Is it the weekend yet?
So the Bob Costas thing is still in full effect. datenshiblue wrote a great little complimentary Bob Costas/Jason Lezak piece you can find here.
As for the new, here is.
:: Michael Phelps/Bob Costas, R. Unbeta'ed.
08.28.2008 (7:56 am)
"10/90"
The knock on the door is a welcome reprieve from his pencil and paper. Bob rubs a hand back through his hair and stands up, toes digging into the soft cream carpet of his hotel room. The stub of lead, eraser chewed off, is stuck behind his ear.
For Beijing Bob uses superlatives like amazing and tremendous, but in truth he's not gotten many chances to revel in culture shock; he is firmly under NBC's umbrella for this first week, studio to hotel and back. Most of his experience comes from news feeds.
There's a small fog in his head as he crosses the private suite to the door-the water shortage, the protesters getting deported, the age of the Chinese gymnasts, Michael Phelps and Usaine Bolt. Bob has been in the business long enough to know that improv is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration, and he's been over the all facts, rewatched all the footage. Now he'll just have to let it come to him.
A twist of his arm checks the time; it's close to eleven p.m. Beijing time. He hadn't realized and the knowledge is enough to make a yawn try to crawl up from deep in his chest. It's stifled with the back of his hand as he opens the door.
Funny thing about letting inspiration come to him is that it never fails to, one way or another. The hallway is brighter than the dim single lamp and TV-glow of his suite and for a moment Bob thinks he might be wrong about it really being Michael Phelps standing outside his room so close to midnight. But he's not.
His eyebrows raise. "Michael. Hello." Bob takes half a step back, unsure if the kid only has something to say or wants a nightcap-the swimmer's eyes look a little bloodshot and he's not so quick to blame the chlorine levels at the Cube; Phelps won his last race two days ago.
"Hey." A long finger points into the hotel room. "Can I come in?" When he pulls himself off the opposite wall there's a little unsteady in his step, a wobble to the right of the barely-there variety.
Bob nods and takes himself completely out of the way of the door, holding it open. He's got a million sudden questions that have absolutely nothing to do with swimming or goals or Olympic feelings and he bites his tongue. Michael slopes in with his hand in his pockets. "Nice place."
"Tell that to NBC; it's on their tab," Bob says as he closes the door behind the swimmer. "But thank you."
Michael laughs quietly, damn near awkwardly. Of course he almost always manages to look awkward most of the time, Bob had found, unless he's in close proximity to a pool. Put sneakers on him and his shoulders roll the way swimmers' shoulders tend to and some times there is the ghost of a true slouch that must have been swum out of him. Though it's pretty endearing, truth be told.
Bob runs a hand over his mouth and then links fingers behind his back. "What can I do for you? Everything all right?" Michael is trailing fingers over the edge of his temporary desk, covered in notes and newspapers and Don't forget across a yellow legal pad in Bob's cramped handwriting.
"Oh. Yeah, I was just. You know. Bored."
Drunk, Bob supplies instead, but he doesn't do that sort of coverage. Leave the gossip to Walters. So he nods and gives a corner of what's probably an indulgent smile. "Hard for me to believe that the athletes are given the chance to get bored."
The brown eyes that look at him are smiling, crows stepping into the skin at the corners. There's something, though, something about the way Michael's mouth is tipped up near crooked that makes Bob second guess both bored and drunk.
"All how you look at it," Michael says. "Maybe if you've been to one Speedo party you've been to them all." He shrugs with a graceful wave of shoulders and then half-swallows a laugh. "Guess I'm not a good posterboy. You're not gonna tell, are you?"
There it is again. That something-and Bob feels distinctly like he's being played. His instincts have been years sharpened by the assholes in the NFL and MLB; if Michael Phelps thinks he's the next Owens or Bonds maybe he should think again.
But, no. Bob doesn't really believe that. Because he's had his judge of character sharpened, too, and Michael Phelps is leagues above T.O.
"I cover the accomplishments," he says, leaning against the arm of the sofa, "not the salaries."
"I like your laugh."
It's so out of left field that Bob can find nothing to say; it's a rare occasion. Michael straightens in the silence and it feels like he's taking advantage-he puts himself close and Bob has to look up to see those laughing eyes. The Olympian's mouth folds upward again, making him look a bit like a kid with his hand in the cookie jar up to the elbow. "What? I said like your laugh."
