under the skin, part one
This is really old, from April or May when Evan was doing SOI/DWTS back-to-back and claiming he didn't wash and slept only two hours a night. I wrote about ten thousand words about him actually getting some sleep (why??), and then I got distracted by something else, and then SOI/DTWS was over and it didn't seem worth finishing a fic that was jossed, since we know he didn't accidentally skip a night of SOI. Now I'm totally allergic to Evan, but this was so close to being done anyway that I thought if I was going to dump it, I might as well post it as finished.
Under The Skin
Johnny Weir/Evan Lysacek
NC-17
12,000 words
i.
Johnny is enjoying a nice, well-deserved night off when Fate, or possibly Nemesis, demonstrates that it absolutely has it out for him. Someone smacks into him from behind and jostles his drink, and normally the wave of Long Island Iced Tea splashing up the sleeve of his jacket would be the bad-karma portion of the evening, but that's just the first shoe. The second drops when he turns around, eyes narrowing, and finds himself staring at a horribly familiar chin.
"Oh my god, no," he says. "No, no, no."
The eyes above the chin squint down blearily at him. It takes them a second, but finally they focus, and a little light of recognition shines through their murky depths. "Hey," Evan Lysacek says, sounding vaguely pleased to see him. "Johnny Weir! What are you doing here?"
There are two answers to this question. The first is boring and factual, and basically contains the bare bones of information; to wit, that Johnny is in L.A. for a few meetings, that Johnny was bored, and that Johnny decided to have a drink and lurk in the corner of the club, vicariously watching other people dance and hook up and snapping at anyone who tried anything with him. The second is directly combative and relays none of this information. Johnny lifts his chin.
"What are you doing here? Hanging out in gay bars is not conducive to your whole lead-lined closet thing, Evan. Did your handlers let you off the choke-chain?"
"I like it here," Evan says, sounding confused. "It's shiny. There are lights. And people." He smiles, an empty, happy smile that somehow gives Johnny chills. Evan doesn't like being out of control, at least not around other skaters, so he hasn't seen Evan this drunk before. Actually, he's not sure he's seen Evan drunk ever. "Pretty people."
"There are boys," he corrects. "Pretty boys. You're so drunk, oh my god. Go away and bother someone else."
Evan keeps smiling at him like the sense of Johnny's words has failed entirely to register. His teeth are unnaturally white against his fake bake, and his eyes, the more Johnny glares into them, are totally empty-looking. He looks like a waxwork of himself. Johnny has a lot of vehement, frequently-aired opinions about Evan Lysacek's IQ, but -
"Oh my god," he says. "Are you high?" He's tempted to follow it up with 'Are you stupid?', because as far as he knows, Evan's still keeping his options for next season open, but the question would be totally rhetorical, so he doesn't bother.
Evan shakes his head slowly, the vacant smile still on his face. "No." He waves the hand holding the bottle about vaguely - god, Evan Lysacek is exactly the sort of douche who would order a crappy American beer at a gay bar. Johnny should probably just be grateful he's not wearing an unironic trucker hat, but the black beanie he's wearing instead is revolting enough on its own. "Only one. Two. Not many."
"You are such a bad liar. Let loose all on your own without a publicist's cheatsheet, it's totally pathetic. You're barely standing up straight."
Later, Johnny will hate himself for doing it, because it's the last point at which he can extricate himself without any sense of screwed-up responsibility, but at this moment in time he's just annoyed by Evan's existence and Evan ruining his evening and Evan maybe being so done with competitive skating as a back-up plan that he can afford to fuck around and have fun, so he leans forward and sniffs accusingly at Evan's boring black shirt. It smells faintly unwashed, like old cologne and a touch of sweat, but there's no sickly sticky smell of weed. He starts to lean back, frowning.
"Pretty boy," Evan repeats, right next to his ear, and his huge hand closes on Johnny's hip.
Either Someone Up There hates him, or he's snapped and had a complete mental break where he's forced to confront the most horrible things his id can throw at him. Johnny can't think of any other semi-reasonable explanations that would explain a listing, crazy-eyed, beanie-wearing Evan Lysacek grinding ineptly against his thigh.
"Get off!" He shoves wildly at him. "Let go of me!"
Evan makes a humming noise, his thumb stroking against Johnny's stomach, and then he starts nuzzling at Johnny's neck, and it’s surprising enough that Johnny stops shoving for a second. Evan’s stubble is scratching at his throat and his mouth is warm and wet and -
Holy shit, Evan is so wasted, and possibly - no, definitely - getting hard, and Johnny still can't believe this is even happening enough to end it decisively.
