water never sees the ground, USA/swimming, Phelps/Lochte 1/5
This . . . is not the tattoo porn I set out to write. It's a little more melancholy than I usually go for. But worth a try I guess. Title from Kings of Leon - Cold Desert.
The thing about relationships is this - everyone comes into a relationship with their own set of perspectives. A lifetime of formative experiences that color how each individual views love.
Ryan has always believed in love. He's from a giant close-knit family. His family is loud and full of life and completely overwhelming and he can't imagine having it anyway. He's always believed in saying just exactly what he feels, and never holding back.
Michael has his doubts about love. He doesn't shy away from it, but he started swimming twice a day before he was even a teenager and between that and his gigantic feet there's certainly not much dating to be had. Besides that he's never prescribed to the outward display of affection. He's the child of divorce and that singular event has bound his remaining family so tightly to one another he sometimes feels like they could have an entire family dinner without speaking and leave feeling completely fulfilled. Michael believes in keeping his cards close to the vest - because you never know what's going to happen.
Ryan hits on Michael for months before Michael figures it out. He's been the funny looking guy with long arms and a lisp and yes funny teeth, he can read the internet just like the rest of you. And sure he swims fast and attracts a set of girls who scream his name and grope him when he's signing autographs. But despite their proclamations on the twitter he's pretty sure none of them really love him. So it's probably good that he hasn't actually been interested in girls since he figured out just exactly what dicks are for.
So without really any warning here's Ryan, and Ryan's everywhere, quiet in the ready room and stretching on deck and throwing himself off blocks and pushing Michael so, so very hard to the wall. And then he's there on the podium, and like a second personality there's Ryan post-race, smiling and laughing and next to Michael on the podium with grills and bling and Michael tries so hard to make swimming the most serious of business, but Ryan, it seems without even trying, inspires laughter and levity and reminds Michael time and time again just how amazing his life is.
Ryan gets in a fight with Gregg and comes to Baltimore. He crashes in Michael's guest room and swims Bob's sets at NBAC and lounges in just his boxers with crazy post-swim hair until Michael is ready to lose his entire mind. He finally cracks one night in the kitchen slamming Ryan against the just-closed refrigerator and shoving his tongue down his throat.
"Jesus dude," Ryan pants against Michael's shoulder, fingers sliding against the waistband of his mesh shorts, "I thought I was going to have to start wandering around naked for you to get the message."
Michael's brain unhelpfully supplies a number of white-hot images of Ryan sprawled naked on various surfaces in his condo.
water never sees the ground, USA/swimming, Phelps/Lochte 2/5
Ryan goes back to Gainesville, despite his claims he's actually unable to fight with Gregg for long periods of time. But by the time he's gone Michael has adjusted to running his hands across acres of golden skin whenever he wants and to waking up unceremoniously curled around someone else in a bed that's been his alone for most of his life and the brilliance of someone to order takeout while he's showering after practice.
Even from thousands of miles away Ryan finds a way to teach him about love. Michael feels completely unprepared to deal with the easy way that Ryan ingrains himself into Michael's life. Suddenly there's a constant stream of texts ranging from news to complete incoherence to butchered rap lyrics and messages so dirty Michael sometimes blushes alone in his living room. On top of texting there’s phone calls and when they’re together there’s so much physical affection sometimes it seems like he's drowning in it. But Michael still can name on one hand the people he has said I love you to in the last 365 days. Ryan can fill that same hand in under an hour.
Ryan is so full of love and not afraid to show it and he's just there, with his love and his laugh and his easy affection at every turn. Suddenly without really knowing what happened Michael starts to see that there's something to be said for laying your heart out for all to see. And then it starts to feel like he's drowning when they're apart, like the only time he can really breathe is when Ryan's there to wrap an arm around his shoulders, and turn himself into a burrito in the blankets and to press their still dripping skin together when they're walking from the pool to the showers.