Bob is still. Against bigger guys (and most of them are) he's stood his ground; he's become adept at turning anger into humor to defuse a situation-a lot of athletes aren't know for their level heads. Bob's dealt with every manner of man in his long career, maybe, and woman, but now he's thinking that he's never dealt with anyone like Michael Phelps.
There's no aggression in the kid's closeness, no defensive tension. Michael is very loose, right up to the curl of his smile. Nothing is truly effective-only hit and miss-when the other team is holding the playbook. Better men them Bob Costas have failed at planning such a defense.
"Okay," Bob hears himself say. "Thank you." For the first time in months he feels off-balance. He's very conscious of the fact that despite being surrounded by the things that make up his temporary home-suits hanging from doorways in dry cleaning bags, reading glasses folded up ontop of a novel he's been trying to finish for going-on six weeks, a half-full mug of coffee-they are suddenly playing on Michael's court.
The swimmer is standing straight, leaning slightly in with the bull-dog focus that Bob's become used to equating with clips from the pool. Michael on the deck. Michael pre-race. Michael in warm-down. Michael with his ear-buds.
He stands above Bob like he's standing on the block. Christ. Bob's palms are sweating a little bit. "Michael..."
"Mike."
They'd missed that in the interview after the record-setting medal. Mike. Here was no Anastasia 'Nastia' Liukins. Debbie Phelps had called him Michael, the world called him Michael, and Bob called him Michael.
Or had, apparently, until this moment. Bob wonders what percentage of people in the world right now could say 'Mike Phelps' without thinking it sounded wrong. Sports Illustrated should look at that for it's "Go Figure" column. In fact, he should jot it down-
"Mr Costas?"
Bob is fingering the pencil still behind his ear; before he can look up warm fingers are covering his and sliding the stub out from under them. The bitten, empty metal end scrapes skin and hair and pours goosebumps down his arms. That long-fingered hand dwarfs his sad little pencil, engulfs it entirely. Bob swallows and when he looks up Michael's brown eyes are closer than ever.
Bells go off, whistles sing. He's young, he thinks, wishing that he were instead thinking things more productive to stopping the incoming moment, everyone forgets it-
Then those eyes close and Michael Phelps presses his slightly open mouth against Bob's. The touch is warm and faintly aggressive after all; a tongue slides over his bottom lip with a wet non-friction.
Hands raise and push on Michael's chest; it's like pushing against a brick wall. Bob turns his head. "Michael-"
"Mike." It's a stubborn breath that smells vaguely of tequila; Michael's turning his own head after and trying to resume the kiss.
"Mike-"
But two large hands on his face stop whatever words he was gathering to talk himself out of this one. And he was wrong, all wrong-Michael's eyes are old, and tired, and there's tension there but it's not defensive. Maybe Michael Phelps doesn't know defensive; the thought is both terrifying and exhilarating.
Bob loses his place and Michael's mouth closes back over his. A tongue presses through his lips and runs across his teeth. The hands that Bob had raised to push the younger man away while thoughts like crazy were running through his head find themselves fisted in the soft fabric of a black button down shirt that does little justice for the body hidden beneath.
He knows. He's seen-the world has seen. But nobody knew this.
There's less fight then there should be when Michael's hands drop to his hips and walk them both over to his lean-to of a desk. Fingers press with enough force to make Bob's breath shallow and facts roll through his mind, things he's read about the lung capacity of swimmers, inane things that he's trained himself to sift through and forget.
His rear hits the desk, is pushed into the wooden lip when Michael grinds himself up with a long, slow roll of hips. He does it again and even while the friction is making Bob hard his mind is listing off world records and the little sarcastic prick he is way down deep wonders if this is going to be a short-course.
His fingers climb up and grab broad shoulders; Michael's settled into a rhythm against him that says he knows how to fuck and little else and whatever his eyes said before, Bob knows it's just like a kid to blow it in the first fifty.
Hands fall and the rhythm breaks apart as Bob slips his hands under Michael's shirttails to slip open the button on his jeans. Skin brushes knuckles, smooth and warm, and there is the hiss of the zipper crawling down along with the press of his palm behind denim.
