Geography for unlurkster
Author: spidergloss
Title: Geography
Recipient: unlurkster
Skaters/Pairings: Johnny Weir/Stephane Lambiel
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 3843
Warnings: None
Prompt: Johnny/Stephane pining, long-distance relationships
Disclaimer: The events portrayed in this story are fictional and do not reflect on the actual people written about
Summary: Johnny and Stephane have a long-distance relationship.
Sometimes, Johnny wondered if Stephane really understood the point of sexting, or if he was just really bad at taking hints.
--
Steph had been staying with him for a few months after the holidays.
"A few months" was a long time for them. Longer than they'd ever been together at one stretch, anyway. All they'd had were tours, or the week-long visits that mostly consisted of non-stop sex, in between whatever touristy things they'd do in Lausanne or New York or Tokyo or wherever.
Their first half-year together, after they'd hooked up almost by accident, were really just one big whirlwind pursuit and courtship. They weren't even "together", exactly. First Stephane was chasing after Johnny, and then Johnny was making sure what he felt was real. Second-guessing himself, really, along with a nervous reluctance to try yet another long distance relationship. At one point, he'd pretty much talked himself out of the possibility that it was anything other than a fling between mutually infatuated (and horny) friends. He'd been trying to figure out how to let Steph down gently, feeling sad and guilty about how much he'd miss being pursued.
--
They'd been on the phone, Johnny curled up on his bed, hugging a pillow and trying not to pretend it was anything other than a pillow. Stephane kept trying to bring up opportunities for them to see each other, and Johnny kept evading him and trying to change the subject.
He worked his way through the Semiramide program Steph was choreographing for Mao; the ongoing stupidity of the short dance and how the ISU was intentionally, viciously revamping it every single year in a terrible plot to drive Stephane insane and ruin the chances of his tiny Rohrbachs to be World Junior Champions; Steph's mostly unsuccessful attempts to break into doing pairs; the new GaGa album; Johnny's own drama at school and with his fashion people; all the new trends that Johnny loved and Stephane hated (and vice-versa); and design and art and music and all the usual bullshit he actually really enjoyed hearing Stephane's perspective on.
Evasion only went so far, though.
"Skate America this year is in Atlanta. That is very close to New York, yes? So we can see each other?"
"What? No, it's not." Stephane really did not have the best grasp on North American geography, despite Johnny's repeated attempts to educate him. Other locations Steph had declared to be "very close" to the city included Toronto, New Orleans, Chicago, Idaho, Texas, and London, Ontario.
"But it is on the East Coast!"
"Our coasts are bigger than your coasts. It's like a twelve-hour drive."
Stephane muttered some expletives in French, then got suspiciously quiet.
"What? What's wrong?" Johnny wondered if Steph was winding himself up for another protracted sulk.
"It's just..."
Oh no, he was. "Just what?"
"It was very lucky Skate America was in New York last year, you know? If it had been in Cincinatti instead, I think we wouldn't be together."
And suddenly Johnny's heart fell through the floor.
If Johnny had just spent that night in instead, drowning under pressure from school, because Stephane had never bullied him into going out to dinner, then failed completely at being able to navigate NY transit on his own, forcing Johnny to shepherd him back to his hotel.
If he'd never been there on the subway platform, shivering his ass off and desperately wishing he'd worn better gloves, cursing Stephane for taking advantage of his stupidity, and mostly just dreading the idea of going into class the next day. Steph had snuck up behind him, wrapped his arms around Johnny's waist, grabbed Johnny's hands in his, and stuck them both in the pockets of Johnny's peacoat. Before Johnny could snap at him for damaging the coat (total lie, the pockets were enormous), Steph had murmured an apology into Johnny's ear, all French and genuinely contrite sounding. He was just so warm, and Johnny was just so fucking tired of everything right then, but especially being burned-out and cynical and tired and worried about school and his career all the time.
So he'd just kind of... let go, and somewhere on the ride back to the hotel, Johnny'd found himself with his head resting on Steph's shoulder, while having his hair petted, carrying on a quiet conversation in terrible French about how he was never, ever going to make it as a designer.
"You worry too much," Stephane had told him, in English. "How can you make art, if you can't trust in how beautiful life is?"
And it might never have happened. They could have been a Cincinatti or a Seattle or a Detroit away from Johnny never getting drunk on room service champagne and taking advantage of a completely sober Stephane. Johnny wouldn't have to try to untangle himself from all this, let Stephane down gently.
Admit how scared he was. Admit why he was so scared.
But really...
"I'd have loved to see that."
"What?" Confused Stephane was, just maybe, the best of all Stephanes. Except for drowsy early-morning naked Stephane.
"Frankly, I wish they had, I'd pay money to see you in Cincinatti."
More French cursing, and ooo, German this time, too. "You are making fun of me."