When Michael and Ryan first started this thing Michael was constantly insecure. Ryan doesn't just touch him, Ryan's always touching people. Always slapping hands and backs and wrapping his arms around people just to say hello. Unlimited texting was invented for Ryan. Someone is always blowing up his phone, he talks to one of his sisters at least once a day, he lives with one of his brothers, his dad is a constant fixture at the pool and in Gregg's office and he's even more of a mama's boy than Michael and that's saying something.
There are times when Michael wonders which seat belonged to him on the roller coaster of Lochte love. He wants to mark him, to leave bruises and bite marks and brand his name across Ryan's shoulders. But there are a hundred reasons he can't, not the least of which is that for all his desires, he just isn't actually that person. Michael is a student of swimming, he's interested in the science and in the toys that make him better and the goals to stretch his performance. He's a born observer from a family of women who can fill any silence. So when Ryan crushed him in a hug in an abandoned airport he filed that information away for later. When he came to Gainesville and Ryan pulled of his shirt, collapsed on the Cheeto crumb-covered couch and tucked his face tucked deep in Michael’s neck Michael made a mental note. And finally Michael realized, right there in the foyer of his not-especially-furnished condo with his head resting on Ryan's shoulder and his fingers curled tight in Ryan's belt loops, that maybe he wasn't the only one who needed to be close to breathe.
water never sees the ground, USA/swimming, Phelps/Lochte 3/5
Ryan says I love you for the first time over post-practice Count Chocula in Debbie Phelps' kitchen. And then it's like a waterfall, once he's started he says it all the time. He tells Michael after great races and before brutal practices. He accompanies it with a wink and a lopsided grin when Michael hands him the shampoo. He tells him when he gives up touchdowns in Madden and when he pays the blowjob toll for headshots in Halo. He mumbles it in his sleep and shouts it as he explodes under Michael's hands. He writes it in the fog on the mirror in Gainesville and in the frost on the sliding glass door in Baltimore. He's as unashamed of the words as he is of his hot pink briefs, and Michael struggles to understand how the words come so easily.
Michael is more hesitant, the muscle memory of the words doesn't come naturally like dolphin kicks. But that doesn't mean he doesn't like to hear it. And in the end maybe he loves Ryan more because Michael's hesitation doesn't stop him. He doesn't demand reciprocity. It's enough for Ryan to be able to tell Michael, he doesn't need the words in return.
The first three times Michael tells Ryan he loves him, he does it after Ryan has fallen asleep. After Ryan's breathing has slowed and he's become a dead weight warm and relaxed against Michael's side. Wrapped in the comfort of darkness sliding around them Michael stokes a hand through Ryan's curls and whispers the words that feel so foreign on his tongue.
The fourth time Ryan isn't actually asleep.
Like speed in the pool, the words come easier with practice. Ryan never hesitates to return them, to initiate them, to reward them with kisses and laughter and sexual favors. And that makes it easier too. On the phone Michael can imagine the quicksilver grin that flashes across Ryan's face. In person he can feel Ryan's lips curve against his neck, tucked against his shoulder, pressed against his own.
All that comes crashing down when Ryan's parents announce they're getting a divorce.
Michael doesn't have any experience with divorce like this. He has experience with divorce at 9 precious years old. He has hazy memories of learning how to be a family of four instead of a family of 5, sacrifices made by one and all. He has experience growing up with a single mom and an absent dad. But he doesn't know what to do at 27, when you've seen your parents as a unit for your entire life, when you know exactly what to expect from the two people who have loved you the longest.
Michael doesn't know what to do when the family you've always believed in crumbles around you.
water never sees the ground, USA/swimming, Phelps/Lochte 4/5
It's different. Ryan's heart is broken. Ryan's family is broken. And when Michael doesn't know what to do he goes to his mom. Because there's no way to watch Debbie Phelps in the stands at a swim meet and not know just how unwavering her love for her youngest child is. She's a rock, his mom, she's the woman who refuses to hear the word can't. She's the one who taught him hard work and perseverance and getting his ass out of bed every morning to do whatever it takes to get the job done.
And she’s also the one he knows without a doubt will love him every day for the rest of his life.
