Hearts Beat Time Out: Outtakes and Ephemera
Sometimes, with the long stories, everything I write ends up in the story. That's how it was with "Like Describing the Alphabet": I deleted some material in editing, but pretty much everything that initially went into that story, ended up in that story. Not so with "Hearts Beat Time Out," which amassed four "deleted scenes" of various kinds, plus an alternate ending. They don't work within the story for various reasons, but I think they're worth sharing.
The headers post, with links to the rest of the story, is right here.
1. Tour bus banter #1. At least one of my betas mentioned that they wished there were more Sasha, Evan, and Kimmie in the fic. Here they are. I love this scene, but it didn't advance the narrative at all, and I couldn't get it to fit in anywhere.
"Two words," Ben said. "'Afternoon Delight.' It's the ultimate song you can never skate to, no matter how funny it would be. Seriously. I defy anyone to come up with something better."
"Oh, that's easy," Johnny said. "'Dirrrty.' I mean, anything by Christina, really, I love her voice so much, but that would be the one I'd get in trouble for."
"As long as we're going there?" Evan said. "'Milkshake.'"
"Or oh my God, I actually kind of hate this song? But that 'Hard out here being a pimp' song," Kimmie said.
"I can hear Dick Button now," Ben said. "'That Kimmie Meissner, she's really grown up fast.'"
"You know what I've always wanted to do because it would actually make a great program?" Tanith said. "'Across 110th Street,' by Bobby Womack."
"Since when do you listen to Bobby Womack?" Ben said.
"Since I downloaded Jackie Brown," Tanith said.
"I'm all for it, if it means I get to wear a pimp costume," Ben said.
"How come I always have to be the whore?" Tanith said.
There was prolonged silence, because there was no safe answer to that question.
"Wait, I've got one," Evan said. "Soundtrack from Brokeback Mountain."
"You can't even skate to that," Johnny said. "No rhythm."
"Oh!" Sasha said. "'I Touch Myself.'"
"We know, Sasha," Johnny said. She blushed.
"Wait, have you guys heard of Depeche Mode?" Kimmie said. "Because, like, 'Blasphemous Rumors.'"
"'Master and Servant' would be even better," Ben said.
"See? You are just thinking of excuses to dress me up as a whore," Tanith said.
"Yeah, but you'd be a bondage whore," Ben said.
"Well, then, just go all the way with it and do 'Venus in Furs,'" Tanith said.
"Okay, now that we're totally in the realm of songs you can't physically skate to?" Johnny said. "If you guys get to do bondage porn, I get to do 'Johnny Are You Queer.'"
"That might actually be funnier if Evan did it," Sasha said.
"Hey!" Evan said.
"No, just, seeing as you're, like, the great heterosexual hope of figure skating and stuff," Sasha said.
"Well, if that's the problem, then I should just do ABBA, right?" Evan said.
"People have done ABBA, haven't they?" Tanith said. "I mean, somebody must have. You'd totally get away with it."
"Even 'Dancing Queen'?" Evan said.
"You'd totally get it approved," Johnny said. "Like, depending on the program, you might be asked never to skate it again, but you'd probably get to do it once."
"I'm asking my coach," Evan said.
"Oh, don't," Sasha said. "You'll just--"
"No. I'm totally asking Frank. Right now." He dashed to the back of the bus, garnering a nasty look from the bus driver, and took out his phone. He was too far away for anyone to hear what he was saying, but his gestures were animated. "He says yes," Evan shouted.
*
2. Gratuitous porn. sathinks was feeling down one night, and she asked for a little something about Ben's secret sex toy stash. I was a little sad to let it go, since it's the only glimpse we get of Johnny's visit to Detroit, but SA and I agreed that it just would have been redundant.
They'd been in Detroit for less than twenty-four hours, and Johnny had already found the handcuffs. It had taken hard work and persistence, but he'd known that a guy like Ben would have something embarrassing in a shoebox under his bed, and there they were. He sat in Ben's unmade bed with his nose in the new Jennifer Weiner novel and the handcuffs in his lap. When Ben emerged from his shower, still drying his wild hair, Johnny rushed to dangle the handcuffs from his fingers suggestively. "When were you planning on telling me about these?" Johnny said.
"Oh," Ben said, smiling shyly into his towel.
"Sorry," Johnny said. "I shouldn't have gone through your things."
"No, it's just --"
Johnny knew what it meant when Ben got vague like this. The entire city of Detroit seemed to have this effect on him: every landmark made him think of his ex. Johnny didn't fault him for it. They'd been together long enough to leave a lot of scars. "Were they a present from Merrie?" Johnny said, hoping he didn't sound jealous.
"Not exactly," Ben said, still cagey.
"I'll put them back where I found them," Johnny said, dog-earing his book and scrambling out of his very comfortable position.
"Okay, see, Tanith and I? We give each other joke gifts sometimes. Like, when she goes somewhere and I don't. Inappropriate souvenirs. It's, like, it started small and turned into X-rated playing cards and stuff." He snatched the handcuffs away from Johnny. "I think she went to Alcatraz or something," he said. "Either that or the Valley."
"So you've never actually used them?" Johnny said. He didn't need to wait for an answer. "Give them here."
