In Exactly This Moment, Five Seconds From Ago for the fs_exchange community!
Author: willowbell
Title: In Exactly This Moment, Five Seconds From Ago
Recipient: the fs_exchange community
Skaters/Pairings: Johnny Weir/Evan Lysacek, implied Brian Joubert/Brian Joubert
Rating: R
Wordcount: 3170
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: The events portrayed in this story are fictional and do not reflect on the actual people written about.
A/N: Thanks to my beta, M. All remaining mistakes are mine. (Sorry for any inconsistencies re: the venue for the 2006 Olympics.) Title inspired by the Big Bang Theory.
Summary: To be fair, Evgeni had told them not to go into any marked doorways during their tour of ЦЕНТР ФИЗИКИ, The Russian Center for Physics Research. Johnny and Brian do so anyway, with interesting results.
To be fair, Evgeni had told them not to go into any marked doorways during their tour of ЦЕНТР ФИЗИКИ, The Russian Center for Physics Research. “Especially if you cannot understand the signs,” he said pointedly to Johnny, which was so unfair, okay- Johnny could totally read and write in Cyrillic. Just because he had mistook coffee for a slang word for cock and thought that Yana and Zhenya were trying to get him into a threesome via text; it was one time, for Chrissakes.
It was a big deal that they had been invited to look at some brilliant physicist’s equation computing the mechanics of a perfect quad. Well, it was a pretty big deal that the invitation had been extended to all four of them; apparently Zhenya got this invitation about once a month, but this was the first time he’d taken them up on it.
Johnny could speak Russian well, but the physicist who had been their tour guide had a tendency to flail and chatter on incomprehensibly when excited. Which was about ninety percent of the time. Evgeni’s translations-usually terse, slightly interested, and muttered in heavily accented English-kind of helped. Brian and Stéphane were doing okay, nodding along to whatever the physicist pointed out and making polite (Brian) ooh-ing noises (Stéphane).
Johnny really wanted a smoke though. They seemed to be nearing the end of the corridor, and when the other skaters and the tour guide rounded a corner, he pushed open the door at the end of the hall, sure that it would lead to a solidly built fire escape, with cover enough for him to sneak a cigarette. Or three. So maybe he had a cold-a smoke would make him feel more settled, less like he was going to drop dead from boredom. Mind decided, he ducked his head to avoid the eyes of any passing scientists, and sidled through the half-open doorway.
The ЦЕНТР ФИЗИКИ must be a lot bigger than it looked from the outside, was Johnny’s first thought, because the door at the end of the hall led to a skating rink.
That was wrong. It wasn’t just any rink. He was at the top of the bleachers of a huge arena, and all the banners read TORINO 2006.
Holy fucking shit.
The rink was still empty, but Johnny… he knew that ice. There was someone on it even now, a tall, solitary skater in all black. Johnny had to sit down to stop his legs from shaking. He had no idea what day it was, if the men’s singles event was over or not. He glanced at the board, and it gave him a pretty good idea of what date it was. It was two days before the men’s singles. He squinted at the skater on the ice, trying to recognize who it was, but then he noticed some of the officials giving him curious looks, so he ducked his head down. He pulled his hood up and tried to make himself blend into the bleachers.
If he remembered right, he was going to come in to practice his long program now, but he wouldn’t finish, wouldn’t even start properly, because there was someone on the ice already-
“Evan,” he exhaled, just as his younger (skinnier, Johnny thought enviously) self stomped through the doors and shouted the same thing. The officials by the boards turned their heads as one to look at him as he shed his skateguards and glided towards Evan, who banked and turned to face him, one hip cocked almost unconsciously. “My turn. Off the ice.”
If he closed his eyes, Johnny could remember the exact mulish expression Evan’s face took on as he crossed his arms and said, “I still have ten more minutes.”
“Which you can spend in the showers,” Johnny on the ice said, tilting his head back to glare at Evan properly. And then he skated off without a backward glance, towards where Priscilla was talking with one of the officials, who gestured at Johnny’s jacket again, and made sounds like un-American, or mixed loyalties. Younger Johnny rolled his eyes and took his place at the center of the ice, in his starting position.
