Fic-Post: Déjà-Vu (Swimming RPS)
Title: Déjà-Vu
Pairing: Ryan Lochte/Anthony Ervin (friendship) | Ryan Lochte/Michael Phelps
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3,321
Summary: Tony helps Ryan understand
Disclaimer: nope
Author's Note: it occurred to me that there are some people are not familiar with Anthony Ervin's history (which everyone should be because he is the most amazing and inspiring human being) and I think that knowing it might help with the story. So just maybe read this and you'll know what's what (looking at the video surely won't hurt anyone either, by the way)
Huge thanks to intrepidy for listening to my endless rambling about Anthony and thanks to her, panna_c0tta and greatestheroine for talking me through this as I was writing.
PS: Merry Holidays!
It’s not hard seeing the signs. But maybe he’s just being way too observant when it comes to that, because he’s been there. He’s seen those signs many times before, for the longest time looking back at him every time he looked into a mirror.
During the summer, back in France and back in London, he saw those signs whenever he saw Michael. Which admittedly, was not a lot because Michael wasn’t necessarily someone he hung out with a lot. No hard feelings, they just were as different as night and day. He wouldn’t even know what to talk about with the guy, to be honest.
That said, he doesn’t know Ryan all that much better. But he’s seen him around a lot more. Ryan is the sociable one, says hi to everybody he’s seen more than once. Ryan is friends with Cullen, Cullen does the same events as him. So sometimes, Ryan hangs out on the pooldeck to watch and inevitably that means that they see each other.
So maybe it’s the signs that make Anthony look a little closer when he sees Ryan arrive on the pooldeck in Istanbul. Maybe it’s the fact that suddenly he doesn’t seem so sociable anymore, that his face seems hardened by something that can’t be explained by cancelled flights. Ryan is an absolute professional at what he does, he knows when to get his head in the game. But he never holds back a smile. And even though he barely knows the guy, seeing his lips pressed in a tight line makes Tony see all the signs again and he almost hurts on his behalf.
It takes a while for Tony to eventually get to talk to Ryan one on one. Conor is pretty much glued to his side. Partly probably because being confronted with Matt makes him realise that he should have just made that move on Elizabeth when he had the chance and partly because you’d have to be blind to not see the dark cloud that seems to be hanging above Ryan’s head these days. And Conor is probably the one who’s the most aware of it, considering the time he spends around Ryan all year long. So he’s probably also the one who wants it gone the most. Or maybe it really is just a case of ‘misery loves company’.
It’s the night before the first races and Tony runs into Ryan in the hallway at the hotel; turns out they’re on the same floor. Ryan seems zoned out, but stops when he notices it’s Tony just a few steps away. He attempts a smile but it seems to get stuck somewhere.
“Hey man.” Ryan says in greeting and pulls Tony in for a bro-hug.
“Good to have you here. Finally.” he replies, slapping Ryan’s back.
“Tell me about it.” Ryan says around a yawn.
“Tired?”
“Exhausted. Haven’t really slept all that much recently.”
Tony nods. “I know how that is.”
When they lock eyes and for a split second, Tony thinks that Ryan gets it. Understands that Tony didn’t mean how it was to deal with insomnia, but that he meant he knew how it was to deal with things that made you an insomniac.
Ryan just nods and Tony thinks this may be as good a time as any.
“Listen dude, if you ever just wanna … I don’t know, talk or hang out or whatever, just drop by.” He points at the door of his room. “Us old men need to stick together.”
And Ryan actually laughs at that. “Right? When did they get so young?”
Tony shakes his head. “Beats me, man.” There’s a pause. “Anyway dude, offer stands.” He nods towards his door.
“Yeah, I might come back to you with that, actually.”
“Whenever you want.”
And Ryan looks at Tony’s door for a moment, then back to his as if he’s considering. Not whether or not he’s going to take Tony up on the offer, but rather if he’s going to do it right now.
*
Eventually, there is a knock on Tony’s door a few days later. It’s almost midnight and Tony knows who’s knocking before he even says “Come in.” He puts his book aside and smiles warmly as Ryan pokes his head into the room.
