Fic: Sugar (skating RPF, Brian/Tanith, Brian/Johnny, etc.) (2/2)

[mosca]

Title: Sugar
Fandom: figure skating RPF
Pairings: Tanith Belbin/Brian Joubert, Brian/Johnny Weir, Ben Agosto/Charlie White, Tanith/Evan Lysacek, Johnny/Meryl Davis
Rating: NC-17 for explicit m/f and m/m sex.

Continued from part 1. See that post for detailed headers.



4. so maybe we're a bliss of another kind

Meryl is dumping sugar into her coffee. "Let's go do karaoke after the team party," Charlie said last night, taking credit for the idea although it was surely Ben's. Ben is the idea man. Charlie just wants to be Ben when he grows up. Not that this hasn't been going on for years now, but it's gotten a thousand times worse since Nationals. Charlie has more or less stapled himself to Ben's side. He would probably crawl under the table and suck Ben's dick right now if Ben asked him to. Fortunately for the mothers of the international figure skating community, all Ben wants is someone to laugh at his jokes. Which Charlie is doing, loudly. Meryl squeezes her eyes shut and burns her tongue on her coffee. "Jesus," she mutters.

"Hey, it's not our fault you had -- how many of those pink things did you have?" Charlie says.

"Two," Meryl says. Japanese coffee tastes like asphalt, and there's no such thing as Splenda here. Real sugar has a weird aftertaste.

"She's a small girl," Charlie informs the table.

"Two pink ones," Meryl says. "Two purple, two blue, one orange, and one green." Some people's memories get fuzzy when they're drunk, but not Meryl's. No loss of coordination, either. What she does get is giggly, fearless, shameless, and fiercely competitive. Eight drinks means she will have won something at her first senior Worlds, even if it's only the gold medal for Ladies' Drinking. And possibly Best Britney Impersonation, although she's pretending to have forgotten that.

Tessa, who was down after four green ones, has not even shown up for breakfast. Tanith, who looks supermodel-flawless despite six rainbow-colored cocktails, is putting away a bowl of granola and yogurt like her stomach is made of steel. Joannie, Meryl's toughest competitor, made it to seven and looks pretty much like Meryl feels, nursing her cup of bad coffee on the other side of the room. The off-season has officially begun.

The guys, who for all of their ludicrousness managed to keep from drinking themselves sick last night, are dealing with the arrival of spring by eating like they're about to hibernate. Charlie's eaten about twenty strips of bacon. Meryl gives him a scolding look when he gets up for thirds, and he says, "What? It's not like you have to lift me."

"I could lift you if you ate less bacon," Meryl says.

"I could give you dirty looks for reading at the breakfast table," Charlie says. "I just want to note, I am not doing that."

"I have a paper due," she says. It's true, and also The Importance of Being Earnest is more interesting than Ben's monologue about Thundercats. Meryl's been around skaters too much lately. She misses school, being around people who are smarter than she is.

She's having trouble concentrating on her book, so she's using it as a screen to peer over and watch the door. If she concentrates, she can almost tune out her friends. She doesn't know who she's watching for: almost everyone's already here. It's down to the people who can't hold their hangovers and the people who hooked up last night. Jeff and Chris, who seem to fall into both categories, stumbling towards the buffet with sunglasses on and not bothering with the traditional seven minutes between entrances by gay lovers. The new men's world champion, who must be seven minutes ahead of somebody if he's got that kind of smile on his face. And sure enough, with uncharacteristic precision or totally characteristic sarcasm, Johnny Weir arrives for breakfast, as if still spitting canary feathers out of his mouth.

"I was wondering if they were going to get around to it this year," Ben says.

Tanith glares at him nastily, like he's crossed a line. Charlie laughs like he knows what the hell Ben is talking about. "It's an annual thing?" Meryl says over her book.

"More or less," Ben says. "I can't believe you guys didn't know."

"I try to think about Weir's sex life as little as possible," Evan says, ostentatiously shifting closer to Tanith and squeezing her hand.

Johnny seems willing to make that easy, taking his coffee and his plate of breakfast meat to a table of Russians. But the table is full, and although they try to make room for him, they can't fit another chair. Charlie waves and says, "Hey, there's a chair over here," and when Johnny shrugs a no thanks Ben rolls his eyes and beckons him over. Evan is scowling; Tanith is fidgeting in her seat. Meryl is holding her head and trying to read.