Johnny cast a critical eye over the form of his younger self. Good posture, nice legs, graceful arms. Before the music started, he had closed his eyes-and so had never noticed that Evan had skated to the boards behind him and was watching, almost raptly, at Johnny’s still form.
Johnny felt like a voyeur, seeing that open, hungry expression on Evan’s face.
Then the music started, and Johnny on the ice, half a decade younger and already hurting in a way Johnny thought he’d never hurt, started to move. Johnny remembered that it had been easy to do the long program that day. He was confident about the Swan-if this was his last season, he’d told his mom, then it would have been enough, just because he’d created something like it. He had done numerous clean run-throughs of the Swan since they’d come to Torino, but only a couple really good runs, for the long program. Mostly he popped jumps or stepped out of them, and he had felt the tension emanate from Priscilla, watching anxiously from the boards.
Kind of like how Evan stayed- watching, leaning against the boards. But his face almost wistful, and his eyes tracked Johnny from one end of the rink to the other. Finally, he shook his head like a dog, as if to clear it, and moved away from the boards.
Johnny, sitting in the bleachers, was torn between watching himself fall on the triple flip and looking at Evan, who kept glancing back with that strange look on his face, all the way to the exits.
It wasn’t really any contest. Johnny got to his feet and spared his younger self one last, lingering look. He watched as his younger self nailed jump after jump, combination after combination. If he closed his eyes, he could recall the feeling even now-the exhilarating joy at finally getting it perfect.
But he knew how this ended.
***
Evan was showering in the last cubicle, furthest from the door. There was a half-open locker in the main room, and while his skates were carefully placed in their case but the rest of his clothes in a messy pile on the floor. Johnny had picked up the shirt before he even realized he was doing so, and folded it away without really thinking, stuffing it into a gym bag placed on the seat.
There was a squeak of the shower knobs, and Evan came into the main part of the locker room, one towel low-slung on his hips and pale. His feet were bare and large against the tiles, and he looked at Johnny in surprise when he pulled the other towel he was using to dry his hair away from his face.
“Johnny?” he said, uncertainly. “What are you doing here? I thought you were-,” He gestured in the direction of the rink, but Johnny tilted his head and grinned at Evan, sharp.
“I’m taking a break,” he improvised, and willed Evan not to get curious now. Evan seemed to take the hint and went over to the bench where his bag was, inches from where Johnny sat. He held himself stiffly, self-consciously, and he glanced confusedly at Johnny before saying, “You look… different.” Evan was squinting-of course Johnny’s hair was different, and what he was wearing wasn’t exactly training attire.
Johnny shrugged, at a loss for words, and watched one gleaming drop of water fall from the side of Evan’s face and onto his collarbone, nestling into the hollow. He didn’t trust himself to speak-not even the “Hail, creatures of earth, I am a time traveler, take me to your leader,” that he had been planning since it became clear to him that that was what the door did.
When it came right down to it, Johnny was an athlete, and athletes were more eloquent with their bodies than with their words. He stepped closer to Evan and reached up with one hand to card searching fingers through Evan’s damp hair.
Evan wasn’t breathing, and his voice seemed hoarse and trapped in his throat when he asked, “What are you doing?”
Johnny smiled, once, sharp and ready, and answered, “Anything you want me to do.” Then he pulled Evan down, so he could press Evan’s lower lip between both of his, nip at it lightly with his teeth.
There was a moment of hesitation, all the muscles in Evan’s body shaking with the slightest tremor, before Evan seemed to make up his mind and grabbed at Johnny with huge hands, one skimming up Johnny’s shirt, to run over his tight abs and muscles, stroke lightly over his nipples. Evan opened his mouth, supplicating, and Johnny made the decision to push Evan into the wall and try to climb him like a tree. Evan reversed their positions and hitched Johnny’s leg up around his waist, his towel slipping because of the rushed movement. Johnny bit along Evan’s jaw, and wrapped a fist around Evan’s cock, thumbing at the head.