He gropes for the back of Evan's neck, finds it, and roughly pinches the skin over his nape, digging his fingertips deep into the tendons. It works on animals, after all.
Evan makes a hurt noise and lets go. The hand that had been getting overly intimate with Johnny's hipbone goes to his neck.
"Ouch," he says. His eyes are accusing and kind of betrayed, like a calf that's found itself on a ramp into a meatgrinder.
"I am not going to apologise for making you stop molesting me," Johnny says, breathing hard. "When you're sober, you'll thank me, because when you're sober, you would never, ever do that."
He fusses with his jacket lapels and runs a hand over his hair, trying to think. He wants to push into the crowd and pretend he hasn't seen Evan and try and salvage the remains of a not-entirely-awful evening, but. Johnny feels qualified to state that Evan Lysacek, in anything close to his right mind, wouldn't touch him intimately with a ten-foot pole, a sentiment Johnny shares and returns. Other guys, yes, maybe; that's between Evan and his closet door. Johnny, no. Therefore -
"Let me look at your eyes," he says sharply, and grabs Evan's jaw between his finger and thumb, trying to angle it so he can see better. Evan stands still and lets him maneuver his face docilely enough, but the light's too poor to tell anything about Evan's pupils. His eyes are really fucking dark to start with, anyway.
Johnny lets go and wipes his fingers off on his pants. "Did you come here with someone?"
Another dopey smile. "Just me."
And there goes Johnny's night.
He's not exactly Pollyanna, but he's his mother’s son, and he’s not enough of an asshole to leave anyone so completely fucked up on their own. Not even his worst rival. Not even pond scum. Not even Evan. Evan, who is currently trying to lean on him, like Johnny's not half a foot shorter than him, and rubbing his horrible face against the curve of Johnny's neck and the shoulder of his jacket, which is now completely irretrievable and will have to be burned. He weighs way, way too much for someone who is mostly just height.
"You live in LA, don't you? Evan. Evan." It takes a slap to get Evan's attention - a small slap against his cheek, nothing major, but Johnny's not going to deny it's kind of satisfying. He's not an asshole, but he's not a saint, either. "Stop acting like someone's roofied you, it's freaking me out. Do you remember where you live?"
"'M only tired," Evan says vaguely. He looks like he's losing focus again, and his arm is curling around Johnny's waist like some sort of hideous creeper, so Johnny slaps him a second time. It's still fun.
"Evan. Address. Why do they let you out without a collar?"
"Mm."
"I’m getting you out of here, okay?" Johnny means it in a 'give me your address now or forever hold your peace' kind of way, but Evan brightens a little like he thinks he's picked up.
"Your place?"
"Yes, Evan, to my place," Johnny agrees wearily, because he doesn't know what else he can do, and right now he'll pretend to agree to anything if it will help get Evan with his moony black eyes of horrifying emptiness out of there.
ii.
The taxi ride is a nightmare. Evan drunk and potentially roofied apparently equals an Evan horribly affectionate. Johnny could deal with grabby hands, but the way Evan keeps trying to hug him creeps him out, and he spends most of the short journey back to his hotel trying to shrug him off. When the taxi stops, he manages to find Evan's wallet in his back pocket, and abstracts a few notes; it's not stealing if the wallet's owner is right there, watching you take out the cash with a sort of blurry benignity, and you're paying for carting his drunk ass around anyway.
Hunting for Evan's wallet seems to have given Evan the wrong idea, though, or reminded him of earlier, unfinished business.
"Hands," Johnny snaps. "Oh my god, you drunken asshole, stop it, I'm trying to help carry your dumb ass, god knows why, and I don't need you making it more difficult."
"I'm not drunk," Evan mumbles. "I'm just tired."
"Walk the rest of the way to the elevator, then," Johnny says. He throws Evan's arm off his shoulder. Evan wobbles, takes a few faltering steps, and stumbles over his own feet. Johnny grabs his arm before he quite ends up in an ungainly pile on the carpet, and grimly hauls him upright. "See?"
"I only had one," Evan says, staring sadly down at his feet like they don't belong to him.
"Sometimes it only takes one, buttercup." Johnny pushes him into the elevator. The creepy clinging continues when the doors close behind them, and Johnny stares blankly at his dulled reflection and tries to figure out how he ended up in a big metal box with his grabby-handed arch-nemesis. He’s going to curl up into a horribly violated ball just as soon as he dumps Lysacek somewhere. Maybe he can take an extra-long shower and use an exfoliating scrub. "Hands," he repeats, slapping them away, and thank god, the elevator stops.
