Choreography
Title: Choreography
Author: tohereandnow
Pairing: Stéphane Lambiel/Daisuke Takahashi
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2930
Disclaimer: Not real, not mine, not making any money from this.
Summary: Stéphane’s choreography stint for Daisuke’s Amélie.
He hates it when interviewers ask him if he has gotten over Vancouver and he has to smile graciously through the redundancy of the question. Why ask at all if the only answer was that there was nothing he could do to change it? If they really believed that he’d gotten over it there wouldn’t be a need for the question in the first place, for even a yes admitted that it occupied some dimmed corner in his mind. In any case, one does not just get over the Olympics, the same way one does not simply get over the pain years of competitive skating have inflicted onto any human frame. They are one and the same, misdirected ambition and the phantom ache that gnaws his hip in the middle of the night. When that happens he cannot wait to get on the ice and let the music dictate the movement of his body. Any tune would do, preferably something exuberant and hopeful that he can lose himself in, anything other than this unformed, unplaceable hurt.
For now, all he can do is focus hard on the present and stare his current state of libre in the face till his vision blurs. Is this freedom, when there is no other road? He toys with the word in his head. It feels loose, unbound and uncertain, like being caught in a spin that has lost its centre.
(He is glad for these bouts of choler because after he thoroughly finishes getting sad and angry and frustrated, he can move on to being happy.)
This mercurial inclination salvages the remainder of his existence. For all the pain that exclusion brings he is glad for its capacity for possibility. He wakes everyday now and finds it strange that he no longer needs to juggle points and triple axels and Level 4 step sequences as he figures out how he is to fit two million elements into a routine without compromising too much on choreography. It makes him excited that he can paint beautiful blossoming movements that will be executed by a body less wasted.
It could mean anything.
He seizes this moment of optimism and replies Daisuke’s email. He votes for the first piece of music, because it is not what Daisuke usually skates to and when he listens closely the jumps he sees have a height he will never master and a vitality only Daisuke can communicate. It is with pride that he concedes that skating is no longer defined by how he lives it.
*****
Stéphane explains the storyline to him. His arms flail about without his notice and Daisuke nods and nods and is reminded of children crowded around an animated narrator in a teatime story-telling session at the library. Then he recalls this is Stéphane and he is Daisuke and wonders how could it be any other way?
It is hard not to look at Stéphane’s face when he demonstrates the movements. Instead, Daisuke busies himself with the music, the story, and obediently imagines that he is some magical creature in the nature reserves. (It doesn’t bother him; he’s imagined worse. Occupational hazard.) He convinces himself he is surrounded by trees and sees fuchsia blossoms peeking from dense foliage and asks Stéphane where are the butterflies? Stéphane laughs and says that can be arranged and isn’t it funny he was thinking about the exact same thing. When they begin to rehearse the straight line step sequence the pace picks up and Daisuke flies across the ice like he always does but Stéphane tells him the monster is not the ice it is something else. It’s difficult enough trying to integrate the upper body movements with his feet going every which way but Stéphane says it is all about the struggle and he wants to believe that too.
It could be in this story that he is allowed to win this once.
*****
The next day is focused on ironing out all the details in the elements. What to hold at the end of rotations, the exact angle of his arm in every pose, pieces of meaning communicated in milliseconds that escape all but the sharpest scrutiny. Daisuke likes that; it’s like the story belongs to him most of all. It is an indulgence he allows himself every once in a while.
Most of the time Stéphane defers far too often to Daisuke’s carefully offered suggestions, or says that it was exactly what he intended. It makes Daisuke feel rather flattered and also a little nervous and uncomfortable, but he supposes this is Stéphane whose arms move so gracefully their beauty must somehow rub off on his choreography and who knows if this is his last year of competitive skating and shit, this is his program after all.
Stéphane corrects his spins, pressing his hands to Daisuke’s sides to correct his posture, all the while mumbling in French. When he realises he smacks a hand to his forehead and grins, sheepish. “I forget.”