“Bad time?”
Tony shakes his head. “It’s fine.”
Ryan steps into the room and hesitantly sits down on the foot of Tony’s bed, pulling one leg up on the mattress, the other dangling off the edge. Tony leans against the headboard and just looks at him. He’s waiting for Ryan to speak, but Ryan looks like he’s waiting for Tony to start so he does.
“Congrats on the world record, man.”
Ryan smiles. “Thanks. Congrats on your Bronze. That’s like, dude, that’s huge!” And he seems genuinely excited, more for Tony’s third place than for his first.
Silence falls upon the room and Ryan keeps picking at a loose thread on the blanket on Tony’s bed and Tony’s just looking at him, being reminded of so many nights and days and months and years of not knowing what he was supposed to think or feel with no one there to actually help him see through the situation. And Tony may not know Ryan all that well, but he knows that’s not what he wants for him.
“So … still can’t sleep, huh?”
Ryan looks up. “I can, just … not very well.”
“Retirement is never easy.” Ryan looks confused, so Tony continues. “There’s always people who are left behind.”
Ryan swallows and just slowly nods his head.
“Have you spoken to him?”
Tony doesn’t need to say his name. Everyone with a working pair of eyes (or even just slightly working, in Tony’s case) can see who this is all about.
Ryan shakes his head. “Not really.” He pauses. “Not since London.” The tone of his voice gives away how hurt he is by it. “I tried, but like, he’s not having it.”
And Tony knows how that is. He knows it so much and so well and all those familiar feelings are making his insides twitch a little.
“I don’t get why.” Ryan says and flops down on across the end of the bed, rolling his head to the side to look at Tony. “What have I done to him?”
To Tony it’s as simple as telling him that two plus two equals four, but he knows it’s not that easy to understand for anyone else who hasn’t been there. He still says it like it is. “You didn’t retire.”
Ryan sits back up a little, enough to lean back onto his elbows. “He knew all along I was gonna go til Rio.”
“It’s different when the reality of it hits you.” Tony offers. “You can know it for years, but it will still hit you unexpected.”
“That what happened to you?”
Ryan seems genuinely interested and Tony realises that he probably knows about as much as the general public. Tony never made a big deal about his comeback, he didn’t even see it as one in the first place. He was gone one day and then re-appeared a few years later and that was all that it was. Until that article in Rolling Stone came out, most people didn’t even know what he had done in his years of absence. What was the point anyways? The only people who knew him then and now were Michael and Jason and Jason knew some things but not all of them and that was that.
“I hadn’t really planned on retiring at 22. I forced it more than anything.”
“Why?”
Tony can tell by the look on Ryan’s face that he just doesn’t get it. It won’t settle in his head how someone can not want to swim. Tony doesn’t know anyone with that kind of attitude. Most of them, all of them, reached the point where they just didn’t want to do it anymore at least once in their career. Where getting up early sucked and where swimming for hours on end sucked and where weight-training sucked and where they had to force themselves to do it every day because it was all part of the game, a tiny piece of the big picture. But Ryan had never reached that point. He always seemed stoked about everything, like he was awaiting the gruelling sets instead of waiting for them to be over. It’s this almost childlike enthusiasm, still there after so many years of being around, that Tony is actually jealous of.
Tony shrugs. “People expected too much, I was a little shit, many things.” Ryan just keeps looking at him, still nowhere near understanding, so he continues, “When I came back from Sydney, it was just crazy, man. Some people treated me like I was the first man to walk on Mars, like I was a fucking superhero, you know. And just … when you’re 19 and people keep telling you that you’re the shit, it goes to your head.”
Ryan furrows his brows and Tony sees the wheels in his head turning, trying to remember what it was like for him, returning from Athens with some medals to show off with.
