Happy memesheep.
Okay, it took forfuckingever, but I have put together a WIPs post. 13 unfinished fics, listed in order of how likely I am to finish them:
Working title: Winter Boys, Summer Version
Fandom/pairing: skating RPF; Johnny/Ben, Evan/Stephane, Tanith/Brian, Ben/Evan
Current length: 15,000 words
Status: Dead. It was supposed to be 2007 summerfic, and then it got supremely jossed in terms of the various skaters' emotional development. Like, it started out as a plausible arc, and then a ton of shit happened in the '06-'07 season, and I stopped believing that the events in this fic could ever happen. Which is sad, especially when I devoted so much energy to it.
Johnny's project for the summer is to be nice to people. Last summer, he was breaking up and cracking up and getting over mono; he might have placed seventh at Worlds but he'd won the competition for biggest bitch in figure skating, men's division. He was unkind to people he liked, people he still likes even if they've given up on him. Everything he did made sense to him at the time, in his cloudy and feverish mind, but he looks back on that year and wants to do it over. Not the competitions (although he wouldn't mind that either) but the human stuff. He's almost never ashamed of the crazy shit he pulls in public, but he's all too talented at piling up private regrets.
And it's easy to be nice, almost as easy as being mean. It's three minutes a day with any given person. Johnny puts the flutter in "social butterfly," up and down the aisle of the tour bus like he's been appointed cruise director. An hour up front talking about fashion with Ira and Marina, a couple of hands of Uno poker with Sasha and Kimmie. The morning Starbucks hunt with Steph and the nightly exchange of gossip with Tanith and Shizuka, who hear everything he doesn't. The more he's around people, the less he wants to be alone, and he appreciates his quiet time more when he does get it. He feels healthy.
He was lonely for a long time. It's been almost a year since he's had sex with anyone other than himself, but he was lonely for a while before that. He lets that little fact slip one morning in New Jersey during his coffee run. He's liable to say anything at any time, and the first burst of caffeine intensifies that particular weakness.
"You should come with me tonight," Steph says.
"To pick up random anonymous guys and pretend I don't speak much English?"
"Yes," Steph says. "Why not?"
"I tried," Johnny says. "Last summer, I tried, but it's... really hard to have sex with someone unless I like them."
"Are you sure you're gay?"
"Yeah, I know, I'm totally handicapped," Johnny says. "But it's all right. I'm channeling all my sexual frustration into my skating."
"But it's summer," Steph says.
"I know," Johnny says. "But I think I'm okay. Me and my hand and my porn."
Steph blushes and laughs.
"What, did I say that really loud?" Johnny says.
Steph laughs harder. It's often hard to tell whether Steph likes him or is embarrassed to be seen with him. It's probably both.
*
Working title: Lift Me
Fandom/pairing: skating RPF; Tanith Belbin/Tatiana Totmianina
Current length: 1500 words
Status: I'd totally forgotten I'd written this. Early attempt to find someone to slash Tanith with, didn't really pan out, I've totally forgotten everything I planned to include in this fic and therefore need to pronounce it dead.
"Okay," Tanith says. "One more time." When Tania is clinging to her securely, she takes a couple of strokes forward, slow ones, before putting Tania down. They switch off for a couple of turns, gaining confidence, until Tanith is motoring into a 3-turn. When she hits her back outside edge, Tania lets go with one arm, then the other, so she's hanging on with her knees while Tanith supports her hips. Tanith feels secure and powerful, like she has never dropped anything in her life.
One of the guys shouts, "Hey, look at the girls!" Knowing she's being watched makes Tanith courageous. She puts Tania down before her edge runs out of steam and does a few crossovers into a spiral with her blade up next to her ear. Which impresses nobody anymore, but she has to wrap things up.
"Girl-on-girl action!" someone else yells, probably Evan, and if he weren't so damn quick she would slap him for it. She skates back over to Tania and pulls her up into something a little sexier, one hand between her legs and one hand supporting her back. Tanith gets some momentum, and Tania lifts a hand over her head and arches her upper body away from Tanith. It's hard to balance her, but she's light, and she knows how to keep herself from falling. There are wolf whistles: ironic ones, but still insulting. Tanith lowers Tania to the ice and sends a middle-finger ladybug in the boys' general direction. She skates slowly towards the exit, hands behind her back, plotting her next move, which she does not have time to enact because Ben races up behind her and sweeps her up into a fireman's carry. She mimes pounding her fists against his back until he deposits her on the foam mats.
"That was a porno lift," he says, with that smile he gets when he is trying to turn his anger into a joke. "I thought we were monogamous about porno lifts."
*
Working title: Hao Zhang's Secret Gay Life
Fandom/pairing: skating RPF; Hao Zhang/Daisuke Takahashi, Hao/miscellaneous Canadians
Current length: 875 words
Status: Has been severely jossed, and not just in terms of competition results. It was a fun idea, but it's out of my system.
It was difficult to talk to anyone but the other Chinese, so Hao kept close to Dan. She was his best friend, anyway, and she always had something clever to say about the other skaters. She disdained the ladies' singles competitors in particular. "They all behave like princesses," she complained. "Somebody told them when they were little girls that they were pretty." Dan prided herself on her athleticism, on being strong. Maybe when you were as tiny as Dan, that was what you had to do. Hao didn't have those problems: anyone could tell by looking at him that he was an athlete.
He knew about the male skaters, men's singles in particular, but some from dance and pairs, the North Americans and Western Europeans. He knew that they paired off at night during practice days and before the exhibition gala. Some Chinese skaters denied that this occurred, but Hao saw no point in that. It lent an air of friendliness to the competition, the sense that rivalries could be set aside for love, or at least for lust. There were needs and feelings that were more important than sports.
*
Working title: Johnny/Ben With Irony and Gender Theory
Fandom/pairing: skating RPF; Johnny Weir/Ben Agosto
Current length: 3000 words
Status: I figured out where it was going and decided I didn't want to go there.