"I am not." Okay, maybe a little. Johnny felt his lips curling up into a smile. "But I'm disappointed in you."
"You are disappointed in me?" Oh, this was glorious. Stephane sounded so pouty. "Why am I disappointing?"
"Because," explained Johnny, using his best I-am-being-very-patient voice, "if Skate America was in New York, obviously fate was working behind the scenes to bring us together, don't you think?"
He didn't necessarily believe that, but he knew in his bones that Stephane did.
"Mmm, yes?" It was a bit hestitant, like Steph was trying to work out where the trap was in Johnny's question.
Johnny wiggled his toes, admiring the Swiss flag pedicure on his big toe and drawing out the suspense. "What kind of romantic are you, if you think fate could be stopped by something like some scheduling difficulties?"
--
So after Stephane had spent half an hour crying happy tears and choking back sobs of joy and being generally adorable, they'd managed to work out the basic details. After covering Skate America for whatever European ESPN spin-off it was, Stephane would fly up to New Jersey and stay with Johnny for a little over four months, including the holidays.
Four months together felt simultaneously too long and too short. When Johnny had first brought up the idea, he was soaring on the wings of newly-realized destiny and triumphant love; a week later, facing the prospect of someone else in his living space - with Stephane in his living space - while he was in the middle of end-of-year craziness, he'd had a minor nervous breakdown.
That had lasted until the third day of Stephane's visit, when Johnny had come home miserable and cranky from his most-hated class, only to find an apartment that smelled amazing, lines in his carpet, and a Stephane who'd tried to to coax Johnny into watching old movies while Stephane fed him Swiss chocolate. Tried, in as much as they got fifteen minutes into Un Coeur En Hiver before Johnny had decided that they should be making out instead.
After that, everything had just clicked into place, like they'd been living together for years. Steph had learned Johnny's cleaning routine, and Johnny had learned how to make all the food Stephane liked, and slowly but surely, day by day and week by week, a modest amount of shelf space and closet room in Johnny's spare bedroom had been taken over by ladybug-themed memorabilia.
Most importantly, they'd proved to themselves they could actually live together without it degenerating into tears and drama. At least, Johnny had proved that to himself. Stephane was unbearably overconfident and cheerful about the prospects of their relationship, probably because his way of dealing with any aspect of reality he didn't like was to ignore it.
The complete denial should have been annoying, but somehow it just... wasn't. Johnny had been shocked to realize just how much watching Steph blithely traipsing through life like it was a field of daisies and just assuming everything would turn out okay was strangely reassuring. Comforting, even. Like something he could actually believe in.
Their domestic bliss was broken up only by Johnny flying out to be the zany color commentary at Nationals and raise their ratings by about five million viewers, which had led to only the third fight he and Stephane ever had. At least as a couple, anyway.
"You don't want to see these bitches, trust me." It was hard to keep up an argument when he kept ducking in and out of his closet to get clothes. Stephane was as useless as Paris when it came to packing, although he certainly looked better draped out on Johnny's bed, half-naked and contorting himself artfully between pieces of Louis Vuitton luggage.
"But all the skating family--"
"Are all in college or having babies or working jobs like real boys and girls now." Irritation made Johnny slam a pair of Louboutins into his suitcase harder than he should have. "You don't know any of these kids, Steph, and you really wouldn't want to."
"I know some of them..." They caught each other's eyes for a second. Johnny thought Stephane might blink, then he might blink, but they both kept quiet. For the most part, they had an unspoken pact not to talk about it.
"Can we not do this, please? Nationals is just... it's not fun for me, and I really want to just go there and do my job and keep myself from saying some shit and come home." He found himself tearing up a little. Going into it, Johnny realized early on that Stephane was just never going to understand all that drama. Steph's career had been a completely different experience than Johnny's, and his relationship with the Swiss federation wasn't even on the same planet as Johnny and the USFSA. That had been okay, or Johnny had thought he was okay with it. Stephane's perpetual everything-is-sunshine-and-rainbows field covered for a lot, and he'd been sure he'd just... move on, stop thinking about it, stop caring so much.
But he hadn't.
"I just think..." Stephane shifted a little on the bed, obviously choosing his words carefully. "Maybe it is not fun for you because it is your job. Maybe if I came, it would not be so much a job."
Johnny had sighed and kissed Stephane's head and allowed himself to be distracted from packing for an hour or so, but in the end he'd gone to Nationals alone and Stephane had stayed in New Jersey.
It was hard to whether being apart made Nationals better or worse, but the part where Johnny got to come home to Stephane had been incredible.
--
Only a month later, they'd been curled up together in the airport, sharing a chair in one of the cramped eateries, trying to drag out the last of their time together to the last possible moment.