Ben held the handcuffs behind his back. "What'll you give me for them?"
"Blow job," Johnny said with a grin.
Ben responded by climbing on top of Johnny and pushing him down onto his back. Johnny squirmed, and Ben caught his wrist, locking it in one of the cuffs. "This isn't what I meant," Johnny said.
"If it isn't what you meant, then why did you take them out of the box in the first place?" Ben said.
"I was going to put them on you, silly," Johnny said.
"Oh, of course," Ben said. "You were going to put my handcuffs on me." He threaded the chain around one of the bedposts but hesitated before cuffing Johnny's other wrist. "Was the key still in the box?"
"Yeah," Johnny said. "I made sure."
That was apparently all the reassurance Ben needed to close the cuff around Johnny's wrist. Johnny was trapped flat on his back with his hands over his head: the bedpost was tall, and flexible as he was, he wasn't double-jointed. But Ben could ease him free if he needed to. Johnny wriggled and resisted, and it was mostly just playfulness, although it was kind of unnerving to let Ben have such complete control over him. Ben was usually so indecisive, so happy to let Johnny take charge when they had sex. Maybe he was getting restless. Johnny hoped that he was, and that he trusted Johnny enough to express that, to be honest about that need.
Ben ran his hands up and down Johnny's chest, under his shirt, like he wasn't sure where to start. But when Johnny opened his mouth to make a suggestion, Ben clapped a hand over it so he couldn't speak. Still covering Johnny's mouth, Ben went for his neck. He nipped gently at the skin for a while, sending a little more blood rushing to Johnny's cock with each tiny bite. He squeezed Johnny's nipple, making Johnny writhe under his hands. Johnny was wearing tight jeans, mostly for Ben's benefit, and he was getting uncomfortable in them. Without thinking, he tried to reach down to unzip his fly, but the cuffs dug into his wrists.
Ben got the message, and he used it as an excuse to torture Johnny more intensely. He put one hand where Johnny had no choice but to grind against it, found the tip of Johnny's cock with his thumb and circled it. Meanwhile, he focused his lips and tongue on the side of Johnny's neck, sucking hard enough to leave a mark. The ache of his cock and the pressure of Ben's teeth made Johnny whimper and struggle. Ben took his hand off Johnny's mouth for a merciful moment, but when Johnny started to beg for release, Ben covered it again. Ben had developed a sense of Johnny's timing, though, and he must have been able to tell that Johnny wasn't going to last much longer. He fumbled Johnny's fly open with one hand. Johnny gasped with relief. "Finally," he said into Ben's hand.
"Shh," Ben commanded. He had to free Johnny's mouth in order to go down on him, but Johnny pursed his lips, willing to pretend for him. He kept silent as Ben gripped the base of his cock and teased his balls with his thumb. Ben could get Johnny's cock in his mouth about halfway now, which was more than enough, especially since he'd mastered the pressure of his lips as he moved up and down over Johnny's cock, the sideways movement of his tongue underneath. Johnny arched his back against the resistance of the cuffs. He loosed a couple of breathy, rebellious "oh"s as he came. "I hate you so much right now," he said, knowing that Ben would hear the irony and know that he meant exactly the opposite.
*
3. Tour bus banter #2. I actually just wrote this last week at writercon. I went to liz_marcs's panel on writing ensemble, and she made us write, darn her. We were supposed to write to a prompt, but the prompt was for S1 Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and do you know how long it's been since I watched that? So I was a jerk and ditched the prompt to write a bunch of skaters riffing on pirate movies. Still, I think this follows a lot of the guidelines and tips that the panel laid out.
Tanith was trying to listen to her new TV on the Radio mp3s. They were amazing songs, and Evan was going to ask about them, and also it was so unfair to eavesdrop on Ben and Johnny (not to mention also unpleasantly X-rated). But they'd all snuck out of the hotel the night before to see Pirates of the Caribbean 2 (because hi, pirate movie), and it had spawned, like, round eight million and three of the battle for Orlando Bloom's ass.
"What are you smoking?" Totally hotter as an elf," Ben was saying. "I mean, the ears. The hair. The bow and arrow."
"The ears are weird, the facial hair is hot, and a sword is a better phallic symbol," Johnny said. "I can't even believe we're having this conversation."
Tanith couldn't hold it in anymore. "You have this conversation daily," she said, turning around to kneel with her arms resting on the back of the seat.
"So. Fine. Settle it," Johnny said. "Elf or pirate?"
"That's so not my job," Tanith said.
"How many more hours is it to Portland?" Ben said. "Because I'm sure we could keep debating this till we get there."
Tanith rolled her eyes at him: he was too far away for her to punch him. "Okay, the truth is? I'm just not that into Orlando Bloom. I'm more of a Johnny Depp girl. And Keira Knightley. I would totally switch teams for Keira Knightley."
Evan, sitting across the aisle, piped up. "Where's the switch? She looks like a boy. Seriously, like, I'd do her."
"Oh, come on," Ben said. "In the corset, she's almost got a rack."
"See?" Tanith said. "She totally counts for my imaginary bi-curious experiment."
"So," Ben said. "Elf, right?"
"Still not taking a side on this," Tanith said.