“I didn’t have a Michael Phelps sized shadow everyone threw over me.” he interrupts Ryan’s train of thought. “I think if I had, things may have been different.” He sighs. “It was weird, dude. Like, people kept telling me how awesome I was, but they all had their different ideas of awesome that they forced down my throat. They wanted me to be a kick-ass swimmer and an A-grade student and a well-rounded guy and just … fuck dude, I was just a 21-year-old college kid.”
Ryan smiles. He’s been there, he knows how little of a shit you give when the next college-party is just some hours away.
Tony continues. “It was already hard enough for me to say no when someone offered a drink or a pill or anything in between. But when you desperately want everyone to just shut up and leave you the hell alone, you basically take everything that’s anywhere within your reach.”
“You wanted to let people see you fail?” Ryan asks, still trying to wrap his head around it.
“Pretty much, yeah. I thought that if they saw how I was struggling with things, they may suspend me, stop me from swimming, kick me out of school, let me live my life on my own terms.”
“You could’ve just walked away.”
“Could have, but didn’t. I don’t know what I was thinking back then, but looking back I think my weird form of logic was that if other people made me stop, it was better than when I stopped myself.”
“Was it?”
Tony shakes his head. “No.”
He pauses for a moment, looking at Ryan. He looks back at him with an unreadable expression. There’s no curiosity anymore, no not understanding, no expectations. He just patiently waits for the explanation, but if it won’t come, he’s not going to hold it against him either. He knows he’s dealing with extremely unfamiliar and private territory of someone he doesn’t even know that well.
With a calm voice, Tony continues. “I woke up one morning and … it was probably the worst moment of my life that ultimately turned out to be the best one.”
“How?”
“Because I woke up when I had no intention to do it when I closed my eyes the night before.”
Ryan just stares at him.
“For a while, I was just angry. ‘I can’t even kill myself, what the fuck is wrong with me’ type of thing, you know? But then, that shifted into this whole ‘Maybe there is a reason why it didn’t work’ attitude. I truly began to see myself as that superhero that everyone thought I was and I was that without swimming so I quit. I walked away.”
“And?”
“Dude, it was awesome. I was broke most of the time and I crashed on people’s couches. The jobs I had were just enough to put dinner on the table and my family thought I had fucking lost it for real. But I was doing what I wanted to do every day.”
He smiles at the memory, but looking at Ryan’s face, open and engaged and maybe finally understanding, makes it harder for him to say what he’s about to say.
“I think that’s what Michael’s doing right now.”
And sure enough, Ryan’s face falls. The hurt is back in his eyes, like mentioning Michael’s name is enough to make Ryan’s entire world collapse. He lays back down on his back, completely still, and stares at the ceiling.
“I needed to cut ties with swimming to find out what I really wanted. I think Michael’s doing the same thing. He’s trying to figure out what parts of his life he can let go off and what parts are important to hang onto.”
“I thought I was at least considered to be important to hang onto.” Ryan says defeated.
Tony nudges Ryan’s thigh with his foot. “You are. Everyone knows you are. Even Michael knows you are. It may just take him a while to realise it. All his life, everything was swimming. Swimming brought you into his life. He connects you with it and it with you. He doesn’t realise that not having swimming in his life means that he’s not having you either.”
“What do I do?” And Ryan looks back at Tony and he looks so sad and helpless that Tony wishes he could fast-forward time to the moment Michael Phelps will finally come back to his senses.
“You wait it out.” Tony says. “He’s struggling as much as you are, Ryan. But he doesn’t get reminded of it every time he wakes up in the morning to get to practice. He has the luxury of distraction far away from everything, but you don’t. Just wait until he comes around.”
“What if he doesn’t?” And Ryan sounds actually scared.
“He will.” Tony says with certainty. “I have.”
“Took you like what, nine years?”
“I have about a ninth of Michael’s mental strength.” He looks at him convincingly. “He loves you, Ryan.”
Ryan snorts bitterly. “He has a funny way of showing that.”
“He just needs a nudge into the right direction. I had no desire to go back to swimming, I just coached kids because it paid the bills and got into the water because it cleared my head. At some point, someone said, ‘dude, you’re fast enough, just do a race and see where it takes you’. Now look where I am.” His eyes glance around the room. “I’m in fucking Istanbul and have won two new world championship medals at the age of thirty-fucking-one. All because of a nudge.”
