Leave Out All The Rest for walover165
Author: megume_legume
Title: Leave Out All the Rest
Recipient: walover165
Skaters/Pairings: Alexei Yagudin/Evgeni Plushenko
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 2,100
Warnings: None
Prompt: 7. Evengi/Alexei - domestic!fluff - waking up together, making each other meals, etc :) and 6. Evengi/Alexei - Post-Torino cuddlefluff - Alexei
congratulates Evgeni
Disclaimer: The events portrayed in this story are fictional and do not reflect on the actual people written about.
A/N: Hope you like! I somehow managed to combine 6 and 7 into a single prompt, I hope you don’t mind. Also, as a warning, the timeline is a bit screwy.
Summary: How it all begins. Maybe.
i.
Perhaps it begins like this, Alexei thinks, as he lies awake listening to Evgeni breathe, Evgeni is most undignified when he sleeps, blond hair sticking out ever which way and sometimes he drools on the pillow. Once upon a time, Alexei might have minded all these things, but now he finds them helplessly endearing. Leaning forward, he nuzzled the side of Evgeni’s jaw and felt the other man start.
“It’s only me, Zhenya.”
“Oh.” The tension immediately eases from Evgeni’s shoulders and he lets out a small sigh. “Of course it’s you, Lyosha.” He keeps his eyes closed, but he shifts over so that his head is nestled warmly in the crook of Alexei’s shoulder. “Let me guess, it’s the crack of dawn again and you want to grumble about how I never let you leave the bed. You work too much.”
Who else could it be? And in that moment, Alexei feels a prickle of uncertain jealousy at the back of his mind, but even half-conscious, Evgeni’s tongue can accomplish wondrous feats and it is Alexei’s turn to let out a contented sigh as he raises a hand to sift through Evgeni’s hair. He’s always liked Zhenya’s hair. “That’s funny, coming from you. Today is Saturday.”
“Hm, is it?” Here, Evgeni pauses to nip at his skin with his teeth. Alexei secretly hopes that it is a mark that will keep so that he will have another reason to wear a scarf outside, aside from the cold. He suspects they will always be like this -- even though they have both left competitive skating behind. Both of them are exceptional at holding grudges. There is too much to forgive, and yet they are here. Unclothed, without barriers.
“Yes, yes it is. But it’s nice to know you worry about me once in a while.”
“Whatever is that supposed to mean?” Evgeni manages to heave himself up one elbow and look at him. His face somehow looks ominous and soft at the same time. “You know that I worry about you. You are such an idiot.”
Alexei reaches up to kiss him, and whatever retort that Evgeni might have continued on with is appropriately silenced, “I suppose I am,” he concedes after they part for breath. “But I’m your idiot. Let’s go back to bed, it’s too early to get up.”
Evgeni sinks back to sleep easily enough as his breathing slowly deepens once more. Alexei has lied, he’s not so sleepy, but he likes it when Zhenya is warm and still next to him. He runs an idle hand through Evgeni’s hair again and closes his eyes.
ii
“For Evgeni, he thinks that it probably began a different way. He is not one to give into sap or sentimentalities because he’s really nothing like Lyosha, or Alexei. He certainly does not need to be practically quarantined in his bedroom while Alexei is making a mess in his kitchen. If Evgeni even dangles a foot over the bed, Alexei will poke his head in the door and --
“Zhenya, what part of ‘please rest’ do you not understand? Do I honestly have to be more obscene about it?”
Actually, Evgeni thinks that might be interesting, Lyosha is hardly ever obscene. There’s an impressive mound of used tissues on the pillow next to him. Alexei sleeps there sometimes, but Evgeni is determined not to let him, not tonight. Besides, he has an awful cold and even if he is annoyed with Lyosha right now, giving him a cold just seems off, somehow.
“You,” Evgeni says tiredly, reaching for another tissue, “desperately need a new hobby. Why don’t you start skating again?”
