(no subject)
Title: When Forever Failed
Fandom: Figure Skating RPF
Characters: Carolina Kostner/Tomas Verner, Stephane Lambiel/Johnny Weir
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: Work of fiction. Never really happened.
Summary: Carolina finds one man is still true.
Author's Notes: Takes place shortly after the news broke about Carolina possibly facing a longer ban than her ex did for covering up his doping.
Carolina was getting emails from skaters she had never heard of. This morning it was a pair of American girls who had been really close with Kimmie Meissner in the past, and who said they had already long known what had happened to her, but hadn’t known the important role Carolina had played in her recovery, until just now, when Kimmie had told them about that part. Kimmie herself had written too, saying she wished she could tell the world what Carolina had done for her. But of course even had she been willing to go public about being raped-which she absolutely was not, understandably-to explain the circumstances under which she and Carolina had had their talk in her hotel room in Goteborg really was impossible.
Most of the emails were supportive ones, which still stunned her a bit. On the other hand, occasionally there came one that was not. Sometimes there even came one that was so vicious and angry at her she had to fight back tears as she hastily clicked through the deletion process, and wondered how such words could get to her, after she had spent so long priding herself in being hardened to them, as well she ought to be, given what people had said about her scores and placements. But everything made her feel vulnerable now, ever since she had found herself facing down that potential ban and realized how out of her control a single rash act had made her fate.
And one person still had not contacted her at all, which left her beginning every morning scanning through the messages for his name. She couldn’t understand why he hadn’t. Even if it was because he thought she didn’t deserve forgiveness, he was still the sort of person to just tell her that immediately. He had never in his life been the type to give her the silent treatment.
It even made her jump when her phone rang. But it was someone more expected. She and Stephane had either seen each other or been on the phone with each other almost every day since the whole thing started the previous summer. Except that he usually didn’t call her until after lunch, which made her anxious as she answered the phone, wondering what could have him needing her this early.
She got her answer soon enough. The first thing he said was, “I just had phone sex with Johnny.”
“What?!” She yelled out both her urge to hug him and her urge to slap him. “Why?!”
“I don’t know, it just happened.” She could hear the suppressed tears. “We’ve been talking, you know, and I know you think I shouldn’t, but…”
“Of course you shouldn’t! Stephane, it’s been four years. You shouldn’t still be hung up on him like this. Especially when you know he’s never going to take you back unless you agree to come out and be his big public husband in the spotlight. Unless you really think he’s learned a lesson from the one he had already?”
There was a pause, when for a wild moment she dared hope maybe he had, maybe he had renounced who he had become since coming out, and gone back to being the Johnny she had come around to as Stephane’s boyfriend, before he’d done what he’d done. But Stephane’s deflated reply was, “No, he hasn’t. He kept talking about Radford. He wants to know what I’m so scared about.”
“He should know that’s not the problem,” sighed Carolina, now getting very angry at Johnny indeed. “And here I really thought he knew you better than that…”
Just then she heard the doorbell ring. Stephane heard the chime over the line as well, and said, “Better go get that right away that without being on the phone with anyone, right?”
“Right,” she agreed; she didn’t need whoever was on the other side of her front door speculating on why she might be delaying, or who she might be talking to. “I’ll call you back when I can, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Stephane agreed, and they said their goodbyes, and Carolina had the phone safely put away when she pulled open the door, and found herself face to face with he whose silence had been driving her so crazy over the last few days.
“How are you here, Tomas?” she asked, dazed. “You’re supposed to be performing in Russia.”
“By coming here directly from the airport and going directly back there from here I can be with you for three hours, if I need to be. I kept trying to email you, but I…couldn’t get the words to work. I think I needed to do this in person. May I come in?”
“Of course,” she said, and stepped back, more confused than ever. She didn’t understand why this was so important to Tomas that he felt he had make such a crazy trip. It would’ve seemed crazy even when they’d been at their closest, and nowadays they weren’t even half as close as they’d once been.
Although that had been at least partly Alex’s fault. Tomas had always been wary of him, although even now Carolina thought that had been partly anger that he had insisted on exclusivity, and so cost Tomas and Carolina their friends-with-benefits arrangement, and when she thought he really could’ve used it then too, with his love life having just gone so chaotic. But with all the moving around and coaching changes, she also thought their moving apart would’ve probably happened anyway.
