The Gentlest Chains: Spark
Aug. 28th, 2013 11:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ladyjanellyFeedback please:
This is the first 2600 words of Nathalie/Jaromir, part of the Gentlest Chains bonding verse. It's attraction/affection with background Nathalie/Mario. No infidelity. Ends at a pretty good chapter break.
I haven't written or really read het that felt right in forever, but I think this feels right, so maybe it feels wrong to the rest of the world? I would really love someone else's opinion.
It only takes weeks for Jaromir’s NHL dreams to turn to nightmares. He had no idea, at the time of the draft, how hard this would be, how he would struggle. The constant wash of noise, a million foreign voices shouting from every radio and television, people on the street with their English. An entire team that he can barely share words with. He had no idea how it would crush him, how lost he would feel.
Mario is the worst, the man Jaromir has idolized for so long, the one he most wants to impress. He still remembers every shot, every check, Mario taking on the Russian team in ‘85 like he was the only man on the ice.
Nothing Jaromir does seems to please the man. He is not cruel, but he is relentless. “Let’s run that again,” he’ll say at practice and they’ll play the scrimmage over, Jaromir trying and failing to get the puck past Barrasso. “Keep your head up, kid, damn it!” he’ll scream as Jaromir gets hit again and again in his first games, as he fails to score, fails to pass, fails to get enough shots on goal to even show how hard he’s working.
They’ll send him back, he thinks at the end of his first month, and he’s not even sure if he’ll curse them for it or thank them.
“Get some sleep,” Mario growls at him as they split up at the airport after another crushing defeat, shakes him by the shoulders until Jaromir looks up at him, meets his eyes and nods.
He tries. Everything Mario tells him to do, he tries. Skating and eating and sleeping. Tries to follow every order. He catches Mario watching him sometimes, off the ice more than on. Judging. Jaromir knows he comes up wanting.
He goes to bed at night, in the guest room of the nice family the Penguins have fostered him off to, and stares at the ceiling, running the day’s disappointments over in his head, so angry at himself, so frustrated.
He gets up in the morning, aching from his sleepless night, heart-sick and determined. He works as hard as he knows how to at practice, sweat dripping from his hair, his legs burning from pushing himself so hard. He plans to stay out on the ice after everyone else heads to the showers, but Mario chases him off, tells him to go get cleaned up.
Jaromir isn’t sure if it’s because Mario knows there’s no use in him practicing more, or if he doesn’t trust Jaromir not to skate himself to death.
He showers and heads to the dressing room, lets the noisy camaraderie of the guys wash over him, around him. He smiles from stupidity, not knowing if they’re making fun of him or just joking with each other. It’s awful.
The players dress and leave the building together. Jaromir lets himself be towed along with the tide, out into the bright mid-day sun. One of the guys calls a greeting and he looks up to see what is going on. There’s a sapphire-blue car there, a Corvette, sleek and curvy, parked outside the door, and the most American woman he could imagine leaning against the side of it. She is beautiful. Her hair is blond, bouncy bangs in front and full curls framing the sides of her face. She has on tight blue-jeans and boots with chains looping around the ankles, a teal t-shirt and a white leather jacket.
She is Mario’s girlfriend, Nathalie, and he ducks his head and knocks into the guy next to him to keep from staring at her. From his peripheral vision he sees Mario go to her, the sweet and easy way their body language fits together as they talk and smile and then part.
“Jaromir,” she calls, and his mouth falls open in shock. He had no idea she even knew his name. She smiles, and there’s nothing vicious in it, nothing mocking. “Come ride with me,” she says, and he can think of no reason he’s given this woman to want him dead.
He looks around like there could possibly be another Jaromir in the crowd, and the man behind him shoves him forward a step, out of the protection of the group.
There’s a chorus of wolf whistles and Nathalie flicks a hand-gesture at them that Jaromir is sure proper girls are not supposed to make.
“I wouldn’t keep her waiting,” Mario warns, and Jaromir has been trained in the last month to obey anything his captain asks.
