└ Sway Checking On Knies | Round One, Game Seven: Bos Vs. Tor | 5.4.24

└ sway checking on knies | round one, game seven: bos vs. tor | 5.4.24

Quiet

HRPF | Erik Karlsson/Kris Letang | 1.3K | Rating: G | Complete

Tags: Fluff, Established Relationship, post loss fic for the soul

Summary: Erik comes home to a sleepy, sick Kris after the Pens' OT loss to the Lightning (and Erik's very large bff, Hedman)

Read on Ao3. Summary under the cut :)

Erik tries to make as little noise as possible as he maneuvers through the dark front hall, the wallpaper peacocks invisible now, just blurs lost in all the other grey. Lucky, Erik knows his way half-blind now, from all the other nights like this one, trudging home in miserable, tired silence. There’ve been too many nights like this one.

Sometimes the air is tight with tension, too. Those nights are better, for the way Kris will press Erik hard into the wall, the pictures rattling in their frames as he bites at Erik’s neck, Kris’s hot hands, so quick and clever usually, gone rough and bruising with not-so-buried fury.

There are no hands tonight, though, no choked-off grunts to break the quiet. Only stillness and smudgy dark lit only by the deck light, muzzy and dim through the pulled curtains, just enough for Erik to make his way up the stairs without tripping.

No other footsteps follow his, avoiding the creaking fifth step. No warmth of a body close in space. No deep, disappointed sighs to mirror his own.

Erik finds himself hurrying as he gets to the top of the stairs, overcome suddenly, the dark quiet now somehow worse than everything else tonight—the hush of the arena after the last goal sounded, the harsh bang of thrown gear in the locker room, the familiar low sound of Geno’s voice drifting over from his post-game, atoning for all their sins like usual. All of it burns and grates and sinks in Erik, always, and each game this season a little more.

But none of it compares to this, now, this dark, this silence, the space behind Erik—empty, like it hardly ever is.

The bedroom door doesn’t squeak anymore, not since Erik got out the WD-40 over the summer. He thinks of that day every time he enters their room—Kris’s dark eyes, his big hands, his beautiful, grateful mouth. His laugh when Erik offered to fix anything, everything, for the rest of their lives, if it got him a thank you like that.

There’s no reason for thank you’s tonight. Even if they’d won, Erik wouldn’t have expected one, not with how miserable Kris was when he left, with his stuffed-up nose and red, bleary eyes, and his poor, shot voice, saying, win for me or don’t come home.

Erik feels a pang at the joke now. He knows there’s some truth in it, knows how hard these losses weight on Kris. Hell, Erik knows he’s to blame, at least partly, for a good portion of them. They’ve all been playing like shit, but Erik more than others, some games, and it’s—it’s hard, to face Kris then. To lie in bed beside him, both of them tired with nothing to say to each other. Erik feels the apologies heaviest then, clawing at his throat, desperate to escape into the air—I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

Read the rest on Ao3 :)

10 notes View Post

lilfeckingoblin

11 months ago