Evan nearly goes down again, getting out, and Johnny tugs him ungently back to his feet. He tries to unwind Evan and prop him against the wall while he gets his keycard out, but Evan refuses to be unwound, so Johnny stands there fishing through his stupidly oversized purse with Evan Lysacek pressed against his back and hugging him around the waist, breathing moistly against the back of his neck.
He hates everything, especially the prompting of consciousness that made him hustle Evan out of the bar in the first place. He should have left him there to make a fool of himself in public and get his ugly orange face splashed all over the tabloids. Of course, it’s equally likely that Evan might have let himself get picked up by the wrong sort of person, and Johnny’s not quite bitter enough to wish that on him.
Evan starts kissing the ridge of his spine just as Johnny gets the door open, and he jerks them both forward with a force that’s at least ninety percent horror.
“Take your shoes off and just - lie down,” he orders.
“And my pants?”
“Whatever,” Johnny says. “I have to go hyperventilate in the bathroom. Take a nap.”
"You'll be right back?"
"I'll be right back," Johnny lies. He shuts the bathroom door, locks it, and pulls out his phone and hits speed-dial.
"Evan Lysacek is half-naked in my hotel room." He lowers his voice, but it doesn’t kill the frantic panicky edge to it. "I think he thinks I brought him here for sex-"
"Ha, ha," Paris says half a country away, sounding bored. "I totally believe you."
"Paris," Johnny says. Actually, this needs the big guns. "Justin. I am not lying to you. I ran into him at a club, and he was all weird, and I think someone gave him something because he was - he was just weird."
"So you decided to pick him up? Assuming I believe you, which I don't, your standards are seriously slipping."
"I couldn't just leave him there - I'm calling you for help, you asshole. I think he might have taken something. You know about stuff about that."
"Harsh," Paris says. "And also, like I have to dope my lays."
"That's not what I meant,” Johnny says. "Seriously, he's all strung-out and weird. What do I do?"
"Take embarrassing pictures of him while he's passed out?"
“Well, obviously, but that's not helpful!”
Paris sighs like his life is so, so hard. He’s not the one with an addled archrival invading his personal bubble. “Just watch him, I guess. Unless he's seizing or something. You think he needs medical help?”
“He’s not - no,” Johnny says. That would open up a whole new can of worms. “Wow, this is so unhelpful.”
“Love you too, baby, and fuck you,” Paris says. He sighs. “Call me back if you have issues.”
iii.
When Johnny cracks the bathroom door open, all he can hear is deep, even breathing. Evan is fast asleep, flat on his back in Johnny's cushy hotel bed. He makes an odd picture, fully dressed in black from his chin to his wrists, his stupid hat still squashed flat over his hair; like some half-ninja creature that's only human below his navel. From the waist down, he's all stupid whitebread boxers and long brown legs, all sinew and bone.
Johnny can't do anything about the turtleneck, but he removes the beanie, pinching the greasy thing fastidiously between his fingers. Evan doesn't lurch up and grab his wrist like he'd half been expecting, so Johnny tosses it into a corner.
Somehow Evan looks even more tired without it. His face looks like a dead thing under the harsh light, the skin pouching under his eyes like it's trying to slough away from his skull. The idiot has tried to fix it with concealer five times too pale for his skin tone. His eyes are faintly screwed up, like sleep is something that comes hard for him, that requires work, or something he has to actively resist even when he's passed out.
Johnny makes jokes about Evan being a robot or an automaton or whatever, but it's still weird to see him so completely there but not there, his face slack and blank. All he needs to complete the look, really, is his big hands crossed on his chest like a Crusader. Johnny almost freaks himself out with that thought, but then Evan's chest moves and okay, he's still breathing, he hasn't had some sort of mysterious overdose and left Johnny implicated in his death.
He needs to turn Evan onto his side. That's what you're meant to do with drunk people, but with Evan it feels like trying to turn the Titanic before it hits the iceberg, if the Titanic was a floppy deadweight that seemed to take silent and malicious pleasure in resisting his efforts. It takes a lot of tugging on Evan's arm and pushing at his shoulder, but Johnny finally does it.
"So beyond the call of duty," he mutters. After staring down at him for a few more moments, just trying to take in the absolute surreality of Evan Lysacek passed out in his bed, he moves away and takes up a perch on the uncomfortable armchair in the corner. Evan doesn't seem to be in imminent danger of choking on his own tongue, after all, which is not always the case when he's awake and talking.
He watches for a while. He’s not staying up just to keep an eye on Evan; there are important things he needs to do, like check his email. And Google himself. He fucks around on his laptop for a few hours, and despite his best intentions, he's getting dozy when the phone goes off.