Ryan sighs, bringing his hand up to rub at his eyes. Tony thinks he may fall asleep on his bed and he’s willing to let him, because being alone may not really help him in his current situation. He is actually surprised when Ryan abruptly sits back up.
“I should probably go.”
“You can crash here if you want.” Tony offers.
“Thanks, but like … I think I need to be by myself for a bit.”
“Sure thing, man. You know where to find me.”
Ryan nods. “Hey, uhm … thank you, dude. Like, for everything. I really … I appreciate you doing this … the whole talk and stuff.”
Tony smiles. “Don’t sweat it.”
“No seriously man. Like, I needed that. I needed to understand this whole thing. Thank you.”
Tony still smiles. “Any time.”
When Ryan’s at the door, he turns back around to Tony. “Night, man.”
“Night, Ryan. See you in the morning.”
And Ryan smiles back at him, the first real smile Tony has seen of him in a while, before he slips out into the hallway and closes the door behind him.
*
Ryan gets back to his room and flops down onto his own bed. His phone is resting on the nightstand, neglected. He reaches for it and scrolls through his messages and alerts, secretly hoping to see a name appear that he deep down knows won’t be there.
He remembers Tony’s words and before he can think himself out of this, he hits the call button for that one number he hadn’t dared dialling in quite some time. It rings for a while and Ryan hopes and wishes he won’t get ignored or being directed to voicemail. This is something that needs to be heard.
And suddenly the ringing stops and the call gets picked up and before there can be an answer, Ryan starts talking.
“Don’t say anything right now. Just listen.”
He pauses, waiting with his heart rapidly beating if he gets hung up on or doesn’t. He sighs in relief when it’s the latter.
“Look, I know you have shit to figure out right now. Go ahead and do that, take your time, figure it out. But please remember one thing.” He pauses, taking a deep breath. “I love you. And I know that maybe I remind you of some things you want to leave behind and I really wish that it wasn’t like that, I do. But like, that’s me and it’s part of who I am. And what we had, what we have, that’s us. What we do is just a part of it, but we are so much more and I hope you will realise that rather sooner than later, but … even if it takes you a while, or, y’know, a while longer, I just want you to know that I’m here, okay? I’ll wait.”
He holds his breath, waiting for an answer. He’s met with silence and while it breaks his heart and crushes him, he realises hoping that Michael was going to come around right now wasn’t really in the realm of possibilities.
“Okay, uhm … I guess I’ll talk to you?” He makes it sound like a question, but there’s still no answer and he sighs. “Bye Michael.”
He ends the call and puts his phone back onto the nightstand, staring at it for a few moments. He doesn’t know what he expected exactly, thinks that not being hung up on is probably the biggest victory he’s had in the last few months. But somehow, that doesn’t make it hurt less.
Ryan is back on his feet and ready to leave his room and phone behind for the night, taking Tony up on the offer to crash there, because waiting for something that’s not going to happen seems like too much torture to endure. But suddenly, the buzzing of the phone vibrating on the wooden nightstand cuts through the silence and it almost makes Ryan’s heart stop. He’s back by the side of the bed in two quick strides and presses the accept-button quickly, before the ringing stops.
He doesn’t say anything, but he hears breathing that stops and resumes randomly, like he wants to say something, but doesn’t know what or how.
And then he speaks, quietly, shy and unsure, like he’s afraid of the reaction it will cause from Ryan or himself.
“I … I love you too. And I … I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
And Ryan is so relieved that he wants to punch the air and dance around the room in his underwear ‘Risky Business’ style and cry happy tears all at once. But he’s been through gruelling months of waiting for those words and all he is capable of doing is let the bed catch him as he falls.
He grips tightly onto his phone, pressing it to his ear harder than he needs to, wanting to memorise every breath that comes from the other end.
