Archive Post - Over Time
Title: Over Time
Chapter: One
Author: firiel77
Word Count: 2161
Warnings: WIP, angst fest, schmoop, misunderstandings, regrets, men being silly and uncommunicative.
Rating:R, NC17 in later chapters.
Fandom Hockey RPS
Pairings: Sidney Crosby/Alexander Ovechkin
Summary: Set several years in the future. Sid’s taking stock of his life and finds he’s thinking about Ovie more and more. Only thing is, he doesn’t know what he wants. Ovie knows what he wants. He just doesn’t know how to get it. And so it goes.
Beta: Unbeta’d. If anyone is interested let me know.
Disclaimer: It’s fan fiction people.
Feedback: Sure. Let me know what’s working for you.
Authors Notes: Warning. I’ve read a grand total of one fic in this fandom but I LOVED IT and I wanted to give writing a shot. Bare with me if I get things wrong because I’m not really familiar with the canon. I’m just hoping that if I set it far enough in the future that no one will notice I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. Yes, I’m totally making shit up. Hope it flies.
Sometimes Sid feels like the best times are over. He’s thirty years old and feels sixty. The accumulative damage of concussion leaves him prone to headaches and his body hurts in more places than he can count. The physicality of hockey has taken its toll on Sid’s body. He’s never been the biggest guy and it all eventually all caught up with him.
He’s been thinking a lot lately, at loose ends with the hockey season finished. The Penguins have had their season cut short by the Bruins in the quarter finals. Players and coaches have dispersed around the globe for the summer. Sid flew home to see his parents but now he was back in Pittsburgh, working for the team. He hadn’t played the last two years, couldn’t really; his career cut short by head injuries. Now he works for Mario in PR.
It’s not difficult work, part time really, but then Sid doesn’t need to work at all. He’s set for life. But the job keeps him involved in hockey after a fashion and that’s good. It leaves him lots of down time to do whatever he feels like. A lot of the time he feels like golfing, running, and going fishing with the friends he’s made in Pittsburgh over the years. Sometimes he doesn’t feel like doing anything and he’ll stay in for days. That’s when his parents will fly down for a visit and watch him worriedly while he watches hockey clips for hours on end in his media room.
He’s on his way to a pub downtown to meet up with Jordan Staal for dinner. Sid grabbed a cab so he can drink as much as he wants without having to worry about a DUI. He’s looking forward to seeing Jordie, was glad when the other man called him out of the blue and arranged the meeting. He can’t remember when they last got together, probably a year. Without realizing it time has ground on and left him unaware of its’ passing.
Sid’s been missing his former team mates. He’s kept in contact with Letang and Staal, because it’s easy, they still live in Pittsburgh after all, but he doesn’t do it as often as he’d like. They’d been like a family, all of them, and swore their friendships would last forever. They hadn’t realized in their youth that coincidence and apathy could prevent them from meeting, that people got tied up with their lives, and that keeping in touch took effort. After they’d won their Stanley Cup, it seemed inconceivable that they would drift apart, no matter what the reason. Sullivan, one of the veterans, had warned them it would happen but they hadn’t believed him.
Sullivan knew what he’d been talking about. Players got traded and moved to other cities or they retired and moved back where they’d come from. Sid had watched them go, one by one, until hardly anyone from his core team remained, until even Sid was gone. After the NHL awards ceremony that year in Vegas, after the cup, it hadn’t occurred to Sid that a day would come when he would feel like he couldn’t call any of them. Least of all Ovechkin.
Somehow Sid has managed to miss Ovie all this time without ever calling him, and now he’s left it so long that he realizes, as soon as he finally decides he has to see him again, that he really should call, that he will one day, that he can’t. Or more like, he shouldn’t. He’s had his phone out more times than he can count and then put it away again.
Nothing is different. Time has passed, life events have unfolded as they do; a failed relationship, serious injuries, retirement from the game he loves. He and Ovie are still the same people, and he feels the same, even if he didn’t quite know what it was he was feeling at the time. But Sid’s not a kid anymore. He’s now six years older but obviously no wiser. They are still as far apart as ever. All the same shouldn’ts that made him shy away from the possibility of Ovie are still there.