Alexei comes in, and displaces the mountain of tissues so that he has somewhere to sit, “You make it sound as if I’ve quit.” He has the sense to sound only slightly offended. “You know I haven’t...” he falters, and then suddenly looks mischievous, “Or is that your way of telling me you miss me?”
Evgeni glares at him, but with a runny nose, he knows he looks less than threatening. So mouths “fuck you” and shrugs one shoulder to savage his dignity. Because he doesn’t miss Alexei. It’s hard to miss Alexei when Alexei is right here in his apartment being an overbearing mother hen when he hardly needs to. But then his gaze softens and he picks idly at a corner of his tissue.
“You bring out the worst and best in me, that is what I miss, besides, I’ll have more medals than you soon. Don’t tell me you aren’t jealous?” He smirks a lopsided smirk as he settles a heavy hand on Alexei’s shoulder.
For a long time, Alexei does not say anything, then he puts his hand over Evgeni’s on his shoulder and grins a placid grin of his own, “One day, you’ll grow old too. I hope that day never comes.”
Leave it to Lyosha to say such nonsensical -- senseless things, but Evgeni finds that he doesn’t much mind the warm feeling that has suddenly swelled in his chest; for him, that is all the beginning that he has ever needed. He isn’t sure what to say, but he opens his mouth; at that very moment (perhaps to say that Alexei could have found a good career as a poet), when an obnoxious alarm from the kitchen rings and Alexei squeezes his hand.
“I will be right back with your soup.”
“Since when did you learn how to cook?” Evgeni can’t help but be a bit wary. He doubts Alexei means to poison him...but sometimes, Evgeni doesn’t think it’s something that Lyosha can help doing, if last night’s attempt at spaghetti is any indication.
Alexei turns and almost smirks at him; Alexei shouldn’t smirk, Evgeni thinks. The expression looks strange on him. “Well, you said I needed a hobby, no?” He takes in Evgeni’s mildly horrified expression and comes back to the side of the bed to press a quick kiss on his temple.
“Relax, I got it out of a can.”
Evgeni throws the spare pillow at him, of course he will insist later that he misses entirely on purpose.
iii
Or perhaps it starts even earlier than that. It begins when Alexei is in the stands watching the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin. He’s always promised himself that he wouldn’t...that he hardly missed competitive skating and that he’s contented with the way his life has become. But he watches Evgeni skate, and he suddenly does. Except Alexei might have confused himself -- he does not know which he misses more, competitive skating, or Zhenya.
He tries not to think about it.
Alexei is not surprised when Zhenya wins. What surprises him is how irrationally happy he feels about it. He is so happy that it can’t be anything else but irrational. He doubts that Evgeni will be happy to see him, but he goes anyway. Perhaps Evgeni will not be in his room and Alexei can comfort himself by telling himself that he tried.
Evgeni is in his room, and when he first opens the door, he stares at Alexei up and down for a very long time before he blinks and finally says -- “Oh.”
While it is true that he hasn’t really seen Evgeni in a little less than half a decade, Alexei can’t help but think that some other reaction might be more apt than just a general monosyllable ‘Oh.’ “Hello to you too, Zhenya, may I come in?”
For a moment, Evgeni seems uncertain, but then he steps aside and opens the door wide, “Yeah, but I will be going out in a bit.”
“I promise I won’t be long,” Alexei says. He steps into the room and closes the door, looks at Evgeni up and down. “You haven’t changed.”
“Neither have you.”
The intensity of Evgeni’s gaze makes Alexei squirm, so he drops his gaze to focus elsewhere. There’s a patch of missing carpet not so far away. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
“Must you treat yourself like an old man all the time?”
“I am an old man,” Alexei says with a shrug. He has yet to hit thirty, but he speaks truth. Evgeni is the one who never ages; either that, or he does a fantastic job of convincing himself he will never grow old. “And it’s easier if only one of us is young. That way we won’t fight.”