In the end, he just smiles into the phone. “I know, it’s okay. We’ll be fine.”
Pairing: Ryan Lochte/Anthony Ervin (friendship) | Ryan Lochte/Michael Phelps
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3,321
Summary: Tony helps Ryan understand
Disclaimer: nope
Author's Note: it occurred to me that there are some people are not familiar with Anthony Ervin's history (which everyone should be because he is the most amazing and inspiring human being) and I think that knowing it might help with the story. So just maybe read this and you'll know what's what (looking at the video surely won't hurt anyone either, by the way)
Huge thanks to intrepidy for listening to my endless rambling about Anthony and thanks to her, panna_c0tta and greatestheroine for talking me through this as I was writing.
PS: Merry Holidays!
It’s not hard seeing the signs. But maybe he’s just being way too observant when it comes to that, because he’s been there. He’s seen those signs many times before, for the longest time looking back at him every time he looked into a mirror.
During the summer, back in France and back in London, he saw those signs whenever he saw Michael. Which admittedly, was not a lot because Michael wasn’t necessarily someone he hung out with a lot. No hard feelings, they just were as different as night and day. He wouldn’t even know what to talk about with the guy, to be honest.
That said, he doesn’t know Ryan all that much better. But he’s seen him around a lot more. Ryan is the sociable one, says hi to everybody he’s seen more than once. Ryan is friends with Cullen, Cullen does the same events as him. So sometimes, Ryan hangs out on the pooldeck to watch and inevitably that means that they see each other.
So maybe it’s the signs that make Anthony look a little closer when he sees Ryan arrive on the pooldeck in Istanbul. Maybe it’s the fact that suddenly he doesn’t seem so sociable anymore, that his face seems hardened by something that can’t be explained by cancelled flights. Ryan is an absolute professional at what he does, he knows when to get his head in the game. But he never holds back a smile. And even though he barely knows the guy, seeing his lips pressed in a tight line makes Tony see all the signs again and he almost hurts on his behalf.
It takes a while for Tony to eventually get to talk to Ryan one on one. Conor is pretty much glued to his side. Partly probably because being confronted with Matt makes him realise that he should have just made that move on Elizabeth when he had the chance and partly because you’d have to be blind to not see the dark cloud that seems to be hanging above Ryan’s head these days. And Conor is probably the one who’s the most aware of it, considering the time he spends around Ryan all year long. So he’s probably also the one who wants it gone the most. Or maybe it really is just a case of ‘misery loves company’.
It’s the night before the first races and Tony runs into Ryan in the hallway at the hotel; turns out they’re on the same floor. Ryan seems zoned out, but stops when he notices it’s Tony just a few steps away. He attempts a smile but it seems to get stuck somewhere.
“Hey man.” Ryan says in greeting and pulls Tony in for a bro-hug.
“Good to have you here. Finally.” he replies, slapping Ryan’s back.
“Tell me about it.” Ryan says around a yawn.
“Tired?”
“Exhausted. Haven’t really slept all that much recently.”
Tony nods. “I know how that is.”
When they lock eyes and for a split second, Tony thinks that Ryan gets it. Understands that Tony didn’t mean how it was to deal with insomnia, but that he meant he knew how it was to deal with things that made you an insomniac.
Ryan just nods and Tony thinks this may be as good a time as any.
“Listen dude, if you ever just wanna … I don’t know, talk or hang out or whatever, just drop by.” He points at the door of his room. “Us old men need to stick together.”
And Ryan actually laughs at that. “Right? When did they get so young?”
Tony shakes his head. “Beats me, man.” There’s a pause. “Anyway dude, offer stands.” He nods towards his door.
“Yeah, I might come back to you with that, actually.”
“Whenever you want.”
And Ryan looks at Tony’s door for a moment, then back to his as if he’s considering. Not whether or not he’s going to take Tony up on the offer, but rather if he’s going to do it right now.
*
Eventually, there is a knock on Tony’s door a few days later. It’s almost midnight and Tony knows who’s knocking before he even says “Come in.” He puts his book aside and smiles warmly as Ryan pokes his head into the room.
