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nomorelonelydays · 6 years

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We’ll Be Young Forever, 3.7K. @sidgenophotochallenge

“I’ve never been on the West Coast,” Sidney says absently, as he unlaces his skates.

They’d lost the Cup again. So close, always so, so close that Zhenya had gone to sleep each night dreaming about lifting that weight and shouting into the crowd. Of Sidney’s glowing face, exuberant and pink and looking the way he does when he’s overjoyed and relieved all at once.

Now, he feels nothing save for his own heart, weighing down like a stone. He’d wanted to win the Cup for Sidney so badly. But he always does, every year, since the first time he saw Sidney on the ice.

“You’ve been on the West Coast,” Zhenya mumbles. “We go all the time for games.”

“Oh, well. It’s not really the same.” Sidney’s voice sounds a little funny. But then again, he’d never talked so much after a loss like this. “I think I wanna go back to visit. See the ocean.”

“Okay.” From his experience, there’s really no use asking Sidney to explain why he wants to do something. He looks up. “We go.”

Sidney turns sharply at him. “What? Seriously? You want to come?”

He shrugs. “Is our summer now. We can do whatever we want.”

Sidney gives him another look, then changes into something unreadable. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, okay.”

“I book ticket—”

“Can we drive?” Sidney asks abruptly.

Zhenya blinks. “Sure. But is going take forever.”

“It can be a road trip.” He looks a little cheerier. “It’ll be fun.”

Zhenya’s pretty sure the road from Pittsburgh to the other side of the U.S. is just going to be a lot of cornfields. At least ten hours of corn and the occasional gas station oasis, so he tells Sidney this.

“It’s okay,” Sidney says softly. Something about his tone worries at the back of Zhenya’s mind, but he’s too exhausted to dwell on it. “I want to see everything.”

“A road trip?” Flower says, sounding incredulous. “You hate road trips.”

“Yeah,” Zhenya agrees as he divides up the t-shirts and underwear he’s planning to pack. But he loves Sidney.

He doesn’t say that, though, but he thinks Flower can guess.

“Is Sidney okay?” he asks instead. “You know how he is after a loss. He takes it harder than anyone else.”

To be fair, Zhenya isn’t sure.

He drives to Sidney’s place on a Tuesday, bright and early so they can beat the traffic.

“We’re not taking your sports car, G,” Sidney says, fondly, as Zhenya pretends to pout in the passenger seat. “It’s not gonna fit all of our stuff.”

Which made little sense--the back of Sidney’s Tahoe is mostly filled with Zhenya’s luggage, boots, and backpack. Sidney’s isn’t exactly known for packing lightly, what with his good luck charms on roadies and his first aid kit that he always has in his bag. But all he had brought today seemed to be the essentials crammed in a single duffel bag.

“Where to?” Sidney asks, smiling brightly at him.

Now, without the weight of the Cup looming over his shoulders, he can’t believe he’s nearly forgotten how much he loves it when Sidney looks at him like that.

Butterflies, Zhenya thinks. That’s how Americans would say it. But it’s a modest word for what he truly feels.

“Get out of Ohio, first,” he grumbles, and Sidney laughs.

Sidney gets them out of Ohio in four hours and fifteen minutes. Zhenya doesn’t think he’s seen Sidney floor it like he’s running for his life, and he was pretty sure Sidney would’ve kept going if Zhenya didn’t make them stop at a McDonalds halfway through before his ass melted into the seat entirely.

Sitting there with Sidney, inhaling an entire burger and watching Sidney steal his fries when he thinks Zhenya isn’t looking, fills him with something unspeakable, a little like he’s swallowed a lightbulb.

(He orders two McFlurries for them, watches Sidney hesitate, then dig into his share before going after Zhenya’s, too.)

He hates traveling. He’s never liked traveling, regardless of whether it’s in a car or by air, not with the way his legs are always cramped in the seats, or how everything has to go by a schedule and being late is pretty much his middle name. But listening Sidney hum to the radio as they barrel towards Missouri calms Zhenya hazy, post-loss mind; and seeing Sidney try to stifle his infamous giggle-honk as they pass by an unfortunate produce truck that keeps dropping their apples onto the road as they hit each bump in the pavement, is a such a wonderful, wonderful thing. So much that he starts to think that even without a Cup to drink champagne out of this summer, this is just as good.