It's the most obnoxious ringtone he's heard in his life; it blares tunelessly like some sort of air raid siren, at a frequency that could probably make your brains start bleeding out your ears. It’s also waking Evan up, and that’s not okay; passed out is like the only state in which Evan is barely tolerable. Johnny can’t allow that.
He manages to find the phone tucked into the pocket of Evan's discarded pants, and wrestles it out before it's rung for the third time, sliding his thumb over the touch screen and cutting the alarm short. He glances over at the bed, and watches Evan stop stirring and go back to sleeping like the dead.
Johnny's never seen someone sleep so hard. It's almost kind of pathetic, and he's not sure why. If Evan wants to kill himself with sleep deprivation, that's totally his choice. He's a grown man, and also an asshole. He runs his fingers over Evan's phone, though, and sets about trying to disable the alarm permanently and put the thing on silent. He tries 1985 first, because Evan seems like the sort of guy who would set his birth year as his code; then 0406, 2007, 2010. At '2576' the touch screen disappears, and Johnny grimaces in sour satisfaction.
He can’t find an extra blanket in the closet, and he’s not going to tuck Evan into bed. It might wake him up, and more importantly, Johnny desperately needs that layer of separation, Evan on top of the covers and Johnny under them. It’s not quite enough; the sort of thick blanket they use to put out fires wouldn’t be enough, but he’s not going to let Evan have his bed and sleep in the chair. He crawls in on the empty side of the bed, pulls the sheets up to his chin, and goes to sleep.
iv.
When Johnny wakes up to the muted chimes of his own phone, he finds himself staring at the back of Evan's head, his hair black and lustreless with sleep.
It's officially the weirdest morning of his life, and he's running so late for his brunch date that he can't even devote any time to freaking out. Evan doesn't stir when Johnny pushes back the blankets and gets out of bed. Johnny doesn't have time to be considerate, or motive, so he gets dressed and clatters around in the bathroom like normal, showers and blow-dries his hair and makes a pained decision between two pairs of pants and three pairs of pointed shoes without censoring himself or trying to be quiet.
Evan's still asleep when he's dressed and coiffed and ready to go, though. His face has eased a little, but there are still faint lines of discontent running from the edges of his nose to the sides of his mouth. His face is unimaginably sallow against the white pillowcase, and his mouth is a little open. He's probably been drooling.
Johnny looks down at him and wonders if Evan knows that exfoliation exists for a reason, and if he always looks grimy with uneven fake tan out of personal choice. You couldn't just not realise, could you?
"Lysacek," he says, raising his voice. "Evan. Wakey-wakey." He shakes Evan's shoulder. He doesn't have time for this. The frown lines in Evan's face deepen, and his eyes screw tighter, but he doesn't wake up. Johnny shakes him again. Nothing happens. He's going to be late, unless he leaves right now, and that's not the impression he's trying to give potential publishers.
"You are not my responsibility," he tells Evan's mutinously sleepy face. "I have done everything I can. I have gone beyond the call of duty. If you sleep through anything important, it's your own stupid fault."
Evan can let himself out. He shakes Evan one last time, for good measure, and because it's fun, and when it proves as fruitless as his earlier attempts and results only in Evan making a small grumbling noise and pressing his face into the pillow, Johnny really really has to go.
v.
He finishes up a very successful power-brunch at around three, and forgoes the pleasure of window-shopping on Rodeo Drive in order to duck back into the hotel and make sure that Evan hadn't trashed the room or any of Johnny's belongings before he left. He really doesn't expect Evan to still be there, let alone still passed out, but when he slides his key card through the lock and pushes the door open there's still someone in his bed.
"Motherfucker," Johnny mutters under his breath, and strides over. Evan is still breathing. Actually, Evan is snoring, a faint nasal whistle that makes Johnny want to kill him worse than usual. "Wake up," he says loudly. "I know you like to be the best at things, but sleeping is not a competitive sport. You've had nearly twelve hours, get the fuck up."
Evan's head flops back and forth when Johnny shakes him, and the snore stops, but when Johnny lets go he just makes a protesting sort of noise and tries to roll over and bury his face in the pillow.
"I'm through babying you," Johnny tells his insensate face. It's a final warning, but Evan doesn’t hear it.
He marches into the bathroom and fills up a glass of water. When he comes back out, he takes aim. It's a beautiful square hit that catches Evan full in the face, and Johnny sets the empty glass on the nightstand and steps back, watching with a certain dark pleasure as Evan splutters into wakefulness.
His long limbs thrash around like a spider having a spasm, and there's water running off his face and onto his neck and slicking his fringe to his forehead. Tiny droplets scatter off his eyelashes when he blinks wildly, clearly trying to figure out where he is and what just happened.