It was sort of ironic, Johnny thought, that even though they'd spent Nationals apart, he and Stephane would still be geographically closer than when they were both covering Worlds. Fuck Universal Sports, anyway.
A tall girl in skinny jeans strolled over towards the security check-in. Her boots were amazing: mid-calf with a cuban heel, in turqoise snake leather of some kind.
"Look at those." He nudged Stephane gently to direct his attention to the footwear in question. "I'm loving the python. Very playful, don't you think?"
Stephane rolled his eyes, then flicked his hair out of them. "I think they are not python, is what I think."
Johnny rolled his eyes right back, not unaffectionately. Over the years, he'd developed a keen sense of when he was about to be hit with a Stephane-ism, and most of the time, he enjoyed playing along. "Oh really? What do you think they're made of?"
"Boa constrictor!" Steph announced, and snaked his arms around Johnny's waist, making snakey hissing noises and squeezing him like a -- well, boa constrictor. All right, all right, very cute.
Johnny laughed and settled into the embrace. "I'm going to puke mango-strawberry all over both of us if you keep that up!"
"Then maybe you should not be stealing it all for yourself!" Steph leaned over Johnny's shoulder to take a sip from the smoothie they were sharing. He used Johnny's straw, too, despite having insisted they get two in the first place. He must have seen it in some movie.
They stayed like that for another few minutes, joking and cuddling and people-watching, until Johnny's phone buzzed. "Shit. I have to go. Now."
It really wasn't fair; they weren't even flying out of the same terminal, which meant going through different security lines, which meant Stephane couldn't even wait with him.
Johnny started to extract himself from the coils of the boa, only to have Stephane cling tighter. "You can stay for five minutes, you will not be late."
He pried Steph's limbs off, and shoved the now-empty smoothie cup into his hands. "No, seriously, I mean it. I'm flying coach, this is going to be bad enough as it is."
It came out more snappish than Johnny really intended, and he kicked himself mentally when he saw the look on Steph's face.
"I am sorry, it is just I will miss you so much." Johnny seriously thought Steph was about to break into tears, which made him tear up a little, but all he did was grab Johnny's hand, and press the fingertips to his lips. "You will call me? When you arrive in Los Angeles?"
Johnny sighed and bent down to kiss Stephane's forehead. "You'll still be flying when I touch down."
"Because it is such a long flight! I will be so bored. You must call me!" Typical Stephane, to make Johnny do all the work and take the active role in everything ever.
He sighed. "Do you know how late it will be for me once you arrive?"
"So you will have time to get settled in! Then you can call me at night, before you go to bed."
Johnny couldn't help but leer a little at that implication. "What do I get if I do?"
Stephane was the picture of innocence. "To talk to me, of course!"
There wasn't even time to argue, even if Johnny had wanted to argue, which he really, really didn't. Not when they were about to be apart for the better part of two months. They'd had a nice stretch of time together in New Jersey over the holidays and into early spring, but now with Worlds and all the little shows they each had, they wouldn't be together again untl Festa. Johnny really, really didn't want to part with anything hanging over their heads.
He gave Steph one last kiss, and then tore himself away, calling over his shoulder in his best bedroom voice, "Just send me something beautiful, and I'll think about it. Something to inspire nice dreams!"
There was absolutely no mistaking the tone or what Johnny meant. None.
--
Johnny hit the ground running the second he touched down in L.A.: A lunch meeting with the Universal Sports guys (that felt more like a dinner meeting), a quick stop at Rachel Zoe's for clothes and to say hi to Brad and the girls, then cramming in as much shopping as possible with Tara L. and Tanith before dinner.
He dashed off a quick text to Steph between boutiques: "miss you, love you", then turned his phone off when there wasn't a reply. It would probably be another hour or two before his plane made it to Europe, especially if there had been delays, but Stephane would have no qualms at all about interrupting Johnny's dinner.
All of which would have been fine, except that Johnny forgot to turn is phone back on the next day.
Not that they'd have been able to talk much, what with both of them having to commentate. Still, it would have been nice to at least hear Steph's voice. If they could avoid bickering over Florent versus Adam, anyway.
Stephane always got grumpy when skaters he choreographed for didn't win the PCS, whether they really deserved it or not, and Florent had changed the choreography from what he'd been using at Skate Canada and TEB. That was a surefire recipe for a meltdown. Johnny desperately hated listening to Stephane when his Swiss kids left any part of his choreography out. Especially little Bettina Zisli, who Steph had harrassed Johnny into designing a costume for. She had pink hair and liked crazy Scandinavian death metal and had an amazing quad salchow, and always skated near perfectly and with spectacular energy, now matter how much her programs got stripped down by the end of the season. Hearing Stephane bitch about her leaving out some head-toss or arm movement just felt like some kind of hellish proxy for everything everyone had used to criticize Johnny after Vancouver, dissected and brought up over and over again. Not that Stephane ever seemed to realize that was what he was doing, or how Johnny felt.