When the door was closed behind him, he said, “Carolina, I don’t want to believe you actually knew, but I can’t believe you didn’t suspect what he was doing.”
Put on the spot like that, Carolina was through with lying, at least to him. “I did,” she said simply. “I didn’t want to believe it.”
She couldn’t look at him as she said it, and when he said nothing in response, she kept looking down. Moments stretched on and on, and she forced herself to focusing on her breathing, in and out. Crazily, she wondered if they’d stand like this the entire three hours.
Finally, he said, sounding more confused than anything else, “I expected to have a long conversation with you. I expected shouting, or crying. Now, I find I don’t have anything more to say. Well, except that I can’t condemn you when I don’t know I wouldn’t have done exactly what you did had it been Nathalie.”
“She wouldn’t deserve it,” Carolina said automatically, not even putting any emotion into it. Though she still was angry at Nathalie, even more than she could be at Johnny. It had been a disappointment to everyone, she thought, that their similar levels of promiscuity and all the other ways they were so suited to each other hadn’t stopped Nathalie from throwing Tomas over like a pair of worn out blades when that actor had charmed her.
“He didn’t deserve it either,” was his almost as automatic response. Carolina supposed he might be right about that, and she wasn’t up to arguing with him about it anyway.
She still didn’t even look up, until his next words, spoken in an intense, almost frightening hiss, were “I hate him for this.”
She had to look up then. There was less anger on his face than grief, eyes wide enough she scanned for tears, though there were none visible. “Tomas,” she started, “I don’t want you to…”
And then he was kissing her, hard, rough, with teeth as well as tongue, and once he got his hands on her he knew just where to touch. A stroke down her shoulder blade left her knees weak, a bite to her lower lip made her moan, and when his finger stroked her ear, the tenderness of it out of place, it made her just ache. When he pulled away maybe half a minute later, she was nearly out of breath, but none of this could stop her mind from forcing her the face the reality about this, and she somehow got herself to say, “No, Tomas, you can’t do this to me right now. You can’t go saying things like you hate him, not when I…”
“But please Carolina,” he was out of breath too, but that didn’t hide the wretchedness. “I’m not even saying I’m in love with you, if you’re afraid of that, but please, you need to be over him somehow. I want…” He stopped, and she didn’t think he even knew what he wanted, at least beyond the immediate desire.
The desire she had too, in spite of where her heart was. It had been over six and a half years ago, but the memory was still fresh in her mind, waking him up in the hotel bed after leaving Kimmie and Stephane and Johnny, still in a daze from the emotional overload that night had been for all five of them. She’d just made out with him for a while until she’d felt more in control, and they’d had sex slowly, gently, holding hands as she’d ridden him. They’d had no idea then that would be the last time.
Part of her wanted to leave that as the last time, to leave their sexual relationship as ended on a much warmer and more comforting note than it would now. But as he continued to stare at her, waiting, begging with his face even when silent, all she could do was move in to kiss him again, and said simply, “Come,” and led him to the bedroom, her hand in his.
Once there they went slow, him laying her out on the bed and kissing his way down her torso as he unbutton her blouse, lingering over the sensitive spots near her hips until she was gasping and twitching. But he also felt his hands spread themselves over and feel the bone. It ought not to feel much different, she thought; it wasn’t like she was likely to need surgery. Yet his grunt was still disapproving.
Her jeans were unzipped and slid off, her underwear with them. Tomas followed them down too, even stopping to suck on the big mole on her thighs and lick under her knees. The latter weren’t as sensitive as they’d once been, but the former still sent sparks flickering up and down her spine. Her shoes came off with the jeans, but a sudden impulse made her say, “Don’t take the socks off. Please.” She didn’t even know why; her feet had looked much worse almost every time in the past that he’d seen them. But he obediently left them in place as he kissed his way back up her legs, gently spreading them further apart, and sliding them up his shoulders, making clear what he was going to do, until she moaned even at the warmth of his first breath over her clit. Then he set to work.