Johnny steeples his fingers in their black faux-leather half-gloves and strikes a sinister pose, waiting for Evan to focus on him.
"What," Evan says blankly when he does. His face kind of freezes with horror, and okay, maybe Johnny's kind of glad he gets to be here for this, after all. Evan's eyes move from Johnny to the hotel room, back to Johnny, down to his own bare legs, back to Johnny, and then to his own hand when he reaches up and pats the wet hair on his brow. His eyes go back to Johnny, wide with surprise and sharp with a certain hostile, suspicious edge that had been missing last night.
Johnny's almost relieved to see it. Something is right with the universe again. "Hello, Sleeping Beauty," he says, his voice sharp and sweet. "I thought you were never going to wake up."
One day someone should tell Evan that his frozen, blank expression is not the poker face he clearly thinks it is, but it's not going to be Johnny.
"What-" Evan stops and clears his throat. "What am I doing here? What the fuck is going on?"
"Darling, I'm hurt," Johnny says, just for the fun of watching Evan glance down again and back at him, clearly putting pantsless and Johnny Weir together and coming up with ?!!! "Don't tell me you don't remember our night of passion.”
Evan’s confused expression curdles into terrified disbelief.
"We didn't," he says, like if he can say it firmly enough it’ll be true. Fascinated, Johnny watches him flush a dull brick colour. It starts in his ears and at the line of his shirt and creeps up his neck, and the more Johnny stares the deeper it gets. "I wouldn't."
Johnny raises an eyebrow, and, impossibly, the flush deepens. "Sure about that?"
"I wouldn’t." Evan clenches his jaw. "Tell me what I'm really doing here."
"Well, you wanted to," Johnny says, carefully popping the little buttons on the back of his gloves and pulling them off. He smoothes them out, folds them and lays them carefully on the nightstand beside the water glass, and flashes Evan his best and most poisonous smile. "Luckily, I have standards."
Evan snorts, and Johnny restrains himself from pitching the empty glass at him. “Then why am I here?”
It’s a good question.
"What do you remember?" he prompts, half because he's still enjoying being unhelpful, and half because he's genuinely curious.
Evan looks at him, and Johnny raises his eyebrows a little higher, waiting. Somehow, it works. "The show," Evan says shortly. "Taping, getting changed, and going out. I had a few hours free-"
Suddenly Evan looks horrified, and Johnny wonders what just shook loose inside his bleary little brain.
“I ran into you in a bar,” he says, truthfully enough. “Somewhere in West Hollywood, actually. You were completely shitfaced."
Evan grunts. "And you, what, decided to separate me from the herd?"
"You hit on me," Johnny says, and the way Evan flinches again is beautiful. "You rubbed your dick on my leg and then you slobbered on my neck. So naturally I decided that you were probably on something, and I didn't want to leave you in the club to make a public spectacle of yourself, because I'm a sucker. I totally should have."
"I don't believe you."
"I don't care. Believe whatever you want."
Evan still kind of looks like hell. He shakes his head back and forth, slow, like some sort of sacrificial animal brained by a mallet. "I don't get it," he says. "Why would you-"
"My mama brought me up right," Johnny says. "And it was a golden opportunity to take photos of you passed out in your underwear and share them with the internet."
The lost expression clarifies into vindication even as Evan goes chalky under his glaze. "You asshole," he says. "If you-"
"It was a golden opportunity," Johnny says over the top of his inarticulate threats. "Unfortunately, I don't actually know how to upload photos to the internet, so I had to let it pass."
Evan stares at him a little longer. Then he shakes his head again. "I don't have time for this bullshit. Where's my phone? What have you done with it?"
He glares around the room, and then his eyes catch on it, lying on the floor. He snatches it up, and then turns the glare at Johnny. "It's dead," he says accusingly, pressing the button a few more times, as if that's going to get a different result. The little picture of a depleted battery comes up again.
"I killed it," Johnny says. "It was a deliberate and premeditated attack - for fuck's sake, shaking the baby is not going to help it, Evan. I'll plug it into my laptop, give it here."
"What?"
Johnny shrugs one shoulder. "You can go take a shower while it charges. You look like an actual dead thing."
Evan hesitates, like he suspects a deep-laid trick.
"I'm not messing with you," Johnny says. He feels very tired. Dealing with Evan is emotionally exhausting. "Your unwashed state just offends me."
Evan gives him another suspicious look, but he goes. It's very hard for a person to stand upon their dignity or to make a particularly dignified retreat when they're missing their pants, and from the stiff set of Evan's shoulders, he knows it. The bathroom door closes behind him with a gentle click.
vi.
