Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

2004 — ages 7 & 9

When the NHL officially announces the lockout, Matthew was maybe just a little too young to fully understand the situation. All he knew was that dad was barely home most days—playing hockey and traveling everywhere to play hockey—and then suddenly he was seeing his dad pretty much daily. The house wasn’t just mom and Matthew and Brady and baby Taryn anymore; dad was also around. And he loved that, even if dad would sometimes get grumpy and his face would look all scrunched like he was upset. But whenever he looked at Matthew, he would smile and pat his lap and let Matthew sit with him while he told him stories about funny things that the Blues players did on the ice.

But it was still weird. Matthew wasn’t used to dad being home almost all the time.

He’d find himself staring at his dad on most mornings, frown on his little face, because mornings were always mom and Matty time. Brady is a lazy butt who never wakes up early enough to help mom with breakfast, so that obviously became Matthew’s job. But with dad home, mornings quickly became mom and Matty and dad.

“Dad,” he finally decides to ask his dad the one question that’s been bothering him for days now. “Why aren’t you playing hockey no more?”

Mom and dad share a look; Matthew frowns and goes to open his mouth again when dad starts to talk. The explanation—that the league is having a lockout—was no less confusing than the fact that his dad isn’t going to practice every day and that the only hockey they’ve been playing lately was street hockey on the driveway.

“Did you lose the key?” Matthew asks, genuinely confused. If they got locked out, then they need the key. Duh!

Mom laughs, leaning against dad’s shoulders as she does.

“Yeah, bud. I think we lost the key. Might take a while to find it.” Dad nods. He looks so calm despite not being able to play hockey, which is crazy to Matthew. There is no way he (himself) could ever live without hockey for even a day. No, an hour! He tells his dad as much and pouts when the man laughs, full belly and loud. “Yeah, I think it sucks, too. But I’m working on maybe playing somewhere else until we, uh, find the key.

“Not the Blues!?” At seven, Matthew couldn’t really fathom the idea of Big Walt not playing for the Blues—of his dad not wearing that distinctive blue, white, and yellow uniform.

“Probably not for a bit, bud.”

They were moving to…Germany.

Matthew didn’t know what that was, or even where that was, aside from it not being St. Louis. But dad was going to go play hockey in Germany and this time, the family was going with him.

When he asked mom where Germany was, she pulled out a dusty old atlas from their bookshelf and showed him. First, she pointed to where they were, just a tiny dot (somewhere just left of the middle of the United States) and then her finger ran across the page all the way to the opposite side of the world—there was a whole ocean between them!—before landing on another small dot. It was a word Matthew didn’t recognize, his little blue eyes squinted at the letters as if that would make them make more sense.

“Germany, Matty.” Mom tells him, one hand sweeping back his curls from where they’d fallen into his eyes. She muttered something about a hair cut soon, before smiling down at him. “We’re gonna go to a place called Cologne, in Germany, for a bit, so dad can play with his new team.”

He didn’t really understand why dad wasn’t playing with the Blues anymore—though apparently no one was playing for the Blues, and that’s even more baffling a thought for little seven year old Matthew—but he nodded anyway.

He forgets about the lack of hockey (and the weirdness of dad being around so much) as the whirlwind of packing up and leaving for Germany takes over the Tkachuk household. And Matthew steps up to be the best big brother ever as he watches over Taryn—and Brady—while his parents do everything else. Though he makes sure that mom packs his skates because he can’t not have them no matter how far away they’re going.

Before long, the five of them are in a plane and off to a whole other country. Matthew spends the majority of the way too long flight with his face pressed to the windows as he stares wide eyed at the clouds. It’s not his first plane ride, but they still fascinate him. Anyway, it’s better than Brady crying like a little baby—even Taryn isn’t crying—for half the trip.

Everything else is a whirlwind after they land.

Germany feels different. Even the air feels not like St. Louis.

“That’s because it is different, Matty.” Mom tells him as they make their way to their new house. It’s big, like their house back in St. Louis, but also nothing like it.

“It’s…old.”

Dad laughed as he picked Matty up before setting him down inside the house.

Matty doesn’t know why it’s funny. The houses do look old, like pictures he’s seen on books at school and in movies Mom sometimes watches, and they’re all connected to the other houses. St. Louis—their house—had a big yard with lots of trees and grass and even an old swingset he had helped his grandpa build.

“But so pretty.” Mom says as she brings in Brady and a sleeping Taryn. “You kids play in here while I help dad with some things.” She tells them and Matty nods. He pokes Brady until he nods also and yelps when Brady pokes him back. Hard. Right in his arm.

Little brothers are so much less nice than little sisters, he decides. And wonders if, when they leave Germany, they can maybe just leave Brady here. He might like the old-ness.

It’s a week into their stay in Germany that Matthew first meets Leon. A week of Mom making the house “theirs,” she tells them, and Dad going out and meeting with his new team—Kölner Haie.

Matthew has been bored out of his mind until Mom decided they deserve a trip to the rink.

He and Brady had been begging to go see dad’s new rink since they arrived, but between feeling sleepy almost all the time and helping mom out with baby Taryn, they hadn’t had the time until today. Mom had woken them up early and told them the news, they were finally going to go check out where his dad will be playing for the next…however long.

When they get there, dad disappears somewhere but all of Matthew’s attention was on the giant rectangle of ice situated in the middle of the giant room.

It looked different. Bigger. At the same time it also looked the same. It wasn’t the Blues’ ice, yet Matthew still itches to go out and skate on it.