The cab pulls up to the pub and Sid hands the driver some cash before he gets out. He finds Staal immediately sitting at a table in the corner and is surprised to see Letang is there too as well as Malkin. He smiles easily when he sees them all. Staal waves the waitress over and orders two more pitchers of beer and a glass for Sid.
They catch up on each other’s news, the wives and girl friends, the ex’s and the kids, and what their plans are for the off season. They order food and still more beer and while they talk and laugh easily with each other they swear they will keep in touch. They all agree it’s a shame they haven’t been. Sid realizes again that, despite distance and commitments, these people will always be important in his life.
Before long Malkin is feeling no pain and begins to talk about Alexander Ovechkin. Being a fellow Russian and friend he’d stayed with him at his dacha outside Moscow two weeks before. Sid watches him owlishly while Malkin tells the others about his visit with Ovie and his family. Everyone looks up at Sid when he misjudges distance and slams his mug down a bit too loudly on the table, spilling some beer.
“Have you heard from Ovie, recently?” Staal asks him after a moment, and when he says no, Jordie does bother to hide his surprise.
“Not for years,” Sid tells him.
“On the phone?” Jordie tries, clearly thinking Sid doesn’t understand.
“No,” Sid says, trying to be casual, but inwardly feeling a peculiar clenching in his gut.
“Is he still seeing that supermodel?” Letang asks, unaware of Sid’s discomfort.
The blonde one?” Sid forces himself to ask.
Malkin jumps in helpfully and shakes his head, equally unaware. “No, no, that one history. Not seeing Katrina anymore either. You know Ovie, “seeing” probably not best word to use.”
The others nod sagely. “Yeah, seeing is probably a bit too strong a word for Ovechkin,” Staal agrees, “kind of like you,” he says to Sid. Sid looks away when he feels a hot flush wash over his face.
Staal tries to be tactful, never his strongest suit and made more difficult by the beer he’s had. He asks Sid, “So how long has it been since you and Ovie, you know, have talked, or seen each other, or whatever?”
Everyone looks at him with interest and Sid is obviously not sober himself, because what comes out is “too long,” when he intended to say “a couple years.” At least he doesn’t totally embarrass himself by saying “two years and a month,” which he knows to be fact.
“Why’s that?” Letang asks, forgetting about tact.
Sid frowns and slides his mug from hand to hand. “It didn’t seem.....I don’t know. We’re still friends, I guess.”
Staal says carefully, “That surprises me. I would have thought...” he says before trailing off.
“You guys have a fight?” Letang asks.
Sid shrugs and finishes his beer before saying, “No. There’s no problem. We just lost touch.”
Letang rolls his eyes and says, “Sounds like a problem to me...” before Staal kicks him under the table and he stops abruptly. His tact has been abandoned.
Sid frowns again, or maybe he has been frowning the whole time. “ Look, there’s nothing to say,” Sid tells them irritably.
It is a problem, but most of the time Sid thinks it’s for the best. At least, he’s at a loss as to what the hell to do about it, how to fix it.
“He still the same guy,” Malkin tells them, thinking he’s changing the subject.
“Mm-hm,” Sid acknowledges noncommittally while Jordie watches his expression carefully.
Not so easily put off, Malkin pulls out his phone. “Look, I got pictures from Russia. Me and Ovie.”
He holds it out and Sid sees a photo of Ovie and Malvin grinning madly up at the camera. It’s the same crazy, gap toothed grin he remembers and his stomach clenches at the sight. Ovie’s hair is a little shorter, not as shaggy as Sid remembers, and there are fine lines in the skin framing his smile. Malkin scrolls through more pictures, showing them all to the guys.
There’s another one that captures Sid’s attention. Ovie’s looking directly into the camera, frankly, not smiling, his expression open and honest. It’s almost raw and it hurts Sid to look at it. Alexander Ovechkin too has faced some life lessons over the past few years.
“How is he doing?” Staal asks.
Malkin shrugs before answering. “So so. He still have knee problems. Working out. Hope he will play next year but maybe not.”
Letang takes the phone from him and looks at the image. “He looks sad,” he says critically, and he’s right. Sid had thought the same thing.
Malkin nods. “Well, not a lot to be happy about sometime,” he tells them before shrugging helplessly. “But he Ovie,” he concludes, as if that explains why he can smile at all.