“Lyosha,” Evgeni suddenly smiles, shakes his head, as he takes both of Alexei’s hands and holds them. “You have plenty of time to be as ancient and prehistoric as you’d like. Don’t spoil today for me. You’ve already half spoiled it by not competing.”
Alexei notes that Evgeni’s hands are so very warm. Like everything he’s ever remembered, except the callouses on his fingers might have grown harder, and he almost wonders about the cause -- and then he puts the thought out of his mind. “You are that confident that you can beat me?”
Evgeni just smirks a knowing smirk, shrugs.
“You were always...” but Alexei can’t quite come up with the right words, so he leans in to kiss Evgeni, like he has always wanted to. It feels like a first, and he remembers a boy in the kitchen, whose tongue had tasted like sweetened cookie dough.
“Was that ‘congratulations’, or that you miss me?”
Now Alexei wants to strangle him, but then Evgeni deters him from making good on that thought by licking the inside of his mouth most generously. “While I can’t exactly offer the former, I missed you.” His words are somewhat jumbled, but all in all, Evgeni has always got a talented tongue. That has never changed and Alexei hopes it never will.
“You’re only such a graceful loser when you win,” what bitterness that Alexei might have felt...it’s mostly fleeting. Both of them fall against the soft hotel mattress, legs intertwined.
“Could you ever forgive me?” Evgeni doesn’t need forgiveness, he never does. But at least he has enough propriety to ask for it, and Alexei realizes that he loves that about him and that’s why.
“Maybe. You canceling dinner plans would be a good start.”
iv
Sometimes, you will come to love the person you loathe. Except on Evgeni’s part, the adage isn’t exactly accurate. He knows that he has loved (whatever that word even means for him) Alexei long before then, but in his anger, he thinks that he finally understands. Fucking Lyosha is standing there, waiting for Evgeni to congratulate him, no doubt.
“I don’t want to speak to you.” (Actually, Evgeni thinks that he will never speak to Alexei again, maybe.) He does not even care about how childish it is. “I don’t want to see you at all. Get out.”
“Zhenya.”
“Out.”
The gold medal hangs around Alexei’s neck, taunting -- and Evgeni might have strangled him. But Alexei’s eyes grow hard and he leaves, slamming the door behind him. Final.
Only later, does Evgeni stand out there in the empty hallway, with “Wait, Lyosha, come back,” on the tip of his tongue.
He can’t say it. But his chest aches with a strange pain that he doesn’t want to name,
that’s what matters.
v.
Long before both of them knew what it meant (maybe that was a good thing), it started. Neither of them have an affinity for the kitchen, but it’s late at night and neither of them can really sleep.
“My mother will catch us,” says Alexei, as he watches Zhenya flitter around in the kitchen like an over-excitable butterfly, pulling out ingredients here and there. “Zhenya, you are not even listening to me, are you?” Because Zhenya is only sixteen and he is young enough to want to conquer the world. At eighteen, Alexei is already feeling decidedly ancient. “Look, if you want cookies, we can go buy some tomorrow.”
“But I’m hungry now,” Evgeni pouts at him. ”Besides, we’ll be quiet. My mother taught me how to make them. They don’t take very long, and it’s easy.”
“...We?”
“You will be helping me, won’t you?”
Zhenya, Alexei thinks, is endlessly odd. But he supposes that since Evgeni is far away from home, he is allowed to be odd in dealing with homesickness...if it really is homesickness. As much as Alexei knows, Evgeni might just be putting on an act to jerk him around. If that happens, Alexei thinks that he might kill him.
But they make the cookies, and the cookies fail. They are hard as rocks, and even when Evgeni steps on one of them with his foot, it doesn’t break. This is funny. So funny, that he has to hide his face in Alexei’s shoulder to muffle his laugh. Alexei is sort of...not amused.
“You win.”
Alexei looks at him, and wonders about that.
“This time.”
Zhenya’s smile is quiet and golden. Maybe it begins that way.