"No, sorry, there's just not a lot to do in New Jersey when you've only got two hours," Johnny said. "I mean, we could walk around and possibly find a 7-11 or a diner. But other than that..."
"We could go drop things over the edge of the overpass," Ben said.
"Or get our nails done by a girl with big hair," Johnny said.
"Hey," Ben said. "Maybe there's a mall."
Johnny put the back of his hand to his forehead and overacted a swoon. "There's just nothing to do, darling," he said. "We'll just have to stay here and make out." He trusted Ben to hear the irony, to interpret it as anything but genuine flirtation. Ben was undoubtedly being kept away from the local press for just that reason.
So it was visibly not without sarcasm that Ben put his phone and Johnny's charger down on the desk, took the few steps necessary to close the distance between himself and Johnny, and kissed Johnny the way straight guys do when they're trying to prove how not homophobic they are. And it was totally cynical of Johnny to reply by tilting Ben's head forward before he could pull away and slipping him tongue.
The longer it went, the less ironic the kiss got. What was the limit of irony, the point where they would have to see this kiss as a genuine expression of desire, or at least evidence that they shared more than a cell phone service and a sense of humor? The answer turned out to be just over two minutes. "Go call your girlfriend," Johnny said.
*
Working title: Svoboda
Fandom/pairing: skating RPF; Johnny/Ben/Evan
Current length: 2700 words
Status: At some point, I decided that what this fandom really needed was an apocalypse AU. I also realized that the only plausible scenario for this threesome was "if the world was about to end." In my mind, I have a long and detailed narrative for this AU, spanning about 20 years, but I have been led to believe that this is drawerfic of the truest kind.
Ben stretches out as much as he can across the middle row of seats, and you squeeze in with Evan in the back row. Evan needs to be next to someone so he won't freak out. Correction: he'll freak out anyway, but if he's got you next to him, he'll calm down quicker. He closes his eyes, and he sees his parents and his sisters. He closes his eyes, and he sees Los Angeles slide into the ocean. The rest of you still hold out some hope, but he knows that everything he had is gone. He was doing better for a while, but the gunfire woke him, and he's gone silent again, silent and shaking.
You take his shoes off of him and spread a blanket over him. His eyes are wide open. You take off your own shoes and lift the tangle of jewelry off of your neck. It seems so decadent that you still have that stuff, but you were wearing it when you left the first hotel. Everything you're still sure you have is in this fucking van. It had better all still be here when you wake up.
You crawl under the blanket next to Evan. He scooches down the seat so he can rest his head against your chest. He must be folding his legs under him or wrapping them around the back of the seat, because his body is so long. You hold him, stroking the back of his neck, kissing his hair. You've spent so much of your time doing this, it's not something you think about. It's what has to be done. It's how you fall asleep. There's no reason to keep him at arm's length anymore; it's not like you're going to be in direct competition ever again. You might literally be the only two people left in the world who can land a quadruple toe loop. And you don't have your skates anymore.
*
Working title: Border Crossing
Fandom/pairing: skating RPF; Tessa Virtue/Kimmie Meissner, Scott Moir/Shawn Sawyer
Current length: Hard to say, since I wrote it longhand and never typed it up, but about 2500 words.
Status: I have come to accept that I probably will never finish this. I like it, but it has no ending, and it kind of bores me. Tessa and Scott were a fun friendship to write, though.
"This is the long version," Tessa said. "The summary leaves stuff out."
"I'll say."
"Listen," Tessa said. "If I'd known you wanted the long version --"
"Okay, from now on can we just assume I want the long version?"
"Okay," she said.
"Why would you think I would want anything but the long version?"
"I don't know," she said. "It always just seems like... like girl stuff. Like you wouldn't care."
"Seriously?"
"I don't know," she said. "I'm wrong, aren't I? I'm seriously wrong."
"You're my friend, we skate together, I spend an hour a day in the car with you. I'd like to think I'm worthy of the long version."
He couldn't see her, because some idiot in a black SUV was tailing them and he decided he'd rather not get them both killed a month before Nationals. But he thought she was smiling. "Okay," she said. "So after that, I don't know, we saw the rest of the museum and got food and found the right Metro and went back to the hotel."
"There's more?" Scott said.
"You said you wanted the long version," Tessa said, getting her phone back out. "I'll shut up."
"No," Scott said. "Keep going."
"You sure?"
"Yes," Scott said. "I have committed to the long version."
*
Working title: The Masochism Tango
Fandom/pairing: skating RPF; Ben Agosto/Charlie White
Current length: 3100 words
Status: So depressing I can't bear to write it, but annavtree might poke me until I give in.
"What, you're going to chase the Zamboni?" Tanith said. "Go talk to the man. I'll be here when you get back."
Outnumbered, Ben followed Charlie to one of the few quiet places in the rink, a former janitorial closet that now housed an old skate sharpening machine and a graveyard of ice show costumes. "Okay, what?" Charlie said. "Is something going on with Merrie?"
"That's more or less it," Ben said.
"Okay, whatever," Charlie said. "I thought we were better friends than that. But okay."
"We are," Ben said. "But that's, I mean, that's the whole --"
"Are you trying to tell me something?" Charlie said.
"Actually, I'm doing everything I can to not tell you something," Ben said. "Because, I mean, I can't. We can't. And if I did right now? I -- I can't speak for you, but I know I would."
"You can go ahead and speak for me," Charlie said.
There was a long spell of quiet, an eerie calm. Ben studied Charlie's lips, full and red against the rink rat pallor of his skin. Charlie was leaning back against the skate sharpener, pressing his hands into the metal. To keep from touching, Ben thought. What else did he do to keep from touching? He was so much better at it than Ben was. "How long?" Ben said.
"Since I was, like, fifteen," Charlie said. "But don't worry. I'm gonna get over you any day now."
"Don't," Ben heard himself saying. "Don't bother." He didn't feel his own hands moving or Charlie's, because they were quick and graceful, both of them, his hands around Charlie's waist and Charlie's arms around his neck. And his lips, his lips.