The last time Carolina had seen him do this, it hadn’t been to her, leaving her able to focus completely on how he’d looked doing it. Now, even as her world spun and eyes rolled back into their sockets she could still remember it, the diligence in his eyes, the furrow of his brow, the bob of his head, the unconscious little noises he’d made, more audible as Kimmie Meissner’s soft cries had become soundless. Carolina, too, found herself beyond sound then, though her ears were surrounded by the sound of her own blood and breath. Her hands scrambled, needing to touch him, know it was him. One of them found his hair, those locks she could never have forgotten the texture of, and she just held on. He’d forgotten nothing of what he’d learned of her, and she knew he knew when she was close, because his tongue on her clit pressed harder, and harder, and harder still, until she nearly screamed her release, rocking back and forth on the bed, the force of it echoing back and forth through her body even after the orgasm itself faded.
She was still shaking all over when Tomas pulled himself up to kiss her. His torso was bare, and his pants loosened; Carolina tried to pull at them, but didn’t have her coordination back. That was also why it took her a few moments to realize he was only half-hard, and also they and his briefs were both damp to the touch. “You came?” she gasped. “Just from…”
He shrugged. “I missed it. Don’t even know why, I mean, not like I’m not doing it to lots of other girls, but…I still missed doing it to you.”
“I missed it too,” she said, surprised by it even as the words came out. She’d spent so many years only having sex with Alex, hoping for a future that would have involved only having sex with him for the rest of their lives. And it wasn’t even like she couldn’t have been happy with that; she knew she could have. And yet… “I missed so much about you.”
“I did too,” he said. “And honestly, Carolina? I felt like Alex took that away too, not just the sex. Like I couldn’t be your constant companion anymore, even before the coaching changes. I felt like he took away our bond.”
“Oh, Tomas,” she cried, and she was kissing him then, touching him at random, on his back, on his arms, feeling all the places she’d given up, thought were consigned to her past. She could feel him getting fully hard again against her thigh, and she wanted him inside her then, so badly she was moaning with it into his mouth.
He remembered that too; laughing softly as he pulled away. “I’ve got the condom in my wallet,” he whispered, which made her moan again, laughing through it, because of course he did. She managed to pull herself up into a sitting position as he went looking for the wallet where it had fallen on the floor somewhere around his coat. She drank in the sight of his naked body greedily, the sweat glistening on his back and that firm ass, his thighs casually displaying the power of his body as he crawled around the coat before snatching up the wallet with a triumphant, “Ah!”
When he came back to the bed she pushed him down. Her eyes fixed on his nipples, hardened, but far too untouched. Before he could say anything she had one between her fingers and the other between her teeth, and when her other hand stroked his hip and thigh she could feel the latter clench and unclench, clench and unclench.
She got moans out of him too, when she moved down to his stomach, and used her nails. His cock was now fully hard, and she blew lightly on the top, bring her name from his mouth like a plea. Still she took her time moving up, running her knee along his inner thigh in the way she knew drove him absolutely crazy, before bending down to give each of his nipples one last little bite. But her own need between her legs was making it harder to even concentrate of anything else, and finally she slid the condom down over him, fumbled her way into positioning him at her entrance, and slowly slid down.
For a moment, it was like the last six and a half years had never happened, like they were still in that hotel room in Goteborg, finding a basic root to hold onto after an emotionally tumultuous evening and week. Then she looked down, into Tomas’ eyes half-lidded with pleasure, and whispered, “With me?”
“Always,” he whispered back, and she began to move.
She couldn’t go slow this time, though; she needed this too much. He was thrusting harder into her too, getting more moans out of her as he filled her up so well, until she thought she could feel him up in her chest. When she started to feel tired and sag, he took hold of her shoulders and rolled them over, and then he was pounding into her, both their cries echoing through the bedroom, and Carolina didn’t always come from penetration but she knew already she was going to if he kept it up. She thought he could tell it too; his finger started to dig into her skin the way they did when he was trying to keep from coming, his breaths between moans rough and wild. He growled her name out and gave one last hard thrust, and she was coming, his head pressed into her cheek and her final yell in his ear, while he groaned into her neck as he let go.