“You have to do what I did for you Michael. “
“Feed him and ship him to the YMCA for swimming lessons with his sisters." Michael may still be learning to navigate relationships, but he's knows exactly the path to wall with this one.
“Kind of”. Debbie smiled. "Find his love language sweetheart,"
"I don't even know what that means,"
"It's a book Michael, a book about how to make relationships work,"
"I'm not going to read a whole book on relationships. Honestly Ma,"
"Michael," she groaned, "figure out how to make him know that whatever else is going on in his world you're going to be exactly where you've always been,"
OK, that he could actually do. That he is at least familiar with.
“You have to be his rock Michael. You have to be there. Even when he pushes so hard you can't imagine why anyone would stay. “
So Michael does. He packs the dogs off to his mom's, cleans out his fridge, dumps the entire contents of 2 laundry baskets into a suitcase and goes to Gainesville. He and Coach Bob have what should probably be described as the most epic fight in his career. They don't speak to each other for 3 days and when Bob gives his blessing Michael feels more like a grown-up than he ever has before.
In Florida there's no escaping the pool - the absence of Bob doesn’t make things easier because Gregg turns out to be just as much of a hard-ass as Bob. Besides Michael and Ryan have both worked too hard to give it up now. Bob sends sets 4 days a week and Gregg picks up the other 3. Ryan welcomes the hard work, welcomes Bob's workouts created, Michael is certain, to punish him. Ryan's almost frighteningly intense in the pool - eyes focused in a way Michael recognizes as a concerted effort to avoid the outside world. Ryan swims like if he just works hard enough he'll be able to swim fast enough to go back in time.
Michael sleeps, sheets tucked around his hips, sprawled on his stomach in Ryan's king sized bed. Ryan sleeps with a pillow wrapped in his arms and his head tucked under Michael's arm. Michael swims every day in the lane next to Ryan. He hangs on the lane dividers and watches Ryan finish his strokes, he spots Ryan on the bench and takes his reps, and at the end of every day they race with the same intensity they always have. A rivalry born mainly for TV cameras and articles in magazines does transfer to the pool.
water never sees the ground, USA/swimming, Phelps/Lochte 5/5
What's not expected is how easily they manage to leave it in the pool. There's no denying their competitive spirit but somehow love manages to allow them to compete tooth and nail in the pool and shed that rivalry before they've left the showers. And when they're done at the pool they drive home. They’re friends, best friends probably, boyfriends too. At home Ryan’s different, quieter, more withdrawn. Privately Michael finds it really fucking freaky to see his personality shift when he’s alone.
Michael feeds him, and slumps next to him on the couch and plays endless games of XBOX and squeezes the back of Ryan's neck when he tucks his face against Michael's neck when they're curled in bed at night. And searches Wikipedia for love languages.
It turns out the love languages thing makes sense. Michael's not going to force Ryan to take a test or something, and he's not going to read the book, but he still figures it out pretty easily. Ryan's love language is quality time, with a healthy dose of physical touch thrown in for good measure. Michael could talk for days about the things he loves about Ryan (if only he could find the words) but it wouldn't matter. Gifts don't get him anywhere and feeding him and doing his laundry only guarantees that there will be clean clothes and neither of them will starve.
But quality time is what makes Ryan's clock tick. It doesn't have to be special, it doesn't have to be any more than sitting across from each other at the scarred kitchen table eating the dinner that's been crafted and calorie-counted and typed and laminated by a faceless nutritionist who's way too enthusiastic about quinoa. At night when they're laying in bed, Michael rubs Ryan's back, putting aside his aches from another day of the Bob and Gregg carnival of masochism and sliding his hand hypnotically across the plane of muscles he's touched a thousand times and plans to touch at least a thousand more.
Quality time is seats next to each other on the plane and quiet time spent next to each other in the ready room and shared hotels rooms that are as quiet or as rowdy as they're interested in being. And Michael doing everything he can to be a solid presence in Ryan's not so solid life.
And so they forge a new normal. Michael still says I love you. Ryan doesn’t respond every time anymore. But maybe that’s the biggest gift of all, because Michael has finally learned to be comfortable with the words, finally learned that he doesn’t have to expect them in return in order to give them freely. His mouth forms them easily, more easily than he ever could have imagined.