Evan made a noise that sounded like he’d been punched in the gut, and let Johnny down so he could scrabble at the front of Johnny’s pants with searching, urgent fingers. When he’d pushed Johnny’s jeans down and Johnny had kicked them away, along with his underwear (part of Johnny groaned at thinking of his designer denim on the locker room floor), Evan met Johnny’s eyes and he looked-like he was planning something. Johnny favored him with a suspicious glare, which Evan returned with a smile as he sank to his knees swiftly, almost painfully. He looked far too happy, Johnny thought briefly, to be in that position, but then Evan latched eager, wet lips over the head of his cock, and Johnny didn’t think of much else, after that.
***
He wondered that if he could convince himself (his younger self, that is) that fucking Evan Lysacek was a life-changing, soul-searching event. He imagined trying to tell a twenty year old Johnny that-then promptly decided against it. Not only would the universe possibly explode if he did try to make contact with his younger self (according to his great, great geeky knowledge, gleaned from years of reading science fiction and fantasy with his family), but he’d probably messed up the space-time continuum enough, just fucking (and being fucked by) Evan Lysacek. Plus he wasn’t looking forward to getting derisively laughed at by his younger self, still reeling from the trouble with Drew and ready to cut anything that fell stupidly into his path. It was a bad idea, Johnny thought regretfully, to suggest Lysacek to Johnny at twenty. Twenty year old Johnny would probably chew Evan up and spit him out. And then step on his balls.
Johnny mourned the years of mind-blowing sex that was going to be denied him. Maybe he could even warn himself to get all the sex he could handle now, before he started next season and Galina’s resulting sex embargo.
This did, however, explain the puppy-dog looks Evan shot him and all the touchy-feely hanging out in his room, before Johnny politely explained to Evan that he didn’t date guys who tanned themselves the same shade as Cheetos. Even though that wasn’t the worst of the Evan tanning episodes that Johnny would witness in the years after-it seemed like Evan was trying to spitefully tan himself into more and more obnoxious and blinding shades, in response to Johnny’s cruel, offhand comment. Johnny winced when he remembered the wounded look Evan had shot him, before attempting to hug Johnny one last time and leaving, the door closing behind his dejected form.
He wondered if he could warn his younger self all the same-don’t implode during the long program, try not to be so nervous-but before he could decide, he noticed the writing on one of the metal doors that lined the hallway.
Why would a door in Torino have Cyrillic characters? Johnny dove for the door handle, before the door got smart about disappearing again, and was stopped by another hand reaching for it. Johnny looked up, one hand tight around the handle already. The other man looked equally surprised.
“Brian?” Johnny said in disbelief.
“Johnny?” Brian said in more or less the same tone, except his eyes were darting amusedly over Johnny’s neck, which was probably marked with huge hickies, given Evan’s surprising penchant for Johnny’s neck and shoulders. Johnny clapped a hand over a particularly large bruise and asked Brian, “What are you doing here?”
“I thought it was a bathroom,” Brian said, shrugging his massive shoulders. “Obviously it was not.”
“Why didn’t I see you though?” Johnny wondered, and Brian shrugged again.
“You were,” and Brian grinned at Johnny, wider, more mischievous. “Otherwise occupied, I think. It is a good thing no one else saw you with Lysacek.”
“You saw?” Johnny said, feeling the heat spread from his neck upwards.
“I was looking for a bathroom,” Brian said. “And you looked like you were enjoying yourself.”
“So where did you go?” Johnny asked, genuinely curious now, and eager to distract Brian from further probing.
“I went to look for myself, of course,” Brian said slowly, as if Johnny were very simple and had to be fed sentences word by word. “To tell myself what would happen.”
Johnny’s mouth fell open. “Did you?”
“Non, not exactly,” Brian said sheepishly. “My younger self, he is very… excité.”
“What does that mean?” Johnny asked, confused. The word was familiar-he thought he’d heard Stéphane use it before.
“Attractive,” Brian said, ducking his head. It was his turn to blush, and Johnny’s mouth dropped open again, in surprise, as the pieces in his head fell together and started to make sense.
“You fucked yourself?” Johnny said, torn between clutching at his head and laughing until he cried. Or peed in his expensive designer pants.
