Work Text:
He almost turned around when he saw Sid in the elevator. A variety of convenient excuses flashed through his mind. He had forgotten his wallet; he needed a jacket; he never wanted to see Sid’s smug, self-righteous face again.
“On or off,” Sid said impatiently as Zhenya wavered, and the hard edge to his voice spurred Zhenya into motion. He didn’t want Sid to win, and losing here meant being the first one to crack. Zhenya hadn’t been affected at all. Nothing Sid said or did mattered to him. He stepped onto the elevator just as the doors began to slide shut.
“Which floor,” Sid said, his fingers already at the buttons.
“Lobby,” Zhenya said, trying to layer his voice with a healthy serving of ‘fucking obviously.’ It was time for dinner, he was dressed for dinner; where exactly did Sid think he was going?
“Fine,” Sid said. He jammed the lit button with his thumb.
Zhenya stared straight ahead and waited for the elevator to drop into motion. Beside him, Sid was silent, warm, breathing, smelling faintly of cologne, and that same awful choking miserable fury and grief clogged Zhenya’s throat again. He hadn’t expected to encounter Sid again so soon.
The elevator lurched and halted. From the corner of his eye, Zhenya saw Sid smash the lobby button again. Nothing happened. Sid hit a button for a different floor, and then every other button in turn, all up one side and down the next. The elevator didn’t move.
“Are you fucking kidding me,” Sid said, with enough frustration in his voice that Zhenya cast him a sideways glance.
“Stuck?” Zhenya asked.
“You tell me, you’ve got exactly the same amount of information I do,” Sid said. He hit the door open button a few times. “Fuck.”
“Sid,” Zhenya said.
“It’s fine,” Sid said. “Just—I’ll call.”
Zhenya waited while Sid hit the alarm button and spoke with a voice on the other end, a woman who promised that help would be there soon.
“When is soon,” Zhenya said, when the call ended.
Sid sighed heavily. “I don’t know, Geno. Does it make a difference? We’ll be here until someone comes to get us.”
“Fine,” Zhenya said, and he regretted everything, kissing Sid for the first time, leaving Sid’s hotel room two hours ago while Sid was still covering his eyes with his hands to pretend he wasn’t crying. He texted Horny: Elevator is stuck. Late for dinner
???? Horny replied. Stuck??
With Sid, we ok, Zhenya sent, and then turned off his phone and put it in his pocket. He didn’t want to deal with anyone’s chirping right now.
Sid was staring up at the ceiling of the elevator, hands deep in his coat pockets. Zhenya wondered if he was contemplating climbing through the escape hatch, like something out of a spy film.
“Just wait, Sid,” he said.
Sid didn’t reply. Zhenya eyed him furtively. Sid looked the same as he always did, his wool coat, his fresh haircut, the familiar strong lines of his face. Zhenya was conditioned by now to feel a surge of overpowering fondness when he looked at Sid, and it welled up in him and then was instantly soured by his lingering anger. He didn’t know where they had left things. Maybe this was the end, and his last chance to feel unblemished affection for Sid had already passed him by.
They waited in silence. Zhenya refused to crack first. He shifted his weight onto one foot and then the other, and then took off his coat, because it was too warm in the elevator. Sid didn’t move. If Zhenya was warm, Sid was probably sweating, but he didn’t take off his coat or display any signs of discomfort, because of course he had to be competitive even about this.
Zhenya hated him, and hated how much he didn’t hate him.
“Fuck,” Sid said finally, after an eon that Zhenya’s watch told him had been ten minutes. He shrugged out of his coat and folded it up, and used it as a cushion to sit on the floor. His jeans strained at his thighs, which Zhenya didn’t notice, because he wasn’t looking.
Another minute passed. Zhenya, who was far less stubborn than Sid, sat on his own coat on the other side of the elevator and leaned back against the wall, cool gleaming metal, polished to a high shine. His head bumped against the handrail. He slouched down further and stretched out his legs, getting comfortable, settling in for however long it would take for them to get free.
It was a nice elevator, at least, as elevators went. Clean, well-lit. No weird smells.
“We could try to pry the door open,” Sid said, a little while later.
Zhenya checked his watch. Fifteen minutes. Sid had crumbled much faster than he expected.
“Just wait,” he said. “Someone is come.”
“I’m hungry,” Sid said, as if that would make some difference to whoever was coming to the rescue. Sidney Crosby is hungry: step lively, boys!
