#basically if any of you try to sell me on natecale i WILL block you. HOWEVER. very interesting to consider cale as the leader who has to

[moregraceful]

okay not to be too earnest in your asks about 2929, but now that I have slept on it, a dynamic you mentioned that I think is very interesting with Nate/Leon is that Connor McDavid is always gonna be the love of Leon's life. & I'm very into the general concept of a platonic relationship being The Relationship of someone's life and the thing they build their life (and free agency) decisions on. because so often people assume you're gonna pick the romantic/sexual partner, and there's so much potential for messiness. like would Nate just assume leon would work some cap limit miracle (we're really in the stretching fictional believability now) to sign with Colorado so they can inflict the horrors of ASW on the entire team full time? would leon have never considered it because Connor is in Edmonton and unfortunately they are going down with that ship? would this be the greatest act of self-preservation Leon has ever committed? alas ej is not there to explain to nate that even people who go dick first into the world to make decisions have their limits. what is the opposite of make-up sex because that is what would happen the next time they saw each other, and there are now things cale and people three counties over cannot unknown. -patrichornkissed

I was thinking abt this ask all day going increasingly apeshit...I live very strongly in the belief that you can love someone and show up for someone in all the ways that matter and effectively be their soulmate without having any kind of romantic or sexual element to the relationship...you can be the love of someone's life and never once kiss. You can be deeply in love and totally committed to each other in life and there's zero sex or romance.

Anyway that's Leon and Connor and Leon will always put Connor first over every other relationship (Connor would do the same but this isn't about him.) Nate, whose romantic experiences are like Jo Drouin in high school, a series of ill-advised short relationships with local girls back home as an adult, and a very badly hidden crush on Ryan O'Reilly, probably thinks of the way him and Leon circle each other and clash and fight and bite and fuck as some kind of love -- to be consumed and to consume are a version of commitment, he thinks, and when Leon and Connor's contracts are up, he pitches Colorado to Leon, like you and me, what if we made it. Leon laughs in disbelief. He's not going anywhere without Connor and Colorado cannot afford both of them. It didn't even occur to him that Nate was an option, because, at the end of the day, he isn't. There's no one Leon would make a free agency decision for except Connor.

Nate has to learn the hard hard truth in the worst possible way that there's variations of commitment beyond marriage and sex, beyond consumption and heat. Their first meeting post-Leon and Connor signing in Anaheim is at Biosteel Camp. (No hate but I think Anaheim were below the cap floor this season so I'm pretty sure they are one of the few teams who could afford both of them. Also it's incredibly funny to think abt Jamie Drysdale and Trevor Zegras existing in the same space as Leon and Connor. Oh the hijinks.) It is intense and it is heated and it is hurtful in ways that harm themselves more than the other. It culminates in quite frankly unhinged sex in the apartment that Connor and Leon are short term renting that causes Connor to leave the premises and sleep in Travis Dermott's guest room even though Travis isn't even at Camp...like it's Bad-bad if he's going to his Erie teammates for help. Leon has ringing in his ears for several hours after and Nate feels like he's just played an SCF Game 7 that went into triple overtime. The worst part is Leon doesn't even kick him out immediately after. He's kind. He puts antiseptic on the scratches on Nate's arms, wipes a warm wash cloth over Nate's wet face. Nate leaves when he can't handle it anymore. Goes back to the house he is splitting with Cale and Ryan Graves and Sidney Crosby, all of whom are playing a deeply involved boardgame at the dining room table. It's 2am. Ryan and Sid register that something intense went down but not that his tender heart has been torn. Cale watches him carefully; he knows. Nate makes some excuse for himself and goes to bed alone.