"Totally with you on the Depp, though," Evan said.
"Thank you," Tanith said. She pivoted on her knees and leaned across the aisle to kiss him on the cheek.
Michelle peeked around her seat. "You guys are loud," she said. "Also, come on. Norrington. The stubble alone, my God."
Tanith wasn't sure why everyone else went silent, but her excuse was astonishment at the sudden emergence of Michelle's dirty mind.
"Christ, that was a bad movie," Johnny said, finally.
"Unlike certain Oscar-winning movies with elves in them," Ben said.
"This doesn't mean you win," Tanith said.
"No, he wins," Michelle said. "You don't argue with Oscar." You also didn't argue with Michelle, so it was settled.
*
4. Schmoop. I wrote this for callmesandy in my last round of ficlets-to-order. It's... cute.
All of Johnny's moods were a little bit scary, but his good moods might have been the scariest. Good moods brought blow jobs first thing in the morning, but they also brought out-of-tune impromptu shower renditions of Christina Aguilera songs. A cloud of steam announced that Johnny was done in the bathroom, and he came out with his towel stretched out behind him like a cape, spinning and leaping. He was going to break something, or break himself, and Ben was not going to watch. He buried his face into his pillow and pretended to still be asleep.
Johnny bounded onto the bed and poked Ben with his foot. "Your turn," he sang. He jumped over Ben onto the floor, pirouetted, and threw the curtains open. "Good morning, Portland," he said.
"Jesus, you just blinded me," Ben said. "Also, aren't you naked?"
"We're on, like, the tenth floor, who's looking? It's a beautiful day in a non-crappy city where it's never a beautiful day, and I'm --"
"Torturing me with it," Ben said. He stretched and rolled out of bed.
Johnny took him by the hand, lifted him to his feet, and spun him around. "I thought I was cute when I'm happy," he said, pouting a little.
"You'll be really cute in about ten minutes," Ben yawned.
"Don't lie to me," Johnny said. "You love it when I'm crazy. You're looking down on that city right now and realizing that most of them don't have, like, a constant mental soundtrack and a taste for exhibitionism."
"It's Portland. They might."
"They aren't, and you don't want them to be, because if everyone were as crazy as you and me? You wouldn't be taking home all those silver medals."
"Maybe," Ben said.
"Admit it," Johnny said. "You like me because I'm fabulous and obnoxious."
"No," Ben said and kissed him. "That's why I love you."
*
5. Alternate ending. This was the original epilogue to the story. It got jossed when the Grand Prix assignments went out, and annavtree and I agreed that it just felt kind of flat. I transferred most of the funny and/or important moments to the revised epilogue, but there are a few things I really like here.
Johnny kept reminding himself that they'd really be something if they made it to Thanksgiving. Eight months sounded like a real relationship, a real accomplishment. It was what he repeated in his head when the press asked him coy questions about dating and it was all he could do to keep from erupting into diva rage. Someday, he'd tell them, tell everybody, say, "Look, I'm gay, we're all gay, that's the way this sport is." But it wasn't time for that, and more and more, he didn't believe it was his responsibility to say it. He'd taken the fall enough times so that other people could hide in the closet. He had the perfect fantasy of the ten-page New Yorker profile or the Men's Vogue fashion spread, the one where he'd casually drop Ben's name. But even that, he saw as part of some magical and improbable future.
For now, he was concentrating on the fact that it was the day before Thanksgiving, and he was driving to the Philadelphia airport to pick Ben up. They'd been flying in and out of each other's lives since the end of August, grabbing weekends when they could, but mostly subsisting on long phone calls and AIM. The one Grand Prix event they'd had together was Skate Canada, and it had felt like they'd come full circle, clandestinely sharing another hotel room at another competition in Canada. It was incredible how well they'd both skated, considering how little sleep they'd gotten. Ben had credited the Spirit of Flamenco, and he'd almost sounded serious about it.
That week had been a luxury. They only got two days for the holiday, and these were two days that they shouldn't have been taking. It was a good thing, sometimes, that Johnny's mom insisted that he be a person, even when he was still jet lagged from competing in France and Ben was leaving for Japan on Tuesday. Since skating had taken over Johnny's Novembers, his extended family had made a ritual of coming down to Delaware for Thanksgiving, and Johnny was not allowed to skip out on dinner when his grandparents were going to all that trouble. And neither was Ben: Johnny's mom had persuaded him that he had to come in and meet Johnny's entire family. Ben hadn't put up much of a fight; he never did. He was the kind of guy who enjoyed charming the socks off people's elderly relatives.
I-295 was a nightmare like always, but Johnny's excitement had inspired him to leave early, and he was in the airport parking garage before Ben's plane was scheduled to land. He sat in the car for a minute, listening to the CD he'd burned from songs that Ben had sent him. Even with that delay, he had to sit on a bench in the baggage claim with his face buried in Vogue for twenty minutes. He meant to watch for Ben, but he didn't want to draw attention to himself. Besides, there were so many planes coming in at this time of evening, especially the day before Thanksgiving, that he couldn't tell which throng of people was Ben's.