Zhenya removed himself from his makeshift cushion and fished out the protein bar he had stashed in the inner pocket of his coat, and silently offered it to Sid. He had started keeping snacks on hand because Sid got grumpy when he was hungry and refused to admit it, and it was easier to always have food in his pocket than to get Sid to acknowledge his mortal failings.
“Oh,” Sid said. He looked at Zhenya’s hand, and then at his face, and then took the bar and peeled open the wrapper. “Thanks.”
“Welcome,” Zhenya said.
Sid ate half the bar and then tried to pass it to Zhenya, who shook his head. He wasn’t hungry.
“You eat,” he said.
“Okay,” Sid said. He ate the last few bites, and then he said, “That was for me, wasn’t it. There’s no way you’ve just always conveniently got a snack on hand. You’ve been keeping stuff for me to eat.”
Zhenya shrugged. What was the point in admitting it? He felt foolish for doing it, now that he knew his care wasn’t reciprocated.
Sid carefully folded the wrapper into a tiny triangle and stuffed it in his back pocket. “You wanna play some chess? We might be here for a while.”
Sid hated chess; it was a peace offering. Zhenya glanced at him again, and this time Sid was looking back at him, wearing his earnest tell-me-all-your-problems face, the one he liked to apply to rookies like a firehose of friendly welcome.
Zhenya’s heart did its thing, a slow unwanted throb of love. “Fine,” he said, and waited for Sid to open the app on his phone and make the first move.
They played a few turns in silence, passing the phone back and forth across the elevator. Zhenya hated that Sid had a chess app on his phone, and wondered how long it would take for Sid to delete it if they broke up. If they hadn’t already. Sid didn’t want to talk about anything, but surely he would at least talk about that.
Sid made a bad move, and then a worse one. “You suck,” Zhenya told him.
It wasn’t a great thing to say. Sid hated losing at anything, at any time. He was competitive about cooking. Zhenya knew for a fact that Sid used to practice playing video games so he wouldn’t get too thoroughly spanked during road trip SoCom tournaments. He hated chess, but he still wanted to be the best at it.
But Sid just shrugged and said, “You’re better than me.”
“You admit?” Zhenya said, torn between glee and concern, because maybe Sid was having a stroke.
“Only at chess,” Sid said. He made his move and passed the phone back to Zhenya. “And maybe at hockey.”
Zhenya considered the board. Sid was going to lose in another three moves, maybe four. He tapped the screen to move his bishop. “Oh, maybe.”
Sid didn’t say anything. He held out his hand for the phone and lost in three moves: pitiful, but far from his all-time worst.
“Good try,” Zhenya said.
Sid sighed and tucked his phone back in his coat pocket. “I read a story about a guy who got trapped in an elevator for eighty-one hours. That’s like. More than three days.”
“We don’t get stuck for three days,” Zhenya said. “We both have phones. I already text Horny, tell him we stuck. Someone get us out. You have to pee, go in water bottle.” Sid never went anywhere without a tiny water bottle. Zhenya still hadn’t figured out what that particular habit was about.
“I don’t have to pee,” Sid said. “I’m not going to pee in my water bottle.”
Zhenya’s ass was going numb on the thin carpeting. He shifted on the floor and tried to fluff up his jacket to make a better cushion. “We get out soon. Then—”
Then you don’t have to talk to me ever again, he wanted to say, but that was unnecessarily dramatic. Of course Sid would still talk to him.
They subsided into silence. Zhenya checked his watch. Thirty-five minutes.
“Are you, uh,” Sid said. He drew his knees toward his chest, wrapping his arms around his shins and resting his cheek on his knee, watching Zhenya warily. “How mad are you?”
Now he wanted to talk about it. Well, fine. “I’m a little bit mad,” Zhenya said, “but more it’s—sad, scared.” He looked at the buttons all lit up, unwilling to look at Sid’s face. “Scared we break up.”
“You’re the one who walked out,” Sid said. He sat up, shoulders back: ready to fight more, if he had to.
Zhenya was too tired for more fighting. “I’m just upset, need break. I think, you come find me, we talk more, make up. But you don’t come, and I go back to your room and you not there.”
“I went for a walk,” Sid said. “I was, uh.” He exhaled slowly. “I was pretty upset.”
“Yes, me too,” Zhenya said. He hadn’t thawed nearly enough to be prepared to offer Sid any sympathy.
Sid tipped his head back to rest against the wall. “Do you want to break up?”
Zhenya swallowed. His throat was clogged again. “Maybe we should. Since you don’t want—” Me, he wanted to say; but that felt too embarrassing, to let Sid know how much that had hurt. He wouldn’t crack. “Don’t want to spend time.”