He slid down and out, and his head settled onto her breasts, and her hands settled on top of it, but for some time neither of them moved further. Had they had the entire day, Carolina might have liked to suspend everything, just stay in this moment, where they didn’t have to worry about how they would deal with things when they got out of bed.
But they only had three hours, and eventually Tomas reluctantly dragged himself up. Checking the clock, Carolina got up too, saying, “I’ll shower first. Then I’ll make us some tea.”
The halfway mark found them drinking their tea in silence, still putting off talking about it further. When Carolina concentrated on her drink, she could almost pretend that there was nothing to talk about, that it was still 2008. When she shifted in her seat, she could savor the soreness between her legs that good sex always left her with.
Finally he said, “I want you back for good. I know we can’t go back to the past, but can we try to start over?”
“It’ll be harder,” she reminded him. “We aren’t in the same place so much anymore. There’s a possibility I might even be barred from certain ice shows, or they might not want me.”
“Any show that bars you I won’t participate in,” he told her. “And I doubt I’ll be the only one.”
This expression of support meant more to Carolina than she could hope to express. She could only bend her head, for a moment before Tomas’ hand found hers on the table, with a, “Don’t cry, Caro, please.”
She didn’t feel like crying, though, not really. She looked up so he could see that, then glanced at their cups; both were empty. “Let me help you wash up,” he said.
With the two of them everything was washed quickly. They were nearly done when Carolina’s phone rang. “Stephane,” she said.
“It’s all right,” he said. “I’ll wait in your living room.”
Since Stephane had already confessed the day’s indiscretion to her, she went ahead and told him the whole situation as well. “Keep him!” Stephane cried as soon as she was done. “You have the chance to. Take it, don’t let it go. Don’t let yourself lose something when you’ll regret giving it up.”
“You haven’t called Johnny again,” was her dismayed response to that.
“Not yet,” he said. “But I will. I don’t care what he says. I have to now.”
“You don’t have to do anything,” she protested.
“You would want me to always hang up on him and never speak to him again,” said Stephane, and it broke her heart to hear his smile. “Look, I won’t call him again today anyway. I’m not up to that. Why don’t you call me back later, and enjoy your time with Tomas now?”
“Thank you,” she said. “But I assure you, I will call later, and we will talk about this.”
“Tomas,” she said as she came into the living room to find him on the couch. “Can you do me a favor?”
“Anything,” he said, with an intensity that felt out of place here.
“When you get back to Russia,” she said, sitting down next to him, “can you corner Johnny and yell at him to either take Stephane back without demanding he come out when he’s not ready to, or leave him alone?”
“He’s doing that to Stephane?” Tomas demanded, appalled. “I’ll be happy to yell at him on behalf of both of us!”
“But why did it all fail?” he then sighed. “I remember when we were young, and we all thought when we retired, things would be easy, that once we no longer had to center everything around winning medals we’d all settled down and be happy. Of course I suppose we couldn’t expect all the relationships to work out, but why did Stephane and Johnny and me and Nathalie and you and Alex all have to fail?”
Because all three relationships included someone who was a self-centered asshole was what Carolina wanted to say. But she wasn’t fully sure that was really fair. It felt more like retirement had changed them too much, and they were no longer who they had been, or wanted what they’d thought they’d want.
Retirement. She’d known, deep down, that was probably what she was going into when she’d stepped down from that final podium in Saitama. But she hadn’t really admitted it until more recently, when it had become clear she was going to be forced into it anyway. There were things to do, of course, shows to be in and such. But she no longer knew where she’d been in March. Where she’d be in four years time.
She was suddenly glad to have the man sitting with her, that he’d come here, and wanted to keep something between them, something they could both rely on, if they could only figure things out. Stephane’s urging that she not let herself give him up took on a new meaning then, as she understood what he, retired four years and knowing what lay in store for her, had been trying to tell her about.
“Tomas.” She spoke his name without knowing what she was going to say next. But perhaps the way she said his name said more than words would anyway, and he turned, took her hands and then leaned over and kissed her.
It was an odd kind of kissing, not like the kinds of kisses that had happened between them in the past. Too firm to be lazy or simple, too chaste to be for pleasure or out of lust. It felt more like a statement, a feeling.
“Stay with me,” she said to him. “I mean, you can go in half an hour, but…”
“I will,” he said, and she believed him.
