Work Text:
The day after the Capitals’ last game, with very little fuss and no fanfare, TJ Oshie disappears.
No one notices.
John calls TJ with the vague idea of meeting up before the production that will be locker cleanout and exit interviews. All he gets is TJ’s cheerfully half-assed voicemail, Leave a message or text me! And well, that’s sort of its own answer to whether or not TJ wants to see him. Given the way the season ended, John can’t really blame him.
Whatever, he can talk to TJ tomorrow.
Except it’s tomorrow, and TJ isn’t there.
There’s no uproar from the front office, and it’s easy to blame his absence on the start-of-summer chaos. Everyone is splitting off to wind down in their own way (or, for a handful of them, heading straight to Worlds), and somehow his locker gets cleaned out anyway, so he must have been there earlier. As far as John can tell, though, no one has actually seen him or spoken to him since the last game, which has to be impossible.
John mentions it to Niskanen in passing. He mentions it despite knowing he’ll probably get nothing more than a pitying look and maybe a tactfully worded “told-you-so.”
“Oshie? Haven’t heard from him,” Nisky says, blithely, as though that’s any kind of answer. “Must be busy. You know how he is.”
No judgement, no rebuke, nothing. John would be relieved if it weren’t so unsettling.
John would be relieved, if it weren’t for the fact that Nisky cornered him, way back at the start of the season, and told John on no uncertain terms: “You better know what you’re doing. You can’t let it get in the way. I mean it.” That was months ago now, but John still vividly remembers the way Nisky had looked expectant until John said, stiffly, “We’ll keep it off the ice.”
It must have been good enough, because Nisky let it drop after that. But throughout the season, he’d kept watching them both closely. John wishes he knew what Nisky had been watching for.
It’s late spring in DC now, almost summertime, but it’s been unseasonably cool and rainy. All day today, the sky has been darkened by low clouds and there’s already fog rising off the water by late afternoon.
John goes home across the river and tries not to take that as some kind of sign.
The first time he and TJ had fucked was in Sochi, right after the game against Russia -- exactly what you’d expect. John doesn’t really remember it.
No, that’s not quite right. He doesn’t have a clear, beginning-to-end memory of it, but he knows how it had felt at the time, to want it so much that his entire body felt lit up with desperation.
He can recall momentary flashes, touch and impulse and reflex, the hectic heat underneath his skin. TJ’s brilliant laughter, his touch generous with triumph, and the frantic beating of John’s heart in his chest, overwhelming. He has one vivid image of TJ’s hand gripping tight at his biceps, fingertips digging in as though he’d never be pried away, with enough intensity that John had been surprised it hadn’t left a mark the next day.
He remembers thinking that it wasn’t the best sex he’d ever had, but as half-drunken victory hookups went, it was definitely worth doing again.
John tries calling TJ again before he goes to bed, half-expecting TJ to answer like nothing’s wrong, like he hasn’t been avoiding everyone for two days. He’s half-expecting to have to apologize for something he did, even though he doesn’t know what it might be.
The phone rings and rings, though -- seems to go on ringing for so long that John pulls back to check that he’s got the right number. TJ’s name blinks starkly back at him from the screen. No one answers.
Fuck. John sighs and ends the call. He’s too tired for this shit.
That night, he dreams of finding himself in the foyer of an unfamiliar house; the wood-paneled walls have a pale grain that seems to glow in the light coming in from the high-set windows. Everything about the place looks old, sturdy and worn smooth with age.
Someone steps up behind him. It feels like TJ even if John can’t quite see him, the solid breadth of his chest against John’s back, his hands splayed possessively across John's stomach.
TJ kisses the back of his neck and stays there, pressed against John, his lips moving softly against his nape as he murmurs, “I’ve been so lonely, babe,” sweet and plaintive. “I thought it would pass, but it just kept getting worse. It was physical, like hunger, like thirst. It felt like if I didn’t satiate it, it would consume me instead. And even once I did -- I fed it, I slaked it --”
Out of the corner of his eye, John catches a glimpse of something wispy and green.
TJ sighs out and clutches John a little tighter. “When are you coming home?”
John opens his mouth to answer, tries to turn around. The dream shifts around him.
He opens his eyes under water with the vague sense that something isn’t right. The surface of the water overhead ripples gently breaking the light into glittering columns around him as he falls downwards. The light becomes richer and greener as he nears the bottom of the lake, thick with algae and water weeds. He can’t move. His body is still breathing, heartbeat steady and peaceful, not reacting at all to the sensation of water flooding into his lungs, a suffocating weight filling his chest to bursting, straining against his ribs from the inside. Each breath out is a stream of silvery bubbles rushing to the surface, until there’s no air left in his lungs to breathe out. The lake bed is slick silt, dark and fine. It billows slowly up as his body settles there, silently buried in the mud.
It’s peaceful. It feels like late spring or early summer, the water fresh and cool. The sunlight glitters brightly through the little wavelets on the surface.
John wakes up, out of breath and choking on the taste of bile and the memory of murky water at the back of his throat.
Sochi and the summer were quickly retreating, and so the day TJ landed in DC, he and John met up for lunch.