But Daisuke must have understood whatever he intended, because his spins are showing some improvement. He has never particularly liked spins (since jumps came so much more easily), and for the first time he finds freedom in the instant where his body just gives before the spin locks in and gains speed and the world is him. Stéphane beams. He goes faster and faster till the ground tilts up to meet him and he is on the ice clutching his knees in some fit of laughter, and apparently that makes Stéphane laugh too. Then all too soon do they return to seriousness and work, and their dogged persistence pays off because by evening the program is more or less completed and Daisuke suggests a celebratory dinner.
They are seated in a restaurant wedged into a quaint little corner. Outside, the street is winding down, divesting itself of its day costume and preparing for night. The waiter arrives with the menu and Daisuke looks to Stéphane for help. Stéphane only smiles. He has no choice but to gesticulate cave-man style. The waiter is about to attempt some elementary English but is silenced when Stéphane whispers something inscrutable to him. He turns to Daisuke and his eyebrows grin wickedly. “If it’s something you cannot eat, I will tell you.”
Daisuke assents in good humour and assures him that he will extend the favour when they are in Japan.
*****
He receives a handsomely dressed salad. He must be really lucky, he thinks, or. He shifts his eyes to Stéphane’s plate and notes that he continues to keep a skater’s diet (barring dessert regulations, which S. has never adhered to anyway).
They eat; without the ice beneath them it is kind of awkward, and eating, it gives them something tangible that thankfully eases the quiet in this space in between.
Stéphane spoons the last of his chocolate sundae into his mouth while Daisuke watches. He begins a broken profession of appreciation for his help these past two days, recites something about how they might collaborate again in the future, but is interrupted by Stéphane.
“You know, this is my job. You don’t have to treat this like it is a favour.” It sounds terse, almost accusatory. The tone is tinged with more bitterness than he actually feels and Stéphane has a strange sensation that it’s the sugar doing the talking here.
“...”
“I like doing this,” he continues, “in fact, since we have the rest of the week we could try working out the other piece,” he says, licking the back of the spoon and for a brief moment, eyeing his distorted reflection in it. He has no idea what made him offer that. He blames the chocolate syrup.
Daisuke’s face lights up. It is for the third time today that Stéphane wonders how he can be so intense on the ice yet so easily touched by a gossamer’s happiness off it.
And so they part ways. That night in his bed, Stéphane’s thumb swivels his iPod’s click wheel and selects the track. He listens and tells himself of journeys, of happy roads with no destination, and closes his eyes. He sees a figure skipping stones across the rippling surface of a canal. Apparently the phenomenon of bouncing stones, like his insane spins, can be explained by physics.
He might be falling asleep. The next track begins but he’s too tired to adjust the player and simply lets it be. His palms smooth against the blanket and his long fringe falls over his face when he turns his head. Does he need a haircut, he asks. Is this right, or this, or this? At the edge of dreaming a top performs continuous revolutions and it seems that at certain angles a screw in the knee can look very much like a metal disc on a stake.
*****
Another day, another story. Stéphane pops the CD into the record player. The baggy sleeves of his hoodie fall over his fingers and he pushes them up his arms a little impatiently and presses play. Light, clear notes ring out over the creaky PA system.
Standing at the edge of the rink, Stéphane discourses in concentric circles about the exhibition program. The pressing need for hope and human connection and its accompanying fear of disappointment are the threads that bind wheeling strangers together. He tells him about projecting this need outwards by devising stratagems that doctor the lives of others. His hand dallies momentarily on his chest before it splays outwards against an imaginary mirror when he speaks of the haunting fear following the recognition of a kindred spirit, almost like glimpsing one’s doppelgänger at the edge of one’s shadow.
Stéphane pauses. He has always wanted to teach, but sharing expressions and motions entwined with his deepest dreams and fears is the last thing he’d expect himself to do. With each raise of his arms he feels like he’s heaving his heart up from the messy tangle of his person for inspection. Somehow, baring his innermost feelings in his own performances does not frighten him as much as this, this, where Daisuke stares unabashedly at him, scrutinising his movements and reproducing them exactly within minutes.