Fandom: Figure Skating RPF
Characters: Carolina Kostner/Tomas Verner, Stephane Lambiel/Johnny Weir
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: Work of fiction. Never really happened.
Summary: Carolina finds one man is still true.
Author's Notes: Takes place shortly after the news broke about Carolina possibly facing a longer ban than her ex did for covering up his doping.
Carolina was getting emails from skaters she had never heard of. This morning it was a pair of American girls who had been really close with Kimmie Meissner in the past, and who said they had already long known what had happened to her, but hadn’t known the important role Carolina had played in her recovery, until just now, when Kimmie had told them about that part. Kimmie herself had written too, saying she wished she could tell the world what Carolina had done for her. But of course even had she been willing to go public about being raped-which she absolutely was not, understandably-to explain the circumstances under which she and Carolina had had their talk in her hotel room in Goteborg really was impossible.
Most of the emails were supportive ones, which still stunned her a bit. On the other hand, occasionally there came one that was not. Sometimes there even came one that was so vicious and angry at her she had to fight back tears as she hastily clicked through the deletion process, and wondered how such words could get to her, after she had spent so long priding herself in being hardened to them, as well she ought to be, given what people had said about her scores and placements. But everything made her feel vulnerable now, ever since she had found herself facing down that potential ban and realized how out of her control a single rash act had made her fate.
And one person still had not contacted her at all, which left her beginning every morning scanning through the messages for his name. She couldn’t understand why he hadn’t. Even if it was because he thought she didn’t deserve forgiveness, he was still the sort of person to just tell her that immediately. He had never in his life been the type to give her the silent treatment.
It even made her jump when her phone rang. But it was someone more expected. She and Stephane had either seen each other or been on the phone with each other almost every day since the whole thing started the previous summer. Except that he usually didn’t call her until after lunch, which made her anxious as she answered the phone, wondering what could have him needing her this early.
She got her answer soon enough. The first thing he said was, “I just had phone sex with Johnny.”
“What?!” She yelled out both her urge to hug him and her urge to slap him. “Why?!”
“I don’t know, it just happened.” She could hear the suppressed tears. “We’ve been talking, you know, and I know you think I shouldn’t, but…”
“Of course you shouldn’t! Stephane, it’s been four years. You shouldn’t still be hung up on him like this. Especially when you know he’s never going to take you back unless you agree to come out and be his big public husband in the spotlight. Unless you really think he’s learned a lesson from the one he had already?”
There was a pause, when for a wild moment she dared hope maybe he had, maybe he had renounced who he had become since coming out, and gone back to being the Johnny she had come around to as Stephane’s boyfriend, before he’d done what he’d done. But Stephane’s deflated reply was, “No, he hasn’t. He kept talking about Radford. He wants to know what I’m so scared about.”
“He should know that’s not the problem,” sighed Carolina, now getting very angry at Johnny indeed. “And here I really thought he knew you better than that…”
Just then she heard the doorbell ring. Stephane heard the chime over the line as well, and said, “Better go get that right away that without being on the phone with anyone, right?”
“Right,” she agreed; she didn’t need whoever was on the other side of her front door speculating on why she might be delaying, or who she might be talking to. “I’ll call you back when I can, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Stephane agreed, and they said their goodbyes, and Carolina had the phone safely put away when she pulled open the door, and found herself face to face with he whose silence had been driving her so crazy over the last few days.
“How are you here, Tomas?” she asked, dazed. “You’re supposed to be performing in Russia.”
“By coming here directly from the airport and going directly back there from here I can be with you for three hours, if I need to be. I kept trying to email you, but I…couldn’t get the words to work. I think I needed to do this in person. May I come in?”
“Of course,” she said, and stepped back, more confused than ever. She didn’t understand why this was so important to Tomas that he felt he had make such a crazy trip. It would’ve seemed crazy even when they’d been at their closest, and nowadays they weren’t even half as close as they’d once been.
Although that had been at least partly Alex’s fault. Tomas had always been wary of him, although even now Carolina thought that had been partly anger that he had insisted on exclusivity, and so cost Tomas and Carolina their friends-with-benefits arrangement, and when she thought he really could’ve used it then too, with his love life having just gone so chaotic. But with all the moving around and coaching changes, she also thought their moving apart would’ve probably happened anyway.