"Are you okay, honey?" Johnny says, and it takes Meryl a second to realize he's talking to her.

"I won the drinking contest," Meryl says.

"Here, I have some Motrin," Johnny says. She was going to stick it out, but he's already digging around in his bag and she thinks there might be some kind of cosmic penalty for saying no to him.

"You missed an outstanding night of karaoke," Ben says to Johnny. Meryl's pretty sure there's a secret message encoded in the comment.

"Yeah, well, you missed an outstanding night of anal sex." Johnny hands his bottle of Motrin to Meryl. "Have as many as you want." She takes two and chases them with coffee. Evan is telling Tanith something about his iPod, in the way people do when they want to make sure everyone nearby notices. Meryl pretends that the Motrin is kicking in already and returns to her book.

She tolerates a couple of minutes of Johnny reading over her shoulder before she closes her book and rubs her temples. "Oh, I thought that was what it was," Johnny says. "I read that a couple of summers ago on the tour bus."

"I have to read it for my English class," Meryl says. "I mean, not that I don't like it, but I never would have -- okay, I know you're trying to be nice and stuff, but --"

"I can talk about the great classics of literature or I can talk about Evan's iPod," Johnny says. "Believe me, I'm making my choice."

She laughs. "So okay, is it just me, or are the two guys, like --"

"Courting the rich, pretty girls so they can sneak out to the countryside and --"

"Go Bunburying," Meryl finishes.

"Oh my God, that's it," Evan says, shooting up from his seat.

"What?" Johnny says. "We were talking about the book she's reading for school."

"Yeah, whatever, I'm sure she's reading gay porn for school," Evan says.

"You would have never heard of Oscar Wilde," Johnny says. "Or is that another thing you're just pretending?"

Evan stands there with his hands on the back of his chair. His mouth is open, but there's no comeback coming out of it. Tanith pats his hand and says, "Sweetie, do you want to go somewhere?"

"Yeah," Evan says. "I want to go to the gala rehearsal."

"We should," Tanith says to Ben. "We should get going."

Ben blinks a reluctant goodbye to the remains of his breakfast. "Yeah."

"Leaving us losers alone?" Charlie says.

"Sorry," Ben says. "But I'll see you there later, right?"

"Yep," Charlie says.

There's a silence, like Meryl and Johnny are supposed to chime in. "I don't know," Meryl says. "I have a lot of homework."

"I'm just cutting out to go shopping," Johnny says.

"See?" Meryl says. "I'm normal."

"You're skipping the gala to read. That's not normal," Charlie says. "You could at least go sightseeing or something."

Meryl gnaws her lip. She's torn between responsibility and the strange, beautiful city she hasn't had time to explore.

"My mom wanted to go to the park with the cherry trees," Johnny says. "You could come with." Meryl doesn't know him well enough to explain how helpful he's not being.

"Thanks, but I really need to --"

"Mer," Charlie says. "If you spend the afternoon in this hotel studying, I swear to God I will drop you on your head and make it look like an accident."

"Okay," she says. "Okay, I'll... go talk to my mom."

Her mom is eager to see the cherry trees, as a matter of fact, and when Meryl mentions Johnny, Mrs. Weir makes a point of inviting them along. They're, like, a whole family of not helpful. Mrs. Weir says something about how the only thing more boring than a gala is a gala your kid isn't in, and Meryl sneaks away while the table of parents is laughing.

She's glad to see her mom making friends. Her mom has sat nervously with Charlie's mom at a lot of competitions, avoiding the scary-intense skating parents. When Meryl was about ten, her mom rented Gypsy and said, "If I ever start acting like that, you are to start carpooling to competitions with the Whites." Ever since, she's made a habit of writing "Sing out, Louise!" on cute stationery and sticking the notes in Meryl's bag so she'll find them right before she skates. It's something not even Charlie knows about.

By the time they gather in the lobby for their sightseeing trip, the posse of moms has grown to six, plus one dad. It feels like Meryl and Johnny are the chaperones. Meryl is disappointed that the subway isn't as crowded as it was in pictures she's seen, but the park makes up for it. The cherry trees are beautiful, more pink than Meryl has ever seen at once (and she's been in a few ice shows). The stream that runs through the park is clogged with petals, and every inch of lawn is buried under picnic blankets. "Glad you took the day off?" Johnny says.