And like a plane chasing dawn from the darkness toward the light, Michael believes in love.
This . . . is not the tattoo porn I set out to write. It's a little more melancholy than I usually go for. But worth a try I guess. Title from Kings of Leon - Cold Desert.
The thing about relationships is this - everyone comes into a relationship with their own set of perspectives. A lifetime of formative experiences that color how each individual views love.
Ryan has always believed in love. He's from a giant close-knit family. His family is loud and full of life and completely overwhelming and he can't imagine having it anyway. He's always believed in saying just exactly what he feels, and never holding back.
Michael has his doubts about love. He doesn't shy away from it, but he started swimming twice a day before he was even a teenager and between that and his gigantic feet there's certainly not much dating to be had. Besides that he's never prescribed to the outward display of affection. He's the child of divorce and that singular event has bound his remaining family so tightly to one another he sometimes feels like they could have an entire family dinner without speaking and leave feeling completely fulfilled. Michael believes in keeping his cards close to the vest - because you never know what's going to happen.
Ryan hits on Michael for months before Michael figures it out. He's been the funny looking guy with long arms and a lisp and yes funny teeth, he can read the internet just like the rest of you. And sure he swims fast and attracts a set of girls who scream his name and grope him when he's signing autographs. But despite their proclamations on the twitter he's pretty sure none of them really love him. So it's probably good that he hasn't actually been interested in girls since he figured out just exactly what dicks are for.
So without really any warning here's Ryan, and Ryan's everywhere, quiet in the ready room and stretching on deck and throwing himself off blocks and pushing Michael so, so very hard to the wall. And then he's there on the podium, and like a second personality there's Ryan post-race, smiling and laughing and next to Michael on the podium with grills and bling and Michael tries so hard to make swimming the most serious of business, but Ryan, it seems without even trying, inspires laughter and levity and reminds Michael time and time again just how amazing his life is.
Ryan gets in a fight with Gregg and comes to Baltimore. He crashes in Michael's guest room and swims Bob's sets at NBAC and lounges in just his boxers with crazy post-swim hair until Michael is ready to lose his entire mind. He finally cracks one night in the kitchen slamming Ryan against the just-closed refrigerator and shoving his tongue down his throat.
"Jesus dude," Ryan pants against Michael's shoulder, fingers sliding against the waistband of his mesh shorts, "I thought I was going to have to start wandering around naked for you to get the message."
Michael's brain unhelpfully supplies a number of white-hot images of Ryan sprawled naked on various surfaces in his condo.
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Ryan goes back to Gainesville, despite his claims he's actually unable to fight with Gregg for long periods of time. But by the time he's gone Michael has adjusted to running his hands across acres of golden skin whenever he wants and to waking up unceremoniously curled around someone else in a bed that's been his alone for most of his life and the brilliance of someone to order takeout while he's showering after practice.
Even from thousands of miles away Ryan finds a way to teach him about love. Michael feels completely unprepared to deal with the easy way that Ryan ingrains himself into Michael's life. Suddenly there's a constant stream of texts ranging from news to complete incoherence to butchered rap lyrics and messages so dirty Michael sometimes blushes alone in his living room. On top of texting there’s phone calls and when they’re together there’s so much physical affection sometimes it seems like he's drowning in it. But Michael still can name on one hand the people he has said I love you to in the last 365 days. Ryan can fill that same hand in under an hour.
Ryan is so full of love and not afraid to show it and he's just there, with his love and his laugh and his easy affection at every turn. Suddenly without really knowing what happened Michael starts to see that there's something to be said for laying your heart out for all to see. And then it starts to feel like he's drowning when they're apart, like the only time he can really breathe is when Ryan's there to wrap an arm around his shoulders, and turn himself into a burrito in the blankets and to press their still dripping skin together when they're walking from the pool to the showers.