And Johnny actually kind of liked Florent's new choreograhy better, anyway. So maybe it was a good thing he'd left his phone off.
When Johnny finally got back to the hotel, completely exhausted, he pulled his phone out and turned it on, collapsing back onto the bed. Watching to Peter Carruthers attempt to flirt with Tanith had murdered Johnny's sex drive, but seeing the slew of texts and pics from Stephane had perked him right back up. Literally. He started going through them with one hand down his pants.
At least until he'd actually gotten a good look at the pictures.
The first one was of some flowers outside the arena. Okay, fine, they were nice flowers, and it was a very artistic shot. Then a bunch of promotional posters, with very pretty non-representational art that Johnny thought was maybe supposed to indicate the flow of skaters over ice or something like that. Then a couple of snaps of the arena itself, showing off the architecture of the building. Was Stephane trying to rub it in that he actually go to attend Worlds while commenting, while Johnny was cooped up in "The Loft"? That seemed extreme, but Johnny wouldn't put it past him.
After that, pictures of cats. Not adorable fluffy kittens, or pretty purebreeds, or even grown cats doing something interesting or funny. Just a bunch of fat, scruffy alley cats, hanging around some cafe and being fed by tourists. The only remotely interesting one was a picture of Joubert's dog sniffing an enormous orange tabby.
Stephane was either the most innocent human being on the planet (and Johnny knew that wasn't true), or... he was deliberately giving Johnny the cold shoulder. Right. Johnny pulled his hands out of his pants and tossed the phone onto a pillow. God, he hated long distance relationships. Everything was so much worse when they were apart. All the little quirks and habits of Stephane's that Johnny should have found annoying were somehow adorable, or at least tolerable, when they were in close proximity. But apart, when he barely had to deal with most of it, somehow Stephane was capable of getting on every single nerve in his body.
Johnny kept trying to tell himself it would get better when it was all over, when the demand for both of them died down, when they didn't need to spend so much time making the most of their fame and popularity. And once Johnny had enough money saved to pay for school, and enough time and stability to actually devote himself to it, without fucking everything up this time. And once Stephane found a rink in the U.S. he wasn't too much of a diva to work at, stopped using choreography as an excuse to jetset, and settled down. And once they somehow got on top of all the other million-and-one preconditions life kept piling on their relationship.
This was dangerous territory he was working himself into. It was so easy to fall into the trap of second-guessing everything, and make everything worse than it was. Or just withdraw completely.
"I've done this before," he announced to the ceiling. The ceiling had no reply. "I'm not doing it again. I'm not."
It wasn't exactly that Johnny needed blurry phone pictures of Stephane's cock to feel close or connected, although it was still surprising, just how sexual their connection was. But this was the part he hated, the not-knowing-what-was-going-on, the second-guessing, the loneliness that came not from physical isolation, but from not being connected to each other's lives.
Especially when they were covering the same event, from different continents. It went beyond loneliness into something like alienation. Anything could be going on right now, and Johnny wouldn't know. Maybe Stephane hadn't come up with Florent's new arm movements, maybe he'd added them himself or cheated on Steph with another choreographer, and Steph had melted down over it and there'd been a huge dramatic screaming match. Maybe Stephane was sitting in jail right now, for having gone after Florent or Florent's coach with a blade for daring to rework his choreography.
Fuck it. Johnny grabbed the phone and called Stephane, cursing in frustration when it immediately switched over to voice mail. He'd been the one to fuck up, but still, did Steph have to act so childish about everything?
Fine, voicemail. "Hi. Sorry I missed you. What did you think of everyone? I thought Florent skated really well, even with the changes. It's definitely an amazing program, no matter what. Um. Say hi to Brian for me. I miss you. I'm... I'm sorry, okay? I had my phone turned off for dinner, and I forgot to turn it back on, and I'm just... I'm a crazy diva bitch and I'm sorry. This is hard. I don't know. Call me, please?"
Johnny closed his eyes and sunk back into the mattress. He tried to think of what he'd say if Stephane called: I'm sorry. I miss you. I hate this. Why can't you just move to the U.S. already? I love you. This will never work out. I don't want to lose this. I miss you. It won't feel like coming home if you're not there when I get back.
His phone was dingling.
It was a text. From Steph, of course, a single picture with no message attached.
Stephane was fully clothed in grey jeans and a black turtleneck, his back turned so his face wasn't visible. He must have taken it in the mirror. It was a perfectly innocent picture. Nothing suggestive about it at all, really.
The only skin visible was his hand holding the camera, the long arc of the back of his neck. But there was just a tiny glimpse of Stephane's lower back, where his shirt was riding up a bit from his arm being outstretched, like an invitation for someone to come and pull it off.
--
Grinning, Johnny hit redial.