*
Working Title: Everybody's Changing
Fandom/pairing: skating RPF; Johnny/Tanith (f/f)
Current length: 7900 words
Status: This is the one where Johnny wakes up to discover that he's turned into a girl. I actually love the stuffing out of this fic. I ran into a plotting problem and set it aside, figured out a solution, and never managed to write it. Maybe what I need is encouragement.
The room smelled headily of female bodies, of sweat and deodorant and cosmetics, the stenches of feet and crotch they had to work to cover up. Johnny followed the old instinct to keep his head down, even if he wasn't sure he needed it. He was in a room full of half-naked sixteen-year-old girls, and glimpses of cool pale breasts made him shiver. The rush that he'd felt earlier that morning, when he'd found his clit, came back and stayed, an abiding ache where his legs met. He laughed to himself. It would have been weirder to be straight.
He tugged his clothes out of his bag. He'd packed everything the night before, as he usually did, so he wasn't afraid of having forgotten some essential girl thing. The bra was trouble, but he managed to wrestle himself into it before he made himself look suspicious. The rest of it wasn't all that different from how he'd dressed as a boy: distressed jeans, seafoam green square-necked knit top over a white t-shirt with the collar cut off, and a pair of totally cute furry Roberto Cavalli cowgirl boots.
He was admiring the boots when he found himself being tackled from behind. Not so much tackled as hugged tightly, but add the element of surprise, and that was what he got. He stiffened beneath the unidentified arms. "What's going on?" It was Tanith's voice. It was high and piercing and it carried; he'd been on enough tour buses with her to recognize it. "Did you have a bad practice?"
He wished she would stop touching him. He told himself that these were different circumstances, that this was probably a world where she had permission to, but he had a feeling that even here, he wouldn't be in the mood for a giddy hug. "No, actually, I had a really good practice."
She released him, and he let out his breath. She said, "What did I do?"
"Nothing," he said. "Nothing. It has nothing to do with you."
"Okay," she said. "Fine. You let me know when you're willing to have a conversation." She rubbed his back in a circle of passive-aggressive comfort and said, "Oh, honey, you're all tangled up." The term of endearment gave him pause. Tanith was huggy and overwhelming, but that wasn't how she talked to her friends. Warm in her actions, cool in her words. In his mind, he replayed her wave as he'd walked into the locker room, the way she'd pressed her chest into his back when she'd hugged him. It was a subtle pattern of gestures, but it was a familiar one. It was how you acted in the locker room when you were hiding a relationship, treading the boundaries of what you could show.
*
Working title: So You Think You Can Slash
Fandom/pairing: SYTYCD RPF; Benji Schwimmer/Travis Wall
Current length: 2900 words
Status: I started writing this for synful_trixx, wrote one scene, and thought it was a dead fic. Then, almost a year later, I started working on it again. At this rate, you might see the finished work sometime around 2009, but the fact that I revisited it once makes me hopeful.
Until he could figure that out, he rested his hand on Travis's chest, on the left, where his heart was. Faintly, through Travis's t-shirt, he could feel the thrum of it. He told himself, go for it, be stupid. It wasn't like Travis was under any illusion that Benji knew what he was doing. Benji let his hand drift downward, past a tight and interesting knot of nipple, feeling the terrain change from ribs to abs. Getting kind of low down, there, and he was telling himself, Stop the hand, stop the hand, but on the other hand, he really wanted to know what it felt like.
The next minute or two reminded of one of the things that amazed Benji about dancing when he stepped back from it, when he watched other people. How many things you could do in a moment, how fast a person could move. One second, he had his hand on the crotch of Travis's cargo shorts, and it honestly didn't feel like much, just a lump under the zipper, but Travis let out this sort of growl. Before Benji could tell him he was getting ahead of himself, he was yanking off his belt, he was stepping out of his shorts, he was putting Benji's hand over his underpants and moving his hips so he was rubbing against Benji's hand. Benji told himself this wasn't sex, this was... giving. He didn't believe himself, but it was enough of a push, a distraction, to get him to put his hand down Travis's underpants, and hello, it just felt like skin, like any part of a person's body, and why was he even surprised, he knew what his own felt like, not necessarily when it was like this, but in general. As long as he didn't look at it, he was all right. Travis was still working his hips, and he seemed happy to just have Benji rubbing it and feeling it in his hand. So Benji kept doing that, until Travis gave one really decisive groan, and Benji realized there was, like, semen in his hand. He didn't know what to do, so he ran to the bathroom and washed his hands twice, with soap. Lots of soap.
When he came back, Travis was sitting on the bed. He still had his shorts and underpants off, and Benji thought, please, please don't. Half-naked Travis was messing with his head. More than his head. He needed to leave now, go back to his own room, and pray a lot. Except that he also needed to lie down on that bed and -- whatever Travis had in mind, he needed to do that. He was going to do it eventually, they were going to. His plan had always been, wait for marriage, but he wasn't ever getting married. Not in the Church, not for real. It was either never or anytime. Travis would wait forever, would be patient with him, and that's what made Benji think it had to be now.
*
Working title: The semi-covert project name is "Skaters in a Jar." The actual title I'm probably going to give the fic is "Lost in the Netherward."
Fandom/pairing: skating RPF; Tanith/Alissa Czisny, Johnny/Ben, Jeff Buttle/Chris Mabee, and lots more.
Current length: No exact figure since some of it's scrawled in longhand, but 23,000 words is a good estimate.
Status: This is the most complicated and epic thing I've ever written, and it's taking a long time. It started as my entry for brains_in_a_jar, and it's radical-AU space opera. But I'm actively adding to it at least once a week, so my instinct is, it'll get done eventually. I wish I could go faster, but it's a lot of detail and a lot of worldbuilding, not to mention a lot of plot. This is all offset by my tremendous enthusiasm for this project and my determination to learn how to write this kind of story.
They bring in a nervous girl named Andrea and port her into you, and suddenly you have two sets of thoughts. She's from Saskatoon, and she likes horses. You try not to think about how boring she is, but she's boring, and it's all you can think about. She cries until they disconnect you.
