Summary:
Much of his true feelings are hidden in firm smiles and lies, but he
never was able to lie to her.
Disclaimer: I don't know anyone mentioned in this story, nor do I
dare to insinuate these things are actual happenings. Nothing is mine
except the words that describe what's in my head.
Pairing: Johnny Weir/Sasha Cohen
Warning: This is a RPF (real people fic), about the two figure
skaters and their life both on and off the ice. If this kind of thing
squicks you, please move along.
Warning #2: Angst covered in angst sauce. You won't find happy
fluff here.
Beta: Thank you, Richard, for the tremendous insight. Thanks also
to oli...x and Lorraine for looking it over.
Note:
tamingthemuse Prompt #39: Inertia.
Another Note: The sections in all italics are from the past, in
case that's not clear. And lyrics used in one scene are from Nelly
Furtado's 'I'm Like a Bird'.
Rating: PG-13
Time frame: Takes place during the summer of 2007.
Author's Note: I'm very nervous about this. It's basically my
first time of trying to capture real people in the real world. My words
tame the explosiveness of Johnny's personality and present a more somber
image. Let me know your thoughts?
- - -
- -
He had been there since the lights started to blaze, giant fluorescent
bulbs warming up with a flicker spreading from one side of the building
to the next. He made angry shapes in the ice, frenzied stabs and changes
of direction expressing his frustration inside. Pent-up anger at a year
gone by without the dazzling results and the bows to the skating gods
with the wink that said, "If I can conquer this world, I can do
anything. I am an unstoppable force."
The unstoppable ness, having been strangled by pressures to change and
the destruction of a deftly constructed image as it was tossed to the
wind that knocked him down to the ice and bruised more than his hip in
public, was deadened. His heart had gone from a swelling red to a
starving purple, deprived of the screams in the audience that signaled
victory regardless of scores. Wanting to swing at its absence with fists
clenched until sweat gathered within them, he could only stroke angrily
on this bed of ice that had defeated him in ways he'd never thought to
beckon into nightmares. Standings from the year past were mocking and
clearly visible, like ads on the boards surrounding him, and no matter
how much speed he gathered, the blur was never sufficient enough to give
the needed calm again. There was no being calm when fears of becoming a
has-been were shoved to the forefront of all that remained of his
consciousness, like a reporter's relentless microphone. Hard, black, and
amplified.
What had yet to be stopped, or even slowed down, was the choking seize
of his throat muscles when her small body stepped into view. This
constriction was a constant shadow to her presence. Anymore and always.
"What are you doing here?" he asked, working to hide the difficulty of
his breathing as he stopped at an angle that showered her lower legs
with ice shavings. Her name, Sasha, tickled his throat into
coughing spasms that took up a few humiliating moments as he first tried
to address her. "This has become the loser rink. Aren't you afraid it'll
taint you?"
"Why are you so down?" she asked, her voice easy, her tone light. Her
eyelashes bewitched him with each blink.
"Oh, you didn't hear?" he said, the honey in his voice dripping with
sarcasm. "Rumor is, the love of my life left me this year. All the
passion I've ever had in anything has leapt from my body, and my
deadened limbs are suddenly leaving me out of the gold medal race."
She sighed, cocking her head to the side. "You're always so dramatic.
Maybe you should try to see the sun behind those Giorgio Armani
shades of yours."
"Ha, dramatic. Says the actress who left her true calling to pretend to
be everyone else."
Sasha smoothed two fingers back along her silken brown strands,
tightening the ponytail. "I didn't leave anything. I can pick up where I
want, when I want."
Johnny sighed, and then licked his lips and came back again: "It'll
never be the same."
She looked at him strangely. "Yeah?" she challenged. "Prove it." With
that, she set to warming up with a few laps around the rink.
"Come on, let's show me your quad," he beckoned with his 'come hither'
fingers. "Clean landing, please."
She bit her lip as she faced the opposite end of the rink, then began
performing a double of every jump, her arms poised as if the practice
session were previously choreographed. When she stumbled on the double
loop, she didn't even seek out his face to see his response. She just
kept going, determined to prove what she would insist she didn't have
to.
He watched with pursed lips, here and there, in between the six axels,
both triple and double, he casually threw all around the rink. He didn't
stop to realize that when he was breathing hard, her breaths could have
matched his, to the T.
--
They sat on a bench outside the inner rink, their bodies right next to
each other, but their minds far apart. He refused to look at her while
they were in such close proximity. He refused to see the glow she
emitted from every pore of her skin, as his public bravado failed to
poke through on this day, when he needed it to shove at her like a
dead-set reflection of all her glory that kept gaining in ripples that
spanned to touch things far and wide. She was growing, while he was
stunted, angry and unaware of all the places from which it stemmed
anymore.