Nathalie comes around to the back of the car and unlocks the tiny trunk for him to put his bag into, but there is no way his sticks will fit. He goes to the passenger side and folds his long legs into the low-riding car, stuffing the bottoms of his sticks out the car’s T-top and jamming the grips down against his calves.
“Perfect,” she says as she drops into the driver’s seat. The lightening bolt on her keychain catches the sun as she turns the ignition and the powerful motor revs under her delicate foot.
He has never been the passenger in a woman’s car before, and he’s equal parts terrified and fascinated as she slides it through the gears and pulls away, confident with the clutch, the wind whipping at his hair and hers, the rink and the team and all of his worries falling behind them as she hits the highway flying.
He finds himself smiling as she slips through late-morning traffic, his knuckles white where he grips the dash but feeling free for the first time in weeks.
“You crazy!” he shouts into the wind, stinging cold now on his cheeks and he wishes he’d brought a hat.
“You hungry?” she shouts back, and he just got out of practice; of course he’s hungry.
“Ya!” he yells. She whips off at the next exit, but a couple boys in a gold Camaro call out to her at the first red light. Engines growl and cars jerk against the tight reign of their brakes. The light turns green and the Corvette leaps forward, devouring the road until she cuts in front of the other car and back onto the highway ramp.
“Sorry,” she says when she slows back down to a speed that is only illegal and not life-threatening, but her grin is too bright for her to mean it. “I didn’t want them to follow us and key my car while we ate.” Her words roll along and he tries to find meaning in them, lets the ones that make no sense just flow by him.
She pulls off again, in a neighborhood with pot-holed streets and sagging power lines crossing over the roads. They pull up outside a diner and he grabs his sticks out of the car and brings them in; he won’t leave them hanging out of the roof where anybody could steal them.
Nathalie grins like she understands and is amused, and they go in together.
The place is grimy and dim, nicotine stained tabletops and a bored-looking waitress in a pink uniform. Nathalie takes both of the menus they’re handed and he sees no reason to object. The waitress comes back and she orders for them, burgers and fries and something else he doesn’t understand.
“Having fun?” she asks as they wait for their food, and he can’t stop smiling for the first time in a long time.
“Ya,” he says, “Drive fast, very good,” he says, not caring that his English is so bad. She doesn’t seem to care either. “Not crash!” he says, meaning it as a compliment, and she laughs.
“Did you see their faces?” She recreates the street race with hand-gestures, and they laugh over it all again. “Do not tell Mario about that.”
The reminder that she is not his, can never be his takes the bright edge off of his joy for a moment, but then the food comes, three plates of burgers and fries and puny little salads in teacup sized bowls, and he’s distracted from things that will never happen. She shoves all the plates to his side of the table, making room on hers for a smaller one with some sort of jablecny kolac heaped with scoops of smooth white ice cream.
“I want that!” he objects, and points at her plate with his fork.
She wields her spoon like she would honestly thump him with the back-side of it and glares at him. “Touch my pie and we will not be friends,” she warns, and he pouts. The next time the waitress comes by, Nathalie orders him his own plate of pie and he contents himself with putting the burgers away while he waits for it.
She eats her way through her own pie and ice cream, smiling again and relaxed, like they don’t need words. She takes her time, probably used to the huge amounts of food a hockey player needs to eat in a day to keep his weight on.
His pie comes, and it is good, sweeter than he is used to at home, but the ice cream is a cool and mellow surprise against the tartness of the apples.
“Good?” She asks, and he nods and covers his mouth with his hand.
“Good, good,” he agrees, and he means everything. The drive and the race, the stupid run-down diner where nobody knows his face. Not having to navigate a foreign language to get his belly filled and her smile across the table at him. Ice cream and pie.
“Come on,” she says, and drops some money on the table as she stands up, gathering her purse and pulling out her keys. “I’ll drive you home.”
He follows her back out to her car, sticks in hand. She drives him back to the Domek’s house, one hand on the wheel, slower going back than coming out, and he really wants it to be because she’s reluctant to let him go; he really wants for her to have had as much fun as he did this afternoon.
