[fic] Bitter (Like Licorice)

Jun 01, 2008 17:40

Title: Bitter (Like Licorice)
Author: creepy_crawly
Rating: Um. R. I think.
Warnings: Hockey. Slash. Tragedy.
Pairing/Those Involved: Kari Lehtonen/Tobi Enstrom. Because I’m a fangirl.
Disclaimer: I own them. No, seriously. They live in my basement with Johnny Depp and my pet dragon.
Summary: A tragedy told in 16 parts of 100 hundred words apiece. An experiment; I’m rather happy with how it worked out.



He’s all but addicted to the little licorice wheels that you bring home. He’ll settle on the couch, the bag of them by his side. While the news plays, he unwinds them with a single-minded intensity, turning them into straight (if curly) lines. Then he eats them slowly, starting at one end with the other curled around his finger. He eats slowly, enjoying them, ignoring the news, paying attention to nothing but the taste of licorice and the warmth of you, settled by his side, a steady presence.

You just don’t understand it, this habit of his.

You hate licorice.

----

He’s laughing as he talks, beaming at the reporters that are clustered around his stall. He answers every question they give him, his teeth flashing in the light, so white against the recent tan of his face. He flashes his dimples like they’re weapons, and in his hands, maybe they are. He’s got the press eating out of the palm of his hand, and you both know it.

You watch from your own stall, a stupid smile on your face. He’s happy talking to them. You love watching him when he’s happy.

It’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen.

----

He sleeps in on Saturdays, curling up under the nest of blankets and burying himself in the pillows. He whines about the sun and the birds and your alarm clock. He whines (wordlessly) about you moving before he’s properly awake, disturbing his rest. He clings to you like a limpet, hands and arms and feet and legs twining around you, holding you close, holding you against him.

Sometimes you manage to slip away, to sneak out of the bed and into the kitchen. Then you prepare breakfast, making bacon and eggs, sometimes omelets, sometimes pancakes.

As you cook, you hum.

----

When all the reporters are gone, you take him by the hand and you drag him close. He just smiles up at you, laughing quietly, deep in his chest. His eyes sparkle shortly before they fall closed, as he tilts his face up to meet yours.

He likes it when you kiss him, and you like to kiss him, and so it all works out in the end. His lips are as soft as ever beneath your own, and the hand he slides around your back is strong for all that it is slim and delicate.

You kiss him again.

----

You love to treat him, to bring him candy, to let him sleep in on Saturdays, to bring him breakfast in bed, to sit next to him and pretend to watch the news. You love the way he laughs and the way he smiles. You love the way he kisses you and the way he makes you feel.

He loves to be treated, and you both know it. You make him feel special, he tells you. In a family of that many people, opportunities to feel like the only one alive are, perhaps, incredibly rare.

But with you, he’s everything.

----

He stumbles as something rocks the building. It makes the floor lurch beneath your feet, and you sway forward, automatically stepping back to adjust to the movement. You turn as the lights go out, looking for him even though you cannot see him. with alarms blaring, you cannot hear yourself think, let alone hear him.

He cannot hear you, either, and he can’t see you. On his knees, he reaches forward carefully, searching for you. Finding your hand, he squeezes it tightly. When you squeeze back, he uses it to haul himself to his feet.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know.”

----

When this started, you struggled with the disparity in your heights-he barely rises to your upper arm! But you’ve since discovered that he fits perfectly in your arms, perfectly against your body. He’s just the right size to curl against you, head on your chest and legs twined with yours. It’s the part you actually enjoyed about women combined with the best things the male body has to offer.

His hands are soft, but his body is not. He doesn’t want coddling, he wants you to want him and mean it. He wants to take and be taken.

Yes!

----

The air is quickly getting smoky and thick with dust, and he coughs. He’s still not completely over the cold he had last week. You draw him against your body, pressing his head against your chest even as you tell him to relax and stay calm. Dropping your bag, you take a stick from the rack on the wall and begin to sweep the ground with it, searching for a clear path.

