Fic: Half a Truth and Lie

[bratri_ve_zbrani]

Title: Half a Truth and Lie (and a few sketches I did for fun)

Rating: R

Pairings: Kari Lehtonen/Johan Hedberg

Disclaimer: This is a product of my procrastination, writing fics when I should be writing papers.

Note: This is my first fic to the community, so please be kind (but constructive criticism is always welcome. I'm rather used to having my papers ripped apart by TA's, so I can take the heat. Yeah!) Anyway, this is something of a dedication fic to hollycomb as is the sketch of Hedberg and Lehtonen. The other two of Halak and Price are for a_symphony_in_c .

 

 

It's a surprise to find Kari at his door.

 

They haven't even had a decent conversation since last April.

 

"Can I come in?" he asks, hesitant, when Johan takes a second too long to invite him in.

 

"I've been - I've been traded," Kari announces once inside, standing awkwardly in Johan's living room, looking down at his socked toes. They come up to his ankles, white with grey heels. "To Dallas."

 

Johan is aware of this already, of course, but he can only manage a nod in response. He's been keeping his ear to the ground all day, refreshing the web site and checking his phone for any news. About him - unlikely - and about Kari, and this is exactly what he dreaded. The point drives itself home when Kari, who's never been comfortable with silence,, hastily adds, "I leave tomorrow morning."

 

Yes. Yes, he knows. Should he be comforting? Consoling, perhaps, while secretly glad that it's not him who has to reacquaint himself with another city, another team? Really, what could he possibly say to Kari? They have grown apart since last summer, circling each other from a distance like two-pole magnets spinning out of control in orbit.

 

It's this unexplained aloofness that makes Johan hesitate; he doesn't know whether he has permission to pull Kari into his arms.

 

What a shame, he thinks. A year ago, he would have wrapped himself around Kari without question, wih no hesitation whatsoever. So he's counting on the hope and chance that some things don't ever change when he pulls Kari tight against his chest. It's achingly familiar and new; the contour's of Kari's body, young and new, is changing still, shifting to accommodate another year and injury.

 

"Did you like Dallas?" Kari asks after a while, his words muffled, "while you were there, I mean."

 

"It's a good place." This is the best answer he knows to give. "You would like it, I think."

 

"I hope so," he whispers, nodding against Johan's shoulder.

 

"It's a new start," he adds, trying the glass-half-full approach. He knows that Kari doesn't really buy it - Johan himself never did anyway, whenever people told him this. So he's grateful when Kari merely hmms and doesn't call Johan on his poor attempt at reassurance. When Kari pulls back half a step, he's still holding - or clutching rather - the hem of Johan's faded t-shirt.

 

It's neither of their fault that Kari is leaving, and he doesn't look as dejected as Johan had expected and maybe - and he hates himself for this a little - hoped. He won't deny the sliver of disappointment in him; he would have liked it if Kari had come to him broken hearted.

 

He has no right to contemplate these things, circumstances considered. Looking back on it now, he played a bigger part in the disintegration of their relationship. It's just that, he's a goalie, too. He grew up with ambitions, too, and it's so crude of him but god, he'd seen the chance, he saw the fucking chance and pounced on it.

 

He doesn't deserve to question Kari's attachment, to wonder if Kari's love was as bound and fused as what Johan still feels for him. But Kari came to him tonight, out of everyone, he'd chosen to ring Johan's doorbell.

 

So maybe Kari still does love him, or maybe not. Maybe it's the aftertaste - and what better time than now to call this affair bittersweet - that he's come for, and his heart is still intact.

 

Johan, though, he knows he's not coming out of this unscathed because it's breaking his heart to stand before an older Kari, the one who has shed layers and fragments of his former naiveté season by season right before Johan's eyes. His English isn't perfect but it's passable and coherent, and when accosted by curious reporters, Kari no longer looks to Johan for help with that bewildered, wide-eyed expression anymore. His early petulance has melted away like the final thaw of winter, and these day Kari's frustrations show themselves in the form of grave, discontent expressions.

 

A sense of grounded composure is slowly coming to define Kari, and the way it resembles Johan's quiet stoicism just so, Johan can't bear to stand quiet witness to Kari's transformation toward this dark, foreboding maturity.