Michael's cock is hot from the friction between them, hard and swollen against his palm. Bob can feel a quick pulse through thin, supple skin and his own heart beat tries instinctively to match it. Michael's face falls against the crook of his shoulder with a moaning shiver of breath. A damp mouth crawls up his neck and Bob thinks fleetingly about lung capacity again-his own is not up to the task.
The same fingers that had, he was sure, bruised his hips, roam down to his ass to grab him through his chinos. It makes his breath catch, hard and short, as Michael jerks them together. Bob is nearly pulled off his feet. His legs spread slightly and his fist struggles to resume it's loose-fisted pace.
There's no controlling the situation. Michael's breath is a rasp against his ear, each in and out marked by a throb of Bob's cock. All the thinking he's done on his feet over the years and there's nothing that comes now-it's thrown out the window by the determination of one young swimmer. Bob murmurs a curse as his pants are opened; Michael's hand around him is a curse and a blessing and all he can do is lift his hips.
They fit together-Michael fists them together. Bob hangs on, precariously on the edge of the desk, on his toes, off his game. Under rolled cuffs his arms are covered in goosebumps, under his pants his hips are bruised and aching for more. Michael's long-fingered hand is all tight and hot and he is going to come apart under it.
There are two distinct sensations; there is the relentless mash of soft skin on the inside and outside there is the rough, quick strokes of calluses. Bob can't focus on anything else; his head's fallen back and his notes and papers complain as the shift of their bodies crumple and disturb. Michael isn't kissing his neck anymore, just puffing breath after breath against it in time to his tugging, making the skin hot and damp.
The breath stops; a warning prelude to an almost hard few twisting jerks of Michael's hand and then a spread of heat. The feeling of it, wet and sticky, shoves Bob over the edge he'd been climbing and he stifles an open-mouthed noise against Michael's shoulder as his body stiffens and shakes. His mess is added between them as Michael-already coming down-is letting go.
His cheeks are flushed, eyes lidded, clothes rumpled. Bob watches the swimmer's chest rise and drop in shallow gasps and then raises his eyes to find Michael's waiting for him. A quiet, laughing smile climbs across the swimmer's face.
"You're not gonna tell, are you, Mr Costas?" Michael echoes an earlier question, mouth close again, fingers wrapping back around hips and surely staining pants.
Bob laughs, mostly air. "Call me Bob."
As for the new, here is.
:: Michael Phelps/Bob Costas, R. Unbeta'ed.
08.28.2008 (7:56 am)
"10/90"
The knock on the door is a welcome reprieve from his pencil and paper. Bob rubs a hand back through his hair and stands up, toes digging into the soft cream carpet of his hotel room. The stub of lead, eraser chewed off, is stuck behind his ear.
For Beijing Bob uses superlatives like amazing and tremendous, but in truth he's not gotten many chances to revel in culture shock; he is firmly under NBC's umbrella for this first week, studio to hotel and back. Most of his experience comes from news feeds.
There's a small fog in his head as he crosses the private suite to the door-the water shortage, the protesters getting deported, the age of the Chinese gymnasts, Michael Phelps and Usaine Bolt. Bob has been in the business long enough to know that improv is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration, and he's been over the all facts, rewatched all the footage. Now he'll just have to let it come to him.
A twist of his arm checks the time; it's close to eleven p.m. Beijing time. He hadn't realized and the knowledge is enough to make a yawn try to crawl up from deep in his chest. It's stifled with the back of his hand as he opens the door.
Funny thing about letting inspiration come to him is that it never fails to, one way or another. The hallway is brighter than the dim single lamp and TV-glow of his suite and for a moment Bob thinks he might be wrong about it really being Michael Phelps standing outside his room so close to midnight. But he's not.
His eyebrows raise. "Michael. Hello." Bob takes half a step back, unsure if the kid only has something to say or wants a nightcap-the swimmer's eyes look a little bloodshot and he's not so quick to blame the chlorine levels at the Cube; Phelps won his last race two days ago.
"Hey." A long finger points into the hotel room. "Can I come in?" When he pulls himself off the opposite wall there's a little unsteady in his step, a wobble to the right of the barely-there variety.
Bob nods and takes himself completely out of the way of the door, holding it open. He's got a million sudden questions that have absolutely nothing to do with swimming or goals or Olympic feelings and he bites his tongue. Michael slopes in with his hand in his pockets. "Nice place."