“Bad time?”
Tony shakes his head. “It’s fine.”
Ryan steps into the room and hesitantly sits down on the foot of Tony’s bed, pulling one leg up on the mattress, the other dangling off the edge. Tony leans against the headboard and just looks at him. He’s waiting for Ryan to speak, but Ryan looks like he’s waiting for Tony to start so he does.
“Congrats on the world record, man.”
Ryan smiles. “Thanks. Congrats on your Bronze. That’s like, dude, that’s huge!” And he seems genuinely excited, more for Tony’s third place than for his first.
Silence falls upon the room and Ryan keeps picking at a loose thread on the blanket on Tony’s bed and Tony’s just looking at him, being reminded of so many nights and days and months and years of not knowing what he was supposed to think or feel with no one there to actually help him see through the situation. And Tony may not know Ryan all that well, but he knows that’s not what he wants for him.
“So … still can’t sleep, huh?”
Ryan looks up. “I can, just … not very well.”
“Retirement is never easy.” Ryan looks confused, so Tony continues. “There’s always people who are left behind.”
Ryan swallows and just slowly nods his head.
“Have you spoken to him?”
Tony doesn’t need to say his name. Everyone with a working pair of eyes (or even just slightly working, in Tony’s case) can see who this is all about.
Ryan shakes his head. “Not really.” He pauses. “Not since London.” The tone of his voice gives away how hurt he is by it. “I tried, but like, he’s not having it.”
And Tony knows how that is. He knows it so much and so well and all those familiar feelings are making his insides twitch a little.
“I don’t get why.” Ryan says and flops down on across the end of the bed, rolling his head to the side to look at Tony. “What have I done to him?”
To Tony it’s as simple as telling him that two plus two equals four, but he knows it’s not that easy to understand for anyone else who hasn’t been there. He still says it like it is. “You didn’t retire.”
Ryan sits back up a little, enough to lean back onto his elbows. “He knew all along I was gonna go til Rio.”
“It’s different when the reality of it hits you.” Tony offers. “You can know it for years, but it will still hit you unexpected.”
“That what happened to you?”
Ryan seems genuinely interested and Tony realises that he probably knows about as much as the general public. Tony never made a big deal about his comeback, he didn’t even see it as one in the first place. He was gone one day and then re-appeared a few years later and that was all that it was. Until that article in Rolling Stone came out, most people didn’t even know what he had done in his years of absence. What was the point anyways? The only people who knew him then and now were Michael and Jason and Jason knew some things but not all of them and that was that.
“I hadn’t really planned on retiring at 22. I forced it more than anything.”
“Why?”
Tony can tell by the look on Ryan’s face that he just doesn’t get it. It won’t settle in his head how someone can not want to swim. Tony doesn’t know anyone with that kind of attitude. Most of them, all of them, reached the point where they just didn’t want to do it anymore at least once in their career. Where getting up early sucked and where swimming for hours on end sucked and where weight-training sucked and where they had to force themselves to do it every day because it was all part of the game, a tiny piece of the big picture. But Ryan had never reached that point. He always seemed stoked about everything, like he was awaiting the gruelling sets instead of waiting for them to be over. It’s this almost childlike enthusiasm, still there after so many years of being around, that Tony is actually jealous of.
Tony shrugs. “People expected too much, I was a little shit, many things.” Ryan just keeps looking at him, still nowhere near understanding, so he continues, “When I came back from Sydney, it was just crazy, man. Some people treated me like I was the first man to walk on Mars, like I was a fucking superhero, you know. And just … when you’re 19 and people keep telling you that you’re the shit, it goes to your head.”
Ryan furrows his brows and Tony sees the wheels in his head turning, trying to remember what it was like for him, returning from Athens with some medals to show off with.
“I didn’t have a Michael Phelps sized shadow everyone threw over me.” he interrupts Ryan’s train of thought. “I think if I had, things may have been different.” He sighs. “It was weird, dude. Like, people kept telling me how awesome I was, but they all had their different ideas of awesome that they forced down my throat. They wanted me to be a kick-ass swimmer and an A-grade student and a well-rounded guy and just … fuck dude, I was just a 21-year-old college kid.”