Brian looked appropriately chagrined. He grinned at Johnny though, looking at him from under his bangs, and he said, almost philosophically, “I thought, I am not going to medal at these Games anyway, it is cursed for me.”
“Good attitude,” Johnny said, amused. “Very positive, Brian.”
Brian shrugged again. “Eh, it was very good, at least, and now it makes sense, the man who looked very much like me coming into my hotel room and fucking me through the mattress. I actually blamed him for years and years, for my loss, but I see now that I couldn’t have resisted my younger self. Yes,” Brian repeated. “Now it all makes sense.”
“What, time traveling?” Johnny asked.
“It is better than my former theory, that I had an older brother out there my parents wouldn’t tell me about,” Brian answered matter-of-factly.
“So your old theory was accidental incest?” Johnny asked, torn again between hilarity and being aghast.
“It’s not like I thought time traveling was possibly in the equation,” Brian said defensively, letting go of the doorknob and crossing his arms across his chest.
“We’re such failures at time traveling,” Johnny commented, as he finally turned the door handle and prepared to step back into the other corridor, which was the same wallpaper and horrible linoleum flooring as the ЦЕНТР ФИЗИКИ. “I mean, we could have done so much. Like, changed history or something.”
“I think,” Brian said thoughtfully, following Johnny through the door. “That we did change something today. I discovered something about myself, at least. And you, you did not realize anything, with Lysacek?”
Johnny watched Brian close the door securely behind the two of them, and thought of Evan’s eyes, intent and searching, a slight smile on his lips as he pushed his fingers into Johnny, and of the way he had gasped in surprise when Johnny licked a long stripe from the base of his cock to the tip of it, before swallowing the whole thing down in one smooth motion. Johnny could still feel the head of Evan’s cock, hitting against the back of his throat. He could taste him when he licked his lips; could still smell Evan in his hands and skin, embedded invisibly into the marks he had left on Johnny’s neck.
Brian was looking knowingly at him, but before he could say anything, the tour guide rounded the corner, Evgeni and Stéphane still following him, listening raptly to every word, as the guide said, “And that concludes our tour of the ЦЕНТР ФИЗИКИ. If you will follow me, we will have our refreshments in the lounge.”
Stéphane and Evgeni noticed Brian and Johnny then, but while Evgeni nodded once to them, before sweeping regally into the lounge (how did he manage to do that, Johnny wondered, in short pants and a Cheburashka print t-shirt?), Stéphane bounded over to where Brian and Johnny stood, and asked them where they’d been.
“We did our own tour,” Brian said, before Johnny could get a word out. Stéphane opened his mouth to ask something else, but Brian said, “Do you think they’ll have those little Russian cakes I like so much?” and steered Stéphane in the direction Evgeni had gone. He looked pointedly at Johnny though, before they rounded the corner and were out of sight.
Johnny wondered what Brian wanted him to do, exactly. He mulled over Brian’s last words to him-You did not realize anything, with Lysacek?
Johnny fished his phone out of his bag and scrolled down to a number he hadn’t used in years. He stared at it for a long while before he pressed the dial key.
Maybe he wouldn’t answer, Johnny thought wildly. Wasn’t it the middle of the night, over there?
“’lo,” Evan’s voice was gravelly over the phone, sounding half-asleep and irritated.
“Evan?” Johnny said, hesitantly.
“Johnny?” Evan said, and there was a sound like bedclothes rustling. “Uh, hi?”
Johnny took a deep breath, willing himself to stay on the line, and he said, “Do you have time? If you’re not doing anything right now, I have the weirdest story for you.”
There was a silence on the phone line, and Johnny had thought Evan had hung up on him, but then Evan said, softly, as if he’d pressed the mouthpiece closer to his mouth, almost mushed against it.
“Yeah?” Evan said, and something about his voice made Johnny think again of the Evan in that locker room in Torino, half-wondering and surprised at Johnny’s sudden appearance. There was a funny feeling in Johnny’s chest, but whether it was pity or anticipation or something else-he couldn’t even tell himself. Evan’s voice sounded like he had been waiting for this call to come for years.
“Yeah,” he replied instead, and Evan said, almost childishly, “So tell me already.”