He worked his throat muscles in silence, wetting the roof of his mouth
with his tongue. "Seriously, why are you here?"
"I missed you, isn't that enough?"
"You know it's not."
--
She set her fingers to work on the boom box that sat just outside of the
rink. Setting a song to start, she hopped back onto the ice, with vigor,
and body language screaming "look at me".
You're beautiful... that's for sure, sang Nelly Furtado through
the stereo. You'll never ever fade.
Sasha started stroking toward Johnny, her hips all parts of attitude.
You're lovely, but it's not for sure. She caught his eyes and
made her gaze pointed. That I won't ever change.
And though my love is rare... More stroking of the blades, until
she was within touching range of Johnny, who stood fascinated where he
used to be amused. Though my love is true...
I'm like a bird, I'll only fly away. She grabbed his hips from
behind him, and pulled his body back flush against hers. When she began
making quick dips backwards by widening her legs toward a spread eagle
and then bringing them in back together repeatedly, he caught on, and
joined her, as her small hands clung tightly to his waist.
Lyrics flew by as their bodies began this dance together out on the ice.
I don't know where my soul is. Sasha released her grip on Johnny
and pushed herself away, just enough so that when he turned around, she
could latch onto him again, getting a good look at his cheeks, tinged
pink from the cold. I don't know where my home is.
She focused every moment of her brown-eyed girl life in on his eyes that
stared into hers. Not for a second did she allow herself to blink too
long. She emitted love while not giving too much away. All I need for
you to know is...
Your faith in me brings me to tears, even after all these years.
The catchy rhythmic beat kept playing; Nelly's voice kept singing, and
yet it was as if neither of them needed any music in the world they held
between their gazes. Hands clasped through laced fingers, they kept up a
sassy sway to the music, until Sasha pulled her body ever so slowly
away.
The spell was broken as she headed to the side of the rink to take a
drink from her water bottle that was placed there. The lyrics, so
familiar to Johnny, cooed to his senses as he continued exploring
different body poses in a rhythm on the ice; deftly he ignored the
mental sting of the eternal inertia in losing his grip on her, time and
time again.
--
Sasha set her water bottle gently on the ledge, shoulders shaking for
a few moments, as she seemed to lose her composure with her back to the
ice. With a deep breath in and a look to the ceiling, she pulled herself
together. Skating out to meet him where he stood, her voice came through
almost steady. "So, when I leave tomorrow... I won't be back in two
weeks, like I said," she began, stopping to think as though words had
difficulty coming to her.
"I want to double spread eagle," Johnny said, reaching out to touch his
fingers to the bit of her skin exposed by a rumple in the shirt on her
lower back.
"You want to what?"
"Press the positions together. Here." He took her hand with its soft,
silky black glove, and pulled her out toward center ice. With a hold on
one her wrists, he was leading her, and they were performing team-like.
She calculated his glide speed and fell in step with him.
"I seriously have to tell you something -- "
"Shh," he whispered in her ear, his breath hot and wanting on her lobe
as she closed her eyes and tried to bear it, knowing what she had to
say.
Johnny pulled her back in by the waist when they hit center ice,
pressing himself up behind her, and holding her close. "Spread your
legs, you know how," he told her, and with wet eyes, she hit the
position to match his. Her legs fit along the line inside of his so
perfectly, as though they were meant to be together this way. She'd been
struggling with the meaning of many things, and it was much like pulling
a drawstring out of fabric and watching the article of clothing sag from
the loss of that support. She could see already how certain things would
deflate, and yet her decision was undying, though yet unspoken. Nothing
would ever fit the same way again.
"Johnny..." She wasn't facing him, and both of their bodies were
concentrated on the body line they drew to the "move in the field", as
around they circled, eclipsing the previous circle's groove in the ice
with every circuit. It was the best time to tell him -- when she
wouldn't have to witness his face crumble or his eyes flare. "I'm
leaving things for a while."
"Things?" He cleared his throat, and breathed in the scent of her hair
as he fingered the covered skin of her waist affectionately through the
hold. "Your spread eagle is fucking awesome. You don't work it often
enough."
She closed her eyes as she searched for some kind of strength inside,
even as she allowed their speed to fade. "I won't be competing this
year. And I... have to walk away from things because -- "
"Again!" he commanded, disappointed when they nearly came to a stop in
momentum. He tugged on her hand as she began to move away, pulling her
closer. She pushed gently on his chest, countering his efforts.
"Maybe someday," she promised vaguely. When she saw his face drop in
confusion, and knew that he was finally listening, she moved closer,
unable to come to terms with what she would have to force him to accept.