When Michael and Ryan first started this thing Michael was constantly insecure. Ryan doesn't just touch him, Ryan's always touching people. Always slapping hands and backs and wrapping his arms around people just to say hello. Unlimited texting was invented for Ryan. Someone is always blowing up his phone, he talks to one of his sisters at least once a day, he lives with one of his brothers, his dad is a constant fixture at the pool and in Gregg's office and he's even more of a mama's boy than Michael and that's saying something.
There are times when Michael wonders which seat belonged to him on the roller coaster of Lochte love. He wants to mark him, to leave bruises and bite marks and brand his name across Ryan's shoulders. But there are a hundred reasons he can't, not the least of which is that for all his desires, he just isn't actually that person. Michael is a student of swimming, he's interested in the science and in the toys that make him better and the goals to stretch his performance. He's a born observer from a family of women who can fill any silence. So when Ryan crushed him in a hug in an abandoned airport he filed that information away for later. When he came to Gainesville and Ryan pulled of his shirt, collapsed on the Cheeto crumb-covered couch and tucked his face tucked deep in Michael’s neck Michael made a mental note. And finally Michael realized, right there in the foyer of his not-especially-furnished condo with his head resting on Ryan's shoulder and his fingers curled tight in Ryan's belt loops, that maybe he wasn't the only one who needed to be close to breathe.
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Ryan says I love you for the first time over post-practice Count Chocula in Debbie Phelps' kitchen. And then it's like a waterfall, once he's started he says it all the time. He tells Michael after great races and before brutal practices. He accompanies it with a wink and a lopsided grin when Michael hands him the shampoo. He tells him when he gives up touchdowns in Madden and when he pays the blowjob toll for headshots in Halo. He mumbles it in his sleep and shouts it as he explodes under Michael's hands. He writes it in the fog on the mirror in Gainesville and in the frost on the sliding glass door in Baltimore. He's as unashamed of the words as he is of his hot pink briefs, and Michael struggles to understand how the words come so easily.
Michael is more hesitant, the muscle memory of the words doesn't come naturally like dolphin kicks. But that doesn't mean he doesn't like to hear it. And in the end maybe he loves Ryan more because Michael's hesitation doesn't stop him. He doesn't demand reciprocity. It's enough for Ryan to be able to tell Michael, he doesn't need the words in return.
The first three times Michael tells Ryan he loves him, he does it after Ryan has fallen asleep. After Ryan's breathing has slowed and he's become a dead weight warm and relaxed against Michael's side. Wrapped in the comfort of darkness sliding around them Michael stokes a hand through Ryan's curls and whispers the words that feel so foreign on his tongue.
The fourth time Ryan isn't actually asleep.
Like speed in the pool, the words come easier with practice. Ryan never hesitates to return them, to initiate them, to reward them with kisses and laughter and sexual favors. And that makes it easier too. On the phone Michael can imagine the quicksilver grin that flashes across Ryan's face. In person he can feel Ryan's lips curve against his neck, tucked against his shoulder, pressed against his own.
All that comes crashing down when Ryan's parents announce they're getting a divorce.
Michael doesn't have any experience with divorce like this. He has experience with divorce at 9 precious years old. He has hazy memories of learning how to be a family of four instead of a family of 5, sacrifices made by one and all. He has experience growing up with a single mom and an absent dad. But he doesn't know what to do at 27, when you've seen your parents as a unit for your entire life, when you know exactly what to expect from the two people who have loved you the longest.
Michael doesn't know what to do when the family you've always believed in crumbles around you.
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It's different. Ryan's heart is broken. Ryan's family is broken. And when Michael doesn't know what to do he goes to his mom. Because there's no way to watch Debbie Phelps in the stands at a swim meet and not know just how unwavering her love for her youngest child is. She's a rock, his mom, she's the woman who refuses to hear the word can't. She's the one who taught him hard work and perseverance and getting his ass out of bed every morning to do whatever it takes to get the job done.
And she’s also the one he knows without a doubt will love him every day for the rest of his life.
“You have to do what I did for you Michael. “
“Feed him and ship him to the YMCA for swimming lessons with his sisters." Michael may still be learning to navigate relationships, but he's knows exactly the path to wall with this one.
