Work Text:
they made you into a weapon and told you to find peace
Connor is lying down on his sofa, half-enjoying, half-being drowned in the quiet of the house and starting to feel, for the first time in a week, that the screaming pain of his ankle has been reduced into something manageable. Still dull and throbbing but not so much that Connor can still feel his heartbeat in his foot twenty-four-seven.
Disappointment and guilt wash over him, not for the first time today, when he remembers why he is able to be resting right now. He resists the need to put any videos on his TV, both because it's not good and second because it is a rule for the first days after being eliminated from the playoffs. The fact that there are rules, unwritten or said out loud, for it, is already a testament of what a fucking nightmare his last three seasons have been.
"What a fucking mess," he says, out loud, to the ceiling of his living room, who stays dully impermeable to his struggles.
At some point during the morning, after the physical therapy session leaves him raw and with a renewed, albeit more focused, pain, he hears the unmistakable sound of Leon's car entering his driveway. Connor sighs, but warmth blooms in the middle of his gut. He hates how needy he gets when this kind of loss happens; he hates the idea of anyone seeing him like this, but Leon crosses over his walls as if they were not there, as if he were the only one that understood how weak they really are.
The car stops, and keys rattle on his door, bringing in the heavy steps until a body blocks the sunlight coming from the windows, a shadow looming over Connor's closed eyes.
"You're moping," Leon says.
"Hello to you too."
"Correction, you're a professional moper."
Connor opens one eye; he looks up at his face. "Are you here because you were banned from your home after moping for two days straight?"
"Yes." The smile breaks. Connor doesn't miss the sunlight, but it comes back when Leon flops down on the sofa and then winces because he fell too hard on it. That fucking hip, goddammit.
Connor wants to say, you shouldn't have played, but he doesn't, because it's not like they had any other option. Even if they didn't make it, not trying is just not a possibility. The moment he twisted his ankle, though, he knew everything was over. He wasn't even mad at Mattias, it was a stupid way of injuring himself, but Connor knows that this is what happens, usually. Years of downplaying not-so-small pain lead to badly healed injuries lead to their current situation.
"Stop it," Leon says. "The thinking. Stop it."
With care, he picks up Connor's legs and puts them down onto his lap. He offers his hand, palm up, and Connor feels the stupid impulse to take it into his, corny and selfish. Something softens around Leon's eyes, and he points at the little portable refrigerator that Connor has on the foot of the sofa, within his reach. "Ice patch," Leon says, and Connor swallows the tang of disappointment. When Connor takes the ice patch to pass it, Leon's finger pets the back of his hand for a second.
Then he moves them to his ankle, pulls out the sock, and raises up the sweatpants from the hem. It's still purple and ugly. Before he covers it with the ice patch, Leon touches it with his huge hand, and presses it for a minute. Once he's satisfied, he envelopes his hand around the injury, fingers spread all over his calf. The coldness brings a relief is so sudden and unexpected that Connor's treacherous body let's out something that he can't disguise as anything else than a moan and he puts his arm over his eyes, drowning in the remission of the pain.
"That good, yeah?" Leon asks, and Connor can see the shit-eating grin without looking at him.
"Don't laugh at an injured man," he says, but he is smiling.
When the contact between their skin goes back to a warm-ish, more natural temperature, Leon actually uses the ice patch as it was intended, his left hand pressing on it. Connor hisses, and Leon's right had comes to rest on Connor's leg, just above the knee. Not a highly suspicious movement. Nothing that would even be cared about it at their home, but it's the first time that they have actually had time to just be themselves outside the rink, or without a camera pointing at them, for weeks. And before, Leon had been in Germany for a whole month.
The fingers beyond the blue line of his knee before anything else. Offside, referee, but it's only once, and it's tinny, and who cares, anyway.