He was just standing there, in some corner of the rink, holding out his
arms for her body to embrace.
Sasha slipped her arms around his neck, the motion the only thing
familiar to touch her senses. She pulled him in close, loving that he
was able to reserve a couple of solitary rink days for them here and
there. She kissed the side of his neck, wet with the sweaty result of
the day's long workout.
He smiled and held her away at arm's length. "Don't get too close. It's
been a long day; I've got to stink like hell."
"I like..." She hated that her smile faltered. "...the way you smell."
Laughing, he shook out his long unruly hair. "Okay. You're buttering me
up and I don't like it. What's this you have to tell me?"
Risking getting pushed away again, she stepped between his blades with
hers, pushing his legs out to accommodate her hips. Touching his hair
and trying to burn the imprint of its softness into the memory of the
pads of her fingers, she glanced at his eyes, and hers immediately fled.
--
"I'm going," she finally told him, after the eruption of argument
they'd both loathed to endure.
"So go!" he exclaimed with a rough fling of his arm in the other
direction. "Leave, if that's what you insist that you want!"
"I just... have to explore this other side of me... I have to start
fresh; I can't be tied down to something that's going to pull me back."
His voice was deathly still. "Just go."
So she did.
--
Their psyches were too cold to warm the resting bench.
"Don't hate me," she told him, pulling his eyes to a lock on her tender
orbs of brown that sought the kind of confirmation she'd always longed
for. But she wasn't the one who needed it these days.
"How could I? The world would spit on me."
"Since when do you care what the world thinks?"
He narrowed his eyes, but he couldn't tear them away from her face. It
held him mesmerized. That was what he hated. That she was still
fucking beautiful, even so. That she would always be. "Don't tell me
Hollywood's cloaked you in its obliviousness already." He sniffed loudly
just to try to pull more oxygen to his brain. "You must have seen
some of it on a TV screen, here and there..."
She was the one who could look away; and she did so, right then. "The
Johnny I knew didn't let outside influences define anything about him...
I liked that about you."
"Things change." He let the snippet of phrase just sit there, and
ruminate in the chilled air, mingling with every exhale of breath. He
didn't bother to expand on all its implications. She wasn't stupid, no
matter how flippant her social calendar became.
"You think I don't get it, but I do," she told him, leveling him with a
gaze. "I know you. Stop trying to fool me by being someone else."
"This might be a strange concept for you to grasp this year, but not
everything has to do with you, okay?"
She snapped her face away, as if the softness of her cheek had been
struck with a stinging slap. "Fine, push everyone away. Be all alone, be
miserable, if you insist."
"You're the one who pushed," he whispered.
She left him for the ice, and with a glare at the nothingness beneath
his resting blades, he prepared to continue bleeding to death on his way
to the grave that grew shallower with every loss. He could've been
surrounded by the deafening roar of angry swarming bees, for all that he
heard of her dying sincerity since the day that she walked out of the
soundtrack of his life.
--
There were fans -- three elementary school kids, waiting outside the
locker room when he emerged. He slipped on his sunglasses so that his
smile didn't have to reach his eyes.
"Autographs all around, huh?" he asked, his chipper voice as false as
the new "manly" style he was trying to emulate on the world stage. The
three girls seemed to gobble it up with their excited giggles as the
woman with them tried to keep them calm. "How you doing?" he asked one
of them lightly after she spelled out her name for his pen.
"Good! We saw Sasha Cohen a minute ago."
He held the smile in his lips. "Yeah, she was here."
The third girl held out her pad of paper for him to sign, her dirty
blonde pigtails bouncing. "Is she your girlfriend?" she asked in that
way that was all kids at nine.
The laugh he forced was so blasé; but it seemed not to affect anyone
around him, as they continued to adore any sound their words milked from
his mouth. "Why do you ask that?"
"She's pretty!"
All the outside world could see was a slight crinkle at the top of his
nose when he scrunched up his closed eyes in an effort to push away
every mental image that came flying at him like roses after the spell of
a winning program. "I'd better go," he told them. "Thanks for coming.
See you guys."
He couldn't even reach the ability to care what they thought about his
escape, as he quickened his pace every few steps, which numbered far too
many on the way to his car. The sun couldn't penetrate through his heavy
sunglasses; they protected him from the stunning glare of its
brightness. He liked things that way. The more clouded they could be
right now, the better. The less he could see...
...the easier it would be to move on.
He wore those sunglasses to bed that night, hoping they would block out
all of the memories of her hands-legs-feet-lips-tongue that had
met him countless times before on the cool mattress. The room was dark
before he even shut his eyes, and it would be the same when he woke up
the next morning. If he was lucky.
- -
end