You go through seven other girls that way. You know there's whispering, but you don't hear any of it. You just sit in your room, plugged into your power source (a feeling that you describe to anyone who asks as being like wrapping yourself in an electric blanket that mainlines you chocolate ice cream), waiting for your next instruction. You spend two weeks with no new liaison candidates, back in your simulator.
You've shut off half your brain and are using the other half to listen to music and paint your toenails when Igor knocks on your door. "We've got someone for you to meet," he says.
You sigh, wake yourself up, and cap the nail polish. "I guess she can't be worse than the horse girl," you say.
From behind the door, someone whinnies.
"You could have told me she was waiting outside," you say. You get up and open the door, and there's a guy standing there. Dark hair, olive skin, big ears, weak chin. Nice body, like he spends time on that. "I thought you said girls got matched with girls," you hiss to Igor.
"We're trying something different," he says. His accent makes him sound a little bit like a mad scientist.
The room where they run Liaison tests was designed to be comfortable. Big overstuffed chairs and a shag rug masking all the porting equipment. You sink back into your chair while Igor tunes your transmitters to each other. "Is this thing on?" you hear-feel-see.
Great, you think. This one thinks he's funny.
"I know I'm funny," the guy Liaison says. His name is Ben. He has a song in his head. Elvis. And now it's stuck in your head. He's worried that he'll drive you crazy, because his mind is a constant jukebox, snippets of tunes he only knows half the words to. He plays the guitar; he was in a band before he got drafted. "They gave you a horse girl?" he says in your mind. "You are so not cut out for a horse girl."
Ten minutes later, you're swapping embarrassing junior high stories and disagreeing about music. Every time he makes you laugh there are tears in your eyes. You'd forgotten what it felt like to like someone.
*
Working title: The Pink Menace!
Fandom/pairing: skating RPF; Johnny/Ben, Ben/Charlie, Tanith/Emily Hughes, Johnny/Eliot Halverson, Evan Lysacek/Ryan Bradley, and much more!
Current length: 3300 words
Status: fox1013 threw down the gauntlet for Very Classy sex pollen fic, and I'm doing my part. I'm currently working on this and hope I can get past the sheer quantity of porn. It's hard to keep sex interesting, surprisingly enough.
It's Johnny Weir, barefoot and shirtless, looking panicked and flushed. "Oh, God, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to -- it's just -- I can't find my bag, I'm locked out of my room, I was just hoping I could -- I don't know what. Never mind. I'm sorry."
"No, it's fine, I'm ... kind of hiding. From the -- whatever's going on down the hall."
"Yeah, I, um, there was -- it seemed okay until there was, like -- someone touching me without my permission, and then it was like, no."
"Well, this is the no sex room," you say. "You're welcome to chill here for a while."
He laughs uneasily, but it's a laugh. "There should be a sign."
This fills you with a sense of purpose. There's a pad of paper and a pen on the desk, and you write in the biggest letters you can, "LOSER ROOM, NO SEX HERE." Johnny, unscrupulous, is going through people's stuff. He finds a roll of athletic tape, and you use it to stick the sign to the door. You both stand in the half-open doorway for a minute, and you can tell he's thinking what you're thinking: "What the hell."
In one fluid movement, he shuts the door and sinks to his knees, taking your towel with him. He gives ridiculously excellent head, which is no surprise. You don't know what he's doing -- now that there's something warm and wet and tight around your dick, it's beyond you to pay attention -- but you're not getting that rough sensation of coming too fast. He's holding you off, forcing your body to take its time, letting you enjoy it. By the time you come, you want it, and there's pleasure in it, there's satisfaction. You smile and stretch your arms over your head. You know this calm won't last.
*
Working title: The Bleeding Heart Show
Fandom/pairing: skating RPS; Stephane/Johnny
Current length: unknown, since most of it is written longhand in my moleskine, but 7,000 words is a conservative estimate
Status: I used the first chapter as my Twice Told Fandom submission, as this fic grew out of that challenge and I wanted to fulfill my obligation, but I'm not posting that chapter to my LJ until the whole thing is done. (The following excerpt is from chapter 2.) This is the fic I'm currently most excited about, and it's really the reason why I'm abstaining from ficathons for the next four or five months. If I don't finish it, I will be very disappointed in myself.
Johnny circled Steph's hips loosely in his arms. "It's weird for me too."
"It's not weird for me," Steph said. He didn't mean to argue, but he couldn't lie. It felt natural, being held like this, being with this boy.
"Well, lucky you," Johnny said.
"I don't want to be weird to you," Steph said.
"It's not your fault," Johnny said. "It's... me being -- you're wonderful, you're gorgeous, you're -- I mean, you were -- I'm not coming up with good adjectives."
"But you're breaking up with me anyway," Steph said.
"No, oh my God, no, I didn't mean --" Johnny paused to laugh at himself and then to pull Steph closer to him. "I'm a total asshole. No."
"Then what?" Steph said, still pretty sure he was being dumped in some fashion.
"It's so dumb," Johnny said. "but you're so... not my type."
It was such a cute and benign confession, Steph had no choice but to kiss him on the forehead. "And what is your type?"
"I don't know. Tall and butch. Russian." He returned the forehead kiss. "But I like you anyway."
"Then who cares?" Steph said.
Johnny didn't answer right away. Instead, he covered Steph's face with studious kisses. As if deciding he'd shown sufficient adoration or bestowed sufficient protection, he drew back, holding Steph's chin in his hands. "The whole world," he said. "It seems like. Like, everyone expects you to be the girl, to want someone, like, someone who makes sense out of you. And that's what I -- I mean, when I'm with you, it's like, I can relax, I don't have to be that girl who I'm... seriously not."
*
Working title: The one where Miki is a slayer
Fandom/pairing: Buffy the Vampire Slayer/skating RPS crossover; Buffy Summers/Miki Ando
Current length: just under 1000 words
Status: This is birthday fic for callmesandy (don't worry, she made a specific request and is not expecting a surprise). So I have to finish it by September. I'm also not posting an excerpt, because I want some element of surprise.