Still, here he is by choice, alone with Daisuke in an ice rink. Like yesterday, Daisuke is quick to learn and in his opinion far too eager to please as he contorts his body at Stéphane’s instructions. Stéphane savours this power he wields over the younger man, whose submission brings to mind how he gave over his body in Poeta. He recalls how he pushed Antonio away at the end of the first complete run-through of the program, when all he could sense was the twist of a knife inside his chest as he gasped for breath and tried not to show it. Now Daisuke mirrors that situation at the end of his spin, save that he is smiling and asking with bated breath if he has got it right.
(For a second he wants to fuck Daisuke hard against the wall to obliterate that grin and feel him bite into the pulse at his neck through the pain.) He blinks and the urge passes.
He only smiles. It’s the last thing he’d expect himself to do.
*****
Daisuke picks up the oscillating notes and associates them with a desperation he understands. He knows all about the diplomacy of first love, that tenuous connection fearful of articulation. It is not an Asian conservativeness that holds him back (no; he delights very much in the liberal sensuality of a kiss, a wordless exchange that has him drinking deep and forgetting himself in the physical). It is simply the preservation of a connection independent of language, independent of words. It is with this notion in mind that he looks up and scans the thin line of Stéphane’s nose, the set of his jaw and the light, the light, the way it plays on his face when he is moving along the ice.
*****
The media is here. Daisuke entertains them with asides in Japanese that are followed by tight-lipped laughter at some inside joke only he understands. Stéphane loves Daisuke’s laugh. It rumbles low and deep in his chest, as if something colossal in him is moved to mirth.
When the reporters zoom in with that inane video camera, Stéphane hogs the frame and pulls faces at the lens. Laughter of this sort, Daisuke thinks, Stéphane could carve a career out of it. He contrasts it with the lopsided smile he offered the reporters at the rehab centre two years ago and doubts if he will carry himself with as much grace when his time comes.
Later in the locker room as they are discussing the final day’s schedule Stéphane is suddenly terse, almost grim. Daisuke pulls the laces off his skates, his eyes kept low and watching. He decides he prefers Stéphane in these darker candid moments: Stéphane suffering, longing and in pain, and half a point behind him on an imaginary podium, Stéphane carrying all this baggage in his creation of beautiful and terrible things that Daisuke will broadcast to all the world on the ice. Does that make him a sadist, he wonders.
*****
With his palms up against the air Daisuke is back to where he started, save that this time round his chest is heaving and if you look closely you can see the pale tremor in his fingers. Stéphane gazes at the rise and fall of his sternum, made more apparent in black practice kit, and knows exactly how to deck him out for the program.
It is perfect timing since they’re scheduled to meet the costumer this afternoon.
Daisuke holds the shirt up against the light and turns to Stéphane. He asks haltingly, “No…shiny?”
Stéphane winces. Daisuke does look a little crestfallen.
“Not really. Well, there is,” at which Daisuke’s eyebrows perk up slightly and fall back again, “if you really look,”
He concentrates hard on the fabric in his hands till he squints.
“The base of the shirt has some kind of trimming that will look very nicely in the spin,” Stéphane suggests. Daisuke is still squinting rather adorably. He purses his lips as he nods, “Yes, but...next costume I decide?”
*****
He doesn’t regret going along with Stéphane’s costume choice. Being swathed in dimmed black and grey allows him to forget himself a little more easily. He presumes that there will be questions, accusations even, about how his style is too reminiscent of Lambiel’s, that he has been unjustly subdued and overshadowed. But the truth is he doesn’t want to resemble him at all. It remains unvoiced that he wants to be Stéphane, or at least he supposes he wants to suffer what he currently endures, now instead of later, where a fate lies in wait for him in the near but indeterminable future in which continued success is desultory at best. He wants a tasting of his jocular sort of mourning, maybe even splice his grief by sharing it, however ridiculous that sounds. There shouldn’t be a need for justification; it is simply another secret he wants to savour without meddling interference.