-END-
Title: Leave Out All the Rest
Recipient: walover165
Skaters/Pairings: Alexei Yagudin/Evgeni Plushenko
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 2,100
Warnings: None
Prompt: 7. Evengi/Alexei - domestic!fluff - waking up together, making each other meals, etc :) and 6. Evengi/Alexei - Post-Torino cuddlefluff - Alexei
congratulates Evgeni
Disclaimer: The events portrayed in this story are fictional and do not reflect on the actual people written about.
A/N: Hope you like! I somehow managed to combine 6 and 7 into a single prompt, I hope you don’t mind. Also, as a warning, the timeline is a bit screwy.
Summary: How it all begins. Maybe.
i.
Perhaps it begins like this, Alexei thinks, as he lies awake listening to Evgeni breathe, Evgeni is most undignified when he sleeps, blond hair sticking out ever which way and sometimes he drools on the pillow. Once upon a time, Alexei might have minded all these things, but now he finds them helplessly endearing. Leaning forward, he nuzzled the side of Evgeni’s jaw and felt the other man start.
“It’s only me, Zhenya.”
“Oh.” The tension immediately eases from Evgeni’s shoulders and he lets out a small sigh. “Of course it’s you, Lyosha.” He keeps his eyes closed, but he shifts over so that his head is nestled warmly in the crook of Alexei’s shoulder. “Let me guess, it’s the crack of dawn again and you want to grumble about how I never let you leave the bed. You work too much.”
Who else could it be? And in that moment, Alexei feels a prickle of uncertain jealousy at the back of his mind, but even half-conscious, Evgeni’s tongue can accomplish wondrous feats and it is Alexei’s turn to let out a contented sigh as he raises a hand to sift through Evgeni’s hair. He’s always liked Zhenya’s hair. “That’s funny, coming from you. Today is Saturday.”
“Hm, is it?” Here, Evgeni pauses to nip at his skin with his teeth. Alexei secretly hopes that it is a mark that will keep so that he will have another reason to wear a scarf outside, aside from the cold. He suspects they will always be like this -- even though they have both left competitive skating behind. Both of them are exceptional at holding grudges. There is too much to forgive, and yet they are here. Unclothed, without barriers.
“Yes, yes it is. But it’s nice to know you worry about me once in a while.”
“Whatever is that supposed to mean?” Evgeni manages to heave himself up one elbow and look at him. His face somehow looks ominous and soft at the same time. “You know that I worry about you. You are such an idiot.”
Alexei reaches up to kiss him, and whatever retort that Evgeni might have continued on with is appropriately silenced, “I suppose I am,” he concedes after they part for breath. “But I’m your idiot. Let’s go back to bed, it’s too early to get up.”
Evgeni sinks back to sleep easily enough as his breathing slowly deepens once more. Alexei has lied, he’s not so sleepy, but he likes it when Zhenya is warm and still next to him. He runs an idle hand through Evgeni’s hair again and closes his eyes.
ii
“For Evgeni, he thinks that it probably began a different way. He is not one to give into sap or sentimentalities because he’s really nothing like Lyosha, or Alexei. He certainly does not need to be practically quarantined in his bedroom while Alexei is making a mess in his kitchen. If Evgeni even dangles a foot over the bed, Alexei will poke his head in the door and --
“Zhenya, what part of ‘please rest’ do you not understand? Do I honestly have to be more obscene about it?”
Actually, Evgeni thinks that might be interesting, Lyosha is hardly ever obscene. There’s an impressive mound of used tissues on the pillow next to him. Alexei sleeps there sometimes, but Evgeni is determined not to let him, not tonight. Besides, he has an awful cold and even if he is annoyed with Lyosha right now, giving him a cold just seems off, somehow.
“You,” Evgeni says tiredly, reaching for another tissue, “desperately need a new hobby. Why don’t you start skating again?”