So Ben was the one to find him, and he knew he'd been found because he'd been lifted out of his seat and swung into the air. Ben set him down on his feet after one rotation, but they kept their arms around each other for a few minutes of suspended time, happy to be near each other, to feel the warmth of each other's bodies. By the end of the summer, people had joked that the two of them were surgically attached. They were capable of separating, but it felt like there was a cord between them that grew taut with distance. When they were together, the tension released fast, and they slammed into each other.
Ben had stuffed all of his things into a carry-on suitcase -- literally stuffed, in all likelihood -- so they went right back to the car. Johnny withheld his kisses until they'd thrown the suitcase in the back and locked themselves inside. Cars felt like fortresses; it was so often hard to believe that people could see inside the windows. He'd expected to be making out before he had a chance to find his keys, but the kiss he got was more romantic than sexual. "I've been on so many fucking airplanes," Ben said. "I'm so tired, I think I threw my knee out a little again yesterday, and I don't know, can we save it for when we get there?"
"Okay," Johnny said.
"You're disappointed," Ben said.
"I haven't seen you in, like, a month. But I can keep it in my pants until we're somewhere you can keep your weight off your knee."
"I could service you while you drive," Ben said.
"So we can die together while we're still young and beautiful?" Johnny said. "You're so fucking romantic."
"It's one way to come out," Ben said.
There were people in the skating community who would have liked that. You got to come out the day you died. "You've been thinking about it?"
"Obviously," Ben said. "I mean, there's a whole part of my life I don't get to talk about now, and I -- I don't like that. But, you know, not while we're still competing."
"Not the way things are," Johnny said.
"Not 'til they get the new scoring system figured out, at the very least," Ben said.
Johnny started the car, backed out, and sighed. "How did we get involved in this stupid sport?" he said.
"At least we're good at it," Ben said.
"We're really fucking good at it."
"We really fucking are." Ben reached across Johnny to pay the three dollars Johnny owed for parking.
"You just wanted to reach across me," Johnny said.
"I just wanted to not wait half an hour while you found your wallet in your bag and forced that woman to make change for a twenty," Ben said.
"My wallet is always on top, and I totally brought singles," Johnny said.
Ben reached into the back seat and shamelessly manhandled Johnny's brand new Jack Gomme messenger bag. He started pulling things out of it, even though Johnny squealed for him to stop. "Two fashion magazines, a pack of Kleenex, some KY, a crumpled-up receipt, your phone, your iPod, a pocket map of Boston, another receipt, breath mints, and oh. There's your wallet."
"Don't make me pull this car over."
"Two twenties and a ten," Ben said. "What do I win?"
"Not the fifty bucks," Johnny said.
Ben put everything back in Johnny's bag; he put the wallet on top. Gently this time, he set it down in the back seat. "I can stop being mean to you," he said.
"Good, because I have half a mind to make you walk to Newark," Johnny said.
Ben must have thought Johnny was actually mad at him, because he was quiet for a while, until they were crawling down 295. "You're having a good season," Ben said, somewhere between an observation and a question. "You're hitting your quad."
"Most of the time," Johnny said. The more important thing was, he wasn't blowing the easy stuff. He was landing clean triples in the second half of his long; he was keeping the positions and edge transitions sharp in his combination spins. Those were the things that won competitions now, the things that made it impossible for the judges to justify marking you down.
"You were smiling all through your short in Paris," Ben said. "Peggy Fleming talked through half your program on ESPN about how you were smiling."
"I guess they've got to think of something to fill the air with when I'm not fucking up," Johnny said.
"They're just trying to distract the viewers from the fact that they call half the jumps wrong."
"At least they know what my components are called," Johnny said. "When they're talking over your programs, it's all, 'Look, they did a footwork thingy.'"
"Actually, that's the technical name for it," Ben said.
"So what's the technical name for there's this one place in your original dance where you do a left outside bracket and she does a right outside counter and one of you's got to be wrong because it looks really fucking weird?"
Ben put a hand to his forehead and laughed softly.
"Is that a thing?" Johnny said.
"I'll tell Marina you think it looks weird, let's put it that way. Seriously, she says she thinks you're a smart skater. We might actually change it."
"Your coaches say nice things about me?"
"My coaches loved you before we were even dating," Ben said. He sighed, took his hair out of the ponytail, shook it out, and tied it back again. Johnny watched him out of the corner of his eye while trying not to rear-end the Volkswagen in front of him. "It's been the strangest season. And I mean, not, like, the skating itself. It's all, like, people who've barely said hi to me suddenly think they're my best friends, and people who used to be really warm won't even talk to me." Before Johnny could say it, he added, "But that's how it's always been for you, right?"
"Can you live with it being like that?" Johnny said.
"I realized in our first week together that you're just a big ball of consequences," Ben said.
"And drama," Johnny said, changing lanes and cutting off an eighteen-wheeler. "Don't forget the drama."
"I like the drama," Ben said. "I love the drama."
"So you're, like -- you're in this." It was somewhere, again, between an observation and a question.
"You weren't sure?" Ben said.
"You know me," Johnny said. "I'm never sure."
"I'm in this," Ben said. He said it in the same casual way that he'd agreed to Calgary, to New York, to that stadium men's room in Charlotte or Charleston or Columbia. Johnny wondered how many times Ben had made a commitment when it had just sounded like he was saying yes for the night.