She pulls up outside the house, and he doesn’t question how she knew where to take him. She shuts off the engine and smiles at him over the stick shift. Leans in and he’s too startled to pull away. Her lips brush his cheek, sweet and innocent and he wonders if this is special to her or just a thing that girls in America do. The idea of her taking other rookies out for burgers and ice cream will irk him if he thinks about it too long so he doesn’t.
“This was fun,” she says as she pulls back. “Next time you guys practice here?”
“Ya!” he says, too loud, too enthusiastic, but she doesn’t mock him for it.
He climbs out of her car and gets his things from the trunk. Goes inside as she pulls away from the curb. He sleeps that night, falls asleep without twisting in the sheets, without replaying every failure of the day. He dreams of sweet apples and blond hair, the smell of the rink and Mario’s hand warm on his shoulder.
He cannot say he is good at the next day’s game, but he’s less-bad and that has to count for something. He waits for Mario to mention it, that Jaromir has been alone with his girlfriend, but he doesn’t say a word. He thinks maybe Mario will take it out on him on the ice, with added drills or harder checks, but those never come either.
Jaromir is not really expecting Nathalie to be there after the next practice, but she keeps her word and is waiting for him again, just as bold and beautiful. Mario is the one to nudge him towards her this time, and none of the other guys tease about it. He cannot shake the feeling that they know something that he doesn’t, that there is some secret in the team that he doesn’t share. Then she smiles at him and nothing else matters.
—————————
Sometimes he sees her after home games, on Mario’s arm after he’s changed and given his interviews. He thinks maybe he should feel some jealousy but nothing seems to matter more than her happiness.
They go out together four times after practices. The second outing, they drive again, and eat at an Italian place with too much garlic for his taste.
The third, she takes him to a tailor’s shop and he stands patiently as his measurements are taken for a trio of suits. At no point does she ask for his input or his money, so he treats it like a gift.
His fourth day with her, she takes him to a baseball park and a machine throws balls for them to hit. He is terrible at first, the angles and motions so close to hockey and yet not quite right, but by the end he is hitting more of them than her, his shots going further and straighter.
The fifth time she picks him up, she is quieter, her smile softer and her driving less wild, less jubilant than it’s ever been. She takes him to his first American movie. It’s about a man and a horse and a wolf, a whole tribe of people who do not understand him and a woman who does. They share a bucket of popcorn and he is careful not to touch her hand when they reach at the same time.
The movie is horrible, too big, too real. The horse dies and the wolf dies and the man and his wife go off alone, away from their people. He is gutted, crying in his seat and he would have left earlier except he kept hoping it would not end so bad.
“Shit,” Nathalie says, and hands him a napkin that smells of fake butter to wipe his face. Her eyes are damp as well, but he can tell it wasn’t as real for her as it was for him. He feels foolish and embarrassed and tries to laugh as she hugs him.
“I’m sorry,” she says as he pulls himself together. “I had no idea it would be like that. Oh god, the wolf.”
They stumble out into the afternoon sun, disoriented after three hours in the dark. He doesn’t notice her hand in his until she pulls away to get her keys, and he’s not sure who had reached out first.
She takes him to a drive-in restaurant, where girls on skates bring trays to hang off the windows of the car. Nathalie is still subdued, and he does not think it was because of the movie. He wonders, if this is the last time, if she has grown bored, or if Mario has lost patience with sharing her time with the rookie.
The silence is comfortable still, though a little sad.
She drives him home, and before he can get out of the car she covers the back of his hand with her own.
“Jaromir,” she says, more serious than he’s ever heard her. “I need you to know that you can say no to him. Make your own decisions. Choose what’s right for you. This, our friendship, it won’t change if you tell him no.”
“I don’t understand,” he says, pretty sure he knew all the words she just said, but having no idea what she was trying to tell him.
She smiles gently at him, “Call me tomorrow, if you want me to come pick you up.”
“Tomorrow,” he echoes. It is a day off. He cannot think why he would call her away from Mario.
She kisses his cheek and seems pleased with his answer, and pushes his shoulder to urge him out of her car.
He spends the day and the night feeling ill at ease. Sleeps restless for the first time since Nathalie has begun taking him out.