"Yeah," Meryl says.

They get sushi for lunch, at a restaurant where the sushi travels around the room on a long conveyor belt. While they eat, the moms unfold a map and plan a tour of the city. It involves a lot of temples and historic neighborhoods. "You're dying to pull that book out, aren't you?" Johnny says.

"It's... I mean, I don't want to complain," Meryl says, keeping her voice low so she won't make the moms feel guilty. "But it's a lot of walking, and I've been skating all week."

"Not a lot of shopping where they want to go, either," Johnny says. "I mean, it's whatever they want to do, we are clearly outnumbered, but."

"You could ask your mom," Meryl says.

"Yeah, 'Mommy, can I please go run up my credit card debt?'"

"Oh, well. The temples are pretty," Meryl says. She points at something with tentacles. "I dare you to eat that."

Johnny takes the plate, swishes one of the pieces of sushi in soy sauce, and sticks the whole thing in his mouth. It's chewy, apparently, because he's working hard at it. He points at the other piece, makes the thumbs-up sign, and nods at her. She has to bite it in half, so it goes all over the place, and there's too much wasabi and it's really chewy, and that's when Johnny's mom turns to them and says, "Honey, I know you wanted to hit Harajuku. Why don't you two go off together?" Johnny swallows and accepts for both of them. Meryl's mouth is too full of sushi for her to speak, but she smiles broadly. She'd been planning on researching Harajuku subcultures for her contemporary cultural anthropology class. This will totally be homework.

Meryl's mom misreads the situation and tries to rescue her, leading her over to a soft-serve ice cream machine for a private conversation. "I'm not sure how I feel about you going off in a strange city with a boy you hardly know."

"I know him," Meryl says. "Really, Mom. What's he going to do?"

"Well, I think he likes you, for one thing."

"We're not in seventh grade, it doesn't really work like that anymore," Meryl says. She lowers her voice to a whisper, because her mom's reaction suggests that she is somehow missing this. "And also? Mom. Gay."

"You shouldn't make snap judgments about people," Meryl's mom says.

There is not enough time to explain all the ways she knows more than she wants to about Johnny's personal life. "Mom. I feel safe. It's fine. Please."

Meryl's mom puts her hands on Meryl's shoulders. "I'm sorry," she says. "Sometimes I forget you're all grown up." She kisses Meryl's cheek, and they go back to the sushi counter.

Johnny has been stockpiling things that he wants to make Meryl eat. They end up malingering for a while after the moms leave. "So," he says. "I have a question for you."

"Is it multiple choice?"

"Fill in the blanks," Johnny says. "Ben is to Charlie as blank is to blank."

Meryl laughs. "I don't know. As white is to rice?"

"No, but they aren't actually --"

Meryl shakes her head. "Charlie would," she says. "I don't think Ben will."

"Yeah, Ben's one of the straightest people I know in this sport," Johnny says. "Like, to the point where he's comfortable policing other people's homophobia."

"Which is a good thing," Meryl says. "Because the two of them would not be, you know. Smart."

"Totally." He cocks his head to the side. "Charlie would?"

"Yeah. I mean, unless he left that all behind when we moved up from juniors."

"Just what the world needs," Johnny says. "More cute, charming bisexuals."

"I'll keep him in line."

"I'm holding you to that," Johnny says.

"I will," Meryl says. "Okay. I have a question for you. What crawled up Evan's butt and died?"

Johnny snickers. "More like, what hasn't."

"No, really, but --"

"I don't know," Johnny says. "We used to be friends. Like all along, we had this agreement, we'd leave it on the ice. And then all of a sudden he gets together with Tanith and there are sides. And he's mad that everyone didn't automatically take his."

"Because they're your friends too," Meryl says.

"Or something," Johnny says. "I don't know what they are. But they're not my enemies. Anyway. We should pay for all this and get going."

They do, and then they spend an hour getting lost on the subway before they finally, accidentally, find Harajuku station. The Gothic Lolita girls really are everywhere, but the funny part is, a lot of them recognize Johnny. A few of them even recognize Meryl from TV, especially once Johnny explains who she is. "She's an ice skater too," Johnny says patiently. "Ice dance. Seventh place. Better than me." Meryl hopes it's okay if the photos she puts in her anthropology paper have her and Johnny in them.