"I kept telling myself this would work out if we could just make it to Thanksgiving," Johnny said.
"So how long until this starts working out?" Ben said. "Like, an hour?"
"Depends on traffic," Johnny said.
The headers post, with links to the rest of the story, is right here.
1. Tour bus banter #1. At least one of my betas mentioned that they wished there were more Sasha, Evan, and Kimmie in the fic. Here they are. I love this scene, but it didn't advance the narrative at all, and I couldn't get it to fit in anywhere.
"Two words," Ben said. "'Afternoon Delight.' It's the ultimate song you can never skate to, no matter how funny it would be. Seriously. I defy anyone to come up with something better."
"Oh, that's easy," Johnny said. "'Dirrrty.' I mean, anything by Christina, really, I love her voice so much, but that would be the one I'd get in trouble for."
"As long as we're going there?" Evan said. "'Milkshake.'"
"Or oh my God, I actually kind of hate this song? But that 'Hard out here being a pimp' song," Kimmie said.
"I can hear Dick Button now," Ben said. "'That Kimmie Meissner, she's really grown up fast.'"
"You know what I've always wanted to do because it would actually make a great program?" Tanith said. "'Across 110th Street,' by Bobby Womack."
"Since when do you listen to Bobby Womack?" Ben said.
"Since I downloaded Jackie Brown," Tanith said.
"I'm all for it, if it means I get to wear a pimp costume," Ben said.
"How come I always have to be the whore?" Tanith said.
There was prolonged silence, because there was no safe answer to that question.
"Wait, I've got one," Evan said. "Soundtrack from Brokeback Mountain."
"You can't even skate to that," Johnny said. "No rhythm."
"Oh!" Sasha said. "'I Touch Myself.'"
"We know, Sasha," Johnny said. She blushed.
"Wait, have you guys heard of Depeche Mode?" Kimmie said. "Because, like, 'Blasphemous Rumors.'"
"'Master and Servant' would be even better," Ben said.
"See? You are just thinking of excuses to dress me up as a whore," Tanith said.
"Yeah, but you'd be a bondage whore," Ben said.
"Well, then, just go all the way with it and do 'Venus in Furs,'" Tanith said.
"Okay, now that we're totally in the realm of songs you can't physically skate to?" Johnny said. "If you guys get to do bondage porn, I get to do 'Johnny Are You Queer.'"
"That might actually be funnier if Evan did it," Sasha said.
"Hey!" Evan said.
"No, just, seeing as you're, like, the great heterosexual hope of figure skating and stuff," Sasha said.
"Well, if that's the problem, then I should just do ABBA, right?" Evan said.
"People have done ABBA, haven't they?" Tanith said. "I mean, somebody must have. You'd totally get away with it."
"Even 'Dancing Queen'?" Evan said.
"You'd totally get it approved," Johnny said. "Like, depending on the program, you might be asked never to skate it again, but you'd probably get to do it once."
"I'm asking my coach," Evan said.
"Oh, don't," Sasha said. "You'll just--"
"No. I'm totally asking Frank. Right now." He dashed to the back of the bus, garnering a nasty look from the bus driver, and took out his phone. He was too far away for anyone to hear what he was saying, but his gestures were animated. "He says yes," Evan shouted.
*
2. Gratuitous porn. sathinks was feeling down one night, and she asked for a little something about Ben's secret sex toy stash. I was a little sad to let it go, since it's the only glimpse we get of Johnny's visit to Detroit, but SA and I agreed that it just would have been redundant.
They'd been in Detroit for less than twenty-four hours, and Johnny had already found the handcuffs. It had taken hard work and persistence, but he'd known that a guy like Ben would have something embarrassing in a shoebox under his bed, and there they were. He sat in Ben's unmade bed with his nose in the new Jennifer Weiner novel and the handcuffs in his lap. When Ben emerged from his shower, still drying his wild hair, Johnny rushed to dangle the handcuffs from his fingers suggestively. "When were you planning on telling me about these?" Johnny said.
"Oh," Ben said, smiling shyly into his towel.
"Sorry," Johnny said. "I shouldn't have gone through your things."
"No, it's just --"
Johnny knew what it meant when Ben got vague like this. The entire city of Detroit seemed to have this effect on him: every landmark made him think of his ex. Johnny didn't fault him for it. They'd been together long enough to leave a lot of scars. "Were they a present from Merrie?" Johnny said, hoping he didn't sound jealous.
"Not exactly," Ben said, still cagey.
"I'll put them back where I found them," Johnny said, dog-earing his book and scrambling out of his very comfortable position.
"Okay, see, Tanith and I? We give each other joke gifts sometimes. Like, when she goes somewhere and I don't. Inappropriate souvenirs. It's, like, it started small and turned into X-rated playing cards and stuff." He snatched the handcuffs away from Johnny. "I think she went to Alcatraz or something," he said. "Either that or the Valley."
"So you've never actually used them?" Johnny said. He didn't need to wait for an answer. "Give them here."
Ben held the handcuffs behind his back. "What'll you give me for them?"
"Blow job," Johnny said with a grin.
Ben responded by climbing on top of Johnny and pushing him down onto his back. Johnny squirmed, and Ben caught his wrist, locking it in one of the cuffs. "This isn't what I meant," Johnny said.