Daisuke swivels with his arms spanned out in the combination spin. He is the figure by the canal or the pebble bouncing endlessly towards the horizon. It is no coincidence that Stéphane cannot fathom out which is which and when or how, yet the thought of it delights him, for it tells him Daisuke has made the story inscrutable, and that the program from now on is his own.
*****
On the day of the exhibition skate, the prep room is small and perfect for nervous pacing, which Daisuke does.
“Stéphane,” he calls.
“Yes?”
“I...” Daisuke thinks about escaping with a confession about how excited he is, or handing out a really butch punch on the shoulder, or ricocheting off the walls under the pretence of a high from the pre-skate adrenaline rush. Has all the daring he exudes on the ice come to this? All he wants is simply to meet honesty with honesty, sincerity with gratitude. Just when he would like to be at his boldest, shyness has claimed him again.
Stéphane walks next to him and shakes his shoulder good-naturedly. “Yes?” Up close, Daisuke’s eyes are wide and staring. He does not blink. He tilts forward on his toes and lands a kiss on Stéphane’s cheek. It is so light it feels like a wisp of wind, or a cloud.
“Merci, Stéphane,” he whispers and bows his head before hurrying out.
And all of a sudden, Stéphane Lambiel, who kisses people without a second thought and distributes hugs affectionately though carelessly, is left not knowing what to do.
*****
The second time you skate an exhibition program is always less tense that its virgin debut. This time when he tears his jacket off and swings it overhead, he puckers his lips even more than usual and swaggers his hips in the most defiant, persuasive manner. His body unconsciously injects an extravagant flamboyance into the performance that he only recognises later when he’s alone in the changing room easing his left foot from its skate. The idea of it makes him laugh, and he finds that he is not sorry for it at all.
Only now does he understand that speaking of yourself as if you were someone else is not necessarily a sign of indifference. It can also be a sign of love. - Robert Douglas-FairHurst, Introduction to Great Expectations (Oxford World’s Classics edition), p. xxxii
Author: tohereandnow
Pairing: Stéphane Lambiel/Daisuke Takahashi
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2930
Disclaimer: Not real, not mine, not making any money from this.
Summary: Stéphane’s choreography stint for Daisuke’s Amélie.
He hates it when interviewers ask him if he has gotten over Vancouver and he has to smile graciously through the redundancy of the question. Why ask at all if the only answer was that there was nothing he could do to change it? If they really believed that he’d gotten over it there wouldn’t be a need for the question in the first place, for even a yes admitted that it occupied some dimmed corner in his mind. In any case, one does not just get over the Olympics, the same way one does not simply get over the pain years of competitive skating have inflicted onto any human frame. They are one and the same, misdirected ambition and the phantom ache that gnaws his hip in the middle of the night. When that happens he cannot wait to get on the ice and let the music dictate the movement of his body. Any tune would do, preferably something exuberant and hopeful that he can lose himself in, anything other than this unformed, unplaceable hurt.
For now, all he can do is focus hard on the present and stare his current state of libre in the face till his vision blurs. Is this freedom, when there is no other road? He toys with the word in his head. It feels loose, unbound and uncertain, like being caught in a spin that has lost its centre.
(He is glad for these bouts of choler because after he thoroughly finishes getting sad and angry and frustrated, he can move on to being happy.)
This mercurial inclination salvages the remainder of his existence. For all the pain that exclusion brings he is glad for its capacity for possibility. He wakes everyday now and finds it strange that he no longer needs to juggle points and triple axels and Level 4 step sequences as he figures out how he is to fit two million elements into a routine without compromising too much on choreography. It makes him excited that he can paint beautiful blossoming movements that will be executed by a body less wasted.
It could mean anything.
He seizes this moment of optimism and replies Daisuke’s email. He votes for the first piece of music, because it is not what Daisuke usually skates to and when he listens closely the jumps he sees have a height he will never master and a vitality only Daisuke can communicate. It is with pride that he concedes that skating is no longer defined by how he lives it.