*
So when I say I'm always writing, even when it doesn't look like I am? Yeah.
Working title: Winter Boys, Summer Version
Fandom/pairing: skating RPF; Johnny/Ben, Evan/Stephane, Tanith/Brian, Ben/Evan
Current length: 15,000 words
Status: Dead. It was supposed to be 2007 summerfic, and then it got supremely jossed in terms of the various skaters' emotional development. Like, it started out as a plausible arc, and then a ton of shit happened in the '06-'07 season, and I stopped believing that the events in this fic could ever happen. Which is sad, especially when I devoted so much energy to it.
Johnny's project for the summer is to be nice to people. Last summer, he was breaking up and cracking up and getting over mono; he might have placed seventh at Worlds but he'd won the competition for biggest bitch in figure skating, men's division. He was unkind to people he liked, people he still likes even if they've given up on him. Everything he did made sense to him at the time, in his cloudy and feverish mind, but he looks back on that year and wants to do it over. Not the competitions (although he wouldn't mind that either) but the human stuff. He's almost never ashamed of the crazy shit he pulls in public, but he's all too talented at piling up private regrets.
And it's easy to be nice, almost as easy as being mean. It's three minutes a day with any given person. Johnny puts the flutter in "social butterfly," up and down the aisle of the tour bus like he's been appointed cruise director. An hour up front talking about fashion with Ira and Marina, a couple of hands of Uno poker with Sasha and Kimmie. The morning Starbucks hunt with Steph and the nightly exchange of gossip with Tanith and Shizuka, who hear everything he doesn't. The more he's around people, the less he wants to be alone, and he appreciates his quiet time more when he does get it. He feels healthy.
He was lonely for a long time. It's been almost a year since he's had sex with anyone other than himself, but he was lonely for a while before that. He lets that little fact slip one morning in New Jersey during his coffee run. He's liable to say anything at any time, and the first burst of caffeine intensifies that particular weakness.
"You should come with me tonight," Steph says.
"To pick up random anonymous guys and pretend I don't speak much English?"
"Yes," Steph says. "Why not?"
"I tried," Johnny says. "Last summer, I tried, but it's... really hard to have sex with someone unless I like them."
"Are you sure you're gay?"
"Yeah, I know, I'm totally handicapped," Johnny says. "But it's all right. I'm channeling all my sexual frustration into my skating."
"But it's summer," Steph says.
"I know," Johnny says. "But I think I'm okay. Me and my hand and my porn."
Steph blushes and laughs.
"What, did I say that really loud?" Johnny says.
Steph laughs harder. It's often hard to tell whether Steph likes him or is embarrassed to be seen with him. It's probably both.
*
Working title: Lift Me
Fandom/pairing: skating RPF; Tanith Belbin/Tatiana Totmianina
Current length: 1500 words
Status: I'd totally forgotten I'd written this. Early attempt to find someone to slash Tanith with, didn't really pan out, I've totally forgotten everything I planned to include in this fic and therefore need to pronounce it dead.
"Okay," Tanith says. "One more time." When Tania is clinging to her securely, she takes a couple of strokes forward, slow ones, before putting Tania down. They switch off for a couple of turns, gaining confidence, until Tanith is motoring into a 3-turn. When she hits her back outside edge, Tania lets go with one arm, then the other, so she's hanging on with her knees while Tanith supports her hips. Tanith feels secure and powerful, like she has never dropped anything in her life.
One of the guys shouts, "Hey, look at the girls!" Knowing she's being watched makes Tanith courageous. She puts Tania down before her edge runs out of steam and does a few crossovers into a spiral with her blade up next to her ear. Which impresses nobody anymore, but she has to wrap things up.
"Girl-on-girl action!" someone else yells, probably Evan, and if he weren't so damn quick she would slap him for it. She skates back over to Tania and pulls her up into something a little sexier, one hand between her legs and one hand supporting her back. Tanith gets some momentum, and Tania lifts a hand over her head and arches her upper body away from Tanith. It's hard to balance her, but she's light, and she knows how to keep herself from falling. There are wolf whistles: ironic ones, but still insulting. Tanith lowers Tania to the ice and sends a middle-finger ladybug in the boys' general direction. She skates slowly towards the exit, hands behind her back, plotting her next move, which she does not have time to enact because Ben races up behind her and sweeps her up into a fireman's carry. She mimes pounding her fists against his back until he deposits her on the foam mats.
"That was a porno lift," he says, with that smile he gets when he is trying to turn his anger into a joke. "I thought we were monogamous about porno lifts."
*
Working title: Hao Zhang's Secret Gay Life
Fandom/pairing: skating RPF; Hao Zhang/Daisuke Takahashi, Hao/miscellaneous Canadians
Current length: 875 words
Status: Has been severely jossed, and not just in terms of competition results. It was a fun idea, but it's out of my system.
It was difficult to talk to anyone but the other Chinese, so Hao kept close to Dan. She was his best friend, anyway, and she always had something clever to say about the other skaters. She disdained the ladies' singles competitors in particular. "They all behave like princesses," she complained. "Somebody told them when they were little girls that they were pretty." Dan prided herself on her athleticism, on being strong. Maybe when you were as tiny as Dan, that was what you had to do. Hao didn't have those problems: anyone could tell by looking at him that he was an athlete.
He knew about the male skaters, men's singles in particular, but some from dance and pairs, the North Americans and Western Europeans. He knew that they paired off at night during practice days and before the exhibition gala. Some Chinese skaters denied that this occurred, but Hao saw no point in that. It lent an air of friendliness to the competition, the sense that rivalries could be set aside for love, or at least for lust. There were needs and feelings that were more important than sports.
*
Working title: Johnny/Ben With Irony and Gender Theory
Fandom/pairing: skating RPF; Johnny Weir/Ben Agosto
Current length: 3000 words
Status: I figured out where it was going and decided I didn't want to go there.
"No, sorry, there's just not a lot to do in New Jersey when you've only got two hours," Johnny said. "I mean, we could walk around and possibly find a 7-11 or a diner. But other than that..."