Johnny sits with his legs draped over the side of the armchair, watching Evan's phone charge. When it has enough power to start up, it starts vibrating like a mad thing, in a distinctly ominous manner. He's still watching it buzz and buzz when the running water in the bathroom cuts off and the door opens again, bringing with it a faint miasma of steam.
"What are you doing?" Evan asks loudly, and Johnny rolls his eyes at him. It's patently obvious he's not doing anything. "Did you read my messages?"
"Yes, Evan, I read your messages."
Evan squints like he’s trying to figure out what Johnny’s angle is; is he admitting the truth and trusting that Evan won’t believe it? Is he lying and hoping to make Evan paranoid? Is he assuming Evan will trust that he’s lying and therefore assume he's telling the truth when he's really lying?
"Put some pants on," Johnny suggests unhelpfully. Evan startles a little as he reaches over to take the phone, tightening his grip on the towel preserving his modesty like Johnny's going to peel it off with a sideways glance. Flattering himself, jesus. There's already way too much naked Lysacek in Johnny's immediate periphery - he can see about half of Evan's gross tattoo, which is fifty percent too much - and the last thing he wants to see is more.
Evan's grasp on the towel slackens as he flicks through his messages, and it sags dangerously low on his slim brown hips. He still manscapes to the last inch, Johnny notices, and wonders if Evan justifies his absurd vanity by telling himself it'll make him more aerodynamic on the dance floor or something. He can see all of the tattoo now.
The towel dips a little lower still when Evan's phone starts ringing in his hand, loud and angry. Evan looks at the screen like he might look at a poisonous snake, and makes no move to answer it. His obnoxious ringtone blares and blares.
"Are you going to get that? It's getting really annoying."
Evan keeps staring wordlessly at the phone. Johnny’s kind of impressed by the expression on his face; it’s an actual expression. He thought Evan wasn’t allowed to have those anymore.
The ringing stops, and there's a brief, blessed pause.
When it starts again, Johnny loses patience and grabs for it. He doesn't recognise the number when he answers, but it's not like he would.
"Hello," he says, and steps nimbly out of the reach of Evan's abnormally long arms when Evan tries to grab it back, much too late. "Evan Lysacek's answering service, Johnny Weir speaking. Sir Lysacek is detained in a state of undress, can I take a message?"
There's a deep, dead silence. Evan makes a sort of inarticulate gurgle, and on the other end of the line someone asks "Is this some sort of sick joke?"
“Do you want it to be?”
"Turn it off," Evan says frantically, and the panic in his voice is so real Johnny hits disconnect without thinking about it. "I can't believe you just did that!"
"Live in the now, Evan," Johnny says heartlessly, tossing the phone back at him. It's a hard, fast throw, and he's annoyed when Evan catches it one-handed without fumbling. "You weren't answering, so don't get mad at me. Who was that, anyway?" The voice had been almost-not quite familiar. It set alarm bells ringing somewhere in Johnny's hindbrain.
"Scott," Evan says, pauses, and when Johnny doesn’t blink, he stresses, "Scott Hamilton."
Johnny laughs. "You're kidding." Evan just looks at him, and it's clear from his expression that he's really not kidding at all, and it's not like he's ever been noted for his highly developed sense of whimsy. Johnny stops laughing. "Seriously?"
"I can't believe you just did that."
"Me neither, but I'm so glad I did," Johnny says, a little hysterically. "Oh my god, can you imagine his face?"
Evan moans, and Johnny feels a faint twinge of conscience. He quashes it.
"Why was he even calling? Does he keep tabs on you a lot? I mean, it wouldn't surprise me if he trailed you around recording your every golden breath and bowel movement, but -"
Evan scrubs a hand through his hair and stares at Johnny like he's the stupid one. "Right now he's my boss," he says. "I had a flight out first thing this morning to meet up with the tour. And I missed it."
"I did try to wake you up when I left for lunch.” Johnny shrugs. "You were hibernating. It was weird." Evan doesn't say anything. "Sorry?"
There's a long pause. It seems horribly unfair that Johnny actually been trying to do the right thing. Maybe he was born under an unlucky star that doomed him to walk a crooked path for all of his days; it's not the first time he's thought that, the way his best and most disinterested impulses sometimes coil back on him and come out wrong.
"It's not your fault," Evan says at last. It sounds like it pains him to admit that, which Johnny can empathise with. "I still would have missed it. It was a six AM flight. Even if you'd woken me up then-"
"I turned your alarm off," Johnny says, because a concession deserves a confession. "Last night, this morning, or whatever. You looked so tired, I just." He shrugs.