Alexei comes in, and displaces the mountain of tissues so that he has somewhere to sit, “You make it sound as if I’ve quit.” He has the sense to sound only slightly offended. “You know I haven’t...” he falters, and then suddenly looks mischievous, “Or is that your way of telling me you miss me?”
Evgeni glares at him, but with a runny nose, he knows he looks less than threatening. So mouths “fuck you” and shrugs one shoulder to savage his dignity. Because he doesn’t miss Alexei. It’s hard to miss Alexei when Alexei is right here in his apartment being an overbearing mother hen when he hardly needs to. But then his gaze softens and he picks idly at a corner of his tissue.
“You bring out the worst and best in me, that is what I miss, besides, I’ll have more medals than you soon. Don’t tell me you aren’t jealous?” He smirks a lopsided smirk as he settles a heavy hand on Alexei’s shoulder.
For a long time, Alexei does not say anything, then he puts his hand over Evgeni’s on his shoulder and grins a placid grin of his own, “One day, you’ll grow old too. I hope that day never comes.”
Leave it to Lyosha to say such nonsensical -- senseless things, but Evgeni finds that he doesn’t much mind the warm feeling that has suddenly swelled in his chest; for him, that is all the beginning that he has ever needed. He isn’t sure what to say, but he opens his mouth; at that very moment (perhaps to say that Alexei could have found a good career as a poet), when an obnoxious alarm from the kitchen rings and Alexei squeezes his hand.
“I will be right back with your soup.”
“Since when did you learn how to cook?” Evgeni can’t help but be a bit wary. He doubts Alexei means to poison him...but sometimes, Evgeni doesn’t think it’s something that Lyosha can help doing, if last night’s attempt at spaghetti is any indication.
Alexei turns and almost smirks at him; Alexei shouldn’t smirk, Evgeni thinks. The expression looks strange on him. “Well, you said I needed a hobby, no?” He takes in Evgeni’s mildly horrified expression and comes back to the side of the bed to press a quick kiss on his temple.
“Relax, I got it out of a can.”
Evgeni throws the spare pillow at him, of course he will insist later that he misses entirely on purpose.
iii
Or perhaps it starts even earlier than that. It begins when Alexei is in the stands watching the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin. He’s always promised himself that he wouldn’t...that he hardly missed competitive skating and that he’s contented with the way his life has become. But he watches Evgeni skate, and he suddenly does. Except Alexei might have confused himself -- he does not know which he misses more, competitive skating, or Zhenya.
He tries not to think about it.
Alexei is not surprised when Zhenya wins. What surprises him is how irrationally happy he feels about it. He is so happy that it can’t be anything else but irrational. He doubts that Evgeni will be happy to see him, but he goes anyway. Perhaps Evgeni will not be in his room and Alexei can comfort himself by telling himself that he tried.
Evgeni is in his room, and when he first opens the door, he stares at Alexei up and down for a very long time before he blinks and finally says -- “Oh.”
While it is true that he hasn’t really seen Evgeni in a little less than half a decade, Alexei can’t help but think that some other reaction might be more apt than just a general monosyllable ‘Oh.’ “Hello to you too, Zhenya, may I come in?”
For a moment, Evgeni seems uncertain, but then he steps aside and opens the door wide, “Yeah, but I will be going out in a bit.”
“I promise I won’t be long,” Alexei says. He steps into the room and closes the door, looks at Evgeni up and down. “You haven’t changed.”
“Neither have you.”
The intensity of Evgeni’s gaze makes Alexei squirm, so he drops his gaze to focus elsewhere. There’s a patch of missing carpet not so far away. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
“Must you treat yourself like an old man all the time?”
“I am an old man,” Alexei says with a shrug. He has yet to hit thirty, but he speaks truth. Evgeni is the one who never ages; either that, or he does a fantastic job of convincing himself he will never grow old. “And it’s easier if only one of us is young. That way we won’t fight.”