That was when he noticed that the ice wasn’t empty.

There, standing at center ice was another person. Not an adult because they look too small to be that, and suddenly the prospect of there being another kid—someone that’s not his little brother, because that doesn’t count—has Matthew practically bouncing on his feet.

“Mommy. Mommy. Mooom. Look!” He points at the ice, almost too excited to express himself fully. Looking around, he almost forgets that this is a completely new building and he has no idea where anything is. Certainly not where his skates would be. That sets a pout in his face as Matthew deflates slightly. “I wanna—skate!”

Right there in front of his face were his skates, the ones they’d brought with them from St. Louis.

While his mom helped him finish lacing up his skates, Matthew can’t help but keep sneaking glances at the boy—and he can tell it’s definitely a boy now—that’s still out on the ice. He’s alone, skating in small circles with a puck; there’s also a hockey stick in his hands but he’s not in full gear. By the time he’s set on his feet and also given a stick of his own, Matthew was practically vibrating.

He shoots out onto the ice and heads straight for the boy. It’s so easy to slash at the other’s ankle and then steal the puck, and Matthew is laughing in glee at the boy’s outraged cry.

“—play here! And my dad is one of the best players! Oh, my name is Matthew, I should have said. Mommy says it’s rude to not introduce yourself when you meet new people.” Matthew barely changed breaths as he continued to talk while skating circles around this weird kid who keeps staring at him with pinched eyes. “Brady—that’s my brother—always forgets. But he’s only five and a baby. He hates being called that so I always call him that. But he’s not a real baby; that would be Taryn—she’s my baby sister. She’s a real baby. Oh! Oh! What’s your name?”

He slides to a stop and stares up at the slightly older kid. His lips are all twisted and frowny, but he has really pretty eyes. They’re all green, almost blue—but nothing like Matthew’s own eyes—and there’s little bits of gold (just like on the Blues’ uniform) in the center. Matthew scoots closer, mesmerized. And maybe he gets a little too close because his skates bump into the other kid’s and just as he’s about to open his mouth, to tell the kid how pretty he looks, suddenly he’s flat on his butt.

Shock rocks through his entire body and Matthew can only sit there, iciness seeping into his pants, and stare up at the kid who just shoved him.

He opens his mouth to yell, but all that comes out is a loud cry.

Matthew howls up at the ceiling and his visions blurs with tears. But he still sees it when the other kid moves, but not closer; he moves away, skates further and further until he disappears down the tunnel. And Matthew continues to cry until his dad comes onto the ice and picks him up. And he cries until he’s settled in his mom’s arms and head buried in her shoulder. Only then does he quiet down.

“Oh, Matty. You’re okay.” His mom soothes him.

“H-he—he’s a meany butt!” He says, voice muffled in his mom’s shirt collar. “I didn’t even do any-anything! I was b-being nice, like mommy taught me!”

“And you did so well, Matty. You did.”

When mom finally sets him down on the ground, Matthew is still a little wobbly in his skates. And when Brady’s arms wrap around his body, he feels more tears falling from his eyes as he hugs his little brother back.

“You’re okay, Matt.”

He sniffles, “y-yeah.

But when he turns to look out on the ice again, expecting to find it empty, instead Matthew’s met with the sight of an older man—his dad’s age—and the same boy that had shoved him earlier. The boy was pouting, lower lips protruding and thick brows bunched together, as he is led towards where Matthew and his family were gathered.

“Hallo,” the older man says as he skates to a stop by the boards right before where Matthew’s dad stood. “Keith, I’m sorry for my son.” The man seems to know Matthew’s dad and they shake hands—like he’s seen so many adults do all the time—before the other boy is pushed to stand in full view of everyone. “This is Leon. Leon, was hast du dazu zu sagen? Go on, say it.”

“Es tut mir leid.”

The words were mumbled and sounded like gibberish to Matthew, but it caught his attention enough that he had fully turned around to face the older boy. Blue eyes blink up into green-blue eyes, and wow, he’s even prettier without his helmet on.

“Leon.”

Shoulders hunching, the boy—Leon—frowns but opens his mouth again, “I am sorry.”

“You’re mean!” Matthew bursts out, his own furious pout on his own face as he waddles up to the boy, hands on his hips as he looks up at him. “And you sound funny.” It was mean, and Matthew knew it was mean, but he was pushed, and falling on ice hurts when he’s not fully in his pads.

“Matthew!” Oops. Mom sounds mad.

But dad and the other man, who he thinks must be Leon’s dad (they look alike) starts to laugh instead. Which in turn makes Matthew smile, because if they’re laughing that means he’s obviously not in trouble.

He’s feeling much better now, and his butt doesn’t feel as cold (or hurting) anymore, so he turns his smile back to Leon and beams. And then he reaches out with both hands and pushes at the older boy’s chest. Leon stumbles back a step, but he doesn’t fall—which is just unfair. Green eyes widen as they stare down at him, and it looks like Leon is saying something—song-something that Matthew can’t really hear clearly, but it doesn’t matter, because Matthew just knows that they’re going to be best friends.

He says as much. He says a lot until Leon’s eyes get real, real wide and Matthew can see all the different colors inside of them. And then he hears the other boy say something quiet.

The smaller boy is saying so many words without changing his breathing, and Leon is both impressed and a little worried. It feels like he’s back on the ice again when this new person came out of nowhere, already babbling before he’d even slowed to a stop in front of Leon. Still more than a little stunned—and maybe still cowed by his dad’s scolding minutes ago—Leon manages to get out a soft, “slow.”