Ryan smiles. He’s been there, he knows how little of a shit you give when the next college-party is just some hours away.
Tony continues. “It was already hard enough for me to say no when someone offered a drink or a pill or anything in between. But when you desperately want everyone to just shut up and leave you the hell alone, you basically take everything that’s anywhere within your reach.”
“You wanted to let people see you fail?” Ryan asks, still trying to wrap his head around it.
“Pretty much, yeah. I thought that if they saw how I was struggling with things, they may suspend me, stop me from swimming, kick me out of school, let me live my life on my own terms.”
“You could’ve just walked away.”
“Could have, but didn’t. I don’t know what I was thinking back then, but looking back I think my weird form of logic was that if other people made me stop, it was better than when I stopped myself.”
“Was it?”
Tony shakes his head. “No.”
He pauses for a moment, looking at Ryan. He looks back at him with an unreadable expression. There’s no curiosity anymore, no not understanding, no expectations. He just patiently waits for the explanation, but if it won’t come, he’s not going to hold it against him either. He knows he’s dealing with extremely unfamiliar and private territory of someone he doesn’t even know that well.
With a calm voice, Tony continues. “I woke up one morning and … it was probably the worst moment of my life that ultimately turned out to be the best one.”
“How?”
“Because I woke up when I had no intention to do it when I closed my eyes the night before.”
Ryan just stares at him.
“For a while, I was just angry. ‘I can’t even kill myself, what the fuck is wrong with me’ type of thing, you know? But then, that shifted into this whole ‘Maybe there is a reason why it didn’t work’ attitude. I truly began to see myself as that superhero that everyone thought I was and I was that without swimming so I quit. I walked away.”
“And?”
“Dude, it was awesome. I was broke most of the time and I crashed on people’s couches. The jobs I had were just enough to put dinner on the table and my family thought I had fucking lost it for real. But I was doing what I wanted to do every day.”
He smiles at the memory, but looking at Ryan’s face, open and engaged and maybe finally understanding, makes it harder for him to say what he’s about to say.
“I think that’s what Michael’s doing right now.”
And sure enough, Ryan’s face falls. The hurt is back in his eyes, like mentioning Michael’s name is enough to make Ryan’s entire world collapse. He lays back down on his back, completely still, and stares at the ceiling.
“I needed to cut ties with swimming to find out what I really wanted. I think Michael’s doing the same thing. He’s trying to figure out what parts of his life he can let go off and what parts are important to hang onto.”
“I thought I was at least considered to be important to hang onto.” Ryan says defeated.
Tony nudges Ryan’s thigh with his foot. “You are. Everyone knows you are. Even Michael knows you are. It may just take him a while to realise it. All his life, everything was swimming. Swimming brought you into his life. He connects you with it and it with you. He doesn’t realise that not having swimming in his life means that he’s not having you either.”
“What do I do?” And Ryan looks back at Tony and he looks so sad and helpless that Tony wishes he could fast-forward time to the moment Michael Phelps will finally come back to his senses.
“You wait it out.” Tony says. “He’s struggling as much as you are, Ryan. But he doesn’t get reminded of it every time he wakes up in the morning to get to practice. He has the luxury of distraction far away from everything, but you don’t. Just wait until he comes around.”
“What if he doesn’t?” And Ryan sounds actually scared.
“He will.” Tony says with certainty. “I have.”
“Took you like what, nine years?”
“I have about a ninth of Michael’s mental strength.” He looks at him convincingly. “He loves you, Ryan.”
Ryan snorts bitterly. “He has a funny way of showing that.”
“He just needs a nudge into the right direction. I had no desire to go back to swimming, I just coached kids because it paid the bills and got into the water because it cleared my head. At some point, someone said, ‘dude, you’re fast enough, just do a race and see where it takes you’. Now look where I am.” His eyes glance around the room. “I’m in fucking Istanbul and have won two new world championship medals at the age of thirty-fucking-one. All because of a nudge.”