Even if Sidney does keep trying to change the station to country when he thinks Zhenya’s dozed off.

It seems that no matter where they are, the motel sheets are always too starchy, and the walls too thin. Zhenya spends the first night doing his best to not look over at Sidney on the other bed, in his reading glasses as he squints at the map on his tablet.

They don’t talk ever about the next season, or the Cup, or what they could’ve done differently, what they should’ve done.

Which is for the best, because all Zhenya can really think about at the moment is how much he actually doesn’t mind losing the Cup, if what he gets in return is spending time with Sidney.

“There’s a museum here,” Sidney reads, “for the town’s first and only saltwater taffy plant. Should we go check it out in the morning before we hit the road again?”

Zhenya couldn’t give less of a shit about taffy if he tried, but if it makes Sidney happy, he’ll buy him the entire candy factory.

There’s nothing particularly eventful until it’s Zhenya’s turn to drive and he makes a wrong turn in Kansas, and they end up at the World’s Largest Ball of Twine.

It’s the most boring thing Zhenya’s ever seen, even worse than the taffy plant, and that had been pretty bad. Sidney is fascinated.

He takes a picture of Sidney adding a piece of twine to the ball and sends it to the group chat.

Flower: What is that

G: biggest ball of twine in Kansas

Tanger: tf

Whatever.

That night at the motel (probably the only non-shady motel the town has to offer), Sidney’s face looks conflicted as he walks back to Zhenya from the front desk, holding a single set of keys for a single room with a single bed.

“How.” He’s not even annoyed at this time. He’s almost impressed that there’s literally no other available rooms in this town whose only attraction is a ball of twine.

“It’s the summer?” Sidney says, sounding unconvinced. “Maybe people are road tripping like us and they’re headed here.”

“Sid,” Zhenya says, very seriously. “This place is like Denny’s. You don’t go here, you end up here. We end up here.”

“Yeah, well,” Sidney shrugs. “I can sleep on the floor, or—”

Like he’s going to make Sidney sleep on the motel carpet after they’ve both been stuck in a car after a whole day of driving. He’s pretty sure that qualifies as a cruel and unusual punishment.

His thoughts pretty much all fly out of his head when Sidney slides himself into bed on his side, all soft t-shirt and pajama bottoms, his cheeks flushed from the shower as he towels at his hair. Zhenya just settles further into the mattress, his laptop burning a hole on his thighs as he tries to ignore how much he loves the idea of a scene like this, with Sidney freshly showered and settling in to bed next to him like a routine.

When he turns out the lights, his heart’s beating so fast that he’s afraid Sidney can hear it. He turns with his back facing Sidney for a while, shutting his eyes and trying to will himself to fall asleep—it should be easy, because he’s exhausted, but—

“G?” Sidney’s voice says, sounding very small. “Thanks for coming on this road trip with me.”

“Of course,” he replies, turning his body so he’s curved towards Sidney. “No big deal.”

“No.” Zhenya can’t make out his face in the dark, but Sidney sounds like there’s a stone lodged in this throat. “I know you have vacation plans, usually, like Florida. Or you go home to Magnitorgorsk, to family. I’m just a—I’m not—”

“Sid.” He fumbles to find Sidney’s shoulder, before Sidney can say anymore. “I want to be here. Happy be here, with you.”

Sidney doesn’t say anything for the longest time, until Zhenya realizes he’s crying.

“Sidney,” he breathes, then gathers Sidney into his arms without sparing a second thought. “Oh, Sid.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t win us the Cup,” he hiccups, and it tears at Zhenya at how inconsolable he sounds. “I wanted to win it together—”

“Sid, no, no, can win next year, is okay—” He rubs Sidney’s shoulders, holds him close, like he can contain all of Sidney’s grief.