When the door was closed behind him, he said, “Carolina, I don’t want to believe you actually knew, but I can’t believe you didn’t suspect what he was doing.”
Put on the spot like that, Carolina was through with lying, at least to him. “I did,” she said simply. “I didn’t want to believe it.”
She couldn’t look at him as she said it, and when he said nothing in response, she kept looking down. Moments stretched on and on, and she forced herself to focusing on her breathing, in and out. Crazily, she wondered if they’d stand like this the entire three hours.
Finally, he said, sounding more confused than anything else, “I expected to have a long conversation with you. I expected shouting, or crying. Now, I find I don’t have anything more to say. Well, except that I can’t condemn you when I don’t know I wouldn’t have done exactly what you did had it been Nathalie.”
“She wouldn’t deserve it,” Carolina said automatically, not even putting any emotion into it. Though she still was angry at Nathalie, even more than she could be at Johnny. It had been a disappointment to everyone, she thought, that their similar levels of promiscuity and all the other ways they were so suited to each other hadn’t stopped Nathalie from throwing Tomas over like a pair of worn out blades when that actor had charmed her.
“He didn’t deserve it either,” was his almost as automatic response. Carolina supposed he might be right about that, and she wasn’t up to arguing with him about it anyway.
She still didn’t even look up, until his next words, spoken in an intense, almost frightening hiss, were “I hate him for this.”
She had to look up then. There was less anger on his face than grief, eyes wide enough she scanned for tears, though there were none visible. “Tomas,” she started, “I don’t want you to…”
And then he was kissing her, hard, rough, with teeth as well as tongue, and once he got his hands on her he knew just where to touch. A stroke down her shoulder blade left her knees weak, a bite to her lower lip made her moan, and when his finger stroked her ear, the tenderness of it out of place, it made her just ache. When he pulled away maybe half a minute later, she was nearly out of breath, but none of this could stop her mind from forcing her the face the reality about this, and she somehow got herself to say, “No, Tomas, you can’t do this to me right now. You can’t go saying things like you hate him, not when I…”
“But please Carolina,” he was out of breath too, but that didn’t hide the wretchedness. “I’m not even saying I’m in love with you, if you’re afraid of that, but please, you need to be over him somehow. I want…” He stopped, and she didn’t think he even knew what he wanted, at least beyond the immediate desire.
The desire she had too, in spite of where her heart was. It had been over six and a half years ago, but the memory was still fresh in her mind, waking him up in the hotel bed after leaving Kimmie and Stephane and Johnny, still in a daze from the emotional overload that night had been for all five of them. She’d just made out with him for a while until she’d felt more in control, and they’d had sex slowly, gently, holding hands as she’d ridden him. They’d had no idea then that would be the last time.
Part of her wanted to leave that as the last time, to leave their sexual relationship as ended on a much warmer and more comforting note than it would now. But as he continued to stare at her, waiting, begging with his face even when silent, all she could do was move in to kiss him again, and said simply, “Come,” and led him to the bedroom, her hand in his.
Once there they went slow, him laying her out on the bed and kissing his way down her torso as he unbutton her blouse, lingering over the sensitive spots near her hips until she was gasping and twitching. But he also felt his hands spread themselves over and feel the bone. It ought not to feel much different, she thought; it wasn’t like she was likely to need surgery. Yet his grunt was still disapproving.
Her jeans were unzipped and slid off, her underwear with them. Tomas followed them down too, even stopping to suck on the big mole on her thighs and lick under her knees. The latter weren’t as sensitive as they’d once been, but the former still sent sparks flickering up and down her spine. Her shoes came off with the jeans, but a sudden impulse made her say, “Don’t take the socks off. Please.” She didn’t even know why; her feet had looked much worse almost every time in the past that he’d seen them. But he obediently left them in place as he kissed his way back up her legs, gently spreading them further apart, and sliding them up his shoulders, making clear what he was going to do, until she moaned even at the warmth of his first breath over her clit. Then he set to work.