All around you, you can hear screaming. Some scream in pain. Others scream for their teammates, their friends.

You pull him closer, and begin to walk in darkness.

----

At night, he is in his element, an angel fallen from grace to adorn your bed. Golden hair that tangles around your fingers when you kiss him, blue eyes that go oh-so wide when your fingers move down his body-these are the things you dream of, even when he’s sleeping right beside you. And when he’s not sleeping, when he’s hovering above you, on his knees, straddling your hips…

Grabbing his shoulders is too easy, but he gives in and melts against you, every single time. His lips are soft and warm, and his mouth is warmer.

He’s amazing.

----

You trip over something you cannot see and you both fall. He cries out as he lands on the ground, you on top of him. You reach forward to comfort him and start to say something, when the heat pounding on your face suddenly brings understanding.

And with the dawning of understanding in your mind comes a dawning red glow from the hallway.

“Kari?” he asks, coughing again on the smoke and the dust and smell of blood. “My…my leg. I think…” He coughs again, more violently this time. “I think it’s broken.”

You say nothing, staring at the flames.

----

Spending the day with him is one of your favorite activities. You never thought you’d be content to spend the entire day just sitting in one room, reading quietly-no, you always considered yourself too much of a party boy for that.

But he’s changed you, that for sure. Or maybe he’s changed how you see yourself. Either way, you’re happy to spend the day with him, the both of you curled up on the couch, his head resting on your thigh, your hand occasionally reaching down to caress his golden hair.

You’re starting to realise that you love him.

----

The fire roars closer and closer. He’s paralysed by pain; the light’s bright enough now that you can see the bone jutting through the skin of his thigh and the fabric of his slacks. Blood has darkened the charcoal grey (a colour you picked, saying that it made him beautiful) to a sticky black, and dust is mingling with sweat and tears on his face. His lips are parted as he pants for breath, choking on the dust and smoke in the air while you choke on fear.

He’s dying in front of your eyes.

And you both know it.

----

You suffer from terrible migraines, sometimes, and he’s one of the few you trust to take care of you. He doesn’t talk, doesn’t ask how you’re doing, doesn’t try to make you respond. He just bundles you in his arms and takes you home and puts you to bed. He even injects the medication for you. He takes care of you after anxiety attacks, too, after games that you’ve lost.

You fall apart in front of him, and he still sticks around to pick up the pieces.

You’re only just beginning to realise how deep his love for you runs.

----

He passed out not too long ago, and for that, you’re grateful. Every once in a while, when you have the oxygen to spare, you lean over and breathe life back into him, hoping that this time, it will stick. The heat’s growing ever more painfully blistering, and you can feel the skin of your face burning. Still, you lean over like clockwork and press your lips to his.

A crunching sound draws your attention away from his lips. Someone…something…a shadowed shape that makes no sense in this hellhole you’ve found yourself trapped in. A large thing, coming towards you…

----

He’s teaching you Swedish, even as you teach him Finnish. You start with the simple phrases: hello, goodbye, I love you. It should come as no surprise to either one of you that the last is the first phrase either one of you masters.

“Rakastan sua,” he’ll whisper late at night, his lips hot against the skin of your throat.

Smiling, you’ll pull him closer, until you can feel his chest rising when yours falls, your breathing falling into sync with one another. You can feel his heart beating beneath your chest, pounding something crazy.

“Jag älskar dig,” you’ll answer.

----

You lay there beneath the white sheets on a white bed in a white room, body covered in white bandages and red burns. You don’t answer, don’t talk, don’t eat. You let the nurses do what they want, let the doctors poke and prod, let your mother cry by your bedside. You just stare up at the white ceiling thinking of black and grey and red.

Ash-black tears well up in your eyes and spill over, prompting the nurses to change the bandages again and again.

And all the while, a bag of black licorice wheels waits in your car.

hockey, yaoi, thrashers, fanfic, enstrom, lehtonen, atlanta thrashers, slash, fic, hockey fic

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