Ryan sighs, bringing his hand up to rub at his eyes. Tony thinks he may fall asleep on his bed and he’s willing to let him, because being alone may not really help him in his current situation. He is actually surprised when Ryan abruptly sits back up.
“I should probably go.”
“You can crash here if you want.” Tony offers.
“Thanks, but like … I think I need to be by myself for a bit.”
“Sure thing, man. You know where to find me.”
Ryan nods. “Hey, uhm … thank you, dude. Like, for everything. I really … I appreciate you doing this … the whole talk and stuff.”
Tony smiles. “Don’t sweat it.”
“No seriously man. Like, I needed that. I needed to understand this whole thing. Thank you.”
Tony still smiles. “Any time.”
When Ryan’s at the door, he turns back around to Tony. “Night, man.”
“Night, Ryan. See you in the morning.”
And Ryan smiles back at him, the first real smile Tony has seen of him in a while, before he slips out into the hallway and closes the door behind him.
*
Ryan gets back to his room and flops down onto his own bed. His phone is resting on the nightstand, neglected. He reaches for it and scrolls through his messages and alerts, secretly hoping to see a name appear that he deep down knows won’t be there.
He remembers Tony’s words and before he can think himself out of this, he hits the call button for that one number he hadn’t dared dialling in quite some time. It rings for a while and Ryan hopes and wishes he won’t get ignored or being directed to voicemail. This is something that needs to be heard.
And suddenly the ringing stops and the call gets picked up and before there can be an answer, Ryan starts talking.
“Don’t say anything right now. Just listen.”
He pauses, waiting with his heart rapidly beating if he gets hung up on or doesn’t. He sighs in relief when it’s the latter.
“Look, I know you have shit to figure out right now. Go ahead and do that, take your time, figure it out. But please remember one thing.” He pauses, taking a deep breath. “I love you. And I know that maybe I remind you of some things you want to leave behind and I really wish that it wasn’t like that, I do. But like, that’s me and it’s part of who I am. And what we had, what we have, that’s us. What we do is just a part of it, but we are so much more and I hope you will realise that rather sooner than later, but … even if it takes you a while, or, y’know, a while longer, I just want you to know that I’m here, okay? I’ll wait.”
He holds his breath, waiting for an answer. He’s met with silence and while it breaks his heart and crushes him, he realises hoping that Michael was going to come around right now wasn’t really in the realm of possibilities.
“Okay, uhm … I guess I’ll talk to you?” He makes it sound like a question, but there’s still no answer and he sighs. “Bye Michael.”
He ends the call and puts his phone back onto the nightstand, staring at it for a few moments. He doesn’t know what he expected exactly, thinks that not being hung up on is probably the biggest victory he’s had in the last few months. But somehow, that doesn’t make it hurt less.
Ryan is back on his feet and ready to leave his room and phone behind for the night, taking Tony up on the offer to crash there, because waiting for something that’s not going to happen seems like too much torture to endure. But suddenly, the buzzing of the phone vibrating on the wooden nightstand cuts through the silence and it almost makes Ryan’s heart stop. He’s back by the side of the bed in two quick strides and presses the accept-button quickly, before the ringing stops.
He doesn’t say anything, but he hears breathing that stops and resumes randomly, like he wants to say something, but doesn’t know what or how.
And then he speaks, quietly, shy and unsure, like he’s afraid of the reaction it will cause from Ryan or himself.
“I … I love you too. And I … I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
And Ryan is so relieved that he wants to punch the air and dance around the room in his underwear ‘Risky Business’ style and cry happy tears all at once. But he’s been through gruelling months of waiting for those words and all he is capable of doing is let the bed catch him as he falls.
He grips tightly onto his phone, pressing it to his ear harder than he needs to, wanting to memorise every breath that comes from the other end.
In the end, he just smiles into the phone. “I know, it’s okay. We’ll be fine.”