“Kind of”. Debbie smiled. "Find his love language sweetheart,"
"I don't even know what that means,"
"It's a book Michael, a book about how to make relationships work,"
"I'm not going to read a whole book on relationships. Honestly Ma,"
"Michael," she groaned, "figure out how to make him know that whatever else is going on in his world you're going to be exactly where you've always been,"
OK, that he could actually do. That he is at least familiar with.
“You have to be his rock Michael. You have to be there. Even when he pushes so hard you can't imagine why anyone would stay. “
So Michael does. He packs the dogs off to his mom's, cleans out his fridge, dumps the entire contents of 2 laundry baskets into a suitcase and goes to Gainesville. He and Coach Bob have what should probably be described as the most epic fight in his career. They don't speak to each other for 3 days and when Bob gives his blessing Michael feels more like a grown-up than he ever has before.
In Florida there's no escaping the pool - the absence of Bob doesn’t make things easier because Gregg turns out to be just as much of a hard-ass as Bob. Besides Michael and Ryan have both worked too hard to give it up now. Bob sends sets 4 days a week and Gregg picks up the other 3. Ryan welcomes the hard work, welcomes Bob's workouts created, Michael is certain, to punish him. Ryan's almost frighteningly intense in the pool - eyes focused in a way Michael recognizes as a concerted effort to avoid the outside world. Ryan swims like if he just works hard enough he'll be able to swim fast enough to go back in time.
Michael sleeps, sheets tucked around his hips, sprawled on his stomach in Ryan's king sized bed. Ryan sleeps with a pillow wrapped in his arms and his head tucked under Michael's arm. Michael swims every day in the lane next to Ryan. He hangs on the lane dividers and watches Ryan finish his strokes, he spots Ryan on the bench and takes his reps, and at the end of every day they race with the same intensity they always have. A rivalry born mainly for TV cameras and articles in magazines does transfer to the pool.
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What's not expected is how easily they manage to leave it in the pool. There's no denying their competitive spirit but somehow love manages to allow them to compete tooth and nail in the pool and shed that rivalry before they've left the showers. And when they're done at the pool they drive home. They’re friends, best friends probably, boyfriends too. At home Ryan’s different, quieter, more withdrawn. Privately Michael finds it really fucking freaky to see his personality shift when he’s alone.
Michael feeds him, and slumps next to him on the couch and plays endless games of XBOX and squeezes the back of Ryan's neck when he tucks his face against Michael's neck when they're curled in bed at night. And searches Wikipedia for love languages.
It turns out the love languages thing makes sense. Michael's not going to force Ryan to take a test or something, and he's not going to read the book, but he still figures it out pretty easily. Ryan's love language is quality time, with a healthy dose of physical touch thrown in for good measure. Michael could talk for days about the things he loves about Ryan (if only he could find the words) but it wouldn't matter. Gifts don't get him anywhere and feeding him and doing his laundry only guarantees that there will be clean clothes and neither of them will starve.
But quality time is what makes Ryan's clock tick. It doesn't have to be special, it doesn't have to be any more than sitting across from each other at the scarred kitchen table eating the dinner that's been crafted and calorie-counted and typed and laminated by a faceless nutritionist who's way too enthusiastic about quinoa. At night when they're laying in bed, Michael rubs Ryan's back, putting aside his aches from another day of the Bob and Gregg carnival of masochism and sliding his hand hypnotically across the plane of muscles he's touched a thousand times and plans to touch at least a thousand more.
Quality time is seats next to each other on the plane and quiet time spent next to each other in the ready room and shared hotels rooms that are as quiet or as rowdy as they're interested in being. And Michael doing everything he can to be a solid presence in Ryan's not so solid life.
And so they forge a new normal. Michael still says I love you. Ryan doesn’t respond every time anymore. But maybe that’s the biggest gift of all, because Michael has finally learned to be comfortable with the words, finally learned that he doesn’t have to expect them in return in order to give them freely. His mouth forms them easily, more easily than he ever could have imagined.
And like a plane chasing dawn from the darkness toward the light, Michael believes in love.
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