Crash Into Me: PG, General/Romance

[cradle-song.livejournal.com]

This has been floating around in my LJ for a bit. I wasn’t too fond if it when I wrote it, but since then it’s grown on me so I decided to post it.

Disclaimer: I wish. (oh, how I wish.) As far as I know, Svetlana does not exist, but just imagine this lucky bitch woman.

Title: Crash Into Me
Genre: General/Romance
Rating: PG (warning: mention of a heterosexual relationship! also some swearing.)
Players: Nikolai Zherdev, various
Summary: The various ‘falls, trips, stumbles and crashes’ into love by one Nikolai Zherdev.
(Nik POV) Prompt #83: ‘Love’.

          For years I’ve been telling myself I’m not going to fall in love again. For years I’ve sworn ‘this is the last time, that’s it, I’m done’; vowing no more falls, no more trips and stumbles and crashes into love. I always know that it would be so very easy to make just one wrong step, a single mistake, and then I’d be back in that old, terrifying mess of shattered emotions and broken promises.

          For years I’ve ended up breaking those vows.

          It began with Anton. He was my first, in more ways than one. My first friend, since moving from Ukraine to Russia; all the way back in Kristal, and then in Elemash too. My first kiss—though we were both drunk and I don’t know if he remembers it as well as I do. My first fuck. My first real relationship.

And my first ex.

          I think I’m still a little bitter over Anton breaking up with me. It wasn’t that he wanted to break up—I was moving to Moscow to join CSKA and many people separate due to distance—but it was more the fact that he never even wanted to try to keep us together. Like I was some expendable piece of his life. ‘Oh, so you’re moving, then? Goodbye, have a nice life. Next boyfriend..?’ It had been demeaning and infuriating—and ultimately, shattering. It was on the train to Moscow, still heartbroken and tearfully angry, that I had sworn never to get involved with anyone again. I was seventeen.

          In Moscow I became ensconced in the harsh life that came with being involved in Viktor Tikhonov’s organization. With his supposedly-ex-Soviet system, the man still has half his brain back in the days when it was considered a show of strength to have little heat on nights when the temperature reaches twenty degrees Celsius. In modern times that practice is more commonly talked of in the same breath as ‘blatant stupidity’ and ‘pneumonia-inducing idiocy’. But you have to hand it to him—he had all of us wrapped around his little finger. Anyone who wants to be the best dreams of playing beneath the best and as much as we hated Tikhonov, from the first line to the fourth line we all salivated at the chance to learn from him. If you could come away relatively unscathed with just a little piece of that knowledge, you’d have come away successful.

          With my mind and body being pounded daily with the numbing force of the Red Army machine, I didn’t have much time to think of relationships. A blessing, that. I hit second and first line pretty quickly, and Tikhonov discourages his top-liners from getting involved with…well, anything that doesn’t have to do with hockey. Anything we ‘really’ needed was provided in the CSKA compound—food, housing, the gym; the rink. I focused myself completely on hockey, without any worries about the complexes of society and the various forms of relationships involved therein.

          That lasted for about six months.

          And then came Sveta.

Svetlana Vasilievna Tikhonova—yes; Viktor Tikhonov’s granddaughter. If I didn’t know any better I could have sworn she was sent just to get me off my game. After my workouts she would be there: handing me a towel, a water bottle; offering to help me with my gear. She was an incredible nuisance at first, but I was eighteen and lonely, and she grew on me sort of like a fungus. I thought ‘Hey, she’s not a guy, she’s not like Anton—maybe this time will be different.’

Turns out women can be just as fucked up as men.

A few months into our relationship I found out that Sveta was absolutely obsessive. The woman had to be with me all day, every day. I couldn’t turn around without finding her standing there. What was worse was the fact she knew I was bi, and not only suspected me of cheating on her with other girls, but with other guys as well—namely, my teammates. It grew to be so intolerable I eventually broke up with her. I let her down gently; I didn’t want to hurt her, but she went off screaming that I hated her and broke her heart…all the way to Vasiliy Tikhonov. Needless to say, her father was pissed, and he didn’t even bother to confront me about it—he went directly to Viktor.

          Viktor wasn’t so foolish as to get rid of one of his top players, but he was more than a little irked at me for causing trouble. I got kicked out of the CSKA complex and had to find somewhere to live in Moscow—not an easy thing to do when you’re eighteen and previously depended on other people to do everything for you. But, thankfully, there came another option as a form of possible salvation:

          The 2003 NHL Draft.

          I was chosen, fourth overall, by the Columbus Blue Jackets; after some goaltender and two other forwards. There was a nice ceremony, I got a jersey and shook hands with people who were saying things I neither understood nor cared to understand. When I got back to Russia Viktor had fun boasting that one of his players was the first European to be picked in the draft (while complaining the NHL was stealing away all his players). He then promptly ordered me to wait another year before leaving for North America. When I expressed a desire to try the NHL he 1) punched me for being ungrateful and 2) cut my ice time, also for being ungrateful. I only put up with a few weeks of that before hightailing it out of that backend, freezing hellhole.

          Columbus was nice. Bright, quiet, confusing. Sometimes I would sit on the front of Nationwide Arena and just listen as people walked by, talking, not understanding a word they were saying. My teammates weren’t crazy—well, most of them weren’t—and tried to help me adjust as much as possible. (And I’ll admit, despite my self-imposed relationship-celibacy, I had the hots for Rick Nash the second my hand touched his. Pity he was already with that Czech defenseman.)