-END-
Title: Geography
Recipient: unlurkster
Skaters/Pairings: Johnny Weir/Stephane Lambiel
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 3843
Warnings: None
Prompt: Johnny/Stephane pining, long-distance relationships
Disclaimer: The events portrayed in this story are fictional and do not reflect on the actual people written about
Summary: Johnny and Stephane have a long-distance relationship.
Sometimes, Johnny wondered if Stephane really understood the point of sexting, or if he was just really bad at taking hints.
--
Steph had been staying with him for a few months after the holidays.
"A few months" was a long time for them. Longer than they'd ever been together at one stretch, anyway. All they'd had were tours, or the week-long visits that mostly consisted of non-stop sex, in between whatever touristy things they'd do in Lausanne or New York or Tokyo or wherever.
Their first half-year together, after they'd hooked up almost by accident, were really just one big whirlwind pursuit and courtship. They weren't even "together", exactly. First Stephane was chasing after Johnny, and then Johnny was making sure what he felt was real. Second-guessing himself, really, along with a nervous reluctance to try yet another long distance relationship. At one point, he'd pretty much talked himself out of the possibility that it was anything other than a fling between mutually infatuated (and horny) friends. He'd been trying to figure out how to let Steph down gently, feeling sad and guilty about how much he'd miss being pursued.
--
They'd been on the phone, Johnny curled up on his bed, hugging a pillow and trying not to pretend it was anything other than a pillow. Stephane kept trying to bring up opportunities for them to see each other, and Johnny kept evading him and trying to change the subject.
He worked his way through the Semiramide program Steph was choreographing for Mao; the ongoing stupidity of the short dance and how the ISU was intentionally, viciously revamping it every single year in a terrible plot to drive Stephane insane and ruin the chances of his tiny Rohrbachs to be World Junior Champions; Steph's mostly unsuccessful attempts to break into doing pairs; the new GaGa album; Johnny's own drama at school and with his fashion people; all the new trends that Johnny loved and Stephane hated (and vice-versa); and design and art and music and all the usual bullshit he actually really enjoyed hearing Stephane's perspective on.
Evasion only went so far, though.
"Skate America this year is in Atlanta. That is very close to New York, yes? So we can see each other?"
"What? No, it's not." Stephane really did not have the best grasp on North American geography, despite Johnny's repeated attempts to educate him. Other locations Steph had declared to be "very close" to the city included Toronto, New Orleans, Chicago, Idaho, Texas, and London, Ontario.
"But it is on the East Coast!"
"Our coasts are bigger than your coasts. It's like a twelve-hour drive."
Stephane muttered some expletives in French, then got suspiciously quiet.
"What? What's wrong?" Johnny wondered if Steph was winding himself up for another protracted sulk.
"It's just..."
Oh no, he was. "Just what?"
"It was very lucky Skate America was in New York last year, you know? If it had been in Cincinatti instead, I think we wouldn't be together."
And suddenly Johnny's heart fell through the floor.
If Johnny had just spent that night in instead, drowning under pressure from school, because Stephane had never bullied him into going out to dinner, then failed completely at being able to navigate NY transit on his own, forcing Johnny to shepherd him back to his hotel.
If he'd never been there on the subway platform, shivering his ass off and desperately wishing he'd worn better gloves, cursing Stephane for taking advantage of his stupidity, and mostly just dreading the idea of going into class the next day. Steph had snuck up behind him, wrapped his arms around Johnny's waist, grabbed Johnny's hands in his, and stuck them both in the pockets of Johnny's peacoat. Before Johnny could snap at him for damaging the coat (total lie, the pockets were enormous), Steph had murmured an apology into Johnny's ear, all French and genuinely contrite sounding. He was just so warm, and Johnny was just so fucking tired of everything right then, but especially being burned-out and cynical and tired and worried about school and his career all the time.
So he'd just kind of... let go, and somewhere on the ride back to the hotel, Johnny'd found himself with his head resting on Steph's shoulder, while having his hair petted, carrying on a quiet conversation in terrible French about how he was never, ever going to make it as a designer.
"You worry too much," Stephane had told him, in English. "How can you make art, if you can't trust in how beautiful life is?"
And it might never have happened. They could have been a Cincinatti or a Seattle or a Detroit away from Johnny never getting drunk on room service champagne and taking advantage of a completely sober Stephane. Johnny wouldn't have to try to untangle himself from all this, let Stephane down gently.
Admit how scared he was. Admit why he was so scared.
But really...
"I'd have loved to see that."
"What?" Confused Stephane was, just maybe, the best of all Stephanes. Except for drowsy early-morning naked Stephane.
"Frankly, I wish they had, I'd pay money to see you in Cincinatti."
More French cursing, and ooo, German this time, too. "You are making fun of me."