*****
Stéphane explains the storyline to him. His arms flail about without his notice and Daisuke nods and nods and is reminded of children crowded around an animated narrator in a teatime story-telling session at the library. Then he recalls this is Stéphane and he is Daisuke and wonders how could it be any other way?
It is hard not to look at Stéphane’s face when he demonstrates the movements. Instead, Daisuke busies himself with the music, the story, and obediently imagines that he is some magical creature in the nature reserves. (It doesn’t bother him; he’s imagined worse. Occupational hazard.) He convinces himself he is surrounded by trees and sees fuchsia blossoms peeking from dense foliage and asks Stéphane where are the butterflies? Stéphane laughs and says that can be arranged and isn’t it funny he was thinking about the exact same thing. When they begin to rehearse the straight line step sequence the pace picks up and Daisuke flies across the ice like he always does but Stéphane tells him the monster is not the ice it is something else. It’s difficult enough trying to integrate the upper body movements with his feet going every which way but Stéphane says it is all about the struggle and he wants to believe that too.
It could be in this story that he is allowed to win this once.
*****
The next day is focused on ironing out all the details in the elements. What to hold at the end of rotations, the exact angle of his arm in every pose, pieces of meaning communicated in milliseconds that escape all but the sharpest scrutiny. Daisuke likes that; it’s like the story belongs to him most of all. It is an indulgence he allows himself every once in a while.
Most of the time Stéphane defers far too often to Daisuke’s carefully offered suggestions, or says that it was exactly what he intended. It makes Daisuke feel rather flattered and also a little nervous and uncomfortable, but he supposes this is Stéphane whose arms move so gracefully their beauty must somehow rub off on his choreography and who knows if this is his last year of competitive skating and shit, this is his program after all.
Stéphane corrects his spins, pressing his hands to Daisuke’s sides to correct his posture, all the while mumbling in French. When he realises he smacks a hand to his forehead and grins, sheepish. “I forget.”
But Daisuke must have understood whatever he intended, because his spins are showing some improvement. He has never particularly liked spins (since jumps came so much more easily), and for the first time he finds freedom in the instant where his body just gives before the spin locks in and gains speed and the world is him. Stéphane beams. He goes faster and faster till the ground tilts up to meet him and he is on the ice clutching his knees in some fit of laughter, and apparently that makes Stéphane laugh too. Then all too soon do they return to seriousness and work, and their dogged persistence pays off because by evening the program is more or less completed and Daisuke suggests a celebratory dinner.
They are seated in a restaurant wedged into a quaint little corner. Outside, the street is winding down, divesting itself of its day costume and preparing for night. The waiter arrives with the menu and Daisuke looks to Stéphane for help. Stéphane only smiles. He has no choice but to gesticulate cave-man style. The waiter is about to attempt some elementary English but is silenced when Stéphane whispers something inscrutable to him. He turns to Daisuke and his eyebrows grin wickedly. “If it’s something you cannot eat, I will tell you.”
Daisuke assents in good humour and assures him that he will extend the favour when they are in Japan.
*****
He receives a handsomely dressed salad. He must be really lucky, he thinks, or. He shifts his eyes to Stéphane’s plate and notes that he continues to keep a skater’s diet (barring dessert regulations, which S. has never adhered to anyway).
They eat; without the ice beneath them it is kind of awkward, and eating, it gives them something tangible that thankfully eases the quiet in this space in between.
Stéphane spoons the last of his chocolate sundae into his mouth while Daisuke watches. He begins a broken profession of appreciation for his help these past two days, recites something about how they might collaborate again in the future, but is interrupted by Stéphane.
“You know, this is my job. You don’t have to treat this like it is a favour.” It sounds terse, almost accusatory. The tone is tinged with more bitterness than he actually feels and Stéphane has a strange sensation that it’s the sugar doing the talking here.
“...”
“I like doing this,” he continues, “in fact, since we have the rest of the week we could try working out the other piece,” he says, licking the back of the spoon and for a brief moment, eyeing his distorted reflection in it. He has no idea what made him offer that. He blames the chocolate syrup.