"If it isn't what you meant, then why did you take them out of the box in the first place?" Ben said.
"I was going to put them on you, silly," Johnny said.
"Oh, of course," Ben said. "You were going to put my handcuffs on me." He threaded the chain around one of the bedposts but hesitated before cuffing Johnny's other wrist. "Was the key still in the box?"
"Yeah," Johnny said. "I made sure."
That was apparently all the reassurance Ben needed to close the cuff around Johnny's wrist. Johnny was trapped flat on his back with his hands over his head: the bedpost was tall, and flexible as he was, he wasn't double-jointed. But Ben could ease him free if he needed to. Johnny wriggled and resisted, and it was mostly just playfulness, although it was kind of unnerving to let Ben have such complete control over him. Ben was usually so indecisive, so happy to let Johnny take charge when they had sex. Maybe he was getting restless. Johnny hoped that he was, and that he trusted Johnny enough to express that, to be honest about that need.
Ben ran his hands up and down Johnny's chest, under his shirt, like he wasn't sure where to start. But when Johnny opened his mouth to make a suggestion, Ben clapped a hand over it so he couldn't speak. Still covering Johnny's mouth, Ben went for his neck. He nipped gently at the skin for a while, sending a little more blood rushing to Johnny's cock with each tiny bite. He squeezed Johnny's nipple, making Johnny writhe under his hands. Johnny was wearing tight jeans, mostly for Ben's benefit, and he was getting uncomfortable in them. Without thinking, he tried to reach down to unzip his fly, but the cuffs dug into his wrists.
Ben got the message, and he used it as an excuse to torture Johnny more intensely. He put one hand where Johnny had no choice but to grind against it, found the tip of Johnny's cock with his thumb and circled it. Meanwhile, he focused his lips and tongue on the side of Johnny's neck, sucking hard enough to leave a mark. The ache of his cock and the pressure of Ben's teeth made Johnny whimper and struggle. Ben took his hand off Johnny's mouth for a merciful moment, but when Johnny started to beg for release, Ben covered it again. Ben had developed a sense of Johnny's timing, though, and he must have been able to tell that Johnny wasn't going to last much longer. He fumbled Johnny's fly open with one hand. Johnny gasped with relief. "Finally," he said into Ben's hand.
"Shh," Ben commanded. He had to free Johnny's mouth in order to go down on him, but Johnny pursed his lips, willing to pretend for him. He kept silent as Ben gripped the base of his cock and teased his balls with his thumb. Ben could get Johnny's cock in his mouth about halfway now, which was more than enough, especially since he'd mastered the pressure of his lips as he moved up and down over Johnny's cock, the sideways movement of his tongue underneath. Johnny arched his back against the resistance of the cuffs. He loosed a couple of breathy, rebellious "oh"s as he came. "I hate you so much right now," he said, knowing that Ben would hear the irony and know that he meant exactly the opposite.
*
3. Tour bus banter #2. I actually just wrote this last week at writercon. I went to liz_marcs's panel on writing ensemble, and she made us write, darn her. We were supposed to write to a prompt, but the prompt was for S1 Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and do you know how long it's been since I watched that? So I was a jerk and ditched the prompt to write a bunch of skaters riffing on pirate movies. Still, I think this follows a lot of the guidelines and tips that the panel laid out.
Tanith was trying to listen to her new TV on the Radio mp3s. They were amazing songs, and Evan was going to ask about them, and also it was so unfair to eavesdrop on Ben and Johnny (not to mention also unpleasantly X-rated). But they'd all snuck out of the hotel the night before to see Pirates of the Caribbean 2 (because hi, pirate movie), and it had spawned, like, round eight million and three of the battle for Orlando Bloom's ass.
"What are you smoking?" Totally hotter as an elf," Ben was saying. "I mean, the ears. The hair. The bow and arrow."
"The ears are weird, the facial hair is hot, and a sword is a better phallic symbol," Johnny said. "I can't even believe we're having this conversation."
Tanith couldn't hold it in anymore. "You have this conversation daily," she said, turning around to kneel with her arms resting on the back of the seat.
"So. Fine. Settle it," Johnny said. "Elf or pirate?"
"That's so not my job," Tanith said.
"How many more hours is it to Portland?" Ben said. "Because I'm sure we could keep debating this till we get there."
Tanith rolled her eyes at him: he was too far away for her to punch him. "Okay, the truth is? I'm just not that into Orlando Bloom. I'm more of a Johnny Depp girl. And Keira Knightley. I would totally switch teams for Keira Knightley."
Evan, sitting across the aisle, piped up. "Where's the switch? She looks like a boy. Seriously, like, I'd do her."
"Oh, come on," Ben said. "In the corset, she's almost got a rack."
"See?" Tanith said. "She totally counts for my imaginary bi-curious experiment."
"So," Ben said. "Elf, right?"
"Still not taking a side on this," Tanith said.
"Totally with you on the Depp, though," Evan said.
"Thank you," Tanith said. She pivoted on her knees and leaned across the aisle to kiss him on the cheek.
Michelle peeked around her seat. "You guys are loud," she said. "Also, come on. Norrington. The stubble alone, my God."