"Is he your boyfriend?" a girl in an elaborate black lace pinafore asks, pronouncing each word carefully.

Meryl laughs. "No. He's my friend." She wonders if they look like something else if you don't know the context, if it's somehow not obvious enough what he is.

Maybe her mom is right, and she shouldn't judge. So many times, she's assumed guys were just being nice, only to have her friends tease her for leading them on and turning them down. She never knows they're flirting until it's too late. Still, it's ridiculous to think that's what's happening now. Not three hours earlier, this same guy came stumbling into breakfast bragging about spending his night in another guy's hotel room. And Johnny Weir is very low on the list of men's skaters likely to be mistaken for heterosexuals.

They break free of the fans and make their way down Harajuku's main thoroughfare. Johnny says, "The first time I was here, all the really edgy stores were right along this strip. Now it's all the top international designers for three times the price." He leads her into an alley lined with low-roofed boutiques, towards a narrower, funkier variation on the main drag, and starts pulling her into shops. "It's an entire country of short, skinny people," he says. "Everything fits. It's paradise."

She looks around. It's not really her style. "I don't know," she says. "Maybe we should go to some of the men's stores first, and then come back for me if we have time."

He looks like he's trying not to be disappointed in her. "All right." But once he's surrounded by men's clothes, he lights back up. She turns out to be pretty useful in an advisory capacity, letting him know which jeans flatter his skater's butt and which make him look like he's been dipping into the Ho-Hos. He starts to talk about construction and design, then backs off from it like he fears he's boring her.

"No, keep going, I want to know," she says. She's going to forget everything she learns about Japanese fashion by the time the sun goes down, but it's been a week since she's talked to anyone who's knowledgeable about anything other than skating -- not just vaguely educated but really passionate. He likes to talk, once you get him started. And Meryl likes to listen.

But he keeps slowing down when they pass the women's clothes, and he must be waiting for her to see something she likes. There's so much here, she can't tell the difference. To humor him, she pauses at a random store and browses it, looking at clothes without seeing them. She pulls a dress off the rack without checking the size and holds it up in front of her. The fabric clings to her body like it's begging her to take it home to America. "Ooh, you should try it on," Johnny coos, and she can't tell if he actually likes it or if he's encouraging her to try something, anything.

The salesgirl leads her to a dressing room. Johnny waits on the other side of the curtain. Meryl takes off her jeans and sweater and puts the dress on before she looks at it. It's a black cotton sundress with a ruffled skirt and narrow straps made of pastel ribbon tied in bows. It feels like a costume, like something a different kind of girl would wear. She considers taking it off and telling Johnny it didn't work out, but he'll just spend the rest of the afternoon trying to find her something that does. So she puts her shoes on and ventures past the curtain.

He sizes her up, speechless for a moment. "That's perfect," he says. "You should get it."

"Where would I wear it?" she says.

"I don't know," he says. "Anywhere. Wear it to class. Tell people you got it in Japan."

"I'd have to," she says.

He's waiting for her to do something, but she can't figure him out. He says, "Is it expensive?"

"I don't know," she says. "I didn't look."

"Good girl," he says. And he's giving her that look again, the look that makes her think her mom and the Gothic Lolita fans are on to something. Or maybe it's her, she's the one feeling something, and she's trying to convince herself that he's the problem. Typical, protecting herself by getting a crush on the impossible guy. Or telling herself that he's impossible because it's easier than trusting what she has seen so many times, that people fall in love with people and not with bodies, that everyone adapts, makes exceptions.

She gathers her courage into her fists and stands on her toes to kiss him, quickly on the lips like she's a kindergartener about to run giggling to the other end of the playground. He staggers backward and shakes his head. But he collects himself and closes the distance between them. He kisses her back solidly and studiously. It's possible he's never kissed a girl before. With her eyes closed, he's not that different from any of the other boys who have kissed her.

He lifts his lips away from hers and trails his fingertips down her face. "It's not happening, is it?" she says.

He shakes his head. "It would have been fun, though, right?"

She smiles but doesn't answer him. "I'm going to put my real clothes back on," she says. Putting the dress on its hanger, she feels the same mixture of relief and regret as when her skating costumes go back in the garment bag. Time to stop playing make-believe.

