two trade!fics: Without a Kiss and Hope for a Future
I hadn’t even been able to kiss him goodbye.
The bustling airport had prevented that, too many people and too many eyes and too many cameras to be caught on to risk our careers for. Even just the simple act of him resting his head on my shoulder as I waited for my plane was risky enough, but it could at least be hedged as tiredness and damned if I would deny us that small comfort. His head on my shoulder, his breath soft and warm against my neck as he exhaled, both of us quiet-if not silent-as we waited for the inevitable call for boarding to begin. All that could be said in the short time we had left together had already been voiced; and so we sat, in a corner of the airport terminal, taking comfort in each other’s presence before a plane would take me hundreds of miles away from him for an amount of time impossibly undeterminable.
No tears were shed, no words came out broken, but the desolate look in those grey eyes had been enough to shred my heart to tatters.
We had made love the night before, and early this morning; touching each other desperately at first, achingly, fast and hard slipping into slow and tender as we sought to make every moment last; every touch and every kiss sought to be imprinted on our bodies and minds as the fact loomed that the next time we held each other might be months distant.
And so from the moment I was told of the trade until the time I had to board the plane, we were together. He left his phone at his apartment and I turned mine off completely, ignoring all calls from friends or family or media questioners so that I could just focus on him, on the man I loved, on the person that completed me; on that single being who had gotten so close to me as to become so irretrievably part of my life that I couldn’t imagine living without him.
The person who I would be leaving behind in exchange for a new team and a cold hotel bed and an uncertain future shakier still than it already had been.
When my flight was finally called for boarding, we unwillingly disentangled ourselves from the hard-backed airport chairs and he walked me slowly to my gate, both of us desperately wanting more time together. There was little said, we exchanged a brief, customary, less-than-intimate hug, and the way his fingers tightened against my back said more to me than any of the words he might try to utter in such a public setting. He made me promise me to call him the instant the plane touched ground, knowing before he said the words that I was planning on doing so anyway. His eyes glittered and I wanted nothing more than to take him in my arms and never let him go, but instead I rested my hand on his shoulder and squeezed, smiled and said goodbye, and headed down the tunnel to the plane.
And left him without a kiss farewell.
-
Title: Hope for a Future
Genre: Romance/Angst
Rating: G
Pairing: Sergei Fedorov/Nikolai Zherdev
Summary: 'The locker room was shattered.'
Set from unknown CBJ player's POV, I think I was coming vaguely from Kris Russell.
The locker room was shattered.
Our captain was gone. Two of our leaders were gone. With two simple trades, the management had told us it was ‘next year’ yet again. The hope that had filled the room just days earlier was gone, the push for the playoffs that everyone wanted, hoped for, ached for was now firmly out of reach, patience asked of us once again. Even though it would have been nigh impossible, even if it was a long shot-there wasn’t a man in the room who hadn’t wanted to at least try.
When the guys started trickling in for the morning skate the day after the tread deadline, an air of bewildered loss was palpable as we went around mechanically performing our normal routines. It was quiet, stunned silence that broke only after the first media hounds started showing up at the rink, Mike and Freddy Modin stepping up to avert their attention until the younger guys could regain their composure. Faces were lightened and masks slipped firmly into place as the heavy blow of the unexpected trades was sought to be concealed; the hurt buried. Laughs were hollow and smiles were forced; but they were at least there.
Except for the one who wouldn’t even try.
Danny had slunk into the locker room with an air of guilt that was displayed on his sleeve along with his heart. He and Ole arrived soon after I did, and the relief they felt from not being traded was clearly tempered by the emptiness that now permeated the dressing room, those two missing nameplates a conspicuous void that no one could ignore. Gilbert had come in looking hunted, wary, his eyes scanning the room for that expressive grey pair that he knew would have good reason for hating him for his own relief.
But Nikolai was the last to arrive at the arena, and when he finally did, we all gave him a wide berth.
His eyes were sunken, and weary; dark circles smudged beneath them on skin as pale as I’d ever seen it. His hair was mussed, his clothes thrown on, and I could easily recall train wrecks that I’d thought had looked better. He’d taken Howson’s explanatory speech without a word, no-one able to meet his gaze as he’d sat quietly at his locker with a numb, empty look on his haggard face. Practice was subdued, half-hearted, and after the fifth pass slid past him Hitch tiredly told him to just go home and rest. The game wasn’t much better, an attempted façade of effort that ultimately ended in a loss, and it was with no small amount of relief that we all set off for the airport, leaving on a roadtrip that would take us far away from the memories of friends and hopes and dreams that lay in that familiar locker room.