He looks at Sid frankly. “Here Sid, I send pictures to you. You need picture of your friend Ovie.”
Sid nods weakly and then watches while the other man texts him the pictures. The waitress brings more beer and everyone refills their glass. Malkin and Letang get up and wind their way to the restroom for a piss and Staal watches Sid while he runs through the pictures of Ovechkin on his phone.
“You should call him,” he tells Sid without looking up at him, running his finger over a ring of beer on the table. “If you’re still thinking about him, you should call.”
Sid says nothing so Jordie keeps going.
“The longer you wait the worse it will get.”
Sid’s jaw tenses and he has a hard time swallowing his beer through a throat that’s gotten tight all of a sudden. He knows Jordie means well but he doesn’t like to be pushed and it’s hard to keep the anger from his voice when he replies.
“Look, just drop it Jordie,” Sid warns. He can feel one of his headaches coming on and he rubs his forehead impatiently.
Staal holds up a hand and says he’s sorry to say anything but that someone has to, and after this one last thing he’ll shut the fuck up, but “It’s really too bad you lost touch with him. It’s easy to lose something like that, and hard to get it back.”
Right then Sid realizes that Jordie, and maybe the rest of the team, knows more than he realized about his feelings for Ovechkin. He hadn’t hidden things as well has he’d thought. Despite the pretence he’s slipped up at some point. They’d never talked about it to other, never mind anyone else, but the team obviously knew something. Hell, they probably knew as much as Sid did because whatever the hell he and Ovie had, or used to have, Sid corrects himself, has always been completely undefined.
That night, once he’s changed into sweat pants, Sid flops on the couch, still slightly drunk, and pulls out his phone again. He brings up the photo and stares at it. He doesn’t remember starting, but he finds himself with his hand down his pants, stroking himself off to it. It doesn’t take long to come.
When he’s finished he wipes off his hand and goes to delete the photo, feeling slightly ashamed of himself. Before he can hit delete Sid changes his mind and keeps it after all. He tosses his phone on the table in frustration. Sid crawls into bed and despite the room spinning a little he falls asleep immediately.
Next time he gets drunk, he takes the picture out again.
TBC
Chapter: One
Author: firiel77
Word Count: 2161
Warnings: WIP, angst fest, schmoop, misunderstandings, regrets, men being silly and uncommunicative.
Rating:R, NC17 in later chapters.
Fandom Hockey RPS
Pairings: Sidney Crosby/Alexander Ovechkin
Summary: Set several years in the future. Sid’s taking stock of his life and finds he’s thinking about Ovie more and more. Only thing is, he doesn’t know what he wants. Ovie knows what he wants. He just doesn’t know how to get it. And so it goes.
Beta: Unbeta’d. If anyone is interested let me know.
Disclaimer: It’s fan fiction people.
Feedback: Sure. Let me know what’s working for you.
Authors Notes: Warning. I’ve read a grand total of one fic in this fandom but I LOVED IT and I wanted to give writing a shot. Bare with me if I get things wrong because I’m not really familiar with the canon. I’m just hoping that if I set it far enough in the future that no one will notice I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. Yes, I’m totally making shit up. Hope it flies.
Sometimes Sid feels like the best times are over. He’s thirty years old and feels sixty. The accumulative damage of concussion leaves him prone to headaches and his body hurts in more places than he can count. The physicality of hockey has taken its toll on Sid’s body. He’s never been the biggest guy and it all eventually all caught up with him.
He’s been thinking a lot lately, at loose ends with the hockey season finished. The Penguins have had their season cut short by the Bruins in the quarter finals. Players and coaches have dispersed around the globe for the summer. Sid flew home to see his parents but now he was back in Pittsburgh, working for the team. He hadn’t played the last two years, couldn’t really; his career cut short by head injuries. Now he works for Mario in PR.
It’s not difficult work, part time really, but then Sid doesn’t need to work at all. He’s set for life. But the job keeps him involved in hockey after a fashion and that’s good. It leaves him lots of down time to do whatever he feels like. A lot of the time he feels like golfing, running, and going fishing with the friends he’s made in Pittsburgh over the years. Sometimes he doesn’t feel like doing anything and he’ll stay in for days. That’s when his parents will fly down for a visit and watch him worriedly while he watches hockey clips for hours on end in his media room.