The boy—Matthew—pauses.

Oh. His dad has always said that Matthew tends to talk a mile a minute—which means too fast, mom explained once.

“Let’s be best friends,” he declares, slower this time, with a nod of his own, and doesn’t wait for Leon to even respond before taking the older boy’s hand and dragging him back onto the ice. Behind him, he hears Brady’s indignant squawk (which makes him giggle), and calls back, “I guess Brady can come too.”

The first time Matthew gets to see his dad wearing the Kölner Haie uniform, he has to blink a lot. He almost doesn’t recognize his dad because the man looks so different. Everything is red and black and white, and nothing at all like the blues and yellows he’s more used to seeing on his dad’s uniform.

Even the number on the back is different; no longer the singular 7, but now a 77 instead.

And Matthew’s not sure he likes it. When he tells Leon that, nose wrinkling as he looks out at the ice where his dad and the other Haie players are warming up, all he gets in response is a soft flick at his nose.

“Is good number, sonnig,” Leon tells him.

Yeah, okay. If one 7 is good, two 7s must be double good.

Which must be true because the Haie wins the game with a 3-point lead and his dad even scored a goal. Matthew had jumped into Leon’s arms when the puck hit the back of the net, an awesome snapshot from his dad that had the entire arena bursting into cheers. He had screamed his own cheers into the older boy’s ears and Leon only winced once.

“Natürlich,” Leon’s voice is directly in Matthew’s ear and he can hear it crystal clear even over all the noise around them—and Brady tugging at his arm as he cheers for their dad too. “Papa is coach.”

Both their dads are the best, Matthew concludes.

But the team doesn’t always win. That’s just the nature of the game, Matthew’s dad told him once. Leon’s dad tells them the same thing when they were both pouting about it even days later. And the rest of the season has its ups and downs; sometimes it’s a down that has everyone looking sad (and mad), but sometimes its ups and everyone is smiling, and Matthew gets to steal Leon away to play while Kim babysits Brady and Taryn. Matthew doesn’t need looking after because Matthew has Leon.

Not only is Leon the best, he’s also the best at hockey, at least for someone that’s closer to Matthew’s age (adults like their dads don’t count). They also get to see each other almost every day, especially with Matthew starting school just a few years below Leon, in the same school building. Afterwards, he gets to tag alongside and join the older boy’s hockey team—the junior Haie team.

Time chugs along and they’re still in Germany. But Matthew’s no longer sad about it, and he’s starting to think of it as less weird. Still old, but mom was right that it’s also very pretty—and the prettiest thing about Köln is his bestest friend Leon, of course.

Brady thinks that’s ew. But what does a baby like him know?

Leon agrees, because he smiles when Matthew declares him the prettiest boy he’s ever met (and when he says Matthew is, too, that keeps him floating on air for days to come).

But not everything about German is fun and nice. Sometimes people can be mean. Not like Leon-mean, that’s just the older boy being a grump, but actually mean.

Matthew meets other boys in school, and some of them make fun of Matthew for the way he speaks German—slow and stuttered. And they’re mostly easy to ignore, until three of them corner him after school one day and start poking at him. They’ve got him surrounded, Matthew isn’t backing down even when half of what they’re saying goes right over his head.

“—dummkopf!” Laughter comes from all sides, but it’s not funny.

“Du klingst dumm!”

“Deine Haare sind komisch.”

There are tears prickling at the corners of Matthew’s eyes even as he puffs out his chest and prepares to yell back. Only…he doesn’t have to.

“Es reicht!” It’s a familiar voice that yells those words, and Matthew’s angry tears have already transformed into a smile by the time Leon actually reaches them. “Hör auf!”

He inserts himself between Matthew and the other boys readily, pushing the younger boy behind him so that he can more easily shield his friend. More yelling happens in rapidfire German and before things can get physical, Leon is dragging Matthew behind him as they run down the streets. A few simple turns and they’re already closing in on Leon’s house.

Matthew follows, little legs doing their best to keep up with the older boy.

“Danke,” he pants once they finally come to a stop.

For a moment, no words are exchanged between them. Matthew looks up at Leon as Leon looks down at Matthew. Then the older boy is stepping forward, a serious look on his face and green eyes unwavering; he reaches up to put both hands on the younger boy’s shoulders before leaning forward until their faces are only centimeters apart.

“I will teach you more German.”

“I can teach you English!” Matthew beams.

They make a deal. With their first lesson starting the following weekend, which finds them both at Matthew’s house, sitting on his couch with a book opened between the two of them.

But first…

“What does sonnig mean?”

That’s not a question Leon was expecting to hear.

He looks at Matthew, green eyes unblinking. The truth is, Leon’s not really sure when he had even started calling the younger boy by that nickname; only one day it rolled off his tongue, easy as ever, and he just never stopped.

Matthew looks back and giggles at the stunned look on Leon’s face. Maybe he was embarrassed at getting caught calling Matthew something weird.

“What is it, Leo? Is it a bad word?” He flutters his eyes and leans in closer.

Leon’s lips move, but whatever he says is so quiet Matthew can’t hear it. So he pokes at the older boy until he repeats it, louder this time: “sunny.”

“Sunny?” Matthew wiggles his nose, head tilting at almost a ninth degree angle as he thinks. “You think I’m…sunny?”

Tentatively, Leon nods. There’s a dusting of pink along his cheeks that Matthew wants to touch (so he does, the skin beneath his fingers soft and slightly hot). The other boy twitches, but holds still, letting Matthew touch, and prod. And when Matthew laughs, it only makes the younger boy seem more comparable to sunshine.