“There’s no time,” Sidney says, shaking his head. Zhenya feels Sidney’s hands, gripping the back of his t-shirt. “I’m out of time.”

Sidney’s not making sense. “What you mean?”

He scrambles to turn on the lights, nearly knocking off the lamp in his hurry to do so. Sidney face is raw and blotchy as the dim, butter-yellow light bursts to life, and it cuts into Zhenya something fierce.

“Sid, what you mean?” he repeats, more urgently. Something’s off. This whole trip, so impromptu, so unlike Sidney to just suggest it out of the blue without already having planned every gritty little detail for months and months, and the way he packed—it was like he never intended to come back. “You hurt? You retire? You—”

Sidney doesn’t look up, but he’s so close that Zhenya can feel his shuddering breath against his neck.

“I’m dying,” he says, and it sounds exactly like he’s admitting something he’s known for years.

It just about stops Zhenya’s heart.

(Years ago, Sidney Crosby’s knees should have been shattered irreparably in a peewee game. He would’ve never been able to play again, much less even make it into the NHL.

Sidney remembers the moment the spirit came to him—the old god that inhabited the rink, gazing over him as he lay in a broken heap on the ice. Invisible to the coach, the paramedics, invisible to his mother crying as she hovered helplessly over Sidney.

Potential too great to be wasted here, it had intoned, almost musing to itself. What would you like me to do?

Time slowed. The pain in Sidney’s knees dulled into the background as the noises faded.

“I want to play,” he’d begged. “I want to make it to the NHL.”

What would you give for ten years?

“Anything,” he’d said, and even then he knew that he’d said something very, very terrible.

The spirit shimmers. Ten years in the league, it says, waving its hand over Sidney’s legs. In exchange for your heart. You will always live on borrowed time, and the end of your tenth year will be your last. Do you accept?

“Yes,” Sidney had whispered. “Please.”

When Sidney blinks again, he’s standing on the ice again, five minutes before the hit happens.

This time, he dodges it, and goes to score the game-winning goal.)

Zhenya’s attempts to persuade Sidney to see the team doctor, or a registered curse breaker, goes unheard.

“They’ve looked at it. It’s marked me,” Sidney tells him when they cross the border into Colorado. Miles and miles of desert road stretches between them, front and back, so far that that the Pittsburgh they left just days ago seems a century instead. “It’s not like I haven’t tried. But they can’t even touch the mark because it’s been woven in so deeply. It’s old magic. It’s not Cup magic."

“Have you tell anyone else?”

Sidney smiles, still looking out the window at nothing in particular. “Just you.”

He manages to croak out a pathetic, “Sid.”

“I’m glad I told you,” Sidney murmurs. “I’m glad it was you.”

“When--” He can hardly speak. “When you think--”

“I don’t know.” Sidney’s staring down at his lap, picking at the cover on his phone. “I’d always thought at the end of the season. Soon, I think.”

Zhenya says nothing.

“It’s not so bad,” Sidney says, at last. “I got to meet you this way.”

Zhenya concentrates on the road ahead of him, and thinks of nothing, nothing at all, so the stinging brimming in his eyes don’t overflow.

They drive through the night, the Colorado skies above them sparkling.

Sidney doesn’t say anything. He brushes his teeth when they get to their room and goes to sleep on the separate bed without turning off the lights.

It’s dim in the motel room, and Sidney’s back is facing Zhenya on the other bed, but Zhenya’s known Sidney long enough to know that neither of them are asleep.

“Want get fries?” Zhenya asks, towards the ceiling.

Sidney doesn’t respond immediately, and Zhenya thinks for a moment that he might’ve been wrong, after all, that Sidney had never actually been awake.

“Can we get chicken nuggets too?” comes the reply, timidly.

“Only if you share McFlurry.”

Sidney rolls over on his side so he can turn on the light. His eyes are a little red, but he’s giving Zhenya a warm, shy smile. It suddenly reminds Zhenya of the Sidney he met, years ago, when Zhenya spoke no English and Sidney no Russian but both of them still full of hope for their futures, for each other.