And, of course, playoff rules apply also to them. Now that he knows how they ended up, Connor thinks he could have risked it. He could have gone to Leon's room in fucking Anaheim, of all places, gotten into his bed, put himself inside his arms, and siphoned his calm all to himself. He doesn't know if Leon would have said yes, but Connor has the suspicion that they both have a hard time saying no to each other. Is it breaking the playoff rule if they don't fuck? If they don't hug, if they don't even kiss?
Are the hockey Gods looking down at them now, laughing at the sacrifices they make just so they only have themselves to blame when everything goes to shit? In hindsight, every superstition feels stupid. But of course, they are not dumb enough to risk it.
The mix between the ache, the cold and the longing for that hand does something weird to Connor. He doesn't get off on pain, but he discovers he doesn't mind it that much if Leon's hands are the ones soothing it.
"You didn't have to say that," he says. It's been rattling in his head for days, his heart hammering in his chest when he heard Leon say it for the first time.
"What did I say?"
Connor looks at him from under his arm, knowing he is being obnoxious in purpose.
"You know what. To the press."
Leon shrugs. "What, the fucking truth?" Connor huffs, but Leon is unrelenting. "You know you are the best player in the world, yeah?"
One month and a half in Germany and Leon comes back with the bastardized ja at the end of questions. Second time in a row today; with time it will disappear a little bit, but never completely. Connor has to bite the inside of his cheek not to smile at it.
"There is no such thing. Points are not everything."
"Who said anything about points?"
The hand on his knee abandons it to turn the patch onto the other side, giving him a little bit of reprieve with his palm before plastering it back down again. His numbed out nervs almost can't make the feeling. Connor wants to, though. He wants that palm so bad on himself, he wants Leon to apply his effectiveness to him, to have his full attention to himself.
He doesn't feel like the best player in the world right now; he feels like a fucking failure.
The hand comes back. It's higher this time around, just enough of the cool trespassing the fabric of the sweatpants.
"I don't—"
Leon shrugs. "I do."
He brings up Connor's legs to get his knees on his lap instead of his feet, the ice patch discarded on the crystal-topped table. The next time that treacherous hand doesn't stop at the knee, or even the thigh, and by the time it is on Connor's crotch, he is already half-mast on his way to full.
"Fuck," it's all he says when Leon licks the palm of his hand and takes him in it, jerking him softly but without giving him any respite. "Leon," he says, and then fuckfuckfuck again. Leon looks at his face, soft around the eyes, and it's just too much for Connor, who covers his eyes with the heels of his hands, white spots on the inside of his eyelids as his hips buckle up and down, finding purchase in his good feet to avoid undoing all the work from the past two days.
It doesn't take long for his knowing hand to bring Connor to the brink, and now he is so so so close, and he whispers it so, giving him time to prepare, but Leon must know already, and he says. "I know. I got you, Connor. Let it go."
He finishes on Leon's cupped hand, already waiting for it, with little hums of encouragement while Connor feels his soul leave him through the release, not even words daring to form until it is over, where he says a last fuck while Leon cleans his hand as good as he's able with a napkin.
They stay there for a second. Below where the underside of his knee is on Leon's lap, he can feel him, but it doesn't seem like Leon is on a rush for Connor to return the favour. There is a mixture of so many things inside himself (sadness, disappointment; relief and gratitude about not having to endure it on his own) that he feels his eyes prickle but he focuses on the way Leon is caressing his leg, his sweatpants already covering him again, to avoid himself the humiliation of crying for this disgraceful run of a postseason.
With effort, he raises himself up on his hands and gets as close as possible to Leon.
Leon looks at his mouth, then at his eyes. They glint, as if saying, better, ja? What Leon says instead is, "Next year, then?"
Connor smiles, really smiles for the first time in who knows how long. He cradles Leon neck with a hand and brings them together, first their foreheads and then their mouths, soft lips beyond his beard, always thicker than his. He pushes his tongue in and enjoys the way Leon breath hitches.
Against his lips, he says, "Next year."
He's just a little bit surprised about how much he means it.