“Bright. That is you.”

That earns Leon a smile so bright it’s nearly blinding. Matthew obviously likes it.

The topic is dropped—the younger boy’s attention span is a little flighty—and Leon manages to get the focus back on learning more German words, until the end. Matthew nearly ends up in Leon’s lap as he kneels on the sofa next to the other boy.

“If you get to call me sonnig, I should get to call you something too!”

“O-okay…” It is only fair.

And Matthew looks not unlike a confused kitten with his scrunched up face and furrowed brows. Whatever he’s thinking of must make sense because in the next second, he’s launching himself at Leon and screaming:, “trauerkloß!” at the top of his lungs. Which earns them both a spare pillow being tossed at them by an annoyed looking Brady, and a quiet talking to by Chantal because Matthew accidentally woke Taryn up from her nap.

But before Leon leaves for the night, he quietly tells Matthew, “you can also call me Loa, like mama does.”

Matthew wasn’t sure if he loved all of Germany (he’s not even seen much of it outside of Köln), but he thinks maybe the place isn’t so bad. Dad’s team has won lots of games and mom is happy. Taryn is getting bigger and faster and even Brady isn’t as annoying as he usually is. And Matthew has a best friend.

So Germany is pretty okay.

2005 — ages 8 & 10

In all the okay-ness that is Germany and Leon, Matthew has seemingly forgotten about St. Louis, until one day they’re all told that it’s time to go home. But Matthew doesn’t want to leave, and when his mom and dad sat them all down to announce that they’ll be leaving very soon, Matthew promptly burst into tears. Even as his mom tries to talk to him in her calm voice, he is inconsolable.

But they do leave Germany, because his dad has to go back to play with the Blues.

“And you love the Blues, don’t you, Matty?” His mom asks him, wiping at his tear tracked face with her soft fingers.

He nods; of course he does. Matthew even thought about maybe one day playing for the Blues, just like his dad. But at this very moment, all Matthew can think about was how unfair it is that he has to leave his best friend behind, because that’s exactly what Leon is, the bestest friend Matthew has in the whole world. And how is he going to break the news to the other boy? Would Leon cry like he’s crying right now?

“L-Leo’s going to be s-sad!” Hiccups disrupt his words as he tells his mom, warning her that this news is going to make his friend upset.

“Oh, baby.” She tucks him close and lets Matthew rest against her.

It’s nice, even though he’s a big boy and should need his mom to comfort him as much anymore—he’s not still a baby like Brady or Taryn—Matthew loves spending time with his mom. So he stays there, sniffling into her shoulder until the doorbell rings and he hears the telltale signs of Leon’s footsteps. Then he’s off like a shot, running through the living to slam right into the older boy, who always, always catches him. They stumble, nearly fall over, and Matthew is on his tiptoes with his chin hooked over Leon’s shoulder and he sniffles quietly into the other’s ear.

“Mom says we have to go back to St. Louis.” The words are whispered, barely audible, but Leon hears. Because Leon’s arms wrap themselves tighter around Matthew’s torso, almost as if the older boy is afraid Matthew will disappear right this second.

“Ich werde dich vermissen, sonnig.”

“Of course you’ll miss me!”

“We will write, ja?”

When Matthew goes to pull back from their hug, Leon moves to pull the younger boy close again. He’s not ready to let go just yet. And Matthew doesn’t seem to mind either, clinging on just as tightly. Leon buries his face in the other boy’s strawberry smelling curls and sighs.

A week later, Matthew is back in Missouri and back in the house he hasn’t seen in nearly a whole year. Everything still looks the same, but nothing feels the same.

“It’s good to be home!” Dad exclaims as they walk inside.

“Germany was nice, but home is always better.” Mom sets Taryn down and lets her lean on Matthew as she walks around the house, checking everything out. He doesn’t know what she’s looking for though, the house looks just fine. “Boys watch your sister for me, please.”

They do. He lets Brady explain some weird game he learned in Germany to them, and all it does is make Matthew miss someone who is halfway across the world.

Luckily, it doesn’t take long for his mom to come back, clapping her hands as she announces what she’s going to make for dinner. A celebration for their homecoming; Dad is just as excited, voice booming as he picks up Taryn, and lets Matthew and Brady free to run around the house.

The first place Matthew goes is his room; his bed sheets are still the same navy blue they’ve always been, and his hockey gear is still sitting on its shelf in his closet. There are still the same old posters of his favorite players on his walls. But there’s no Leon. And that’s weird. If Matthew pouts a little too much, no one really mentions it, not even his dad. Though Taryn does try to cheer him up by poking him in the cheeks more than usual while she sticks to his side like glue.

Nothing stops him from missing Leon though. Every time Matthew thinks of something funny, he wants to turn around and share it with the older boy, only to find no one there. Sometimes, he finds Brady, but he’s too baby to understand Matthew’s great ideas.

Even shooting pucks in the driveway reminds him of Leon.

Matthew’s only comfort is the promise he got from the German boy, that they wouldn’t lose contact even when they’re so far apart. And he knows Leon would never break a promise he made, not to him.

As predicted, the first letter arrives not long after they get back to St. Louis. It’s short, the handwriting is a little wonky in the way a kid's handwriting always is. But the second Matthew laid eyes on the envelope, with its stamp featuring the Cologne Cathedral, he leapt across the room to snatch it out of his mom’s hand, ignoring her laughing warning for him to be careful.