“Okay,” he says. “I’ll share.”

It’s a peace offering. An apology, even, for everything he’s unable to say.

It’s one A.M. in a nondescript Utah motel when Zhenya dares to say, softly, “Sid, come here.”

Sidney does, wordlessly, from the other mattress. Zhenya scoots back enough on his own bed like an invitation. He’d only meant for Sidney to share the other side of the bed, like they did back in Kansas, but Sidney takes his outstretch hands and folds himself into Zhenya’s arms, carefully, like he’s always belonged there.

His breathing evens out as soon as Zhenya turns out the light. He presses his nose against Sidney’s nape and tries to memorize his scent, the span of his back against his body, and the way he feels solidly, blessedly warm—alive—beneath Zhenya’s fingertips.

There’s a small town county fair halfway across Nevada, all bright lights and delighted yelling of children begging their parents to go on the roller coasters, or for another ice cream cone. They hadn’t intended to stop, and Sidney hadn’t asked to, but Zhenya took one look at his face and signaled right to go into the parking lot.

Hours later, they’re sitting on the grass with their prizes—a hard-won teddy bear after Sidney battles it out with the ring toss about six times in a row, and Zhenya with his funnel cake and ice cream—waiting for the fireworks.

“I don’t think we’re gonna make it to California,” Sidney laughs. “I didn’t realize it’d be so far. I don’t even know if I want to go see the ocean anymore.”

“What you mean, you didn’t realize? We drive for days and now you say you not want to see?” It’s a relief, being able to joke around.

“No, I mean, I figured it was gonna take a while.” He sighs contently. “When I said I wanted to see the coast, I think I was treating this whole trip as a bucket list.” His clears his throat, pointedly not meeting Zhenya’s eyes. “But I think, uh, I just wanted to spend my last summer not being by myself again. So. Thank you.”

Sidney’s face is lovely, illuminated by the carnival lights, and even more so when his eyes crinkle. Zhenya can’t quite decide if he wants to cry or kiss him.

Sidney straightens, then turns excitedly towards Zhenya. “I think they’re gonna start soon—”

Zhenya leans in, his mouth pressing gently against Sidney’s lips as the first round of fireworks explodes into stardust in the sky above them, all pinks and reds and whites and greens like the colors of Zhenya’s heart.

When he pulls back, Sidney’s quiet. For an awful moment, Zhenya thinks he’s ruined it all. “I’m sorry—”

“Kiss me again,” Sidney says suddenly. “Please.”

Zhenya does.

“Oh,” Sidney breathes out, his eyes fluttering as he sinks onto Zhenya’s dick, the slide velvet and hot and tight and just about enough to kill Zhenya a thousand times over. He’s a mess as he squirms on Zhenya’s lap. “Oh, o-oh—G—”

The motel sheets are starchy and scratchy as they’ve always been, foreign against their skin. But Sidney makes everywhere feel like home, so it hardly matters anymore.

Zhenya flips them both over--his hand gripping Sidney’s thigh like he can’t get enough--so Sidney’s on his back. He hooks an ankle over his shoulder, pressing in slowly until Sidney’s toes curl and his eyes flutter. With every angle change, Sidney sucks in a breath like he’s drowning, his cheeks flushing deep red, as if he’s never—

“Sid, you—you do before?”

Sidney’s eyes fly open. His hands, both pressed against Zhenya’s chest, start to pull away as if ashamed. “I—um. No, not…no.”

Zhenya grabs Sidney’s hand before he can retract, pressing the knuckles to his lips. Then he bends down to kiss Sidney sweetly, until Sidney’s shuddering and mewling against Zhenya’s lips again.

“Don’t leave me,” Sidney pants--it’s a plea and a prayer all at once, as he digs his fingers into Zhenya’s back.

“I won’t,” Zhenya promises. “I won’t. I’ll take care.”

There’s something shapeless in the corner of the room when Zhenya blinks awake the next morning, shifting and stirring like fog. Sidney is still asleep in his arms, snuffling as he tucks his head in the crook of Zhenya’s neck.