John had known how it was supposed to go. Just because a guy wanted to hook up once in a haze of triumph and alcohol, didn’t mean he’d want to do it again -- didn’t mean he’d even admit that it’d happened.
But TJ had smirked shamelessly at him and under the table, TJ’s foot nudged up against his.
John had nudged back with more force. TJ smiled for real, then, and it had felt like the most natural thing in the world to take him home after, to close the door behind them and press him up against it, fitting their bodies together in order to kiss him until they were both short of breath.
And this time, John made sure he’d remember every single second of it.
The next time John tries to call TJ, he puts his cell on speaker and sets it on the coffee table. The call connects. The other end of the line rings and rings and rings -- he counts, six, seven, eight, nine -- there’s no voicemail recording. There’s no pleasant robotic voice to inform him that the number is disconnected or not in service. It just keeps ringing.
For a few minutes, John lets it ring, and stares at row of pictures on the mantle. There’s ones of his family, a couple of pictures with the team, one from a couple summers ago -- him and Alzy soaked to the skin at a waterpark, arms around each other's shoulders and beaming at the camera. That whole summer had been a blur of sunshine and laughter. A rush of nostalgia and clear, sudden grief hits him as he looks at the picture, thinking of that day.
John fumbles for the phone and hangs up, cutting the call off mid-ring. Silence floods the room, and the feeling slides away, like a wave pulling back from shore, leaving him a little stunned.
As the weak afternoon sunlight begins to fade into darkness, John falls asleep on the couch by accident to the quiet background patter of rain outside.
He opens his eyes to the light of a sunrise and a surprisingly expansive bed, with grey-green sheets that smell like crisp, clean cotton. The bedroom has a set of sliding glass doors that look like a new addition among the otherwise worn-in stability of the place. The doors are wide open, framed by pale curtains, showing off a stunning view over a lake. Beyond the door is a narrow porch, a strip of green grass separating the house from the edge of the water.
“Hey.” TJ steps inside and smiles at him.
A breeze comes off the lake, stirring the gauzy curtains, carrying the scent of sunlit water and growing things with it. It’s warmer than John would have expected so early in the morning. It makes John think of summer, sunny days at the shore with his family, cookouts with friends, and again, he’s suddenly struck by a wave of nostalgia that threatens to choke him -- TJ comes over and puts a hand on his chest, and the feeling subsides. John looks up at him, relieved.
“I’m so glad you’re home,” TJ murmurs, leaning down, a bare inch from kissing him.
John wakes up, out of breath and shaking, feeling weighed down in every limb.
He supposes that’s what he gets for napping on the couch.
John opens the door to his bedroom and nearly shouts in surprise because TJ is right there, perched on the end of the bed.
“Fuck! TJ!?”
“Huh,” says TJ, tilting his head to the side, the movement oddly birdlike, inhuman. “I didn’t think it’d take.”
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
There’s something slightly off about his appearance, John can’t quite put his finger on what it is. It might just be the way he’s sitting on the bed, head cocked and his legs folded up awkwardly as though he’s not quite comfortable with the direction and placement of his own knees.
“I get lonely,” TJ says blithely, and John flinches at the memory of TJ’s voice saying, I’ve been so lonely, babe. When are you coming home?
“I liked it here with you guys, but it wasn’t enough.”
Maybe if you hadn’t decided to rent a place in fucking Arlington, John’s brain responds on reflex, totally irrelevant to the situation at hand, even as the hairs at the back of his neck prickle.
He asks, instead, “What are you?”
“What am I?” TJ parrots, smiling slow and strange. He answers, “Old enough that all the languages used to name my kind are dead.”
There’s something wrong with his face, it’s obvious now -- too sharp around the chin and exaggerated around the eyes -- the proportions are wrong, and the distortion keeps getting worse as John stares in horrified fascination. He’s afraid to look away from its face, afraid of what the rest of it might look like.
It doesn’t seem to notice John’s unease.
“DC was built on a swamp, you know. The longer I lived here, the more I could feel it shifting and oozing under my feet.” The thing that used to be John’s teammate curls one hand into a fist as it speaks, as if to illustrate its point; its narrow fingers seem to have more segments than they’re supposed to.
John takes a step forward without meaning to, can’t seem to stop himself. It gives him a wan smile, says, “I really like it here with you, but I can’t stay.”
John’s heartbeat is pounding in his head, strong but steady, a poor match to his spinning, spiraling thoughts. His body takes another step forward. He says, “Everyone forgot you. Or as good as, anyway. Everyone except for me.”
“I am sorry,” it says, gently. “I didn’t mean for that to happen, I just wanted it to last.”
It’s beautiful, is the thing -- ethereal and strange, but captivatingly beautiful. John’s body takes the last step, closing the space between them. This is easy, his body relaxed with the familiarity of it, simply existing in each others’ space, as though they were always meant to fit together this closely.
It touches his face, runs its knuckles down the curve of his jaw, murmurs barely audible, “please, come home with me.” In the end, John leans in to kiss TJ, open-mouthed, slick and warm.
It’s late spring, almost summertime. The windows are open, and there’s a light breeze coming in, smelling of sunshine and wet grass. John breathes in deeply and feels his body settling, at peace.