“Oh, it’s from Leeeeon.” Brady pokes at him and tries to snatch the letter away.

“Go away!” Matthew pushes his brother away. “It’s for me.” He shakes the letter in Brady’s face, showing off the front where his name is written in big blocky letters: Matty.

The letter was a mix of German and English, and reading it has Matthew wishing he was back in Germany with Leon by his side. Instead, he was sitting on his couch in St. Louis. His lips naturally dip into a pout but he reads on, laughing when Leon complains about Kim pulling some kind of prank on him. Matthew wants to be there, knowing that if he was, he’d most likely join Kim in making the other boy look silly.

Finishing the letter only makes him want to run away and fly back to Germany.

He nods along with the last of the words, brain stuck on the most important part. It’s the part Matthew really hangs onto, that last promise at the end: we will meet in the summer. Although the words were written on paper, he could feel the conviction ringing through them. The other boy wrote it as if it were already true. Matthew nods. They’ll definitely see each other.

And they do.

Letters are traded back and forth between them throughout the hockey season, into the next year.

The Blues didn't make the 2006 playoffs so Summer came early in the Tkachuk household. With it came Matthew’s jitters; enough to drive nearly everyone in his family up the wall. But he didn’t care. The end of the NHL season means Matthew is gradually inching closer to being able to see Leon again, and this time, it’s the older boy coming to St. Louis to visit him.

It’ll be the best summer ever.

Matthew has plans.

“—ball hockey, of course! And I’ll take him to the rink and we can skate together.” He’s rattling off a list to his mom, who only smiles and nods. Beside her, Brady is rolling his eyes, but Matthew easily ignores him. Leon is going to be here soon enough—a few more weeks, his dad had said last time he’d asked—and Matthew needed to make sure everything was perfect.

When Leon steps off the plane and onto St. Louis soil, the difference between here and home is minimal. All airports seem to look alike on the inside, just like all planes do apparently. But what waits for him at the end of the long walkway out of the baggage claim is nothing like what is back home.

His mom held onto his hand, her slender fingers gripping his tightly to prevent him from running off. And he wants to. Because Leon is practically shaking with excitement. It’s been months of letters (and the occasional tears, which Kim will never find out about), but the promise he made Matthew has finally come true. The hockey season has ended and Leon has arrived in America—in Missouri—to see Matthew again.

“Leon, benimm dich!” The hand around his squeezes lightly.

Leon nods. But he can’t help bouncing on the balls of his feet. Their bags are taking forever to arrive and he’s wasting time waiting here when he could be hanging out with Matthew. He imagines the younger boy must be going as crazy as Leon is right now. Their last few letters have been filled with increasingly more jumbled words detailing all the things they were going to do during Leon’s month with the Tkachuks.

The list was long. He didn’t have the heart to tell the younger boy that finishing the list seems highly impossible.

Not that it matters when their bags finally arrive and then Leon (and his mom) are moving towards the exit. It’s still a journey to get to the giant set of sliding doors that open into the arrivals lobby of the airport, but for Leon it’s all a blur.

One second he was walking beside his mom and the next there was a familiar voice calling (read: screaming) his name and then a curly haired blur darts through the crowd, hurling itself straight into Leon’s arms.

“Trauerkloß!”

Matthew’s voice rings loud in Leon’s ear and he winces a little but it quickly morphs into a smile as he wraps his arms around the younger boy.

“Sonnig,” he whispers into soft curls.

He’s missed this; missed his (dare he say it) best friend and having the other boy so close again. For nearly an entire year, Leon has always had Matthew within arms reach. Months apart was a startling change he didn’t think he’d feel as starkly, but now that he’s hugging the curly haired boy once more, he doesn’t want to let go. Though he has to, because Matthew starts to wiggle restlessly, poking his pointy little fingers into Leon’s ribs until his hold loosens. Then the same fingers lace through his and Leon is being pulled behind the smaller boy with no other choice but to follow.

Their parents’ laughter (and words of half-admonishment) trail after them, not that Matthew pays them a lick of attention.

And much like their airport reunion, the rest of Leon’s time in Missouri is spent much the same, with Matthew taking (and talking) over everything. They take boat rides on the river, visit the aquarium—which looks not that different from every other aquarium Leon has been to before, yet he’s had more fun pressing his face up to the thick glass alongside Matthew than he’s ever had before—and even got to play in MonstroCity, thought Chantal made sure they’d stick to places that are fully visible to the adults.

They also spent a lot of time around Matthew’s neighborhood, so different from the older buildings that fill most of Köln’s streets. There were also lots of kids around to play impromptu games of ball hockey out on the streets. It didn’t even matter that Brady tagged alone with them to most places, though the younger of the Tkachuk brothers was likely less happy about that than either Matthew or Leon.

A month passes by too fast.

It felt like Leon had just landed in St. Louis and he’s already about to head home to Germany again.

Matthew grows more quiet in the last few days of Leon’s trip. And it’s hard not to follow that example. Gone were the big, bright smiles that light up everything, and instead, the younger boy was all soft pouts and silence. So Leon had to try and be the louder one.

He’d drag Matthew out to shoot pucks in the garage.

He’d rope Brady into playing pranks on Matthew—which earns him more pouting, but also a whiny Matthew who spends an inordinate amount of time poking Leon right back, which he preferred to the quiet version.

And by the time the day arrives, Matthew is less quiet, though no less pouty. The younger boy gets loud in voicing his dissatisfaction with Leon’s departure.

“I’m moving to Germany!” He’d declared in the care ride over to the airport.