"Tell that to NBC; it's on their tab," Bob says as he closes the door behind the swimmer. "But thank you."
Michael laughs quietly, damn near awkwardly. Of course he almost always manages to look awkward most of the time, Bob had found, unless he's in close proximity to a pool. Put sneakers on him and his shoulders roll the way swimmers' shoulders tend to and some times there is the ghost of a true slouch that must have been swum out of him. Though it's pretty endearing, truth be told.
Bob runs a hand over his mouth and then links fingers behind his back. "What can I do for you? Everything all right?" Michael is trailing fingers over the edge of his temporary desk, covered in notes and newspapers and Don't forget across a yellow legal pad in Bob's cramped handwriting.
"Oh. Yeah, I was just. You know. Bored."
Drunk, Bob supplies instead, but he doesn't do that sort of coverage. Leave the gossip to Walters. So he nods and gives a corner of what's probably an indulgent smile. "Hard for me to believe that the athletes are given the chance to get bored."
The brown eyes that look at him are smiling, crows stepping into the skin at the corners. There's something, though, something about the way Michael's mouth is tipped up near crooked that makes Bob second guess both bored and drunk.
"All how you look at it," Michael says. "Maybe if you've been to one Speedo party you've been to them all." He shrugs with a graceful wave of shoulders and then half-swallows a laugh. "Guess I'm not a good posterboy. You're not gonna tell, are you?"
There it is again. That something-and Bob feels distinctly like he's being played. His instincts have been years sharpened by the assholes in the NFL and MLB; if Michael Phelps thinks he's the next Owens or Bonds maybe he should think again.
But, no. Bob doesn't really believe that. Because he's had his judge of character sharpened, too, and Michael Phelps is leagues above T.O.
"I cover the accomplishments," he says, leaning against the arm of the sofa, "not the salaries."
"I like your laugh."
It's so out of left field that Bob can find nothing to say; it's a rare occasion. Michael straightens in the silence and it feels like he's taking advantage-he puts himself close and Bob has to look up to see those laughing eyes. The Olympian's mouth folds upward again, making him look a bit like a kid with his hand in the cookie jar up to the elbow. "What? I said like your laugh."
Bob is still. Against bigger guys (and most of them are) he's stood his ground; he's become adept at turning anger into humor to defuse a situation-a lot of athletes aren't know for their level heads. Bob's dealt with every manner of man in his long career, maybe, and woman, but now he's thinking that he's never dealt with anyone like Michael Phelps.
There's no aggression in the kid's closeness, no defensive tension. Michael is very loose, right up to the curl of his smile. Nothing is truly effective-only hit and miss-when the other team is holding the playbook. Better men them Bob Costas have failed at planning such a defense.
"Okay," Bob hears himself say. "Thank you." For the first time in months he feels off-balance. He's very conscious of the fact that despite being surrounded by the things that make up his temporary home-suits hanging from doorways in dry cleaning bags, reading glasses folded up ontop of a novel he's been trying to finish for going-on six weeks, a half-full mug of coffee-they are suddenly playing on Michael's court.
The swimmer is standing straight, leaning slightly in with the bull-dog focus that Bob's become used to equating with clips from the pool. Michael on the deck. Michael pre-race. Michael in warm-down. Michael with his ear-buds.
He stands above Bob like he's standing on the block. Christ. Bob's palms are sweating a little bit. "Michael..."
"Mike."
They'd missed that in the interview after the record-setting medal. Mike. Here was no Anastasia 'Nastia' Liukins. Debbie Phelps had called him Michael, the world called him Michael, and Bob called him Michael.
Or had, apparently, until this moment. Bob wonders what percentage of people in the world right now could say 'Mike Phelps' without thinking it sounded wrong. Sports Illustrated should look at that for it's "Go Figure" column. In fact, he should jot it down-
"Mr Costas?"
Bob is fingering the pencil still behind his ear; before he can look up warm fingers are covering his and sliding the stub out from under them. The bitten, empty metal end scrapes skin and hair and pours goosebumps down his arms. That long-fingered hand dwarfs his sad little pencil, engulfs it entirely. Bob swallows and when he looks up Michael's brown eyes are closer than ever.