Daisuke’s face lights up. It is for the third time today that Stéphane wonders how he can be so intense on the ice yet so easily touched by a gossamer’s happiness off it.
And so they part ways. That night in his bed, Stéphane’s thumb swivels his iPod’s click wheel and selects the track. He listens and tells himself of journeys, of happy roads with no destination, and closes his eyes. He sees a figure skipping stones across the rippling surface of a canal. Apparently the phenomenon of bouncing stones, like his insane spins, can be explained by physics.
He might be falling asleep. The next track begins but he’s too tired to adjust the player and simply lets it be. His palms smooth against the blanket and his long fringe falls over his face when he turns his head. Does he need a haircut, he asks. Is this right, or this, or this? At the edge of dreaming a top performs continuous revolutions and it seems that at certain angles a screw in the knee can look very much like a metal disc on a stake.
*****
Another day, another story. Stéphane pops the CD into the record player. The baggy sleeves of his hoodie fall over his fingers and he pushes them up his arms a little impatiently and presses play. Light, clear notes ring out over the creaky PA system.
Standing at the edge of the rink, Stéphane discourses in concentric circles about the exhibition program. The pressing need for hope and human connection and its accompanying fear of disappointment are the threads that bind wheeling strangers together. He tells him about projecting this need outwards by devising stratagems that doctor the lives of others. His hand dallies momentarily on his chest before it splays outwards against an imaginary mirror when he speaks of the haunting fear following the recognition of a kindred spirit, almost like glimpsing one’s doppelgänger at the edge of one’s shadow.
Stéphane pauses. He has always wanted to teach, but sharing expressions and motions entwined with his deepest dreams and fears is the last thing he’d expect himself to do. With each raise of his arms he feels like he’s heaving his heart up from the messy tangle of his person for inspection. Somehow, baring his innermost feelings in his own performances does not frighten him as much as this, this, where Daisuke stares unabashedly at him, scrutinising his movements and reproducing them exactly within minutes.
Still, here he is by choice, alone with Daisuke in an ice rink. Like yesterday, Daisuke is quick to learn and in his opinion far too eager to please as he contorts his body at Stéphane’s instructions. Stéphane savours this power he wields over the younger man, whose submission brings to mind how he gave over his body in Poeta. He recalls how he pushed Antonio away at the end of the first complete run-through of the program, when all he could sense was the twist of a knife inside his chest as he gasped for breath and tried not to show it. Now Daisuke mirrors that situation at the end of his spin, save that he is smiling and asking with bated breath if he has got it right.
(For a second he wants to fuck Daisuke hard against the wall to obliterate that grin and feel him bite into the pulse at his neck through the pain.) He blinks and the urge passes.
He only smiles. It’s the last thing he’d expect himself to do.
*****
Daisuke picks up the oscillating notes and associates them with a desperation he understands. He knows all about the diplomacy of first love, that tenuous connection fearful of articulation. It is not an Asian conservativeness that holds him back (no; he delights very much in the liberal sensuality of a kiss, a wordless exchange that has him drinking deep and forgetting himself in the physical). It is simply the preservation of a connection independent of language, independent of words. It is with this notion in mind that he looks up and scans the thin line of Stéphane’s nose, the set of his jaw and the light, the light, the way it plays on his face when he is moving along the ice.
*****
The media is here. Daisuke entertains them with asides in Japanese that are followed by tight-lipped laughter at some inside joke only he understands. Stéphane loves Daisuke’s laugh. It rumbles low and deep in his chest, as if something colossal in him is moved to mirth.
When the reporters zoom in with that inane video camera, Stéphane hogs the frame and pulls faces at the lens. Laughter of this sort, Daisuke thinks, Stéphane could carve a career out of it. He contrasts it with the lopsided smile he offered the reporters at the rehab centre two years ago and doubts if he will carry himself with as much grace when his time comes.