“Matty, honey.” Chantal’s voice travels from the front passenger seat.

“I’ll just sneak into Leo’s suitcase. He won’t mind, right?”

Bright blue eyes turn to Leon and the urge to nod is strong. He’d like nothing more than to steal Matthew away back to Köln. But he’s not given a chance to actually answer when Keith’s voice booms loud.

“That’s illegal, Matthew. You don’t want to get Leon in trouble right?”

“No…”

Leon reaches over to hold Matthew’s hand.

Their second parting isn’t too different than the one they had in Germany last year. It involves just as much clinging and tears and promises for Matthew to come to Köln next off-season. Then Leon is waving goodbye from a growing distance, until Matthew and his family are only as big as the size of ants.

For the next few years, their Leon and Matthew’s friendship was loved out through long distance communications, in whatever ways they can manage, and off-season visits to each of their respective countries.

2006 — ages 9 & 11

Another hockey season passes and alongside it, nearly a whole year has gone by where Matthew and Leon are only able to communicate through letters and the occasional video call on the computer. But like before, promises to meet up in the off season are made.

This time, Matthew (alongside the rest of his family) are making their way to Germany.

He’ll get to spend a few weeks with Leon’s family.

The Kölner Zoo is crowded for a random weekday, but it is the summer and there are plenty of tourists around. Matthew and Leon can hear all the different languages flying across the air around them, but their focus is on the animals in front of them.

“Look, look! It’s sooooo tall.” Matthew jumps and points at the giraffe standing in the enclosure before them. The fence before them is tall, taller than both of them by miles, and the animal behind it even taller. He tilts his head and tries to follow that long neck up to see the head; it’s so tiny compared to its neck. As he keeps tilting backwards, Matthew finds himself overbalanced, body falling backwards…only to be caught by whoever was standing behind him. “Loa! Look.”

Instead of apologizing for falling into the other boy’s chest, Matthew simply stays there, leaning back further and using Leon’s slightly bigger body to support himself.

“You gotta take a picture of it!” He shimmies his shoulders to jostle the other boy. It earns him a swat to the shoulder and an arm snaking around his neck from behind, an attempt to hold him still even as Leon does as he’s told, taking a picture of the giraffe looming over the two of them. “Get all of it! Get all of it!”

“Bleib stehen.”

Matthew pouts but stops moving. He looks back at Leon as the other boy snaps more pictures before searching around for their moms and siblings. Sandra is standing next to his mom while Kim is holding Taryn and they’re both pointing up at the giraffe with as much excitement as Matthew had. Even Brady is staring up at the giant hooves animal in awe.

Ducking out from under Leon’s arms, Matthew latches onto his baby brother and practically pulls the younger boy into a headlock. Ignoring Brady’s loud cry of surprise, Matthew turns to Leon with a wide grin on his face.

“Leo, Leo! Get us in the pictures, too!”

It’s easy to comply. And then it’s round after round of pictures with various sibling combinations, the last of which is a whole series of pictures where Matthew makes funny expressions next to Leon’s more stoic (almost) pre-teen face. But his favorite—even years later when they’re all grown up and their relationship has changed from simple friendship to something more—is the one where Leon is looking at him while Matthew looks at the camera. That was the moment Leon totally fell in love with him, Matthew crows at every given opportunity; and Leon will simply shake his head, because he knows it happened way before that.

The rest of the time the Tkachuks stayed in Germany was spent seeing sights they never managed despite having lived in the country, in the city, for nearly a year.

And gorging—mostly the kids (though Chantal also snuck a few)—on chocolate.

When they eventually leave, it’s accompanied by a now familiar scene.

“This is stupid.” The words are whispered directly into Leon’s collar, where Matthew has his head buried, arms wound tight around the older boy’s neck as he pouts. He jostles the two of them, clinging tighter, “I hate this.”

“Ich auch.”

Messy curls tickling the underside of Leon’s jaw, but he holds on tighter to the younger.

Behind them, their families stand around chatting and exchanging their own goodbyes. Leon can vaguely hear Kim making little Taryn giggle loudly while Brady, no doubt, is getting more bored by the second. No one is actually paying all that much attention to the two of them, letting Matthew and Leon do their little goodbye ritual (read: lamentation) before they eventually untangle—however reluctantly—themselves.

2007 — ages 10 & 12

Summer arrives both too slow and too fast. Most of Matthew’s year consists of more letters and emails with his favorite German. But it also consists of more hockey, and soccer, and football, and more. His dad had said that playing sports other than hockey will make them better athletes; more well rounded were his exact words. Mom had agreed. And life became a lot of more than competing with Brady in hockey—it was competing with his little brother in everything.

Brady thinks he’s going to be bigger than me one day. I told him he was stupid and mom heard it. She grounded me. But Brady also got grounded too! Because he hit me with his stick and I fell.

I’m gonna have a cool scar!!!

Matthew once wrote that in one of his letters to Leon, and when the German boy arrived with his family in St. Louis, the first thing he asked about was the scar.

“Zeig sie mir,” he’d said as soon as they’d settled on the couch in Matthew’s living room, hand already tugging at the younger boy’s shorts.

The scar itself wasn’t huge, but it was obvious enough, right on the outside edge of Matthew’s left knee. It was a little jagged in shape and a gentle knot of scar tissue, still looking shinier and pinker than the rest of the boy’s pale skin. Leon reaches out to poke at it and Matthew easily bats his hands away, squirming in his seat with a pout. If he squints, Leon thinks he can almost make out the imprint of the stitches that were once there. He wants to touch it again, brows pinched with worry despite it clearly being a mostly harmless wound, and Matthew lets him. The pad of Leon’s forefinger grazes against that particular bit of skin, pushing gently at the raised edges of the scar.