Bells go off, whistles sing. He's young, he thinks, wishing that he were instead thinking things more productive to stopping the incoming moment, everyone forgets it-
Then those eyes close and Michael Phelps presses his slightly open mouth against Bob's. The touch is warm and faintly aggressive after all; a tongue slides over his bottom lip with a wet non-friction.
Hands raise and push on Michael's chest; it's like pushing against a brick wall. Bob turns his head. "Michael-"
"Mike." It's a stubborn breath that smells vaguely of tequila; Michael's turning his own head after and trying to resume the kiss.
"Mike-"
But two large hands on his face stop whatever words he was gathering to talk himself out of this one. And he was wrong, all wrong-Michael's eyes are old, and tired, and there's tension there but it's not defensive. Maybe Michael Phelps doesn't know defensive; the thought is both terrifying and exhilarating.
Bob loses his place and Michael's mouth closes back over his. A tongue presses through his lips and runs across his teeth. The hands that Bob had raised to push the younger man away while thoughts like crazy were running through his head find themselves fisted in the soft fabric of a black button down shirt that does little justice for the body hidden beneath.
He knows. He's seen-the world has seen. But nobody knew this.
There's less fight then there should be when Michael's hands drop to his hips and walk them both over to his lean-to of a desk. Fingers press with enough force to make Bob's breath shallow and facts roll through his mind, things he's read about the lung capacity of swimmers, inane things that he's trained himself to sift through and forget.
His rear hits the desk, is pushed into the wooden lip when Michael grinds himself up with a long, slow roll of hips. He does it again and even while the friction is making Bob hard his mind is listing off world records and the little sarcastic prick he is way down deep wonders if this is going to be a short-course.
His fingers climb up and grab broad shoulders; Michael's settled into a rhythm against him that says he knows how to fuck and little else and whatever his eyes said before, Bob knows it's just like a kid to blow it in the first fifty.
Hands fall and the rhythm breaks apart as Bob slips his hands under Michael's shirttails to slip open the button on his jeans. Skin brushes knuckles, smooth and warm, and there is the hiss of the zipper crawling down along with the press of his palm behind denim.
Michael's cock is hot from the friction between them, hard and swollen against his palm. Bob can feel a quick pulse through thin, supple skin and his own heart beat tries instinctively to match it. Michael's face falls against the crook of his shoulder with a moaning shiver of breath. A damp mouth crawls up his neck and Bob thinks fleetingly about lung capacity again-his own is not up to the task.
The same fingers that had, he was sure, bruised his hips, roam down to his ass to grab him through his chinos. It makes his breath catch, hard and short, as Michael jerks them together. Bob is nearly pulled off his feet. His legs spread slightly and his fist struggles to resume it's loose-fisted pace.
There's no controlling the situation. Michael's breath is a rasp against his ear, each in and out marked by a throb of Bob's cock. All the thinking he's done on his feet over the years and there's nothing that comes now-it's thrown out the window by the determination of one young swimmer. Bob murmurs a curse as his pants are opened; Michael's hand around him is a curse and a blessing and all he can do is lift his hips.
They fit together-Michael fists them together. Bob hangs on, precariously on the edge of the desk, on his toes, off his game. Under rolled cuffs his arms are covered in goosebumps, under his pants his hips are bruised and aching for more. Michael's long-fingered hand is all tight and hot and he is going to come apart under it.
There are two distinct sensations; there is the relentless mash of soft skin on the inside and outside there is the rough, quick strokes of calluses. Bob can't focus on anything else; his head's fallen back and his notes and papers complain as the shift of their bodies crumple and disturb. Michael isn't kissing his neck anymore, just puffing breath after breath against it in time to his tugging, making the skin hot and damp.
The breath stops; a warning prelude to an almost hard few twisting jerks of Michael's hand and then a spread of heat. The feeling of it, wet and sticky, shoves Bob over the edge he'd been climbing and he stifles an open-mouthed noise against Michael's shoulder as his body stiffens and shakes. His mess is added between them as Michael-already coming down-is letting go.
His cheeks are flushed, eyes lidded, clothes rumpled. Bob watches the swimmer's chest rise and drop in shallow gasps and then raises his eyes to find Michael's waiting for him. A quiet, laughing smile climbs across the swimmer's face.
"You're not gonna tell, are you, Mr Costas?" Michael echoes an earlier question, mouth close again, fingers wrapping back around hips and surely staining pants.
Bob laughs, mostly air. "Call me Bob."