He’s on his way to a pub downtown to meet up with Jordan Staal for dinner. Sid grabbed a cab so he can drink as much as he wants without having to worry about a DUI. He’s looking forward to seeing Jordie, was glad when the other man called him out of the blue and arranged the meeting. He can’t remember when they last got together, probably a year. Without realizing it time has ground on and left him unaware of its’ passing.
Sid’s been missing his former team mates. He’s kept in contact with Letang and Staal, because it’s easy, they still live in Pittsburgh after all, but he doesn’t do it as often as he’d like. They’d been like a family, all of them, and swore their friendships would last forever. They hadn’t realized in their youth that coincidence and apathy could prevent them from meeting, that people got tied up with their lives, and that keeping in touch took effort. After they’d won their Stanley Cup, it seemed inconceivable that they would drift apart, no matter what the reason. Sullivan, one of the veterans, had warned them it would happen but they hadn’t believed him.
Sullivan knew what he’d been talking about. Players got traded and moved to other cities or they retired and moved back where they’d come from. Sid had watched them go, one by one, until hardly anyone from his core team remained, until even Sid was gone. After the NHL awards ceremony that year in Vegas, after the cup, it hadn’t occurred to Sid that a day would come when he would feel like he couldn’t call any of them. Least of all Ovechkin.
Somehow Sid has managed to miss Ovie all this time without ever calling him, and now he’s left it so long that he realizes, as soon as he finally decides he has to see him again, that he really should call, that he will one day, that he can’t. Or more like, he shouldn’t. He’s had his phone out more times than he can count and then put it away again.
Nothing is different. Time has passed, life events have unfolded as they do; a failed relationship, serious injuries, retirement from the game he loves. He and Ovie are still the same people, and he feels the same, even if he didn’t quite know what it was he was feeling at the time. But Sid’s not a kid anymore. He’s now six years older but obviously no wiser. They are still as far apart as ever. All the same shouldn’ts that made him shy away from the possibility of Ovie are still there.
The cab pulls up to the pub and Sid hands the driver some cash before he gets out. He finds Staal immediately sitting at a table in the corner and is surprised to see Letang is there too as well as Malkin. He smiles easily when he sees them all. Staal waves the waitress over and orders two more pitchers of beer and a glass for Sid.
They catch up on each other’s news, the wives and girl friends, the ex’s and the kids, and what their plans are for the off season. They order food and still more beer and while they talk and laugh easily with each other they swear they will keep in touch. They all agree it’s a shame they haven’t been. Sid realizes again that, despite distance and commitments, these people will always be important in his life.
Before long Malkin is feeling no pain and begins to talk about Alexander Ovechkin. Being a fellow Russian and friend he’d stayed with him at his dacha outside Moscow two weeks before. Sid watches him owlishly while Malkin tells the others about his visit with Ovie and his family. Everyone looks up at Sid when he misjudges distance and slams his mug down a bit too loudly on the table, spilling some beer.
“Have you heard from Ovie, recently?” Staal asks him after a moment, and when he says no, Jordie does bother to hide his surprise.
“Not for years,” Sid tells him.
“On the phone?” Jordie tries, clearly thinking Sid doesn’t understand.
“No,” Sid says, trying to be casual, but inwardly feeling a peculiar clenching in his gut.
“Is he still seeing that supermodel?” Letang asks, unaware of Sid’s discomfort.
The blonde one?” Sid forces himself to ask.
Malkin jumps in helpfully and shakes his head, equally unaware. “No, no, that one history. Not seeing Katrina anymore either. You know Ovie, “seeing” probably not best word to use.”
The others nod sagely. “Yeah, seeing is probably a bit too strong a word for Ovechkin,” Staal agrees, “kind of like you,” he says to Sid. Sid looks away when he feels a hot flush wash over his face.
Staal tries to be tactful, never his strongest suit and made more difficult by the beer he’s had. He asks Sid, “So how long has it been since you and Ovie, you know, have talked, or seen each other, or whatever?”
Everyone looks at him with interest and Sid is obviously not sober himself, because what comes out is “too long,” when he intended to say “a couple years.” At least he doesn’t totally embarrass himself by saying “two years and a month,” which he knows to be fact.