"We could go drop things over the edge of the overpass," Ben said.
"Or get our nails done by a girl with big hair," Johnny said.
"Hey," Ben said. "Maybe there's a mall."
Johnny put the back of his hand to his forehead and overacted a swoon. "There's just nothing to do, darling," he said. "We'll just have to stay here and make out." He trusted Ben to hear the irony, to interpret it as anything but genuine flirtation. Ben was undoubtedly being kept away from the local press for just that reason.
So it was visibly not without sarcasm that Ben put his phone and Johnny's charger down on the desk, took the few steps necessary to close the distance between himself and Johnny, and kissed Johnny the way straight guys do when they're trying to prove how not homophobic they are. And it was totally cynical of Johnny to reply by tilting Ben's head forward before he could pull away and slipping him tongue.
The longer it went, the less ironic the kiss got. What was the limit of irony, the point where they would have to see this kiss as a genuine expression of desire, or at least evidence that they shared more than a cell phone service and a sense of humor? The answer turned out to be just over two minutes. "Go call your girlfriend," Johnny said.
*
Working title: Svoboda
Fandom/pairing: skating RPF; Johnny/Ben/Evan
Current length: 2700 words
Status: At some point, I decided that what this fandom really needed was an apocalypse AU. I also realized that the only plausible scenario for this threesome was "if the world was about to end." In my mind, I have a long and detailed narrative for this AU, spanning about 20 years, but I have been led to believe that this is drawerfic of the truest kind.
Ben stretches out as much as he can across the middle row of seats, and you squeeze in with Evan in the back row. Evan needs to be next to someone so he won't freak out. Correction: he'll freak out anyway, but if he's got you next to him, he'll calm down quicker. He closes his eyes, and he sees his parents and his sisters. He closes his eyes, and he sees Los Angeles slide into the ocean. The rest of you still hold out some hope, but he knows that everything he had is gone. He was doing better for a while, but the gunfire woke him, and he's gone silent again, silent and shaking.
You take his shoes off of him and spread a blanket over him. His eyes are wide open. You take off your own shoes and lift the tangle of jewelry off of your neck. It seems so decadent that you still have that stuff, but you were wearing it when you left the first hotel. Everything you're still sure you have is in this fucking van. It had better all still be here when you wake up.
You crawl under the blanket next to Evan. He scooches down the seat so he can rest his head against your chest. He must be folding his legs under him or wrapping them around the back of the seat, because his body is so long. You hold him, stroking the back of his neck, kissing his hair. You've spent so much of your time doing this, it's not something you think about. It's what has to be done. It's how you fall asleep. There's no reason to keep him at arm's length anymore; it's not like you're going to be in direct competition ever again. You might literally be the only two people left in the world who can land a quadruple toe loop. And you don't have your skates anymore.
*
Working title: Border Crossing
Fandom/pairing: skating RPF; Tessa Virtue/Kimmie Meissner, Scott Moir/Shawn Sawyer
Current length: Hard to say, since I wrote it longhand and never typed it up, but about 2500 words.
Status: I have come to accept that I probably will never finish this. I like it, but it has no ending, and it kind of bores me. Tessa and Scott were a fun friendship to write, though.
"This is the long version," Tessa said. "The summary leaves stuff out."
"I'll say."
"Listen," Tessa said. "If I'd known you wanted the long version --"
"Okay, from now on can we just assume I want the long version?"
"Okay," she said.
"Why would you think I would want anything but the long version?"
"I don't know," she said. "It always just seems like... like girl stuff. Like you wouldn't care."
"Seriously?"
"I don't know," she said. "I'm wrong, aren't I? I'm seriously wrong."
"You're my friend, we skate together, I spend an hour a day in the car with you. I'd like to think I'm worthy of the long version."
He couldn't see her, because some idiot in a black SUV was tailing them and he decided he'd rather not get them both killed a month before Nationals. But he thought she was smiling. "Okay," she said. "So after that, I don't know, we saw the rest of the museum and got food and found the right Metro and went back to the hotel."
"There's more?" Scott said.
"You said you wanted the long version," Tessa said, getting her phone back out. "I'll shut up."
"No," Scott said. "Keep going."
"You sure?"
"Yes," Scott said. "I have committed to the long version."
*
Working title: The Masochism Tango
Fandom/pairing: skating RPF; Ben Agosto/Charlie White
Current length: 3100 words
Status: So depressing I can't bear to write it, but annavtree might poke me until I give in.
"What, you're going to chase the Zamboni?" Tanith said. "Go talk to the man. I'll be here when you get back."
Outnumbered, Ben followed Charlie to one of the few quiet places in the rink, a former janitorial closet that now housed an old skate sharpening machine and a graveyard of ice show costumes. "Okay, what?" Charlie said. "Is something going on with Merrie?"
"That's more or less it," Ben said.
"Okay, whatever," Charlie said. "I thought we were better friends than that. But okay."
"We are," Ben said. "But that's, I mean, that's the whole --"
"Are you trying to tell me something?" Charlie said.
"Actually, I'm doing everything I can to not tell you something," Ben said. "Because, I mean, I can't. We can't. And if I did right now? I -- I can't speak for you, but I know I would."
"You can go ahead and speak for me," Charlie said.
There was a long spell of quiet, an eerie calm. Ben studied Charlie's lips, full and red against the rink rat pallor of his skin. Charlie was leaning back against the skate sharpener, pressing his hands into the metal. To keep from touching, Ben thought. What else did he do to keep from touching? He was so much better at it than Ben was. "How long?" Ben said.
"Since I was, like, fifteen," Charlie said. "But don't worry. I'm gonna get over you any day now."
"Don't," Ben heard himself saying. "Don't bother." He didn't feel his own hands moving or Charlie's, because they were quick and graceful, both of them, his hands around Charlie's waist and Charlie's arms around his neck. And his lips, his lips.