The thing doesn’t come closer, but it doesn’t leave its place in the shadows either. Zhenya holds Sidney close, his heart racing.

“I know who you are,” he says in Russian. “I know why you’re here. You’re not taking him.”

When the thing speaks, its voice thin and crackling like ice breaking against steel, comes not from the room where it stands but as if echoing from inside Zhenya’s mind.

I’ve been waiting.

“You’re not taking him,” Zhenya repeats. “I won’t let you.”

I know, it says simply. I have no claims to what he doesn’t own.

“What are you talking about?” Zhenya demands, feeling braver than he had any right to, talking to an old god like this. “You made a deal with him. A heart for ten years.”

His heart was never his to give. I knew this when I offered him the deal.

“I don’t under--”

You already laid claim to his heart then, as he’d done to yours.Your mark is all over him.

(‘They can’t even touch the mark because it’s been woven in so deeply,’ Sidney had said. ‘It’s old magic. It’s not Cup magic.’)

“That’s not possible--” He’s not a magic user, he doesn’t--

Evgeni Vladimirovich Malkin, the thing says, cocking its head quite unnaturally, did you think that this was the first lifetime that you’ve loved him?

Zhenya’s mouth goes dry. “Then why did you help him?”

Potential too great to be wasted, it says. Then, after a pause, What would you have done to save him?

“Anything,” Zhenya says, because it was the truth.

Stupid, the thing says, but it sounds amused. But you said the same thing last time, too.

When Zhenya blinks again, the shape had vanished, like it’d never been there. Sidney lets out a soft sigh, like he’s been unwittingly holding in his breath for decades.

“Geno?” he croaks, his voice heavy with sleep. “What’s going on?”

“I—” He shakes his head, nuzzling into Sidney’s curls and kissing his forehead. He’s pressed close enough to Sidney that he can just about imagine feeling the continued beating of Sidney’s heart, counting down the moments to the next season, and the season after that, like a promise. “I think everything going to be okay, Sid.”

How’s the road trip going? Flower’s text asks. You two kill each other yet?

Zhenya takes a long, indulgent look at Sidney, who’s got a ratty Malkin t-shirt on as he fishes another vending machine tortilla chip out from the bag. He’s completely focused on the shitty motel television that’s doing its best to play Groundhog Day. Sidney’s head is pillowed on his shoulder, close enough that Zhenya can lean over to press a kiss on Sidney’s hair whenever he wants.

He sends a photo of TV instead, the angle barely concealing their tangled legs.

Zhenya almost wants to laugh when Flower calls them immediately. He’s still grinning all the way through Flower’s frantic exclamations that he can barely understand as Flower’s accent starts to become more pronounced, because he’s so, so fucking happy.

He lets Sidney take the phone, and he hears Sidney murmur, gently, “Mhm. Yeah. Yeah, he’s--Yes, we’ll come over--mhm. Yeah. It’s good. It’s really good.”

“There it is,” Sidney says, leaning over the railings from their motel room deck, looking at the span of the waves lapping against the California sand. “The other side.”

Zhenya plasters himself against Sidney, his arms wrapped securely around his waist.

“What now?” he asks.

“Do you enjoy long walks on the beach?” Sidney teases, reaching up to card his fingers through Zhenya’s hair.

“I do,” Zhenya tells him. “If is with you.”

Zhenya thinks he can hear the smile in his voice. “We can sightsee before we have to go home.”

He loves the way Sidney says the word ‘home,’ loves the curve of his mouth and the fullness in his chest at the implication. “No more twine.”

“No more,” Sidney agrees. “Maybe we can go to Disneyland or something.”

“And then go home, win another Cup?”

Sidney laughs quietly, but he sounds confident and in love when he replies, “For sure.”

#sidgeno photo challenge #round 4 #magical realism #probably plot holes too but just if you see one just file that under magical realism #road trip AU #omfg here we go I HOPE IM POSTING AT THE RIGHT TIME AJGALKDGAL #i've went back to edit this post too many times in the last 3 days just take it

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