“Looks cool right?” Matthew barely waits for an answer before he’s rambling onwards, “the doctors gave me seven stitches! Just like dad’s number. And Leo there was soooo much blood.”

“Does it still hurt?”

“Itches a little mostly.”

“Hm.” Leon nods, looking away from the scar and into Matthew’s sparkling blue eyes. “Should have hit Brady back.”

Matthew freezes for a second and then starts laughing, his whole body shaking and falling forward until his head is pillowed on Leon’s shoulder and they’re both quaking with the force of the younger boy’s mirth. All Leon can do was reach out a steadying hand so Matthew doesn’t accidentally tumble off the sofa and injure himself some more.

“That’s what I told mom!” Matthew manages through peels of laughter and giggles. “She didn’t think it was funny.” He sobers for a moment before adding, “and Brady cried a little so I guess that was punishment enough.”

Leon nods again.

And if he was a little rougher with Brady every time they played ball hockey during the weeks he’s in St. Louis, at least no one ended up with stitches this time. (Just some skinned knees and palms and maybe a few tears.)

When they weren’t outside, most of their time was spent inside the Tkachuk house; St. Louis was under some insane heat advisory this Summer with record high temperatures that just so happened to have coincided with the Draisaitl’s visit. Which means a lot of sweaty boys, a few sunburns, and a lot of time indoors as well.

One such day finds Matthew and Leon on the Tkachuk’s couch, watching the St. Louis Cardinals playing against the Philadelphia Phillies. Brady was also with them, sitting on the second couch. They were currently five innings in with the Cardinals pulling way ahead of the opposition…and Matthew’s neck itches the way it always does because his shirt collars always seem to rub up against his collarbones the wrong way. Now a nice day of watching baseball—Matthew’s second favorite sport that Leon apparently doesn’t understand at all—has turned into a wiggle-fest.

It’s getting harder to concentrate on the game.

When the Cardinals strike out, Brady’s groan of disappointment echoes across the open space. Leon casts a quick glance at Matthew and sees how un-still the other boy is—when usually the younger boy is a ball of restless energy, baseball games seem to be a sort of balm that easily soothes him into a more lulled state.

Not today, though. He squirms. Once. Twice. Then there’s a pause for just long enough that Leon has turned his attention back to the baseball game playing on the tv in the Tkachuk’s living room. But then there’s movement beside him again; Matthew wiggling his shoulders like there are ants crawling over him. His shoulder hits Leon’s and finally, he turns his attention fully onto the younger boy.

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing.” But the wiggling and squirming doesn’t stop.

Leon reaches out and places one hand on Matthew’s shoulder to hold the other boy still. He lifts one brow—like he’s seen his dad do to one of his players—and waits.

It doesn’t take long before Matthew breaks.

The younger boy heaves a big sigh and his shoulders slump. A cute pout appears on his face as he looks up at Leon through thick lashes.

“It feels…weird.” He confesses, though with no specificity. “I don’t like it.”

“Don’t like what?”

“My shirt!”

Brady shushes him, but Matthew ignores them in favor of pouting at Leon.

Green eyes widen, Leon looks from his friend’s face down to his shirt and back up again. There doesn’t appear to be anything wrong with it. But still, he reaches out and tugs at the bottom hem, like he’s ready to rip it off Matthew’s body because it’s making his friend uncomfortable. He doesn’t. But that’s only because Matthew does it for him.

And that’s when he notices how red the other boy’s collarbone looks. Patchy and irritated. Oh.

“Do you have scissors, Matty?” The question is out of his mouth because he can help it, his mind (and decision) already made.

“Yeah! Why?” A suspicious look is cast his way but Leon chooses to ignore it.

“Just get me some.”

When Matthew hands him the requested item, Leon takes the shirt in hand and finds the collar. It doesn’t take him very long to finish his little project; the entire time, Matthew doesn’t say a word, just watches as Leon cuts around the collar of the tee carefully. Occasionally Brady would make a comment about how Chantal would be mad about them ruining the shirt but Leon doesn’t stop what he’s doing until the shirt and collar are two separate entities.

“Oooh, I’m gonna tell mom.” Brady tells them before hopping off the couch, presumably to do exactly as he said he would.

However Leon’s attention is on Matthew. With a grin, he turns to present it to the younger boy: shirt in one hand and collar in the other.

“Try it now.”

No questions asked, Matthew takes it and pulls it on.

There’s more wiggling, brows pinched with a look of concentration on his face. Leon watches as Matthew’s bottom lip extrudes again, but before he could doubt his own sudden impulsive decision those lips stretch into a beaming smile. Then he only had nanoseconds to toss the scissors onto the coffee table before he’s got an armful of happy Matthew, curls bouncing as he squeezes Leon close.

“Loa, Loa, Loa! It’s perfect!” His laughter rings directly in Leon’s ear. A matching smile lights up his own face as he holds Matthew closer. “It doesn’t feel weird anymore. Danke, Loa.”

“Gerne.”

They’re still wrapped in a hug, baseball game playing in the background on god knows what inning, when Chantal walks in, Taryn in her arms and Brady in tow.

“Who’s winning?” Brady throws himself down on the couch, only sparing Matthew and Leon an eye roll.