"Oh," Evan says. "Maybe it is your fault, then."
"You were exhausted." Ungrateful asshole. "Excuse me for caring, but you just slept twelve hours, and if I hadn't thrown water on you, you'd still be in dreamland. You clearly needed it, and fuck you, what the hell where you doing at a gay bar at nearly two in the morning if you had a flight at six, anyway?"
"I had time!" Evan folds his arms. "We finished taping at midnight and I needed- I blocked the time out," he says defensively. "I had time to get off fast and get to the airport. I was going to sleep on the plane then hit the ice- Wait, you threw water on me?"
It's so stupidly Evan of him to zero in on that, and to not have realised it for himself already. He shakes his head, looking bewildered, and Johnny wants to toss him out a window. "God, you're an asshole."
"If I'm an asshole, you're a crazy person," Johnny says. "I'm a crazy person, and I'm telling you that. You know that insane schedule wouldn't have worked out, even if you hadn't gotten yourself roofied --"
Evan flushes. "No one roofied me," he says. "I was really, really tired, and I don't have much alcohol tolerance anyway-"
"One beer?" Johnny asks. "One beer?"
"It was more than one!" Evan tightens his grip on the towel again.
Johnny glances down, and then hastily glances back up, and there’s a weird moment where they blink at each other, realising that they've been having an actual, extended conversation during which Evan has been basically naked.
The awkward moment is interrupted by an unearthly sound; a faint but hideous growling.
"Is that your stomach?"
Evan claps a hand to his midsection, looking vaguely embarrassed. "Um."
"Maybe you should go get something to eat," Johnny says. He looks at Evan significantly.
Evan stares back. His eyes are slightly less glassy than they were last night, but they're still dark-circled and confused, and totally not drawing the conclusion Johnny wants him to arrive at.
Subtlety is so overrated, at least where Evan is concerned. "You have a wallet! And a brain, presumably. Use them. Go away."
"I don't have a car," Evan says. "Well, I don't know where my car is. Or my pants."
"Your pants are over there." Johnny jerks his head. "Behind the chair. You should be scourged for wearing drawstring stretch pants to a gay club, by the way. Call a cab." He hesitates, watching Evan trying to pull on his pants and keep his towel firmly in place at the same time, like an awkward dance-of-the-veils. "What are you going to do?"
"Eat something?"
Evan was dropped on his head as a baby. There is no other explanation. "No, you moron," Johnny says, very slowly, so there's no chance of Evan misunderstanding him except through sheer willfulness. "About Stars on Ice. Your show tonight."
"Right now?" Evan shrugs, straightening up like he's come to a conclusion. The pants seem to have given him confidence. "I'm not going to do anything. They're used to doing shows without me, they'll survive."
"What?"
"They can do it without me," Evan repeats. "It's not like I'm skating every date, anyway."
"Oh my god," Johnny says, staring at him. "I think your wiring has fried. Isn't that unprofessional? What about the tiny ice-skating babies waiting to get a glimpse of their great Olympic hero? What will you do without your nightly dose of ego massage?"
"They'll have to go without," Evan says firmly. He looks shifty. "Stop trying to make me feel bad about this decision."
"I'm just finding it hard to believe that you're in any way serious.”
"I'm taking a night off. People do that."
"People do that," Johnny agrees. "It's just, I've thought you were many things over the years, Evan, but never a person."
"God, you're an dick." Evan shakes his head like it's still news to him. "I'm serious. I missed a professional commitment. Scott probably thinks I missed that professional commitment in order to sleep with you, shit." He takes a deep breath. Then another. Then a third. "My schedule is completely screwed up and my dance partner probably wants to kill me, along with everyone on the tour. Even if I flew out now, I wouldn't make it, so there's nothing I can do about that right now. I’m going to take a night off, and not think about this mess, and let things take care of themselves for a while."
"Whoever the sports psychologist was who taught you to verbalise your emotions, they should be stripped of their qualifications, dipped in tar, and rolled in feathers." Johnny shivers. "Do you know how creepy it sounds, listening to you work through your mental breakdown in that flat, emotionless voice? It's like a cyborg having a meltdown."
"I am perfectly fine," Evan says, still terribly calm. "I'm just taking a night off." He strides over to the desk and starts patting the papers there. "Have you seen a room service menu?"
"No," Johnny says, and it's not about the menu. "No, no, no."
"I feel like pizza. If I'm letting things go tonight, I should get to eat something bad, right? Maybe Chinese. Or maybe -- you know what I miss?" Evan asks, ignoring him. "Chocolate cake. Chocolate cake that's really rich, so you feel full after one or two bites, and then you keep going. We could get cupcakes." His toothpaste-ad smile is slightly unhinged.