“Why’s that?” Letang asks, forgetting about tact.
Sid frowns and slides his mug from hand to hand. “It didn’t seem.....I don’t know. We’re still friends, I guess.”
Staal says carefully, “That surprises me. I would have thought...” he says before trailing off.
“You guys have a fight?” Letang asks.
Sid shrugs and finishes his beer before saying, “No. There’s no problem. We just lost touch.”
Letang rolls his eyes and says, “Sounds like a problem to me...” before Staal kicks him under the table and he stops abruptly. His tact has been abandoned.
Sid frowns again, or maybe he has been frowning the whole time. “ Look, there’s nothing to say,” Sid tells them irritably.
It is a problem, but most of the time Sid thinks it’s for the best. At least, he’s at a loss as to what the hell to do about it, how to fix it.
“He still the same guy,” Malkin tells them, thinking he’s changing the subject.
“Mm-hm,” Sid acknowledges noncommittally while Jordie watches his expression carefully.
Not so easily put off, Malkin pulls out his phone. “Look, I got pictures from Russia. Me and Ovie.”
He holds it out and Sid sees a photo of Ovie and Malvin grinning madly up at the camera. It’s the same crazy, gap toothed grin he remembers and his stomach clenches at the sight. Ovie’s hair is a little shorter, not as shaggy as Sid remembers, and there are fine lines in the skin framing his smile. Malkin scrolls through more pictures, showing them all to the guys.
There’s another one that captures Sid’s attention. Ovie’s looking directly into the camera, frankly, not smiling, his expression open and honest. It’s almost raw and it hurts Sid to look at it. Alexander Ovechkin too has faced some life lessons over the past few years.
“How is he doing?” Staal asks.
Malkin shrugs before answering. “So so. He still have knee problems. Working out. Hope he will play next year but maybe not.”
Letang takes the phone from him and looks at the image. “He looks sad,” he says critically, and he’s right. Sid had thought the same thing.
Malkin nods. “Well, not a lot to be happy about sometime,” he tells them before shrugging helplessly. “But he Ovie,” he concludes, as if that explains why he can smile at all.
He looks at Sid frankly. “Here Sid, I send pictures to you. You need picture of your friend Ovie.”
Sid nods weakly and then watches while the other man texts him the pictures. The waitress brings more beer and everyone refills their glass. Malkin and Letang get up and wind their way to the restroom for a piss and Staal watches Sid while he runs through the pictures of Ovechkin on his phone.
“You should call him,” he tells Sid without looking up at him, running his finger over a ring of beer on the table. “If you’re still thinking about him, you should call.”
Sid says nothing so Jordie keeps going.
“The longer you wait the worse it will get.”
Sid’s jaw tenses and he has a hard time swallowing his beer through a throat that’s gotten tight all of a sudden. He knows Jordie means well but he doesn’t like to be pushed and it’s hard to keep the anger from his voice when he replies.
“Look, just drop it Jordie,” Sid warns. He can feel one of his headaches coming on and he rubs his forehead impatiently.
Staal holds up a hand and says he’s sorry to say anything but that someone has to, and after this one last thing he’ll shut the fuck up, but “It’s really too bad you lost touch with him. It’s easy to lose something like that, and hard to get it back.”
Right then Sid realizes that Jordie, and maybe the rest of the team, knows more than he realized about his feelings for Ovechkin. He hadn’t hidden things as well has he’d thought. Despite the pretence he’s slipped up at some point. They’d never talked about it to other, never mind anyone else, but the team obviously knew something. Hell, they probably knew as much as Sid did because whatever the hell he and Ovie had, or used to have, Sid corrects himself, has always been completely undefined.
That night, once he’s changed into sweat pants, Sid flops on the couch, still slightly drunk, and pulls out his phone again. He brings up the photo and stares at it. He doesn’t remember starting, but he finds himself with his hand down his pants, stroking himself off to it. It doesn’t take long to come.
When he’s finished he wipes off his hand and goes to delete the photo, feeling slightly ashamed of himself. Before he can hit delete Sid changes his mind and keeps it after all. He tosses his phone on the table in frustration. Sid crawls into bed and despite the room spinning a little he falls asleep immediately.
Next time he gets drunk, he takes the picture out again.
TBC