"I am not." Okay, maybe a little. Johnny felt his lips curling up into a smile. "But I'm disappointed in you."
"You are disappointed in me?" Oh, this was glorious. Stephane sounded so pouty. "Why am I disappointing?"
"Because," explained Johnny, using his best I-am-being-very-patient voice, "if Skate America was in New York, obviously fate was working behind the scenes to bring us together, don't you think?"
He didn't necessarily believe that, but he knew in his bones that Stephane did.
"Mmm, yes?" It was a bit hestitant, like Steph was trying to work out where the trap was in Johnny's question.
Johnny wiggled his toes, admiring the Swiss flag pedicure on his big toe and drawing out the suspense. "What kind of romantic are you, if you think fate could be stopped by something like some scheduling difficulties?"
--
So after Stephane had spent half an hour crying happy tears and choking back sobs of joy and being generally adorable, they'd managed to work out the basic details. After covering Skate America for whatever European ESPN spin-off it was, Stephane would fly up to New Jersey and stay with Johnny for a little over four months, including the holidays.
Four months together felt simultaneously too long and too short. When Johnny had first brought up the idea, he was soaring on the wings of newly-realized destiny and triumphant love; a week later, facing the prospect of someone else in his living space - with Stephane in his living space - while he was in the middle of end-of-year craziness, he'd had a minor nervous breakdown.
That had lasted until the third day of Stephane's visit, when Johnny had come home miserable and cranky from his most-hated class, only to find an apartment that smelled amazing, lines in his carpet, and a Stephane who'd tried to to coax Johnny into watching old movies while Stephane fed him Swiss chocolate. Tried, in as much as they got fifteen minutes into Un Coeur En Hiver before Johnny had decided that they should be making out instead.
After that, everything had just clicked into place, like they'd been living together for years. Steph had learned Johnny's cleaning routine, and Johnny had learned how to make all the food Stephane liked, and slowly but surely, day by day and week by week, a modest amount of shelf space and closet room in Johnny's spare bedroom had been taken over by ladybug-themed memorabilia.
Most importantly, they'd proved to themselves they could actually live together without it degenerating into tears and drama. At least, Johnny had proved that to himself. Stephane was unbearably overconfident and cheerful about the prospects of their relationship, probably because his way of dealing with any aspect of reality he didn't like was to ignore it.
The complete denial should have been annoying, but somehow it just... wasn't. Johnny had been shocked to realize just how much watching Steph blithely traipsing through life like it was a field of daisies and just assuming everything would turn out okay was strangely reassuring. Comforting, even. Like something he could actually believe in.
Their domestic bliss was broken up only by Johnny flying out to be the zany color commentary at Nationals and raise their ratings by about five million viewers, which had led to only the third fight he and Stephane ever had. At least as a couple, anyway.
"You don't want to see these bitches, trust me." It was hard to keep up an argument when he kept ducking in and out of his closet to get clothes. Stephane was as useless as Paris when it came to packing, although he certainly looked better draped out on Johnny's bed, half-naked and contorting himself artfully between pieces of Louis Vuitton luggage.
"But all the skating family--"
"Are all in college or having babies or working jobs like real boys and girls now." Irritation made Johnny slam a pair of Louboutins into his suitcase harder than he should have. "You don't know any of these kids, Steph, and you really wouldn't want to."
"I know some of them..." They caught each other's eyes for a second. Johnny thought Stephane might blink, then he might blink, but they both kept quiet. For the most part, they had an unspoken pact not to talk about it.
"Can we not do this, please? Nationals is just... it's not fun for me, and I really want to just go there and do my job and keep myself from saying some shit and come home." He found himself tearing up a little. Going into it, Johnny realized early on that Stephane was just never going to understand all that drama. Steph's career had been a completely different experience than Johnny's, and his relationship with the Swiss federation wasn't even on the same planet as Johnny and the USFSA. That had been okay, or Johnny had thought he was okay with it. Stephane's perpetual everything-is-sunshine-and-rainbows field covered for a lot, and he'd been sure he'd just... move on, stop thinking about it, stop caring so much.
But he hadn't.
"I just think..." Stephane shifted a little on the bed, obviously choosing his words carefully. "Maybe it is not fun for you because it is your job. Maybe if I came, it would not be so much a job."
Johnny had sighed and kissed Stephane's head and allowed himself to be distracted from packing for an hour or so, but in the end he'd gone to Nationals alone and Stephane had stayed in New Jersey.
It was hard to whether being apart made Nationals better or worse, but the part where Johnny got to come home to Stephane had been incredible.
--
Only a month later, they'd been curled up together in the airport, sharing a chair in one of the cramped eateries, trying to drag out the last of their time together to the last possible moment.
It was sort of ironic, Johnny thought, that even though they'd spent Nationals apart, he and Stephane would still be geographically closer than when they were both covering Worlds. Fuck Universal Sports, anyway.