“Lyosha,” Evgeni suddenly smiles, shakes his head, as he takes both of Alexei’s hands and holds them. “You have plenty of time to be as ancient and prehistoric as you’d like. Don’t spoil today for me. You’ve already half spoiled it by not competing.”
Alexei notes that Evgeni’s hands are so very warm. Like everything he’s ever remembered, except the callouses on his fingers might have grown harder, and he almost wonders about the cause -- and then he puts the thought out of his mind. “You are that confident that you can beat me?”
Evgeni just smirks a knowing smirk, shrugs.
“You were always...” but Alexei can’t quite come up with the right words, so he leans in to kiss Evgeni, like he has always wanted to. It feels like a first, and he remembers a boy in the kitchen, whose tongue had tasted like sweetened cookie dough.
“Was that ‘congratulations’, or that you miss me?”
Now Alexei wants to strangle him, but then Evgeni deters him from making good on that thought by licking the inside of his mouth most generously. “While I can’t exactly offer the former, I missed you.” His words are somewhat jumbled, but all in all, Evgeni has always got a talented tongue. That has never changed and Alexei hopes it never will.
“You’re only such a graceful loser when you win,” what bitterness that Alexei might have felt...it’s mostly fleeting. Both of them fall against the soft hotel mattress, legs intertwined.
“Could you ever forgive me?” Evgeni doesn’t need forgiveness, he never does. But at least he has enough propriety to ask for it, and Alexei realizes that he loves that about him and that’s why.
“Maybe. You canceling dinner plans would be a good start.”
iv
Sometimes, you will come to love the person you loathe. Except on Evgeni’s part, the adage isn’t exactly accurate. He knows that he has loved (whatever that word even means for him) Alexei long before then, but in his anger, he thinks that he finally understands. Fucking Lyosha is standing there, waiting for Evgeni to congratulate him, no doubt.
“I don’t want to speak to you.” (Actually, Evgeni thinks that he will never speak to Alexei again, maybe.) He does not even care about how childish it is. “I don’t want to see you at all. Get out.”
“Zhenya.”
“Out.”
The gold medal hangs around Alexei’s neck, taunting -- and Evgeni might have strangled him. But Alexei’s eyes grow hard and he leaves, slamming the door behind him. Final.
Only later, does Evgeni stand out there in the empty hallway, with “Wait, Lyosha, come back,” on the tip of his tongue.
He can’t say it. But his chest aches with a strange pain that he doesn’t want to name,
that’s what matters.
v.
Long before both of them knew what it meant (maybe that was a good thing), it started. Neither of them have an affinity for the kitchen, but it’s late at night and neither of them can really sleep.
“My mother will catch us,” says Alexei, as he watches Zhenya flitter around in the kitchen like an over-excitable butterfly, pulling out ingredients here and there. “Zhenya, you are not even listening to me, are you?” Because Zhenya is only sixteen and he is young enough to want to conquer the world. At eighteen, Alexei is already feeling decidedly ancient. “Look, if you want cookies, we can go buy some tomorrow.”
“But I’m hungry now,” Evgeni pouts at him. ”Besides, we’ll be quiet. My mother taught me how to make them. They don’t take very long, and it’s easy.”
“...We?”
“You will be helping me, won’t you?”
Zhenya, Alexei thinks, is endlessly odd. But he supposes that since Evgeni is far away from home, he is allowed to be odd in dealing with homesickness...if it really is homesickness. As much as Alexei knows, Evgeni might just be putting on an act to jerk him around. If that happens, Alexei thinks that he might kill him.
But they make the cookies, and the cookies fail. They are hard as rocks, and even when Evgeni steps on one of them with his foot, it doesn’t break. This is funny. So funny, that he has to hide his face in Alexei’s shoulder to muffle his laugh. Alexei is sort of...not amused.
“You win.”
Alexei looks at him, and wonders about that.
“This time.”
Zhenya’s smile is quiet and golden. Maybe it begins that way.
-END-