sidgeno not!fic inspired by @bluecornmoons post about a self-indulgent fic loosely based around Fireworks by the Tragically Hip, which I saw and said YES but it needs to be Long Time Running.
Geno's at the airport after the Pens wash out of the playoffs. Sid's already back in Halifax but Geno stayed in Pittsburgh a little longer for Nikita to finish out the school year. Nikita is with Anna now, and Geno's really glad the whole co-parenting thing is working out so well, but he's a little bummed out about only getting half the summer to spend with his kid.
So he's at the airport and he has a ticket to go back to Russia, alone, and he's about the check in but then he starts thinking about Sid and the weird way they left things at the end of the season—the weird way things have been since his split with Anna, if he's being honest—and suddenly he finds himself walking down to the Air Canada counter and asking for a ticket to Halifax. And there aren't any flights to Halifax until tomorrow, can he fly out then? But no, Geno needs to go right now, so the nice Air Canada lady says, well, how about Fredericton? It's only a four hour drive from Halifax.
So that's how Geno ends up in New Fucking Brunswick, wherever that is. And he rents a car and he starts driving, and the views are kind of nice, actually, and he maybe feels a little bad that he's never seen more of Sid's country than the cities with an NHL team. But then it gets dark and he can't see much of anything, and then it starts to rain and he can see even less. And then, as he's getting close to Halifax, the main highway gets closed for construction and he gets routed off onto some shitty two-lane country road with barely any shoulder, and no lights, and then the rain really starts coming down and somehow he ends up in the ditch.
And he's fine, really, and so is the car, but he's stuck in the mud and his phone is dead because he didn't bring a car charger. He knows the safest thing to do is stay with the car, but he can see the lights of a gas station just up the road, so he decides to walk up and see if he can get help. Only, just his fucking luck, because he gets there and it's closed. There's a payphone, though, and it's somehow still in service, so he digs out his wallet. He doesn't have any fucking coins—who uses cash anymore, anyway—but then he sees that someone's left a quarter on top of the phone box, a Candian one with the weird moose-or-whatever on the back. He drops it in and dials Sid.
No one remembers phone numbers anymore. It's been hell trying to get Nikita to memorize his in case of an emergency, and Geno can't remember the last time he actually looked at a number before just plugging it into his contacts, but Sid has had the same number for as long as Geno has known him. It's one of the few numbers still burned into his memory, like his childhood landline and his father's old office.
Sid answers the phone, groggy, and Geno's clearly waking him up.
"Geno?" Sid asks, shocked when Geno says his name. "What number are you calling from?"
"Payphone," Geno says. "My phone dead. I'm in—" and then he butchers the name he saw on the last sign.
"Kennetcook? What the hell are you doing in Kennetcook?"
"Come to see you. Maybe get little bit stuck in ditch."
It's still pouring rain when Sid pulls up to get him a half-hour later, the kind of hard, torrential downnpour that makes the whole world feel faraway. They get Geno's stuff from the rental but decide to wait 'til morning to call a tow, because it isn't fair to call anyone out in weather like this. Sid drives fifteen below the speed limit and blasts the heat the whole way back to his lake house, because Geno is soaked to the bone and shivering. They don't talk, and Geno is glad for it because he really doesn't know what to say, even though he was the one who came all this way.
Sid gets him set up in one of the spare rooms, and it's a little bit like the million hotel rooms they've been in together, the anonymity coaxing late-night honesty out of them, and also nothing at all like it, because he can see touches of Sid everywhere, from the Buffalo Plaid bedspread to the framed hockey memorabilia on the walls. Sid hands him a stack of towels and points him towards the ensuite, and he goes to leave, but Geno stops him with a hand on his wrist.
"Sid," he says. "You shower, too?"
And this is a line they haven't crossed in a long time, since before Anna, but Geno thinks that maybe they never got quite as far from that line as he thought. Sid nods, and it feels like it's been a long time coming.
(and then SOMEONE gets wet fingered)
(pokes it in, pulls it out)
(blah blah blah, and then they talk)