The last time Carolina had seen him do this, it hadn’t been to her, leaving her able to focus completely on how he’d looked doing it. Now, even as her world spun and eyes rolled back into their sockets she could still remember it, the diligence in his eyes, the furrow of his brow, the bob of his head, the unconscious little noises he’d made, more audible as Kimmie Meissner’s soft cries had become soundless. Carolina, too, found herself beyond sound then, though her ears were surrounded by the sound of her own blood and breath. Her hands scrambled, needing to touch him, know it was him. One of them found his hair, those locks she could never have forgotten the texture of, and she just held on. He’d forgotten nothing of what he’d learned of her, and she knew he knew when she was close, because his tongue on her clit pressed harder, and harder, and harder still, until she nearly screamed her release, rocking back and forth on the bed, the force of it echoing back and forth through her body even after the orgasm itself faded.
She was still shaking all over when Tomas pulled himself up to kiss her. His torso was bare, and his pants loosened; Carolina tried to pull at them, but didn’t have her coordination back. That was also why it took her a few moments to realize he was only half-hard, and also they and his briefs were both damp to the touch. “You came?” she gasped. “Just from…”
He shrugged. “I missed it. Don’t even know why, I mean, not like I’m not doing it to lots of other girls, but…I still missed doing it to you.”
“I missed it too,” she said, surprised by it even as the words came out. She’d spent so many years only having sex with Alex, hoping for a future that would have involved only having sex with him for the rest of their lives. And it wasn’t even like she couldn’t have been happy with that; she knew she could have. And yet… “I missed so much about you.”
“I did too,” he said. “And honestly, Carolina? I felt like Alex took that away too, not just the sex. Like I couldn’t be your constant companion anymore, even before the coaching changes. I felt like he took away our bond.”
“Oh, Tomas,” she cried, and she was kissing him then, touching him at random, on his back, on his arms, feeling all the places she’d given up, thought were consigned to her past. She could feel him getting fully hard again against her thigh, and she wanted him inside her then, so badly she was moaning with it into his mouth.
He remembered that too; laughing softly as he pulled away. “I’ve got the condom in my wallet,” he whispered, which made her moan again, laughing through it, because of course he did. She managed to pull herself up into a sitting position as he went looking for the wallet where it had fallen on the floor somewhere around his coat. She drank in the sight of his naked body greedily, the sweat glistening on his back and that firm ass, his thighs casually displaying the power of his body as he crawled around the coat before snatching up the wallet with a triumphant, “Ah!”
When he came back to the bed she pushed him down. Her eyes fixed on his nipples, hardened, but far too untouched. Before he could say anything she had one between her fingers and the other between her teeth, and when her other hand stroked his hip and thigh she could feel the latter clench and unclench, clench and unclench.
She got moans out of him too, when she moved down to his stomach, and used her nails. His cock was now fully hard, and she blew lightly on the top, bring her name from his mouth like a plea. Still she took her time moving up, running her knee along his inner thigh in the way she knew drove him absolutely crazy, before bending down to give each of his nipples one last little bite. But her own need between her legs was making it harder to even concentrate of anything else, and finally she slid the condom down over him, fumbled her way into positioning him at her entrance, and slowly slid down.
For a moment, it was like the last six and a half years had never happened, like they were still in that hotel room in Goteborg, finding a basic root to hold onto after an emotionally tumultuous evening and week. Then she looked down, into Tomas’ eyes half-lidded with pleasure, and whispered, “With me?”
“Always,” he whispered back, and she began to move.
She couldn’t go slow this time, though; she needed this too much. He was thrusting harder into her too, getting more moans out of her as he filled her up so well, until she thought she could feel him up in her chest. When she started to feel tired and sag, he took hold of her shoulders and rolled them over, and then he was pounding into her, both their cries echoing through the bedroom, and Carolina didn’t always come from penetration but she knew already she was going to if he kept it up. She thought he could tell it too; his finger started to dig into her skin the way they did when he was trying to keep from coming, his breaths between moans rough and wild. He growled her name out and gave one last hard thrust, and she was coming, his head pressed into her cheek and her final yell in his ear, while he groaned into her neck as he let go.
He slid down and out, and his head settled onto her breasts, and her hands settled on top of it, but for some time neither of them moved further. Had they had the entire day, Carolina might have liked to suspend everything, just stay in this moment, where they didn’t have to worry about how they would deal with things when they got out of bed.
