for a few days, and someone in heat wants to get fuuuuucked. One thing I would imagine to set heats in this 'verse apart is that omegas in heat don't "need" to be knotted like it's often written, and that's something that contributes to the systemic prejudice toward alphas. If omegas can get by just fine without an alpha, what are alphas bringing to the table?

Finally, deleted scenes! Leon's feelings after Matthew knelt for him the first time are largely about heartache – he's aware that he's not feeling something he could and should be feeling, and he wants so badly to know what that would be like. That wouldn't have happened with just anyone, but Matthew's been so kind to him and Leon's starting to see what it could be like to trust someone, which he never really has as an adult/as an alpha, and it's stirring up things that never even had a chance to be planted in the time between when he presented and when he went on suppressants. After so many years of telling himself he's fine and the way he's being treated is fine, letting himself wonder about his alpha nature is really, really scary. So it definitely took a lot of courage and work to get to the point that he could ask Matthew to kneel for him! I think one of the most important facets of that scene is that he doesn't actually plan to make that request of Matthew. He doesn't really think about it all, he's not actively choosing to be brave in that moment. The question just comes out, because he's crossed the bridge from wondering about those alpha instincts to experiencing and even starting to embrace them, and now part of him knows what he needs before he's aware of it.

(I know those aren't really proper "deleted scenes." I do have some codas planned for this 'verse and right now all of them take place either after or before the main fic, but that could change, so if there's anything specific you or someone else wants to see, let me know!)

That was a LOT, I hope I didn't overwhelm you, but thank you thank you again for your questions! It was so much fun for me to think about the 'verse like this.

[fleurywiththesave]

I too am having a tough time letting your fic go. Thank you for writing and sharing this beauty with us. I cannot wait to read it again and again and cannot wait to see what’s next! Sending you lovee ❤️❤️

Thank you 💙💙 It’s really moving that people liked it so much, since it means so much to me. I haven't decided yet what will be next, but I'll do my best to make it good!

[fleurywiththesave]

just read the new chapter and wtf( good way) suppresents arent long term in this world? and they made baby leo go on them right away? so this poor sweet baby feels awful and alone all the time and is constantly told that his true nature is violence when hes never shown any violent reactions??? your a master of storytelling

Thank you so much!! Yep, Leon’s got a whole airline worth of baggage to deal with. I hope people are enjoying reading about it, because I definitely enjoyed writing it.

[fleurywiththesave]

Your Mathew/Leo abo is braking my heart in the best way. Every time they invite him to join in and he thinks it's a test or they're just being cruel makes me want to cry for him. And his desire to actually smell Mathew??? Also I'm assuming Mathew doesn't know he's on surpressnts?

I love the casual way the omegas scent and bond with each other, it's very hockey esque. And I hope we find out that Connor wasn't an asshole in the end, just awkward and pressured.

Thank you so much!! There’s little I love more than making people cry with my angst. Matthew does not know about the suppressants, and I’m excited for you guys to see that part of the story unfold. As for Connor…we will learn more!

[fearlessonthecoast]

It's the strangest feeling, feeling this way for you. There's something in the way you move. Something in the way you move. With you I’m never healing. It’s heartache through and through. There's something in the way you move. I don’t know what it is you do. Not one bone in your body good enough for me. But this heart is open, bloodstain on my sleeve. When our eyes meet, I can only see the end. But tonight I'm here, yours again. But tonight I'm gonna lose it all. Playing with fire, I was the first to fall. Heart is sinking like a cannonball. Baby, kill it, what you waiting for? Something in the way you move. There's something in the way you do it. Something in the way you move. Oh there's something in the way you move. Something in the way you do it. Something in the way you move. Oh. Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh. Oh oh oh oh oh.

Something In The Way You Move by Ellie Goulding