Tanith wasn't sure why everyone else went silent, but her excuse was astonishment at the sudden emergence of Michelle's dirty mind.
"Christ, that was a bad movie," Johnny said, finally.
"Unlike certain Oscar-winning movies with elves in them," Ben said.
"This doesn't mean you win," Tanith said.
"No, he wins," Michelle said. "You don't argue with Oscar." You also didn't argue with Michelle, so it was settled.
*
4. Schmoop. I wrote this for callmesandy in my last round of ficlets-to-order. It's... cute.
All of Johnny's moods were a little bit scary, but his good moods might have been the scariest. Good moods brought blow jobs first thing in the morning, but they also brought out-of-tune impromptu shower renditions of Christina Aguilera songs. A cloud of steam announced that Johnny was done in the bathroom, and he came out with his towel stretched out behind him like a cape, spinning and leaping. He was going to break something, or break himself, and Ben was not going to watch. He buried his face into his pillow and pretended to still be asleep.
Johnny bounded onto the bed and poked Ben with his foot. "Your turn," he sang. He jumped over Ben onto the floor, pirouetted, and threw the curtains open. "Good morning, Portland," he said.
"Jesus, you just blinded me," Ben said. "Also, aren't you naked?"
"We're on, like, the tenth floor, who's looking? It's a beautiful day in a non-crappy city where it's never a beautiful day, and I'm --"
"Torturing me with it," Ben said. He stretched and rolled out of bed.
Johnny took him by the hand, lifted him to his feet, and spun him around. "I thought I was cute when I'm happy," he said, pouting a little.
"You'll be really cute in about ten minutes," Ben yawned.
"Don't lie to me," Johnny said. "You love it when I'm crazy. You're looking down on that city right now and realizing that most of them don't have, like, a constant mental soundtrack and a taste for exhibitionism."
"It's Portland. They might."
"They aren't, and you don't want them to be, because if everyone were as crazy as you and me? You wouldn't be taking home all those silver medals."
"Maybe," Ben said.
"Admit it," Johnny said. "You like me because I'm fabulous and obnoxious."
"No," Ben said and kissed him. "That's why I love you."
*
5. Alternate ending. This was the original epilogue to the story. It got jossed when the Grand Prix assignments went out, and annavtree and I agreed that it just felt kind of flat. I transferred most of the funny and/or important moments to the revised epilogue, but there are a few things I really like here.
Johnny kept reminding himself that they'd really be something if they made it to Thanksgiving. Eight months sounded like a real relationship, a real accomplishment. It was what he repeated in his head when the press asked him coy questions about dating and it was all he could do to keep from erupting into diva rage. Someday, he'd tell them, tell everybody, say, "Look, I'm gay, we're all gay, that's the way this sport is." But it wasn't time for that, and more and more, he didn't believe it was his responsibility to say it. He'd taken the fall enough times so that other people could hide in the closet. He had the perfect fantasy of the ten-page New Yorker profile or the Men's Vogue fashion spread, the one where he'd casually drop Ben's name. But even that, he saw as part of some magical and improbable future.
For now, he was concentrating on the fact that it was the day before Thanksgiving, and he was driving to the Philadelphia airport to pick Ben up. They'd been flying in and out of each other's lives since the end of August, grabbing weekends when they could, but mostly subsisting on long phone calls and AIM. The one Grand Prix event they'd had together was Skate Canada, and it had felt like they'd come full circle, clandestinely sharing another hotel room at another competition in Canada. It was incredible how well they'd both skated, considering how little sleep they'd gotten. Ben had credited the Spirit of Flamenco, and he'd almost sounded serious about it.
That week had been a luxury. They only got two days for the holiday, and these were two days that they shouldn't have been taking. It was a good thing, sometimes, that Johnny's mom insisted that he be a person, even when he was still jet lagged from competing in France and Ben was leaving for Japan on Tuesday. Since skating had taken over Johnny's Novembers, his extended family had made a ritual of coming down to Delaware for Thanksgiving, and Johnny was not allowed to skip out on dinner when his grandparents were going to all that trouble. And neither was Ben: Johnny's mom had persuaded him that he had to come in and meet Johnny's entire family. Ben hadn't put up much of a fight; he never did. He was the kind of guy who enjoyed charming the socks off people's elderly relatives.
I-295 was a nightmare like always, but Johnny's excitement had inspired him to leave early, and he was in the airport parking garage before Ben's plane was scheduled to land. He sat in the car for a minute, listening to the CD he'd burned from songs that Ben had sent him. Even with that delay, he had to sit on a bench in the baggage claim with his face buried in Vogue for twenty minutes. He meant to watch for Ben, but he didn't want to draw attention to himself. Besides, there were so many planes coming in at this time of evening, especially the day before Thanksgiving, that he couldn't tell which throng of people was Ben's.
So Ben was the one to find him, and he knew he'd been found because he'd been lifted out of his seat and swung into the air. Ben set him down on his feet after one rotation, but they kept their arms around each other for a few minutes of suspended time, happy to be near each other, to feel the warmth of each other's bodies. By the end of the summer, people had joked that the two of them were surgically attached. They were capable of separating, but it felt like there was a cord between them that grew taut with distance. When they were together, the tension released fast, and they slammed into each other.