"What are you doing?" he says when she takes the dress to the rack where she found it.

"Putting this back," she says. He intercepts her, sweeps the dress out of her hands, and glides toward the cashier like he's wearing skates. "What are you doing?" she says.

"Buying you a dress," he says. There is no way she is going to talk him out of it. The salesgirl folds the dress elaborately, wraps it in tissue paper, and drops it in a bag. It's hers now; it's his.

5. running through the underworld into your room

Brian watches the deep bathtub fill with water and contemplates the buttons on his hotel room toilet. Two of them are ambiguous illustrations of spraying water and body parts that might be mistakenly translated as "bidet," when what they really mean is, "very cold water sprayed very hard, five or ten centimeters from where it might be useful." The other, larger button has musical notes on it, and that's the one that really frightens him. When one presses it, it makes a flushing noise but does not flush the toilet. What purpose could this serve? The Japanese have not offered him an explanation. He presses the button, and the toilet roars. He laughs, tells himself to grow up, and presses the button again. The small pleasures of travel.

Because he won, he'll be spending another week in Japan, touring. He hates to lose the week of training, but it was explained to him that declining the offer would be an insult. He's run out of clothes. His mom is trying to find a next-day laundry service or else a launderette before she returns to Poitiers. She's leaving tomorrow, leaving him alone in Osaka, Fukuoka, Nagoya, Nagano, Sendai, Sapporo. He'll see all of Japan from the window of a bullet train. It will be lonely, but that's nothing new for him. He'd planned to be done with sex for the rest of the year, to concentrate on skating, and it doesn't look like the tour will interfere with that. His companions will be mostly Japanese jailbait, more exciting as fantasies than as giggling, inept realities. Stéph, he's had and won't have again; Daisuke might be interesting or might not be worth the effort. Brian will see how bored he gets: whether a night of minimal conversation will put other things out of his mind or only make him long for them more deeply.

The bath is full. Brian climbs in and lets gravity take over. The water turns his skin red in an instant, but he'd rather endure it than run cold water. He's trying to teach himself immunity to pain, but his body is not cooperating. It insists on feeling, hurting, dwelling on its wounds.

There are ways of controlling oneself. He thinks, three or four times a year, they could manage it. He would be willing to meet Johnny in Paris; he'd like to see the American countryside, if such a thing exists, or New York City, failing that. They would only do what they could arrange. No phone calls in between, if those would make it too much like a relationship. Brian believes they both have enough restraint and self-discipline for this. Maybe this is where Johnny disagrees. But it's hard to say: his rejection was so vague. Brian replays it in his mind, the "And maybe not" and the laugh afterward. Not a dismissive laugh but sad in a way, wishful. Wanting to accept but not trusting himself.

Brian can understand why Johnny doesn't trust him, either. He's accumulated a reputation, and a fair one, he supposes, since it's reasonable enough to assume that a man who has casual sex two nights in a row maintains that pace throughout the year, rather than self-imposing an asceticism that he suspends annually at Worlds between the men's free skate and the gala. According to Alban, this year's rumor is that after the medal ceremony, he picked up a trio of teenage Japanese fans outside the hotel and threw himself a victory party. It would disappoint some people if they found out that Brian spent most of that evening playing World Cup Football on Alban's new Wii. When he's disappointed in himself, he doesn't trust himself with lovers. And the win didn't mean so much, knowing he'd skated below his abilities. He's embarrassed that he chose safety over perfection. The quad salchow would have been clean.

The bathwater is starting to cool, and his back is cramping. He gets out, dripping water all over the floor, but he'd rather let it evaporate off his skin than dry himself. He makes a trail of wet footprints to the bed and lies down on his back. There's no reason for him to be so tired.

Maybe after they both retire, maybe then they can find a better way to be in love with each other. If Johnny is even in love with him in the first place. Brian would rather not be in love at all; he would rather devote all of his mind and body to skating. But it's too late for that.

Johnny never admitted to liking him, but Brian is sure he does. He closes his eyes and imagines a man who will say flattering things about him before going down on him. Or a woman, it could be a woman: that ice dancer has a hidden talent. But in his fantasy, it's not her. Nor is it Johnny. It's someone with no face, someone perfect.