His agent calls him first thing in the morning. They need to have a meeting.
This is the first 2600 words of Nathalie/Jaromir, part of the Gentlest Chains bonding verse. It's attraction/affection with background Nathalie/Mario. No infidelity. Ends at a pretty good chapter break.
I haven't written or really read het that felt right in forever, but I think this feels right, so maybe it feels wrong to the rest of the world? I would really love someone else's opinion.
It only takes weeks for Jaromir’s NHL dreams to turn to nightmares. He had no idea, at the time of the draft, how hard this would be, how he would struggle. The constant wash of noise, a million foreign voices shouting from every radio and television, people on the street with their English. An entire team that he can barely share words with. He had no idea how it would crush him, how lost he would feel.
Mario is the worst, the man Jaromir has idolized for so long, the one he most wants to impress. He still remembers every shot, every check, Mario taking on the Russian team in ‘85 like he was the only man on the ice.
Nothing Jaromir does seems to please the man. He is not cruel, but he is relentless. “Let’s run that again,” he’ll say at practice and they’ll play the scrimmage over, Jaromir trying and failing to get the puck past Barrasso. “Keep your head up, kid, damn it!” he’ll scream as Jaromir gets hit again and again in his first games, as he fails to score, fails to pass, fails to get enough shots on goal to even show how hard he’s working.
They’ll send him back, he thinks at the end of his first month, and he’s not even sure if he’ll curse them for it or thank them.
“Get some sleep,” Mario growls at him as they split up at the airport after another crushing defeat, shakes him by the shoulders until Jaromir looks up at him, meets his eyes and nods.
He tries. Everything Mario tells him to do, he tries. Skating and eating and sleeping. Tries to follow every order. He catches Mario watching him sometimes, off the ice more than on. Judging. Jaromir knows he comes up wanting.
He goes to bed at night, in the guest room of the nice family the Penguins have fostered him off to, and stares at the ceiling, running the day’s disappointments over in his head, so angry at himself, so frustrated.
He gets up in the morning, aching from his sleepless night, heart-sick and determined. He works as hard as he knows how to at practice, sweat dripping from his hair, his legs burning from pushing himself so hard. He plans to stay out on the ice after everyone else heads to the showers, but Mario chases him off, tells him to go get cleaned up.
Jaromir isn’t sure if it’s because Mario knows there’s no use in him practicing more, or if he doesn’t trust Jaromir not to skate himself to death.
He showers and heads to the dressing room, lets the noisy camaraderie of the guys wash over him, around him. He smiles from stupidity, not knowing if they’re making fun of him or just joking with each other. It’s awful.
The players dress and leave the building together. Jaromir lets himself be towed along with the tide, out into the bright mid-day sun. One of the guys calls a greeting and he looks up to see what is going on. There’s a sapphire-blue car there, a Corvette, sleek and curvy, parked outside the door, and the most American woman he could imagine leaning against the side of it. She is beautiful. Her hair is blond, bouncy bangs in front and full curls framing the sides of her face. She has on tight blue-jeans and boots with chains looping around the ankles, a teal t-shirt and a white leather jacket.
She is Mario’s girlfriend, Nathalie, and he ducks his head and knocks into the guy next to him to keep from staring at her. From his peripheral vision he sees Mario go to her, the sweet and easy way their body language fits together as they talk and smile and then part.
“Jaromir,” she calls, and his mouth falls open in shock. He had no idea she even knew his name. She smiles, and there’s nothing vicious in it, nothing mocking. “Come ride with me,” she says, and he can think of no reason he’s given this woman to want him dead.
He looks around like there could possibly be another Jaromir in the crowd, and the man behind him shoves him forward a step, out of the protection of the group.
There’s a chorus of wolf whistles and Nathalie flicks a hand-gesture at them that Jaromir is sure proper girls are not supposed to make.
“I wouldn’t keep her waiting,” Mario warns, and Jaromir has been trained in the last month to obey anything his captain asks.
Nathalie comes around to the back of the car and unlocks the tiny trunk for him to put his bag into, but there is no way his sticks will fit. He goes to the passenger side and folds his long legs into the low-riding car, stuffing the bottoms of his sticks out the car’s T-top and jamming the grips down against his calves.