Johnny took a deep breath, and did exactly that.
-END-
Title: In Exactly This Moment, Five Seconds From Ago
Recipient: the fs_exchange community
Skaters/Pairings: Johnny Weir/Evan Lysacek, implied Brian Joubert/Brian Joubert
Rating: R
Wordcount: 3170
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: The events portrayed in this story are fictional and do not reflect on the actual people written about.
A/N: Thanks to my beta, M. All remaining mistakes are mine. (Sorry for any inconsistencies re: the venue for the 2006 Olympics.) Title inspired by the Big Bang Theory.
Summary: To be fair, Evgeni had told them not to go into any marked doorways during their tour of ЦЕНТР ФИЗИКИ, The Russian Center for Physics Research. Johnny and Brian do so anyway, with interesting results.
To be fair, Evgeni had told them not to go into any marked doorways during their tour of ЦЕНТР ФИЗИКИ, The Russian Center for Physics Research. “Especially if you cannot understand the signs,” he said pointedly to Johnny, which was so unfair, okay- Johnny could totally read and write in Cyrillic. Just because he had mistook coffee for a slang word for cock and thought that Yana and Zhenya were trying to get him into a threesome via text; it was one time, for Chrissakes.
It was a big deal that they had been invited to look at some brilliant physicist’s equation computing the mechanics of a perfect quad. Well, it was a pretty big deal that the invitation had been extended to all four of them; apparently Zhenya got this invitation about once a month, but this was the first time he’d taken them up on it.
Johnny could speak Russian well, but the physicist who had been their tour guide had a tendency to flail and chatter on incomprehensibly when excited. Which was about ninety percent of the time. Evgeni’s translations-usually terse, slightly interested, and muttered in heavily accented English-kind of helped. Brian and Stéphane were doing okay, nodding along to whatever the physicist pointed out and making polite (Brian) ooh-ing noises (Stéphane).
Johnny really wanted a smoke though. They seemed to be nearing the end of the corridor, and when the other skaters and the tour guide rounded a corner, he pushed open the door at the end of the hall, sure that it would lead to a solidly built fire escape, with cover enough for him to sneak a cigarette. Or three. So maybe he had a cold-a smoke would make him feel more settled, less like he was going to drop dead from boredom. Mind decided, he ducked his head to avoid the eyes of any passing scientists, and sidled through the half-open doorway.
The ЦЕНТР ФИЗИКИ must be a lot bigger than it looked from the outside, was Johnny’s first thought, because the door at the end of the hall led to a skating rink.
That was wrong. It wasn’t just any rink. He was at the top of the bleachers of a huge arena, and all the banners read TORINO 2006.
Holy fucking shit.
The rink was still empty, but Johnny… he knew that ice. There was someone on it even now, a tall, solitary skater in all black. Johnny had to sit down to stop his legs from shaking. He had no idea what day it was, if the men’s singles event was over or not. He glanced at the board, and it gave him a pretty good idea of what date it was. It was two days before the men’s singles. He squinted at the skater on the ice, trying to recognize who it was, but then he noticed some of the officials giving him curious looks, so he ducked his head down. He pulled his hood up and tried to make himself blend into the bleachers.
If he remembered right, he was going to come in to practice his long program now, but he wouldn’t finish, wouldn’t even start properly, because there was someone on the ice already-
“Evan,” he exhaled, just as his younger (skinnier, Johnny thought enviously) self stomped through the doors and shouted the same thing. The officials by the boards turned their heads as one to look at him as he shed his skateguards and glided towards Evan, who banked and turned to face him, one hip cocked almost unconsciously. “My turn. Off the ice.”
If he closed his eyes, Johnny could remember the exact mulish expression Evan’s face took on as he crossed his arms and said, “I still have ten more minutes.”
“Which you can spend in the showers,” Johnny on the ice said, tilting his head back to glare at Evan properly. And then he skated off without a backward glance, towards where Priscilla was talking with one of the officials, who gestured at Johnny’s jacket again, and made sounds like un-American, or mixed loyalties. Younger Johnny rolled his eyes and took his place at the center of the ice, in his starting position.