The papaya-flavored lube is still on the bedside table. He never got around to using it on Johnny. They bought enough sweets at the convenience store. But now is a good time for it, and the room fills with its bright, exotic scent as he pours it into his hand. He doesn't need the fantasy anymore. He has the cool spring air across his damp skin, the slickness and rich smell of his hands, the quiet of late afternoon. He has no lover more reliable than his hand, and it never asks him to prove anything. He comes easily and peacefully, not having to force himself to slow down.

He lies on the bed for a minute, in blissful post-orgasmic clarity. He needs to approach Johnny like a difficult jump. Giving up on the first try isn't acceptable. A fall is an opportunity to assess what's gone wrong, to adjust one's position and one's speed until the jump is successful. Brian knows that people aren't always the same way: sometimes persistence only reinforces their resolve. But that rejection was so ambiguous in the first place, and Johnny's French is full of mistakes. It could have been a mistake altogether. Johnny will forgive him for interpreting it as one.

He gets up, wipes off his stomach, and puts some clothes on. He could lie here naked all night, but he needs to go out and spend time with other people. Kiss fans and sign autographs, if nothing else. Take his mother out to dinner. He has one more night before Johnny returns to America.

On the dresser, there's still a plastic bag half full of junk food from the convenience store. Brian takes out the box of mushroom-shaped cookies and pops one into his mouth. It's cheap chocolate and too sweet. He closes his eyes and lets it melt on his tongue. He's still in Tokyo, still indulging.

There's a hospitality lounge on the third floor. A lot of skaters are milling around, drinking the free tea, finding out where everyone else is going and trying to get invited along. Brian never expects to be invited anywhere; he almost hopes no one does, because he feels pressure to accept. He's never happy in that kind of big social group. He'd rather talk to people one at a time than try to keep up with six or seven. If that means he's aloof, well, there are worse things to be.

For instance, he could be the guy who threw away his friendly reputation, getting defensive over a girl. Brian almost feels guilty, but he reminds himself how easy it would have been for Tanith to turn him down. Her dance partner didn't have any trouble. The problem is between Evan and Tanith; if Brian hadn't stepped in, someone else would have done it. "Hi," Brian says to him. Hands in his pockets, casual.

"Oh," Evan says with a forced smile. "Hi. Congratulations."

"Thank you," Brian says.

"So you're... doing the sushi thing? Or --"

"I don't know," Brian says. "It depends on -- Have you seen Johnny?"

"Weir?" Evan shrugs. "I think he went shopping with Meryl. They're probably not back yet."

Brian's disappointed that Johnny didn't go to the gala, although he hadn't expected it. What's more disappointing is that Johnny is off having fun and will probably go right to dinner. At least he's with a girl. Although Brian should know better than to jump to even that conclusion. "Oh, he -- he left something in my room," Brian says.

"I can call him," Evan says. "I mean, if it's important."

"You have his phone number?" Brian says.

"Sure," Evan says. "We all exchanged them after the tour last summer."

"Would you... give it to me?"

"Oh my God, he'd kill me." Evan grins. "Absolutely." He takes his phone out of his pocket and presses buttons. "I don't have his home phone anymore, just his cell."

"That's fine," Brian says. He takes out his own phone and copies the number into his address book. He doesn't have to use it. But he's pleased to have it and the option of calling.

"That's going to be one hell of an expensive phone call," Evan says.

"I'm paying for fucking up the first time," Brian says. "So. Thank you." He pats Evan's arm, and Evan stiffens and backs away. "Oh, don't," Brian says.

"Don't come on to me, and I won't," Evan says.

"I wasn't," Brian says.

"Sure."

"Listen to me," Brian says. "There is one thing that doesn't interest me, and it is other bisexual men. I'd rather masturbate. It's the same thing, only without the, uh, pissing contest."

Evan chews his lip for a moment, then bursts into laughter. "There's a story I'm going to have to tell you sometime, dude."

"Who?" Brian says.

"Some other time," Evan says. He clucks his tongue. "Walls have ears. Anyway. People are probably getting sushi tonight. Like, certain people might be persuaded to go, and stuff. So you should, like --"

"Thank you," Brian says. "I will... think about it."

"Don't think, dude," Evan says. "Do it."

Brian smiles and sidles away. Maybe he'll go after all. It's better than feeling guilty and angry at himself. The new season starts tomorrow: no record, no past, everything to prove again. And no one has said he has to ring it in alone.