I wondered if someone should try talking to Nik, comfort him somehow, but when I voiced my suggestion to David he just shook his head with a sad little smile. Nik was still shell-shocked, he said; still numb and reeling, and he needed to deal with this on his own-or only with the help of the very man he was missing. Anyone else would just be a burden. It didn’t really settle with me, leaving Nik on his own to brood, but I deferred to David’s opinion-he knew him better than I. And so I watched, along with my teammates, as one of our franchise players went mechanically around doing his usual routine even as his attention lay far elsewhere. He fell inside of himself, crumbling, cracking, collapsing into an empty shell whose lost grey eyes seared us to the core whenever we chanced to make contact with them.
Salvation came in the form of a phone call, ringing during the first intermission of our game against Vancouver.
It went off almost right after Hitch was done speaking, an incongruously cheerful tune from Nikolai’s bag that was almost eerie in its perfect timing. But when I glanced at Nik’s face I knew immediately why the call was so perfectly timed: his eyes widened, his face lit up, and he dove into his bag frantically seeking out that slim little cell phone that usually had its place in his back pocket. The rest of us pretended to be oblivious as he flicked it open and began talking in quiet Russian, a soft smile curling his lips.
The smile soon fled, however, to be replaced with irritated annoyance. I watched, almost fascinated, at the play of emotions that warred across his face during that ten-minute phone conversation. There were sharp words, snapped, angry, as he fenced back and forth with the man on the other end of the line. I saw Jan’s eyebrows shoot up more than a few times but he never said anything about what he heard. Nikolai’s eyes were narrowed, his voice a low growl, but before long the anger smoothed out to something softer. Something calmer and yet more painful, and I had to look away at the ache that crossed his face as the conversation progressed. The argument quieted and at one point there was a suspicious amount of shine in his eyes, but he ducked his head and blinked his eyelids and then it was gone.
By the time it was close to the start of the second period, Nik’s eyes had closed contently as he leaned against his locker with a smile on his lips, the pain of the past few days finally slipping away. He ended the call with a few soft words and curled his fingers around his phone after he’d hung up, that smile still playing on his mouth. When he looked up there was something back in his gaze, something confident and assured and steadied, and when we hit the ice for the second period he no longer had that distracted air that had been so present since the trade deadline. I knew that he had been conversing with that same man ever since the trade had happened, but those talks had always been quiet, subdued-never fierce and angry. But that seemed to have made the difference, and when Nikolai came into the locker room after the win with that familiar bright grin and dancing eyes, it was clear that it had indeed been up to only two people to break him out of his slow decline. Only the one person could have soothed his worries and fears and lit a fire under him all in a single conversation.
Maybe our hopes for the playoffs had been crushed, but for at least one of us, hope and belief was the stuff of life itself.
-
The bustling airport had prevented that, too many people and too many eyes and too many cameras to be caught on to risk our careers for. Even just the simple act of him resting his head on my shoulder as I waited for my plane was risky enough, but it could at least be hedged as tiredness and damned if I would deny us that small comfort. His head on my shoulder, his breath soft and warm against my neck as he exhaled, both of us quiet-if not silent-as we waited for the inevitable call for boarding to begin. All that could be said in the short time we had left together had already been voiced; and so we sat, in a corner of the airport terminal, taking comfort in each other’s presence before a plane would take me hundreds of miles away from him for an amount of time impossibly undeterminable.
No tears were shed, no words came out broken, but the desolate look in those grey eyes had been enough to shred my heart to tatters.
We had made love the night before, and early this morning; touching each other desperately at first, achingly, fast and hard slipping into slow and tender as we sought to make every moment last; every touch and every kiss sought to be imprinted on our bodies and minds as the fact loomed that the next time we held each other might be months distant.
And so from the moment I was told of the trade until the time I had to board the plane, we were together. He left his phone at his apartment and I turned mine off completely, ignoring all calls from friends or family or media questioners so that I could just focus on him, on the man I loved, on the person that completed me; on that single being who had gotten so close to me as to become so irretrievably part of my life that I couldn’t imagine living without him.
The person who I would be leaving behind in exchange for a new team and a cold hotel bed and an uncertain future shakier still than it already had been.
When my flight was finally called for boarding, we unwillingly disentangled ourselves from the hard-backed airport chairs and he walked me slowly to my gate, both of us desperately wanting more time together. There was little said, we exchanged a brief, customary, less-than-intimate hug, and the way his fingers tightened against my back said more to me than any of the words he might try to utter in such a public setting. He made me promise me to call him the instant the plane touched ground, knowing before he said the words that I was planning on doing so anyway. His eyes glittered and I wanted nothing more than to take him in my arms and never let him go, but instead I rested my hand on his shoulder and squeezed, smiled and said goodbye, and headed down the tunnel to the plane.
And left him without a kiss farewell.
-
Title: Hope for a Future
Genre: Romance/Angst
Rating: G
Pairing: Sergei Fedorov/Nikolai Zherdev
Summary: 'The locker room was shattered.'
Set from unknown CBJ player's POV, I think I was coming vaguely from Kris Russell.
The locker room was shattered.