“Perfect,” she says as she drops into the driver’s seat. The lightening bolt on her keychain catches the sun as she turns the ignition and the powerful motor revs under her delicate foot.
He has never been the passenger in a woman’s car before, and he’s equal parts terrified and fascinated as she slides it through the gears and pulls away, confident with the clutch, the wind whipping at his hair and hers, the rink and the team and all of his worries falling behind them as she hits the highway flying.
He finds himself smiling as she slips through late-morning traffic, his knuckles white where he grips the dash but feeling free for the first time in weeks.
“You crazy!” he shouts into the wind, stinging cold now on his cheeks and he wishes he’d brought a hat.
“You hungry?” she shouts back, and he just got out of practice; of course he’s hungry.
“Ya!” he yells. She whips off at the next exit, but a couple boys in a gold Camaro call out to her at the first red light. Engines growl and cars jerk against the tight reign of their brakes. The light turns green and the Corvette leaps forward, devouring the road until she cuts in front of the other car and back onto the highway ramp.
“Sorry,” she says when she slows back down to a speed that is only illegal and not life-threatening, but her grin is too bright for her to mean it. “I didn’t want them to follow us and key my car while we ate.” Her words roll along and he tries to find meaning in them, lets the ones that make no sense just flow by him.
She pulls off again, in a neighborhood with pot-holed streets and sagging power lines crossing over the roads. They pull up outside a diner and he grabs his sticks out of the car and brings them in; he won’t leave them hanging out of the roof where anybody could steal them.
Nathalie grins like she understands and is amused, and they go in together.
The place is grimy and dim, nicotine stained tabletops and a bored-looking waitress in a pink uniform. Nathalie takes both of the menus they’re handed and he sees no reason to object. The waitress comes back and she orders for them, burgers and fries and something else he doesn’t understand.
“Having fun?” she asks as they wait for their food, and he can’t stop smiling for the first time in a long time.
“Ya,” he says, “Drive fast, very good,” he says, not caring that his English is so bad. She doesn’t seem to care either. “Not crash!” he says, meaning it as a compliment, and she laughs.
“Did you see their faces?” She recreates the street race with hand-gestures, and they laugh over it all again. “Do not tell Mario about that.”
The reminder that she is not his, can never be his takes the bright edge off of his joy for a moment, but then the food comes, three plates of burgers and fries and puny little salads in teacup sized bowls, and he’s distracted from things that will never happen. She shoves all the plates to his side of the table, making room on hers for a smaller one with some sort of jablecny kolac heaped with scoops of smooth white ice cream.
“I want that!” he objects, and points at her plate with his fork.
She wields her spoon like she would honestly thump him with the back-side of it and glares at him. “Touch my pie and we will not be friends,” she warns, and he pouts. The next time the waitress comes by, Nathalie orders him his own plate of pie and he contents himself with putting the burgers away while he waits for it.
She eats her way through her own pie and ice cream, smiling again and relaxed, like they don’t need words. She takes her time, probably used to the huge amounts of food a hockey player needs to eat in a day to keep his weight on.
His pie comes, and it is good, sweeter than he is used to at home, but the ice cream is a cool and mellow surprise against the tartness of the apples.
“Good?” She asks, and he nods and covers his mouth with his hand.
“Good, good,” he agrees, and he means everything. The drive and the race, the stupid run-down diner where nobody knows his face. Not having to navigate a foreign language to get his belly filled and her smile across the table at him. Ice cream and pie.
“Come on,” she says, and drops some money on the table as she stands up, gathering her purse and pulling out her keys. “I’ll drive you home.”
He follows her back out to her car, sticks in hand. She drives him back to the Domek’s house, one hand on the wheel, slower going back than coming out, and he really wants it to be because she’s reluctant to let him go; he really wants for her to have had as much fun as he did this afternoon.