 

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That night, Kari is quiet in bed, moaning softly as Johan rocks into him with such tender devotion, cupping his hand behind Johan's neck to pull him down for kiss after kiss, mouthing pleasepleaseplease in warm puffs against Johan's lips.

 

He looks utterly and devastatingly beautiful like this, and Johan would cry if he weren't the man he was. He would weep from regret if he could, at how everything in the past year unfolded, how his foundation faltered when Kari needed him most, how selfish he was while Kari faced the disasters of bad luck on his own.

 

He wants to justify it somehow, explain that Kari is stronger for this. After all, it's true that Kari is more disciplined now, but everyone knows that the young goaltender would rather spend his time toiling on the ice. Relegated to feeble conditioning even before the surgery, haunted by pain seizing his back, his limbs, Johan has some idea of what it's like to be deprived but nothing like what Kari was going through.

He hates himself for letting their conversations trickle to a stop, for letting their interactions atrophy back to the first day they met, when they were awkward and aloof; worse yet, actually, without Kari's eagerness to get to know someone who might understand him.

 

So he's that much more grateful that Kari chose to come to him to-night, and it's utter bliss to fall asleep with his limbs tangled around Kari's, their weight heavy like the guilt in his heart.

 

-----------

 

He wakes in the middle of the night, stirred by a disturbance he can't quiet put his finger to at first.

 

It's nothing other than Kari, his silhouetted form at the edge of the bed with wide shoulder hunched and slumped over itself and face buried in his hands. He thinks at first that Kari must be crying, but he's not. He merely sits there, silent even as Johan moves to gather Kari up into his arms and kiss his hair, which smells of clean sweat, car leather, and Johan's pillow. "Kärppä?"

 

"Sorry," he whispers, voice cracked and dry, "I didn't mean to wake you." As if Johan could ever mind spending another waking moment with him. He doesn't know that Johan could wallow in Kari's presence and be content for nothing else. It’s the kind of thing that Kari used to say and Johan would admonish him for, but he feels compelled to admit to certain compulsions tonight if only to himself.

 

"Don't be," he slides his hand up and down Kari's arm in a soothing pattern. "When's your flight?"

 

"Hm. Eight-thirty."

 

Johan glances at the bed-side clock, which glares at them accusingly with red numbers. They still have a few hours left.

 

"You'll do well in Dallas," he says and immediately regrets it because it's absolutely the wrong thing to say right now.

 

"Maybe. But I'll dread it."

 

"It's nothing to dread. Being traded… it's, you know, it's not so great but it's not so terrible either, you know."

 

"I meant playing against you," Kari says. Johan can feel Kari blushing at this confession. Playing against friends and former teammates - and on the rare occasion lovers though the term paramour might be more appropriate - is practically a way of life in the NHL, and Kari should know this. He does know it, actually - it's the only reason he would tell Johan this - and Johan loves knowing that Kari has put him on a different shelf than everyone else. "Is that pathetic, Johan?"

 

"You'll forget it once you're on the ice." Johan tells him this half a truth and lie.

 

"Maybe.  I just wish I could stay."

 

"I know." Because in two hours they'll be hauling Kari's suitcase and equipment bag to the driveway, holding hands while Johan drives with one hand on the wheel, and because life is cruel and unfair, they'll have their last kiss in the privacy of Johan's car and they'll have to be satisfied with a rough, platonic hug and friendly pat on the back before Kari goes through the security checkpoint where Johan can't follow.

 

There are too many places, he thinks, that he can't follow Kari.

 

Carding his fingers through Kari's hair, he wonders how many days will pass before their conversation will start to stall. It happens always, the same cycle of deterioration; one of them will be bone exhausted after a game, falling asleep over the phone, while the other will be impatient and restlessness from anticipation. Pretty soon, the separate lives they lead will begin to take its toll and for weeks they'll both deny it because whoever said absence makes love grow fonder was probably a fool oblivious to his lover's infidelity.

 

The jolt of jealousy Johan feels for the faceless person who will discover Kari wraps itself around Johan's heart like a tourniquet. For a split second, Johan wishes he could take a guillotine to his love for Kari but quickly dismisses the terrifying thought.

 

They'll see each other again, of course, but after tonight, they will have lost something of their former and future selves. The thought of it nails a profound sense of melancholy into Johan, resolute and final like the fourth corner of a coffin, and he clutches tighter at Kari, who must feel this with him, and responds in kind.