“For Christmas?” Sid said. “Geno, come on. You aren’t being reasonable about this.”
“Reasonable,” Zhenya said, his face flushing with fresh anger.
“Christmas is important to my parents,” Sid said. “I don’t see them that much. I’m not gonna bail on them just to hang out with you.”
“It’s not bail,” Zhenya said, stung. “It’s not hang out. It’s—” He swallowed again. “It’s spend time. Because you pick me.”
“God.” Sid rubbed his eyes, and Zhenya had an uncomfortable flashback to how he had kept doing that earlier, when they were yelling at each other, and how long it had taken Zhenya to realize that Sid was crying. “Put yourself in my shoes, okay? What if I asked you to—I don’t know, skip New Year’s Eve with your friends and hang out at my house instead to watch the stupid ball drop on TV.”
“It’s just idea!” Zhenya said. “I think maybe—you stay Christmas with me, then go see parents in bye week. Or maybe Christmas with parents, and then bye week with me. But you don’t let me explain, you laugh. You say, don’t be ridiculous.”
“Okay, I’m. That was shitty,” Sid said. “I shouldn’t have laughed.” He drew in a breath. “And I shouldn’t—it isn’t just fucking. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“No?” Zhenya said. That had hurt so badly, a deep, direct hit to the part of Zhenya that had wondered for months how serious Sid was about their relationship. If Zhenya could even call it that.
“No.” Sid turned his head to look at Zhenya. “You mean a lot to me. It isn’t just sex.”
“Okay,” Zhenya said. It was everything he wanted to hear, but he was still raw from their fight, how stupid it had been, over nothing of any real importance. He still wasn’t sure why Sid had reacted the way he did.
Sid had been watching his face, and now he shifted, knee-walking over to where Zhenya was sitting and cautiously settling beside him, close enough that their knees and thighs were pressed together. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry I yell,” Zhenya said. “Sorry I make you cry.”
“I wasn’t crying,” Sid said, which was so blatantly untrue that Zhenya could only roll his eyes. Sid put his hand on Zhenya’s forearm, and when Zhenya didn’t shake him off, slid his hand down to cover Zhenya’s.
Zhenya unbent enough to put Sid’s hand in his lap and twine their fingers together. “Sorry I ask about Christmas. It’s too soon. Maybe next year.” He had always been like this, hard and fast and everything all at once, stationary to full speed in no time flat. He loved being in love; he never saw any reason to hold back. But Sid was more cautious, and it had only been a few months. Zhenya had jumped the gun, maybe.
“Maybe,” Sid said. He was quiet for a minute, toying with the strap of Zhenya’s watch. “I’m not, uh. I’m not ready to tell my parents.”
“Okay,” Zhenya said, not sure what to make of this non sequitur. He hadn’t asked Sid to tell anyone.
“I started thinking about next year,” Sid said. “When you brought it up. Because by then, I mean. That would be enough time. I could take you home for Christmas. But then I’d have to tell my parents.”
Oh, Sid. Zhenya pried Sid’s fingers off his watch strap and slid his arm around Sid’s shoulder, tugging him in against his side. He kissed the top of Sid’s head. “Don’t worry now. It’s too soon. You tell, don’t tell, up to you. Maybe next year we fight about more.”
“We can go somewhere for the bye week,” Sid said. “If you still want to.”
“Yes,” Zhenya said simply. He kissed Sid’s head again.
Sid was warm against him, big and bulky. He fit just right in the space beneath Zhenya’s arm. “Can I tell you something?”
“Yes,” Zhenya said, wary again, because Sid could follow that up with anything from another complaint about his hunger to a heartfelt spiritual revelation.
“I’m falling in love with you,” Sid said. “It’s serious for me.”
“Well,” Zhenya said. He wasn’t going to cry; there had been enough crying for one day. He tightened his arm around Sid’s shoulders and tried to decide if he trusted his voice not to waver.
“I hear you sniffling,” Sid said. “You aren’t that sneaky.”
“I’m already in love,” Zhenya admitted. “I know it’s soon—”
“God,” Sid said, and turned his face into Zhenya’s chest, and they were quiet for a while, holding each other.
“Our first fight,” Sid said after a while, muffled against Zhenya’s shirt.
“Probably not last,” Zhenya said. He touched Sid’s hair, soft at his nape where he hadn’t gelled it too thoroughly.
Sid let out a long breath and pulled away. “Listen,” he said, and then Zhenya heard it, too: voices out in the hall, a radio squawking, the sounds of people coming to set them free.