Later in the locker room as they are discussing the final day’s schedule Stéphane is suddenly terse, almost grim. Daisuke pulls the laces off his skates, his eyes kept low and watching. He decides he prefers Stéphane in these darker candid moments: Stéphane suffering, longing and in pain, and half a point behind him on an imaginary podium, Stéphane carrying all this baggage in his creation of beautiful and terrible things that Daisuke will broadcast to all the world on the ice. Does that make him a sadist, he wonders.
*****
With his palms up against the air Daisuke is back to where he started, save that this time round his chest is heaving and if you look closely you can see the pale tremor in his fingers. Stéphane gazes at the rise and fall of his sternum, made more apparent in black practice kit, and knows exactly how to deck him out for the program.
It is perfect timing since they’re scheduled to meet the costumer this afternoon.
Daisuke holds the shirt up against the light and turns to Stéphane. He asks haltingly, “No…shiny?”
Stéphane winces. Daisuke does look a little crestfallen.
“Not really. Well, there is,” at which Daisuke’s eyebrows perk up slightly and fall back again, “if you really look,”
He concentrates hard on the fabric in his hands till he squints.
“The base of the shirt has some kind of trimming that will look very nicely in the spin,” Stéphane suggests. Daisuke is still squinting rather adorably. He purses his lips as he nods, “Yes, but...next costume I decide?”
*****
He doesn’t regret going along with Stéphane’s costume choice. Being swathed in dimmed black and grey allows him to forget himself a little more easily. He presumes that there will be questions, accusations even, about how his style is too reminiscent of Lambiel’s, that he has been unjustly subdued and overshadowed. But the truth is he doesn’t want to resemble him at all. It remains unvoiced that he wants to be Stéphane, or at least he supposes he wants to suffer what he currently endures, now instead of later, where a fate lies in wait for him in the near but indeterminable future in which continued success is desultory at best. He wants a tasting of his jocular sort of mourning, maybe even splice his grief by sharing it, however ridiculous that sounds. There shouldn’t be a need for justification; it is simply another secret he wants to savour without meddling interference.
Daisuke swivels with his arms spanned out in the combination spin. He is the figure by the canal or the pebble bouncing endlessly towards the horizon. It is no coincidence that Stéphane cannot fathom out which is which and when or how, yet the thought of it delights him, for it tells him Daisuke has made the story inscrutable, and that the program from now on is his own.
*****
On the day of the exhibition skate, the prep room is small and perfect for nervous pacing, which Daisuke does.
“Stéphane,” he calls.
“Yes?”
“I...” Daisuke thinks about escaping with a confession about how excited he is, or handing out a really butch punch on the shoulder, or ricocheting off the walls under the pretence of a high from the pre-skate adrenaline rush. Has all the daring he exudes on the ice come to this? All he wants is simply to meet honesty with honesty, sincerity with gratitude. Just when he would like to be at his boldest, shyness has claimed him again.
Stéphane walks next to him and shakes his shoulder good-naturedly. “Yes?” Up close, Daisuke’s eyes are wide and staring. He does not blink. He tilts forward on his toes and lands a kiss on Stéphane’s cheek. It is so light it feels like a wisp of wind, or a cloud.
“Merci, Stéphane,” he whispers and bows his head before hurrying out.
And all of a sudden, Stéphane Lambiel, who kisses people without a second thought and distributes hugs affectionately though carelessly, is left not knowing what to do.
*****
The second time you skate an exhibition program is always less tense that its virgin debut. This time when he tears his jacket off and swings it overhead, he puckers his lips even more than usual and swaggers his hips in the most defiant, persuasive manner. His body unconsciously injects an extravagant flamboyance into the performance that he only recognises later when he’s alone in the changing room easing his left foot from its skate. The idea of it makes him laugh, and he finds that he is not sorry for it at all.
Only now does he understand that speaking of yourself as if you were someone else is not necessarily a sign of indifference. It can also be a sign of love. - Robert Douglas-FairHurst, Introduction to Great Expectations (Oxford World’s Classics edition), p. xxxii