*
Working Title: Everybody's Changing
Fandom/pairing: skating RPF; Johnny/Tanith (f/f)
Current length: 7900 words
Status: This is the one where Johnny wakes up to discover that he's turned into a girl. I actually love the stuffing out of this fic. I ran into a plotting problem and set it aside, figured out a solution, and never managed to write it. Maybe what I need is encouragement.
The room smelled headily of female bodies, of sweat and deodorant and cosmetics, the stenches of feet and crotch they had to work to cover up. Johnny followed the old instinct to keep his head down, even if he wasn't sure he needed it. He was in a room full of half-naked sixteen-year-old girls, and glimpses of cool pale breasts made him shiver. The rush that he'd felt earlier that morning, when he'd found his clit, came back and stayed, an abiding ache where his legs met. He laughed to himself. It would have been weirder to be straight.
He tugged his clothes out of his bag. He'd packed everything the night before, as he usually did, so he wasn't afraid of having forgotten some essential girl thing. The bra was trouble, but he managed to wrestle himself into it before he made himself look suspicious. The rest of it wasn't all that different from how he'd dressed as a boy: distressed jeans, seafoam green square-necked knit top over a white t-shirt with the collar cut off, and a pair of totally cute furry Roberto Cavalli cowgirl boots.
He was admiring the boots when he found himself being tackled from behind. Not so much tackled as hugged tightly, but add the element of surprise, and that was what he got. He stiffened beneath the unidentified arms. "What's going on?" It was Tanith's voice. It was high and piercing and it carried; he'd been on enough tour buses with her to recognize it. "Did you have a bad practice?"
He wished she would stop touching him. He told himself that these were different circumstances, that this was probably a world where she had permission to, but he had a feeling that even here, he wouldn't be in the mood for a giddy hug. "No, actually, I had a really good practice."
She released him, and he let out his breath. She said, "What did I do?"
"Nothing," he said. "Nothing. It has nothing to do with you."
"Okay," she said. "Fine. You let me know when you're willing to have a conversation." She rubbed his back in a circle of passive-aggressive comfort and said, "Oh, honey, you're all tangled up." The term of endearment gave him pause. Tanith was huggy and overwhelming, but that wasn't how she talked to her friends. Warm in her actions, cool in her words. In his mind, he replayed her wave as he'd walked into the locker room, the way she'd pressed her chest into his back when she'd hugged him. It was a subtle pattern of gestures, but it was a familiar one. It was how you acted in the locker room when you were hiding a relationship, treading the boundaries of what you could show.
*
Working title: So You Think You Can Slash
Fandom/pairing: SYTYCD RPF; Benji Schwimmer/Travis Wall
Current length: 2900 words
Status: I started writing this for synful_trixx, wrote one scene, and thought it was a dead fic. Then, almost a year later, I started working on it again. At this rate, you might see the finished work sometime around 2009, but the fact that I revisited it once makes me hopeful.
Until he could figure that out, he rested his hand on Travis's chest, on the left, where his heart was. Faintly, through Travis's t-shirt, he could feel the thrum of it. He told himself, go for it, be stupid. It wasn't like Travis was under any illusion that Benji knew what he was doing. Benji let his hand drift downward, past a tight and interesting knot of nipple, feeling the terrain change from ribs to abs. Getting kind of low down, there, and he was telling himself, Stop the hand, stop the hand, but on the other hand, he really wanted to know what it felt like.
The next minute or two reminded of one of the things that amazed Benji about dancing when he stepped back from it, when he watched other people. How many things you could do in a moment, how fast a person could move. One second, he had his hand on the crotch of Travis's cargo shorts, and it honestly didn't feel like much, just a lump under the zipper, but Travis let out this sort of growl. Before Benji could tell him he was getting ahead of himself, he was yanking off his belt, he was stepping out of his shorts, he was putting Benji's hand over his underpants and moving his hips so he was rubbing against Benji's hand. Benji told himself this wasn't sex, this was... giving. He didn't believe himself, but it was enough of a push, a distraction, to get him to put his hand down Travis's underpants, and hello, it just felt like skin, like any part of a person's body, and why was he even surprised, he knew what his own felt like, not necessarily when it was like this, but in general. As long as he didn't look at it, he was all right. Travis was still working his hips, and he seemed happy to just have Benji rubbing it and feeling it in his hand. So Benji kept doing that, until Travis gave one really decisive groan, and Benji realized there was, like, semen in his hand. He didn't know what to do, so he ran to the bathroom and washed his hands twice, with soap. Lots of soap.
When he came back, Travis was sitting on the bed. He still had his shorts and underpants off, and Benji thought, please, please don't. Half-naked Travis was messing with his head. More than his head. He needed to leave now, go back to his own room, and pray a lot. Except that he also needed to lie down on that bed and -- whatever Travis had in mind, he needed to do that. He was going to do it eventually, they were going to. His plan had always been, wait for marriage, but he wasn't ever getting married. Not in the Church, not for real. It was either never or anytime. Travis would wait forever, would be patient with him, and that's what made Benji think it had to be now.
*
Working title: The semi-covert project name is "Skaters in a Jar." The actual title I'm probably going to give the fic is "Lost in the Netherward."
Fandom/pairing: skating RPF; Tanith/Alissa Czisny, Johnny/Ben, Jeff Buttle/Chris Mabee, and lots more.
Current length: No exact figure since some of it's scrawled in longhand, but 23,000 words is a good estimate.
Status: This is the most complicated and epic thing I've ever written, and it's taking a long time. It started as my entry for brains_in_a_jar, and it's radical-AU space opera. But I'm actively adding to it at least once a week, so my instinct is, it'll get done eventually. I wish I could go faster, but it's a lot of detail and a lot of worldbuilding, not to mention a lot of plot. This is all offset by my tremendous enthusiasm for this project and my determination to learn how to write this kind of story.
They bring in a nervous girl named Andrea and port her into you, and suddenly you have two sets of thoughts. She's from Saskatoon, and she likes horses. You try not to think about how boring she is, but she's boring, and it's all you can think about. She cries until they disconnect you.