A tall girl in skinny jeans strolled over towards the security check-in. Her boots were amazing: mid-calf with a cuban heel, in turqoise snake leather of some kind.
"Look at those." He nudged Stephane gently to direct his attention to the footwear in question. "I'm loving the python. Very playful, don't you think?"
Stephane rolled his eyes, then flicked his hair out of them. "I think they are not python, is what I think."
Johnny rolled his eyes right back, not unaffectionately. Over the years, he'd developed a keen sense of when he was about to be hit with a Stephane-ism, and most of the time, he enjoyed playing along. "Oh really? What do you think they're made of?"
"Boa constrictor!" Steph announced, and snaked his arms around Johnny's waist, making snakey hissing noises and squeezing him like a -- well, boa constrictor. All right, all right, very cute.
Johnny laughed and settled into the embrace. "I'm going to puke mango-strawberry all over both of us if you keep that up!"
"Then maybe you should not be stealing it all for yourself!" Steph leaned over Johnny's shoulder to take a sip from the smoothie they were sharing. He used Johnny's straw, too, despite having insisted they get two in the first place. He must have seen it in some movie.
They stayed like that for another few minutes, joking and cuddling and people-watching, until Johnny's phone buzzed. "Shit. I have to go. Now."
It really wasn't fair; they weren't even flying out of the same terminal, which meant going through different security lines, which meant Stephane couldn't even wait with him.
Johnny started to extract himself from the coils of the boa, only to have Stephane cling tighter. "You can stay for five minutes, you will not be late."
He pried Steph's limbs off, and shoved the now-empty smoothie cup into his hands. "No, seriously, I mean it. I'm flying coach, this is going to be bad enough as it is."
It came out more snappish than Johnny really intended, and he kicked himself mentally when he saw the look on Steph's face.
"I am sorry, it is just I will miss you so much." Johnny seriously thought Steph was about to break into tears, which made him tear up a little, but all he did was grab Johnny's hand, and press the fingertips to his lips. "You will call me? When you arrive in Los Angeles?"
Johnny sighed and bent down to kiss Stephane's forehead. "You'll still be flying when I touch down."
"Because it is such a long flight! I will be so bored. You must call me!" Typical Stephane, to make Johnny do all the work and take the active role in everything ever.
He sighed. "Do you know how late it will be for me once you arrive?"
"So you will have time to get settled in! Then you can call me at night, before you go to bed."
Johnny couldn't help but leer a little at that implication. "What do I get if I do?"
Stephane was the picture of innocence. "To talk to me, of course!"
There wasn't even time to argue, even if Johnny had wanted to argue, which he really, really didn't. Not when they were about to be apart for the better part of two months. They'd had a nice stretch of time together in New Jersey over the holidays and into early spring, but now with Worlds and all the little shows they each had, they wouldn't be together again untl Festa. Johnny really, really didn't want to part with anything hanging over their heads.
He gave Steph one last kiss, and then tore himself away, calling over his shoulder in his best bedroom voice, "Just send me something beautiful, and I'll think about it. Something to inspire nice dreams!"
There was absolutely no mistaking the tone or what Johnny meant. None.
--
Johnny hit the ground running the second he touched down in L.A.: A lunch meeting with the Universal Sports guys (that felt more like a dinner meeting), a quick stop at Rachel Zoe's for clothes and to say hi to Brad and the girls, then cramming in as much shopping as possible with Tara L. and Tanith before dinner.
He dashed off a quick text to Steph between boutiques: "miss you, love you", then turned his phone off when there wasn't a reply. It would probably be another hour or two before his plane made it to Europe, especially if there had been delays, but Stephane would have no qualms at all about interrupting Johnny's dinner.
All of which would have been fine, except that Johnny forgot to turn is phone back on the next day.
Not that they'd have been able to talk much, what with both of them having to commentate. Still, it would have been nice to at least hear Steph's voice. If they could avoid bickering over Florent versus Adam, anyway.
Stephane always got grumpy when skaters he choreographed for didn't win the PCS, whether they really deserved it or not, and Florent had changed the choreography from what he'd been using at Skate Canada and TEB. That was a surefire recipe for a meltdown. Johnny desperately hated listening to Stephane when his Swiss kids left any part of his choreography out. Especially little Bettina Zisli, who Steph had harrassed Johnny into designing a costume for. She had pink hair and liked crazy Scandinavian death metal and had an amazing quad salchow, and always skated near perfectly and with spectacular energy, now matter how much her programs got stripped down by the end of the season. Hearing Stephane bitch about her leaving out some head-toss or arm movement just felt like some kind of hellish proxy for everything everyone had used to criticize Johnny after Vancouver, dissected and brought up over and over again. Not that Stephane ever seemed to realize that was what he was doing, or how Johnny felt.