But they only had three hours, and eventually Tomas reluctantly dragged himself up. Checking the clock, Carolina got up too, saying, “I’ll shower first. Then I’ll make us some tea.”
The halfway mark found them drinking their tea in silence, still putting off talking about it further. When Carolina concentrated on her drink, she could almost pretend that there was nothing to talk about, that it was still 2008. When she shifted in her seat, she could savor the soreness between her legs that good sex always left her with.
Finally he said, “I want you back for good. I know we can’t go back to the past, but can we try to start over?”
“It’ll be harder,” she reminded him. “We aren’t in the same place so much anymore. There’s a possibility I might even be barred from certain ice shows, or they might not want me.”
“Any show that bars you I won’t participate in,” he told her. “And I doubt I’ll be the only one.”
This expression of support meant more to Carolina than she could hope to express. She could only bend her head, for a moment before Tomas’ hand found hers on the table, with a, “Don’t cry, Caro, please.”
She didn’t feel like crying, though, not really. She looked up so he could see that, then glanced at their cups; both were empty. “Let me help you wash up,” he said.
With the two of them everything was washed quickly. They were nearly done when Carolina’s phone rang. “Stephane,” she said.
“It’s all right,” he said. “I’ll wait in your living room.”
Since Stephane had already confessed the day’s indiscretion to her, she went ahead and told him the whole situation as well. “Keep him!” Stephane cried as soon as she was done. “You have the chance to. Take it, don’t let it go. Don’t let yourself lose something when you’ll regret giving it up.”
“You haven’t called Johnny again,” was her dismayed response to that.
“Not yet,” he said. “But I will. I don’t care what he says. I have to now.”
“You don’t have to do anything,” she protested.
“You would want me to always hang up on him and never speak to him again,” said Stephane, and it broke her heart to hear his smile. “Look, I won’t call him again today anyway. I’m not up to that. Why don’t you call me back later, and enjoy your time with Tomas now?”
“Thank you,” she said. “But I assure you, I will call later, and we will talk about this.”
“Tomas,” she said as she came into the living room to find him on the couch. “Can you do me a favor?”
“Anything,” he said, with an intensity that felt out of place here.
“When you get back to Russia,” she said, sitting down next to him, “can you corner Johnny and yell at him to either take Stephane back without demanding he come out when he’s not ready to, or leave him alone?”
“He’s doing that to Stephane?” Tomas demanded, appalled. “I’ll be happy to yell at him on behalf of both of us!”
“But why did it all fail?” he then sighed. “I remember when we were young, and we all thought when we retired, things would be easy, that once we no longer had to center everything around winning medals we’d all settled down and be happy. Of course I suppose we couldn’t expect all the relationships to work out, but why did Stephane and Johnny and me and Nathalie and you and Alex all have to fail?”
Because all three relationships included someone who was a self-centered asshole was what Carolina wanted to say. But she wasn’t fully sure that was really fair. It felt more like retirement had changed them too much, and they were no longer who they had been, or wanted what they’d thought they’d want.
Retirement. She’d known, deep down, that was probably what she was going into when she’d stepped down from that final podium in Saitama. But she hadn’t really admitted it until more recently, when it had become clear she was going to be forced into it anyway. There were things to do, of course, shows to be in and such. But she no longer knew where she’d been in March. Where she’d be in four years time.
She was suddenly glad to have the man sitting with her, that he’d come here, and wanted to keep something between them, something they could both rely on, if they could only figure things out. Stephane’s urging that she not let herself give him up took on a new meaning then, as she understood what he, retired four years and knowing what lay in store for her, had been trying to tell her about.
“Tomas.” She spoke his name without knowing what she was going to say next. But perhaps the way she said his name said more than words would anyway, and he turned, took her hands and then leaned over and kissed her.
It was an odd kind of kissing, not like the kinds of kisses that had happened between them in the past. Too firm to be lazy or simple, too chaste to be for pleasure or out of lust. It felt more like a statement, a feeling.
“Stay with me,” she said to him. “I mean, you can go in half an hour, but…”
“I will,” he said, and she believed him.