You go through seven other girls that way. You know there's whispering, but you don't hear any of it. You just sit in your room, plugged into your power source (a feeling that you describe to anyone who asks as being like wrapping yourself in an electric blanket that mainlines you chocolate ice cream), waiting for your next instruction. You spend two weeks with no new liaison candidates, back in your simulator.
You've shut off half your brain and are using the other half to listen to music and paint your toenails when Igor knocks on your door. "We've got someone for you to meet," he says.
You sigh, wake yourself up, and cap the nail polish. "I guess she can't be worse than the horse girl," you say.
From behind the door, someone whinnies.
"You could have told me she was waiting outside," you say. You get up and open the door, and there's a guy standing there. Dark hair, olive skin, big ears, weak chin. Nice body, like he spends time on that. "I thought you said girls got matched with girls," you hiss to Igor.
"We're trying something different," he says. His accent makes him sound a little bit like a mad scientist.
The room where they run Liaison tests was designed to be comfortable. Big overstuffed chairs and a shag rug masking all the porting equipment. You sink back into your chair while Igor tunes your transmitters to each other. "Is this thing on?" you hear-feel-see.
Great, you think. This one thinks he's funny.
"I know I'm funny," the guy Liaison says. His name is Ben. He has a song in his head. Elvis. And now it's stuck in your head. He's worried that he'll drive you crazy, because his mind is a constant jukebox, snippets of tunes he only knows half the words to. He plays the guitar; he was in a band before he got drafted. "They gave you a horse girl?" he says in your mind. "You are so not cut out for a horse girl."
Ten minutes later, you're swapping embarrassing junior high stories and disagreeing about music. Every time he makes you laugh there are tears in your eyes. You'd forgotten what it felt like to like someone.
*
Working title: The Pink Menace!
Fandom/pairing: skating RPF; Johnny/Ben, Ben/Charlie, Tanith/Emily Hughes, Johnny/Eliot Halverson, Evan Lysacek/Ryan Bradley, and much more!
Current length: 3300 words
Status: fox1013 threw down the gauntlet for Very Classy sex pollen fic, and I'm doing my part. I'm currently working on this and hope I can get past the sheer quantity of porn. It's hard to keep sex interesting, surprisingly enough.
It's Johnny Weir, barefoot and shirtless, looking panicked and flushed. "Oh, God, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to -- it's just -- I can't find my bag, I'm locked out of my room, I was just hoping I could -- I don't know what. Never mind. I'm sorry."
"No, it's fine, I'm ... kind of hiding. From the -- whatever's going on down the hall."
"Yeah, I, um, there was -- it seemed okay until there was, like -- someone touching me without my permission, and then it was like, no."
"Well, this is the no sex room," you say. "You're welcome to chill here for a while."
He laughs uneasily, but it's a laugh. "There should be a sign."
This fills you with a sense of purpose. There's a pad of paper and a pen on the desk, and you write in the biggest letters you can, "LOSER ROOM, NO SEX HERE." Johnny, unscrupulous, is going through people's stuff. He finds a roll of athletic tape, and you use it to stick the sign to the door. You both stand in the half-open doorway for a minute, and you can tell he's thinking what you're thinking: "What the hell."
In one fluid movement, he shuts the door and sinks to his knees, taking your towel with him. He gives ridiculously excellent head, which is no surprise. You don't know what he's doing -- now that there's something warm and wet and tight around your dick, it's beyond you to pay attention -- but you're not getting that rough sensation of coming too fast. He's holding you off, forcing your body to take its time, letting you enjoy it. By the time you come, you want it, and there's pleasure in it, there's satisfaction. You smile and stretch your arms over your head. You know this calm won't last.
*
Working title: The Bleeding Heart Show
Fandom/pairing: skating RPS; Stephane/Johnny
Current length: unknown, since most of it is written longhand in my moleskine, but 7,000 words is a conservative estimate
Status: I used the first chapter as my Twice Told Fandom submission, as this fic grew out of that challenge and I wanted to fulfill my obligation, but I'm not posting that chapter to my LJ until the whole thing is done. (The following excerpt is from chapter 2.) This is the fic I'm currently most excited about, and it's really the reason why I'm abstaining from ficathons for the next four or five months. If I don't finish it, I will be very disappointed in myself.
Johnny circled Steph's hips loosely in his arms. "It's weird for me too."
"It's not weird for me," Steph said. He didn't mean to argue, but he couldn't lie. It felt natural, being held like this, being with this boy.
"Well, lucky you," Johnny said.
"I don't want to be weird to you," Steph said.
"It's not your fault," Johnny said. "It's... me being -- you're wonderful, you're gorgeous, you're -- I mean, you were -- I'm not coming up with good adjectives."
"But you're breaking up with me anyway," Steph said.
"No, oh my God, no, I didn't mean --" Johnny paused to laugh at himself and then to pull Steph closer to him. "I'm a total asshole. No."
"Then what?" Steph said, still pretty sure he was being dumped in some fashion.
"It's so dumb," Johnny said. "but you're so... not my type."
It was such a cute and benign confession, Steph had no choice but to kiss him on the forehead. "And what is your type?"
"I don't know. Tall and butch. Russian." He returned the forehead kiss. "But I like you anyway."
"Then who cares?" Steph said.
Johnny didn't answer right away. Instead, he covered Steph's face with studious kisses. As if deciding he'd shown sufficient adoration or bestowed sufficient protection, he drew back, holding Steph's chin in his hands. "The whole world," he said. "It seems like. Like, everyone expects you to be the girl, to want someone, like, someone who makes sense out of you. And that's what I -- I mean, when I'm with you, it's like, I can relax, I don't have to be that girl who I'm... seriously not."
*
Working title: The one where Miki is a slayer
Fandom/pairing: Buffy the Vampire Slayer/skating RPS crossover; Buffy Summers/Miki Ando
Current length: just under 1000 words
Status: This is birthday fic for callmesandy (don't worry, she made a specific request and is not expecting a surprise). So I have to finish it by September. I'm also not posting an excerpt, because I want some element of surprise.
*
So when I say I'm always writing, even when it doesn't look like I am? Yeah.