Our captain was gone. Two of our leaders were gone. With two simple trades, the management had told us it was ‘next year’ yet again. The hope that had filled the room just days earlier was gone, the push for the playoffs that everyone wanted, hoped for, ached for was now firmly out of reach, patience asked of us once again. Even though it would have been nigh impossible, even if it was a long shot-there wasn’t a man in the room who hadn’t wanted to at least try.
When the guys started trickling in for the morning skate the day after the tread deadline, an air of bewildered loss was palpable as we went around mechanically performing our normal routines. It was quiet, stunned silence that broke only after the first media hounds started showing up at the rink, Mike and Freddy Modin stepping up to avert their attention until the younger guys could regain their composure. Faces were lightened and masks slipped firmly into place as the heavy blow of the unexpected trades was sought to be concealed; the hurt buried. Laughs were hollow and smiles were forced; but they were at least there.
Except for the one who wouldn’t even try.
Danny had slunk into the locker room with an air of guilt that was displayed on his sleeve along with his heart. He and Ole arrived soon after I did, and the relief they felt from not being traded was clearly tempered by the emptiness that now permeated the dressing room, those two missing nameplates a conspicuous void that no one could ignore. Gilbert had come in looking hunted, wary, his eyes scanning the room for that expressive grey pair that he knew would have good reason for hating him for his own relief.
But Nikolai was the last to arrive at the arena, and when he finally did, we all gave him a wide berth.
His eyes were sunken, and weary; dark circles smudged beneath them on skin as pale as I’d ever seen it. His hair was mussed, his clothes thrown on, and I could easily recall train wrecks that I’d thought had looked better. He’d taken Howson’s explanatory speech without a word, no-one able to meet his gaze as he’d sat quietly at his locker with a numb, empty look on his haggard face. Practice was subdued, half-hearted, and after the fifth pass slid past him Hitch tiredly told him to just go home and rest. The game wasn’t much better, an attempted façade of effort that ultimately ended in a loss, and it was with no small amount of relief that we all set off for the airport, leaving on a roadtrip that would take us far away from the memories of friends and hopes and dreams that lay in that familiar locker room.
I wondered if someone should try talking to Nik, comfort him somehow, but when I voiced my suggestion to David he just shook his head with a sad little smile. Nik was still shell-shocked, he said; still numb and reeling, and he needed to deal with this on his own-or only with the help of the very man he was missing. Anyone else would just be a burden. It didn’t really settle with me, leaving Nik on his own to brood, but I deferred to David’s opinion-he knew him better than I. And so I watched, along with my teammates, as one of our franchise players went mechanically around doing his usual routine even as his attention lay far elsewhere. He fell inside of himself, crumbling, cracking, collapsing into an empty shell whose lost grey eyes seared us to the core whenever we chanced to make contact with them.
Salvation came in the form of a phone call, ringing during the first intermission of our game against Vancouver.
It went off almost right after Hitch was done speaking, an incongruously cheerful tune from Nikolai’s bag that was almost eerie in its perfect timing. But when I glanced at Nik’s face I knew immediately why the call was so perfectly timed: his eyes widened, his face lit up, and he dove into his bag frantically seeking out that slim little cell phone that usually had its place in his back pocket. The rest of us pretended to be oblivious as he flicked it open and began talking in quiet Russian, a soft smile curling his lips.
The smile soon fled, however, to be replaced with irritated annoyance. I watched, almost fascinated, at the play of emotions that warred across his face during that ten-minute phone conversation. There were sharp words, snapped, angry, as he fenced back and forth with the man on the other end of the line. I saw Jan’s eyebrows shoot up more than a few times but he never said anything about what he heard. Nikolai’s eyes were narrowed, his voice a low growl, but before long the anger smoothed out to something softer. Something calmer and yet more painful, and I had to look away at the ache that crossed his face as the conversation progressed. The argument quieted and at one point there was a suspicious amount of shine in his eyes, but he ducked his head and blinked his eyelids and then it was gone.
By the time it was close to the start of the second period, Nik’s eyes had closed contently as he leaned against his locker with a smile on his lips, the pain of the past few days finally slipping away. He ended the call with a few soft words and curled his fingers around his phone after he’d hung up, that smile still playing on his mouth. When he looked up there was something back in his gaze, something confident and assured and steadied, and when we hit the ice for the second period he no longer had that distracted air that had been so present since the trade deadline. I knew that he had been conversing with that same man ever since the trade had happened, but those talks had always been quiet, subdued-never fierce and angry. But that seemed to have made the difference, and when Nikolai came into the locker room after the win with that familiar bright grin and dancing eyes, it was clear that it had indeed been up to only two people to break him out of his slow decline. Only the one person could have soothed his worries and fears and lit a fire under him all in a single conversation.
Maybe our hopes for the playoffs had been crushed, but for at least one of us, hope and belief was the stuff of life itself.
-