But I spent much of the season in arbitration, and the next year was the lockout. I had to play, so I dragged my ass back to Russia. Viktor was smugly pleased he could lord himself over me for another season, and stuck me on a line with Alexander Frolov and Sergei Soin.

Alexander Frolov. Damn. What can you say about Alex? He’s a damn good player, he’s funny, sweet, sexy…

…married…

I, of course, didn’t find the latter bit of information out until the season was nearly over, and by then we’d already screwed around quite a bit. His wife—Kate—showed up, all blonde-haired and blue-eyed, at the rink, smiling and waving at him. The look of shock on his face had been enough to tell me what was going on, and I got off the ice as fast as possible. Later Alex tried to explain he thought I had already known…which didn’t excuse anything, but I nodded my head and accepted the answer, and proceeded to let him fuck me again anyway. After that I couldn’t take it, though, and we broke it off. Training camps for the reinstated NHL teams were coming up anyway, and we wouldn’t have been able to make it work.

Shame, though. Alex is—was—no, is, a great guy. He’d been the first to make me feel really special.

In any event. Thus armed with more experience convincing myself to swear off relationships, I trudged into the 2005-2006 season. Unfortunately the hot Canadian stubbed his toe or something in training camp, so we had to make due without him.

Yeah, we…kind of sucked.

          But then It happened. The Thing. (No, not that stupid gross movie with the aliens.) The Event that would alter my life and my views.

          The Jackets acquired Sergei Fedorov.

          Now, up until then I’d heard a lot of things about Sergei Fedorov. He was an asshole. He was a saint. He was a heartless bastard. He was the most caring person you’d ever encounter. Stuff like that. I knew that he was an amazing player, to be respected no matter what his personality was like—but it was when he stepped into the locker room, mussed and blinking tiredly with weary circles beneath his eyes, that I got to see past the legend and to the man. When he shook my hand and murmured a distracted greeting in English, only to pause and retranslate it into Russian upon my confused look, I was able to feel the warm flesh of a person, not of a hockey wunderkind. He wasn’t some sort of untouchable being, and that was pleasing to me.

          A few days after he got situated, Sergei approached me alone and told me flat-out I needed to work on my defense. I’d stared at him. I needed to do what? You’re talking to me? The expression he’d affected at my disbelief had been patient—and thus irritating—and I had nodded my head like I agreed. I didn’t even bother working changing the way I played until a couple games later, when I noticed him coming back to the bench panting for air after having to scramble to cover one of my slip-ups. He met my eyes, saw my understanding—but he didn’t complain; didn’t scold. He just nodded and told me to play hard, do my best. The next shift I covered the defense while he scored a goal, and the celebratory hug afterward seemed somehow sweeter for it.

          I’m not being sappy. Shut the hell up.

          After that I spent a lot of time with Sergei. We’d go out, he’d show me different things I never would have heard of (or understood) with my limited English. He’d try and improve my conversational language skills to offset the dirty stuff Jody had taught me, and when I got frustrated that little patient look would appear again, until I settled down enough to listen. Sergei was always patient with me, never pushing or forcing anything.

So for the first time, I found that I was the one trying to establish a relationship.

          Sergei had been surprised but not negative when I approached him the first time. He’d smiled, and we’d agreed to go to a movie. Some action flick, I don’t remember; I spent most of it exploring his mouth. (He has a very nice mouth, by the way.) For our first couple months together that’s all I did, explore—explore Sergei’s mind, his thoughts, his beliefs and views and ideals. Each expedition brought me closer and tighter to the man, as I became entrapped by the wonder of him. One night, I think it was late March, I explored all of him: every inch of his skin, from his toes to the tips of his fingers, stretched above his head. It was heat and warmth and felt like heaven, and I think that night I knew for sure that I couldn’t live without him.

          So what is that now, three times I’ve broken my promise to never involve myself with someone again? I never learn. You don’t mess around with love. You don’t ever, ever let yourself believe it can cause anything but pain.

          I wait now, in this silent, empty Moscow apartment; wait to see if he’ll come. I know that he promised—promised with kisses and the seal of his hand pressed against my heart; promised he would come for me. The days have gotten shorter, the nights longer, and as they progress I think more and more about the failures of before, the broken vows of before.

          But I can’t forget the whisper of his lips against my skin.

          There’s a knock on the door and my heart slows, and I can feel Sergei’s breath against the back of my neck. I stand and turn to answer; wondering, hoping.

          Will this be the final promise?

          “Sergei…”

-

Have you even been in love? Horrible, isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up this whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...

You give them a piece of you. They don't ask for it. They do something dumb one day like kiss you, or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so a simple phrase like "maybe we should just be friends" or "how very perceptive" turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.

--Rose Walker; Sandman: The Kindly Ones; Neil Gaiman

Comments

[caaare.livejournal.com]

awwww that was poignant and just lovely!

I LOVED this part "The days have gotten shorter, the nights longer" It was deep. And pretty.

[cradle-song.livejournal.com]

Hee, thanks. I'm still amazed this somehow made it into fic form, I felt it was so incredibly rambly when I wrote it...

[itako.livejournal.com]

Well damn your fic makes me feel happy! And holy that wife has a scary tan.

[cradle-song.livejournal.com]

Thankfully as far as anyone knows, that's just his girlfriend (luckily for my slashy mind). And yes, she's so odd looking... (of course I'm biased, because she's female and not Fedorov/Brule/Nash/etc...)

Hehe, and thanks for the feedback. :)