And Johnny actually kind of liked Florent's new choreograhy better, anyway. So maybe it was a good thing he'd left his phone off.
When Johnny finally got back to the hotel, completely exhausted, he pulled his phone out and turned it on, collapsing back onto the bed. Watching to Peter Carruthers attempt to flirt with Tanith had murdered Johnny's sex drive, but seeing the slew of texts and pics from Stephane had perked him right back up. Literally. He started going through them with one hand down his pants.
At least until he'd actually gotten a good look at the pictures.
The first one was of some flowers outside the arena. Okay, fine, they were nice flowers, and it was a very artistic shot. Then a bunch of promotional posters, with very pretty non-representational art that Johnny thought was maybe supposed to indicate the flow of skaters over ice or something like that. Then a couple of snaps of the arena itself, showing off the architecture of the building. Was Stephane trying to rub it in that he actually go to attend Worlds while commenting, while Johnny was cooped up in "The Loft"? That seemed extreme, but Johnny wouldn't put it past him.
After that, pictures of cats. Not adorable fluffy kittens, or pretty purebreeds, or even grown cats doing something interesting or funny. Just a bunch of fat, scruffy alley cats, hanging around some cafe and being fed by tourists. The only remotely interesting one was a picture of Joubert's dog sniffing an enormous orange tabby.
Stephane was either the most innocent human being on the planet (and Johnny knew that wasn't true), or... he was deliberately giving Johnny the cold shoulder. Right. Johnny pulled his hands out of his pants and tossed the phone onto a pillow. God, he hated long distance relationships. Everything was so much worse when they were apart. All the little quirks and habits of Stephane's that Johnny should have found annoying were somehow adorable, or at least tolerable, when they were in close proximity. But apart, when he barely had to deal with most of it, somehow Stephane was capable of getting on every single nerve in his body.
Johnny kept trying to tell himself it would get better when it was all over, when the demand for both of them died down, when they didn't need to spend so much time making the most of their fame and popularity. And once Johnny had enough money saved to pay for school, and enough time and stability to actually devote himself to it, without fucking everything up this time. And once Stephane found a rink in the U.S. he wasn't too much of a diva to work at, stopped using choreography as an excuse to jetset, and settled down. And once they somehow got on top of all the other million-and-one preconditions life kept piling on their relationship.
This was dangerous territory he was working himself into. It was so easy to fall into the trap of second-guessing everything, and make everything worse than it was. Or just withdraw completely.
"I've done this before," he announced to the ceiling. The ceiling had no reply. "I'm not doing it again. I'm not."
It wasn't exactly that Johnny needed blurry phone pictures of Stephane's cock to feel close or connected, although it was still surprising, just how sexual their connection was. But this was the part he hated, the not-knowing-what-was-going-on, the second-guessing, the loneliness that came not from physical isolation, but from not being connected to each other's lives.
Especially when they were covering the same event, from different continents. It went beyond loneliness into something like alienation. Anything could be going on right now, and Johnny wouldn't know. Maybe Stephane hadn't come up with Florent's new arm movements, maybe he'd added them himself or cheated on Steph with another choreographer, and Steph had melted down over it and there'd been a huge dramatic screaming match. Maybe Stephane was sitting in jail right now, for having gone after Florent or Florent's coach with a blade for daring to rework his choreography.
Fuck it. Johnny grabbed the phone and called Stephane, cursing in frustration when it immediately switched over to voice mail. He'd been the one to fuck up, but still, did Steph have to act so childish about everything?
Fine, voicemail. "Hi. Sorry I missed you. What did you think of everyone? I thought Florent skated really well, even with the changes. It's definitely an amazing program, no matter what. Um. Say hi to Brian for me. I miss you. I'm... I'm sorry, okay? I had my phone turned off for dinner, and I forgot to turn it back on, and I'm just... I'm a crazy diva bitch and I'm sorry. This is hard. I don't know. Call me, please?"
Johnny closed his eyes and sunk back into the mattress. He tried to think of what he'd say if Stephane called: I'm sorry. I miss you. I hate this. Why can't you just move to the U.S. already? I love you. This will never work out. I don't want to lose this. I miss you. It won't feel like coming home if you're not there when I get back.
His phone was dingling.
It was a text. From Steph, of course, a single picture with no message attached.
Stephane was fully clothed in grey jeans and a black turtleneck, his back turned so his face wasn't visible. He must have taken it in the mirror. It was a perfectly innocent picture. Nothing suggestive about it at all, really.
The only skin visible was his hand holding the camera, the long arc of the back of his neck. But there was just a tiny glimpse of Stephane's lower back, where his shirt was riding up a bit from his arm being outstretched, like an invitation for someone to come and pull it off.
--
Grinning, Johnny hit redial.
-END-