Ben had stuffed all of his things into a carry-on suitcase -- literally stuffed, in all likelihood -- so they went right back to the car. Johnny withheld his kisses until they'd thrown the suitcase in the back and locked themselves inside. Cars felt like fortresses; it was so often hard to believe that people could see inside the windows. He'd expected to be making out before he had a chance to find his keys, but the kiss he got was more romantic than sexual. "I've been on so many fucking airplanes," Ben said. "I'm so tired, I think I threw my knee out a little again yesterday, and I don't know, can we save it for when we get there?"
"Okay," Johnny said.
"You're disappointed," Ben said.
"I haven't seen you in, like, a month. But I can keep it in my pants until we're somewhere you can keep your weight off your knee."
"I could service you while you drive," Ben said.
"So we can die together while we're still young and beautiful?" Johnny said. "You're so fucking romantic."
"It's one way to come out," Ben said.
There were people in the skating community who would have liked that. You got to come out the day you died. "You've been thinking about it?"
"Obviously," Ben said. "I mean, there's a whole part of my life I don't get to talk about now, and I -- I don't like that. But, you know, not while we're still competing."
"Not the way things are," Johnny said.
"Not 'til they get the new scoring system figured out, at the very least," Ben said.
Johnny started the car, backed out, and sighed. "How did we get involved in this stupid sport?" he said.
"At least we're good at it," Ben said.
"We're really fucking good at it."
"We really fucking are." Ben reached across Johnny to pay the three dollars Johnny owed for parking.
"You just wanted to reach across me," Johnny said.
"I just wanted to not wait half an hour while you found your wallet in your bag and forced that woman to make change for a twenty," Ben said.
"My wallet is always on top, and I totally brought singles," Johnny said.
Ben reached into the back seat and shamelessly manhandled Johnny's brand new Jack Gomme messenger bag. He started pulling things out of it, even though Johnny squealed for him to stop. "Two fashion magazines, a pack of Kleenex, some KY, a crumpled-up receipt, your phone, your iPod, a pocket map of Boston, another receipt, breath mints, and oh. There's your wallet."
"Don't make me pull this car over."
"Two twenties and a ten," Ben said. "What do I win?"
"Not the fifty bucks," Johnny said.
Ben put everything back in Johnny's bag; he put the wallet on top. Gently this time, he set it down in the back seat. "I can stop being mean to you," he said.
"Good, because I have half a mind to make you walk to Newark," Johnny said.
Ben must have thought Johnny was actually mad at him, because he was quiet for a while, until they were crawling down 295. "You're having a good season," Ben said, somewhere between an observation and a question. "You're hitting your quad."
"Most of the time," Johnny said. The more important thing was, he wasn't blowing the easy stuff. He was landing clean triples in the second half of his long; he was keeping the positions and edge transitions sharp in his combination spins. Those were the things that won competitions now, the things that made it impossible for the judges to justify marking you down.
"You were smiling all through your short in Paris," Ben said. "Peggy Fleming talked through half your program on ESPN about how you were smiling."
"I guess they've got to think of something to fill the air with when I'm not fucking up," Johnny said.
"They're just trying to distract the viewers from the fact that they call half the jumps wrong."
"At least they know what my components are called," Johnny said. "When they're talking over your programs, it's all, 'Look, they did a footwork thingy.'"
"Actually, that's the technical name for it," Ben said.
"So what's the technical name for there's this one place in your original dance where you do a left outside bracket and she does a right outside counter and one of you's got to be wrong because it looks really fucking weird?"
Ben put a hand to his forehead and laughed softly.
"Is that a thing?" Johnny said.
"I'll tell Marina you think it looks weird, let's put it that way. Seriously, she says she thinks you're a smart skater. We might actually change it."
"Your coaches say nice things about me?"
"My coaches loved you before we were even dating," Ben said. He sighed, took his hair out of the ponytail, shook it out, and tied it back again. Johnny watched him out of the corner of his eye while trying not to rear-end the Volkswagen in front of him. "It's been the strangest season. And I mean, not, like, the skating itself. It's all, like, people who've barely said hi to me suddenly think they're my best friends, and people who used to be really warm won't even talk to me." Before Johnny could say it, he added, "But that's how it's always been for you, right?"
"Can you live with it being like that?" Johnny said.
"I realized in our first week together that you're just a big ball of consequences," Ben said.
"And drama," Johnny said, changing lanes and cutting off an eighteen-wheeler. "Don't forget the drama."
"I like the drama," Ben said. "I love the drama."
"So you're, like -- you're in this." It was somewhere, again, between an observation and a question.
"You weren't sure?" Ben said.
"You know me," Johnny said. "I'm never sure."
"I'm in this," Ben said. He said it in the same casual way that he'd agreed to Calgary, to New York, to that stadium men's room in Charlotte or Charleston or Columbia. Johnny wondered how many times Ben had made a commitment when it had just sounded like he was saying yes for the night.
"I kept telling myself this would work out if we could just make it to Thanksgiving," Johnny said.
"So how long until this starts working out?" Ben said. "Like, an hour?"
"Depends on traffic," Johnny said.