Johnny cast a critical eye over the form of his younger self. Good posture, nice legs, graceful arms. Before the music started, he had closed his eyes-and so had never noticed that Evan had skated to the boards behind him and was watching, almost raptly, at Johnny’s still form.
Johnny felt like a voyeur, seeing that open, hungry expression on Evan’s face.
Then the music started, and Johnny on the ice, half a decade younger and already hurting in a way Johnny thought he’d never hurt, started to move. Johnny remembered that it had been easy to do the long program that day. He was confident about the Swan-if this was his last season, he’d told his mom, then it would have been enough, just because he’d created something like it. He had done numerous clean run-throughs of the Swan since they’d come to Torino, but only a couple really good runs, for the long program. Mostly he popped jumps or stepped out of them, and he had felt the tension emanate from Priscilla, watching anxiously from the boards.
Kind of like how Evan stayed- watching, leaning against the boards. But his face almost wistful, and his eyes tracked Johnny from one end of the rink to the other. Finally, he shook his head like a dog, as if to clear it, and moved away from the boards.
Johnny, sitting in the bleachers, was torn between watching himself fall on the triple flip and looking at Evan, who kept glancing back with that strange look on his face, all the way to the exits.
It wasn’t really any contest. Johnny got to his feet and spared his younger self one last, lingering look. He watched as his younger self nailed jump after jump, combination after combination. If he closed his eyes, he could recall the feeling even now-the exhilarating joy at finally getting it perfect.
But he knew how this ended.
***
Evan was showering in the last cubicle, furthest from the door. There was a half-open locker in the main room, and while his skates were carefully placed in their case but the rest of his clothes in a messy pile on the floor. Johnny had picked up the shirt before he even realized he was doing so, and folded it away without really thinking, stuffing it into a gym bag placed on the seat.
There was a squeak of the shower knobs, and Evan came into the main part of the locker room, one towel low-slung on his hips and pale. His feet were bare and large against the tiles, and he looked at Johnny in surprise when he pulled the other towel he was using to dry his hair away from his face.
“Johnny?” he said, uncertainly. “What are you doing here? I thought you were-,” He gestured in the direction of the rink, but Johnny tilted his head and grinned at Evan, sharp.
“I’m taking a break,” he improvised, and willed Evan not to get curious now. Evan seemed to take the hint and went over to the bench where his bag was, inches from where Johnny sat. He held himself stiffly, self-consciously, and he glanced confusedly at Johnny before saying, “You look… different.” Evan was squinting-of course Johnny’s hair was different, and what he was wearing wasn’t exactly training attire.
Johnny shrugged, at a loss for words, and watched one gleaming drop of water fall from the side of Evan’s face and onto his collarbone, nestling into the hollow. He didn’t trust himself to speak-not even the “Hail, creatures of earth, I am a time traveler, take me to your leader,” that he had been planning since it became clear to him that that was what the door did.
When it came right down to it, Johnny was an athlete, and athletes were more eloquent with their bodies than with their words. He stepped closer to Evan and reached up with one hand to card searching fingers through Evan’s damp hair.
Evan wasn’t breathing, and his voice seemed hoarse and trapped in his throat when he asked, “What are you doing?”
Johnny smiled, once, sharp and ready, and answered, “Anything you want me to do.” Then he pulled Evan down, so he could press Evan’s lower lip between both of his, nip at it lightly with his teeth.
There was a moment of hesitation, all the muscles in Evan’s body shaking with the slightest tremor, before Evan seemed to make up his mind and grabbed at Johnny with huge hands, one skimming up Johnny’s shirt, to run over his tight abs and muscles, stroke lightly over his nipples. Evan opened his mouth, supplicating, and Johnny made the decision to push Evan into the wall and try to climb him like a tree. Evan reversed their positions and hitched Johnny’s leg up around his waist, his towel slipping because of the rushed movement. Johnny bit along Evan’s jaw, and wrapped a fist around Evan’s cock, thumbing at the head.