She pulls up outside the house, and he doesn’t question how she knew where to take him. She shuts off the engine and smiles at him over the stick shift. Leans in and he’s too startled to pull away. Her lips brush his cheek, sweet and innocent and he wonders if this is special to her or just a thing that girls in America do. The idea of her taking other rookies out for burgers and ice cream will irk him if he thinks about it too long so he doesn’t.
“This was fun,” she says as she pulls back. “Next time you guys practice here?”
“Ya!” he says, too loud, too enthusiastic, but she doesn’t mock him for it.
He climbs out of her car and gets his things from the trunk. Goes inside as she pulls away from the curb. He sleeps that night, falls asleep without twisting in the sheets, without replaying every failure of the day. He dreams of sweet apples and blond hair, the smell of the rink and Mario’s hand warm on his shoulder.
He cannot say he is good at the next day’s game, but he’s less-bad and that has to count for something. He waits for Mario to mention it, that Jaromir has been alone with his girlfriend, but he doesn’t say a word. He thinks maybe Mario will take it out on him on the ice, with added drills or harder checks, but those never come either.
Jaromir is not really expecting Nathalie to be there after the next practice, but she keeps her word and is waiting for him again, just as bold and beautiful. Mario is the one to nudge him towards her this time, and none of the other guys tease about it. He cannot shake the feeling that they know something that he doesn’t, that there is some secret in the team that he doesn’t share. Then she smiles at him and nothing else matters.
—————————
Sometimes he sees her after home games, on Mario’s arm after he’s changed and given his interviews. He thinks maybe he should feel some jealousy but nothing seems to matter more than her happiness.
They go out together four times after practices. The second outing, they drive again, and eat at an Italian place with too much garlic for his taste.
The third, she takes him to a tailor’s shop and he stands patiently as his measurements are taken for a trio of suits. At no point does she ask for his input or his money, so he treats it like a gift.
His fourth day with her, she takes him to a baseball park and a machine throws balls for them to hit. He is terrible at first, the angles and motions so close to hockey and yet not quite right, but by the end he is hitting more of them than her, his shots going further and straighter.
The fifth time she picks him up, she is quieter, her smile softer and her driving less wild, less jubilant than it’s ever been. She takes him to his first American movie. It’s about a man and a horse and a wolf, a whole tribe of people who do not understand him and a woman who does. They share a bucket of popcorn and he is careful not to touch her hand when they reach at the same time.
The movie is horrible, too big, too real. The horse dies and the wolf dies and the man and his wife go off alone, away from their people. He is gutted, crying in his seat and he would have left earlier except he kept hoping it would not end so bad.
“Shit,” Nathalie says, and hands him a napkin that smells of fake butter to wipe his face. Her eyes are damp as well, but he can tell it wasn’t as real for her as it was for him. He feels foolish and embarrassed and tries to laugh as she hugs him.
“I’m sorry,” she says as he pulls himself together. “I had no idea it would be like that. Oh god, the wolf.”
They stumble out into the afternoon sun, disoriented after three hours in the dark. He doesn’t notice her hand in his until she pulls away to get her keys, and he’s not sure who had reached out first.
She takes him to a drive-in restaurant, where girls on skates bring trays to hang off the windows of the car. Nathalie is still subdued, and he does not think it was because of the movie. He wonders, if this is the last time, if she has grown bored, or if Mario has lost patience with sharing her time with the rookie.
The silence is comfortable still, though a little sad.
She drives him home, and before he can get out of the car she covers the back of his hand with her own.
“Jaromir,” she says, more serious than he’s ever heard her. “I need you to know that you can say no to him. Make your own decisions. Choose what’s right for you. This, our friendship, it won’t change if you tell him no.”
“I don’t understand,” he says, pretty sure he knew all the words she just said, but having no idea what she was trying to tell him.
She smiles gently at him, “Call me tomorrow, if you want me to come pick you up.”
“Tomorrow,” he echoes. It is a day off. He cannot think why he would call her away from Mario.
She kisses his cheek and seems pleased with his answer, and pushes his shoulder to urge him out of her car.
He spends the day and the night feeling ill at ease. Sleeps restless for the first time since Nathalie has begun taking him out.
His agent calls him first thing in the morning. They need to have a meeting.
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