Matthew ignores his little brother as he pulls out of their hug—Leon can’t help the slight twinge of disappointment when it happens—and turns to his mom. He puffs up his little ten year old chest and proudly announces that Leon has solved all his problems, “and Imma do it to all my shirts!”

“Maybe not all, Matty.” Chantal emphasizes, but she’s smiling at Leon, so at least he’s not in trouble for cutting up one of her son’s shirts.

On TV the Cardinals hit a home run and all attention is turned back to the screen. Seconds later, Matthew scoots closer so that the entire line of their bodies are touching—pushing Leon into the very corner of the couch essentially—he doesn’t mind at all. Leon just continues to watch a game he’s not entirely sure he understands (or can appreciate fully), enjoying the warmth of the other boy by his side.

No one even blinks an eye at the two of them only taking up a single couch cushion.

When Leon eventually leaves to return to Germany, there’s maybe less tears but the hugs linger longer. Long enough that Brady and Taryn start to get impatient. Matthew ignores them and still waits until the Draisaitls are dots in the far distance before letting his parents take him home.

The first letter of another year apart arrives at both their houses barely a week later.

2008 (St. Louis, Missouri & Köln, Germany) — ages 11 & 13

When Matthew comes to Germany the next year, they end up spending more time indoors at the rink than they do outside it. Leon’s hockey was getting more serious since he joined Kölner’s U16 team last year—Matthew had heard all about his two goals over video chat—and he wanted to play more this year. And really, neither of them hated spending extra time on the ice.

So they did.

Occasionally Matthew would stand-in as a goalie for Leon to practice accuracy shots, and to no one’s surprise, he was not goalie material. Neither was Leon. So whenever possible, the both of them would bribe Brady to goal tend for them.

“I want the good chocolate this time!” Brady may be all of nine years old but he was already starting to catch up to Matthew in height (which seems a little unfair). And he’s currently refusing to get his butt on the ice unless they agree to his conditions.

“All German chocolate is good chocolate,” Leon rolls his eyes, more than ready to skate away from this stupidity. But Matthew has got his fingers twisted in the sleeve of his sweater and Leon wasn’t going to dislodge it just to get away.

The younger Tkachuk glares at them with a pout, “whatever, you know what I mean.”

“Braeden, get in the goal!”

Matthew shoves at his little brother with his stick. All that does is nothing except start them on a stick fight that somehow Leon also gets dragged into simply because Matthew still hasn’t let go of his sleeve. But eventually they manage to get the youngest boy in front of the net with minimal injuries sustained. The same process is rinsed and repeated a few times over the course of the Tkachuk’s time in Germany.

Sometimes, Leon would bring his teammates from Kölner EC and they’d play some 3-on-3 pick up game. More than once, he and Matthew would split into different teams, and even with the younger boy’s less than stellar German—Matthew claims he can understand more than he can speak it especially because he’s got no one to practice with back home and Leon doesn’t count—the games go well. Everyone wins some and loses some.

Matthew and Leon end up having a lot of fun, and even Taryn would join them from time to time; Brady would disagree.

Goodbyes feel harder the older they get. Leon can’t explain it, and neither can Matthew.

It’s almost become tradition for them to sneak off (though it doesn’t really count because both sets of parents are well aware of where they are) on the last day before they part just to spend some alone time—only the two of them. In Köln, it’s often somewhere down the stretch of the Rhein River where they would sit and talk, and catch up on everything they haven’t yet managed to do in the weeks they spend together. Other times, it’s just talking about the future: Leon on achieving more ice time and more points and Matthew dreaming about possibly playing in the NHL one day, like his dad.

“I want that, too.” Leon had said that day, looking out into the setting sun out on the shimmering waters. The words are quiet enough that the wind easily carried them away, but still loud enough that Matthew had heard.

He doesn’t move, doesn’t turn to look at the younger boy even as he feels blue eyes staring at the side of his head.

Hockey is so deeply part of both their lives, but on opposite sides of an entire ocean, continents apart. Leon has big dreams, just like Matthew, but he’s never really said some of it out loud until now. He wants to go to the NHL one day, like Marco Strum or Jochen Hecht, and he thinks he can do it. And if Leon also thinks about what it would be like to play with Matthew (as teammates or as opponents), well, he’s pretty sure Matthew is thinking the same judging by the bright grin on the younger’s face.

2009 (St. Louis, Missouri) — ages 12 & 14

This is the first year they don’t get to meet up in the off season. Matthew is devastated, and Leon isn’t far behind. But Leon is also moving to Mannheim to join the U16 team there—more hockey and more opportunities.

“That’s awesome, trauerkloß!” Matthew’s voice is bright and clear over the phone, before it quiets into a low whispered, “I…I’ll miss you.”

“Sonnig…” Leon wants to get on a plane right now and go to Matthew, pull the younger boy into a hug until he’s smiling again, all teeth and shining blue eyes. Instead, he’s staring out the window of their new apartment at a different German cityscape than the one he spent the first fourteen years of his life in. “I miss you, too.” And maybe that’s a little weird to say to some boy thousands of kilometers away on another continent, but Leon’s life hasn’t really been normal since that day at Kölner Haie’s practice arena when he pushed the other boy over and made him cry—not since that bright smile turned towards him and made Leon see stars.

“You better kick all the German butts when the new season starts up again, Loa!”

Leon laughs.

They spend the rest of the call—and subsequent calls and video chats and letters—much the same way. There’s always a promise that they’ll eventually see each other again, determination coloring their words.

Eventually turns out to be the next off season.