Evan made a noise that sounded like he’d been punched in the gut, and let Johnny down so he could scrabble at the front of Johnny’s pants with searching, urgent fingers. When he’d pushed Johnny’s jeans down and Johnny had kicked them away, along with his underwear (part of Johnny groaned at thinking of his designer denim on the locker room floor), Evan met Johnny’s eyes and he looked-like he was planning something. Johnny favored him with a suspicious glare, which Evan returned with a smile as he sank to his knees swiftly, almost painfully. He looked far too happy, Johnny thought briefly, to be in that position, but then Evan latched eager, wet lips over the head of his cock, and Johnny didn’t think of much else, after that.
***
He wondered that if he could convince himself (his younger self, that is) that fucking Evan Lysacek was a life-changing, soul-searching event. He imagined trying to tell a twenty year old Johnny that-then promptly decided against it. Not only would the universe possibly explode if he did try to make contact with his younger self (according to his great, great geeky knowledge, gleaned from years of reading science fiction and fantasy with his family), but he’d probably messed up the space-time continuum enough, just fucking (and being fucked by) Evan Lysacek. Plus he wasn’t looking forward to getting derisively laughed at by his younger self, still reeling from the trouble with Drew and ready to cut anything that fell stupidly into his path. It was a bad idea, Johnny thought regretfully, to suggest Lysacek to Johnny at twenty. Twenty year old Johnny would probably chew Evan up and spit him out. And then step on his balls.
Johnny mourned the years of mind-blowing sex that was going to be denied him. Maybe he could even warn himself to get all the sex he could handle now, before he started next season and Galina’s resulting sex embargo.
This did, however, explain the puppy-dog looks Evan shot him and all the touchy-feely hanging out in his room, before Johnny politely explained to Evan that he didn’t date guys who tanned themselves the same shade as Cheetos. Even though that wasn’t the worst of the Evan tanning episodes that Johnny would witness in the years after-it seemed like Evan was trying to spitefully tan himself into more and more obnoxious and blinding shades, in response to Johnny’s cruel, offhand comment. Johnny winced when he remembered the wounded look Evan had shot him, before attempting to hug Johnny one last time and leaving, the door closing behind his dejected form.
He wondered if he could warn his younger self all the same-don’t implode during the long program, try not to be so nervous-but before he could decide, he noticed the writing on one of the metal doors that lined the hallway.
Why would a door in Torino have Cyrillic characters? Johnny dove for the door handle, before the door got smart about disappearing again, and was stopped by another hand reaching for it. Johnny looked up, one hand tight around the handle already. The other man looked equally surprised.
“Brian?” Johnny said in disbelief.
“Johnny?” Brian said in more or less the same tone, except his eyes were darting amusedly over Johnny’s neck, which was probably marked with huge hickies, given Evan’s surprising penchant for Johnny’s neck and shoulders. Johnny clapped a hand over a particularly large bruise and asked Brian, “What are you doing here?”
“I thought it was a bathroom,” Brian said, shrugging his massive shoulders. “Obviously it was not.”
“Why didn’t I see you though?” Johnny wondered, and Brian shrugged again.
“You were,” and Brian grinned at Johnny, wider, more mischievous. “Otherwise occupied, I think. It is a good thing no one else saw you with Lysacek.”
“You saw?” Johnny said, feeling the heat spread from his neck upwards.
“I was looking for a bathroom,” Brian said. “And you looked like you were enjoying yourself.”
“So where did you go?” Johnny asked, genuinely curious now, and eager to distract Brian from further probing.
“I went to look for myself, of course,” Brian said slowly, as if Johnny were very simple and had to be fed sentences word by word. “To tell myself what would happen.”
Johnny’s mouth fell open. “Did you?”
“Non, not exactly,” Brian said sheepishly. “My younger self, he is very… excité.”
“What does that mean?” Johnny asked, confused. The word was familiar-he thought he’d heard Stéphane use it before.
“Attractive,” Brian said, ducking his head. It was his turn to blush, and Johnny’s mouth dropped open again, in surprise, as the pieces in his head fell together and started to make sense.
“You fucked yourself?” Johnny said, torn between clutching at his head and laughing until he cried. Or peed in his expensive designer pants.
Brian looked appropriately chagrined. He grinned at Johnny though, looking at him from under his bangs, and he said, almost philosophically, “I thought, I am not going to medal at these Games anyway, it is cursed for me.”
“Good attitude,” Johnny said, amused. “Very positive, Brian.”
Brian shrugged again. “Eh, it was very good, at least, and now it makes sense, the man who looked very much like me coming into my hotel room and fucking me through the mattress. I actually blamed him for years and years, for my loss, but I see now that I couldn’t have resisted my younger self. Yes,” Brian repeated. “Now it all makes sense.”
“What, time traveling?” Johnny asked.
“It is better than my former theory, that I had an older brother out there my parents wouldn’t tell me about,” Brian answered matter-of-factly.
“So your old theory was accidental incest?” Johnny asked, torn again between hilarity and being aghast.
“It’s not like I thought time traveling was possibly in the equation,” Brian said defensively, letting go of the doorknob and crossing his arms across his chest.
“We’re such failures at time traveling,” Johnny commented, as he finally turned the door handle and prepared to step back into the other corridor, which was the same wallpaper and horrible linoleum flooring as the ЦЕНТР ФИЗИКИ. “I mean, we could have done so much. Like, changed history or something.”
“I think,” Brian said thoughtfully, following Johnny through the door. “That we did change something today. I discovered something about myself, at least. And you, you did not realize anything, with Lysacek?”
Johnny watched Brian close the door securely behind the two of them, and thought of Evan’s eyes, intent and searching, a slight smile on his lips as he pushed his fingers into Johnny, and of the way he had gasped in surprise when Johnny licked a long stripe from the base of his cock to the tip of it, before swallowing the whole thing down in one smooth motion. Johnny could still feel the head of Evan’s cock, hitting against the back of his throat. He could taste him when he licked his lips; could still smell Evan in his hands and skin, embedded invisibly into the marks he had left on Johnny’s neck.
Brian was looking knowingly at him, but before he could say anything, the tour guide rounded the corner, Evgeni and Stéphane still following him, listening raptly to every word, as the guide said, “And that concludes our tour of the ЦЕНТР ФИЗИКИ. If you will follow me, we will have our refreshments in the lounge.”
Stéphane and Evgeni noticed Brian and Johnny then, but while Evgeni nodded once to them, before sweeping regally into the lounge (how did he manage to do that, Johnny wondered, in short pants and a Cheburashka print t-shirt?), Stéphane bounded over to where Brian and Johnny stood, and asked them where they’d been.
“We did our own tour,” Brian said, before Johnny could get a word out. Stéphane opened his mouth to ask something else, but Brian said, “Do you think they’ll have those little Russian cakes I like so much?” and steered Stéphane in the direction Evgeni had gone. He looked pointedly at Johnny though, before they rounded the corner and were out of sight.
Johnny wondered what Brian wanted him to do, exactly. He mulled over Brian’s last words to him-You did not realize anything, with Lysacek?
Johnny fished his phone out of his bag and scrolled down to a number he hadn’t used in years. He stared at it for a long while before he pressed the dial key.
Maybe he wouldn’t answer, Johnny thought wildly. Wasn’t it the middle of the night, over there?
“’lo,” Evan’s voice was gravelly over the phone, sounding half-asleep and irritated.
“Evan?” Johnny said, hesitantly.
“Johnny?” Evan said, and there was a sound like bedclothes rustling. “Uh, hi?”
Johnny took a deep breath, willing himself to stay on the line, and he said, “Do you have time? If you’re not doing anything right now, I have the weirdest story for you.”
There was a silence on the phone line, and Johnny had thought Evan had hung up on him, but then Evan said, softly, as if he’d pressed the mouthpiece closer to his mouth, almost mushed against it.
“Yeah?” Evan said, and something about his voice made Johnny think again of the Evan in that locker room in Torino, half-wondering and surprised at Johnny’s sudden appearance. There was a funny feeling in Johnny’s chest, but whether it was pity or anticipation or something else-he couldn’t even tell himself. Evan’s voice sounded like he had been waiting for this call to come for years.
“Yeah,” he replied instead, and Evan said, almost childishly, “So tell me already.”
Johnny took a deep breath, and did exactly that.
-END-