"You're not ordering room service, you're leaving," Johnny says. "Right now."
Part Two
Under The Skin
Johnny Weir/Evan Lysacek
NC-17
12,000 words
i.
Johnny is enjoying a nice, well-deserved night off when Fate, or possibly Nemesis, demonstrates that it absolutely has it out for him. Someone smacks into him from behind and jostles his drink, and normally the wave of Long Island Iced Tea splashing up the sleeve of his jacket would be the bad-karma portion of the evening, but that's just the first shoe. The second drops when he turns around, eyes narrowing, and finds himself staring at a horribly familiar chin.
"Oh my god, no," he says. "No, no, no."
The eyes above the chin squint down blearily at him. It takes them a second, but finally they focus, and a little light of recognition shines through their murky depths. "Hey," Evan Lysacek says, sounding vaguely pleased to see him. "Johnny Weir! What are you doing here?"
There are two answers to this question. The first is boring and factual, and basically contains the bare bones of information; to wit, that Johnny is in L.A. for a few meetings, that Johnny was bored, and that Johnny decided to have a drink and lurk in the corner of the club, vicariously watching other people dance and hook up and snapping at anyone who tried anything with him. The second is directly combative and relays none of this information. Johnny lifts his chin.
"What are you doing here? Hanging out in gay bars is not conducive to your whole lead-lined closet thing, Evan. Did your handlers let you off the choke-chain?"
"I like it here," Evan says, sounding confused. "It's shiny. There are lights. And people." He smiles, an empty, happy smile that somehow gives Johnny chills. Evan doesn't like being out of control, at least not around other skaters, so he hasn't seen Evan this drunk before. Actually, he's not sure he's seen Evan drunk ever. "Pretty people."
"There are boys," he corrects. "Pretty boys. You're so drunk, oh my god. Go away and bother someone else."
Evan keeps smiling at him like the sense of Johnny's words has failed entirely to register. His teeth are unnaturally white against his fake bake, and his eyes, the more Johnny glares into them, are totally empty-looking. He looks like a waxwork of himself. Johnny has a lot of vehement, frequently-aired opinions about Evan Lysacek's IQ, but -
"Oh my god," he says. "Are you high?" He's tempted to follow it up with 'Are you stupid?', because as far as he knows, Evan's still keeping his options for next season open, but the question would be totally rhetorical, so he doesn't bother.
Evan shakes his head slowly, the vacant smile still on his face. "No." He waves the hand holding the bottle about vaguely - god, Evan Lysacek is exactly the sort of douche who would order a crappy American beer at a gay bar. Johnny should probably just be grateful he's not wearing an unironic trucker hat, but the black beanie he's wearing instead is revolting enough on its own. "Only one. Two. Not many."
"You are such a bad liar. Let loose all on your own without a publicist's cheatsheet, it's totally pathetic. You're barely standing up straight."
Later, Johnny will hate himself for doing it, because it's the last point at which he can extricate himself without any sense of screwed-up responsibility, but at this moment in time he's just annoyed by Evan's existence and Evan ruining his evening and Evan maybe being so done with competitive skating as a back-up plan that he can afford to fuck around and have fun, so he leans forward and sniffs accusingly at Evan's boring black shirt. It smells faintly unwashed, like old cologne and a touch of sweat, but there's no sickly sticky smell of weed. He starts to lean back, frowning.
"Pretty boy," Evan repeats, right next to his ear, and his huge hand closes on Johnny's hip.
Either Someone Up There hates him, or he's snapped and had a complete mental break where he's forced to confront the most horrible things his id can throw at him. Johnny can't think of any other semi-reasonable explanations that would explain a listing, crazy-eyed, beanie-wearing Evan Lysacek grinding ineptly against his thigh.
"Get off!" He shoves wildly at him. "Let go of me!"
Evan makes a humming noise, his thumb stroking against Johnny's stomach, and then he starts nuzzling at Johnny's neck, and it’s surprising enough that Johnny stops shoving for a second. Evan’s stubble is scratching at his throat and his mouth is warm and wet and -
Holy shit, Evan is so wasted, and possibly - no, definitely - getting hard, and Johnny still can't believe this is even happening enough to end it decisively.
He gropes for the back of Evan's neck, finds it, and roughly pinches the skin over his nape, digging his fingertips deep into the tendons. It works on animals, after all.
Evan makes a hurt noise and lets go. The hand that had been getting overly intimate with Johnny's hipbone goes to his neck.
"Ouch," he says. His eyes are accusing and kind of betrayed, like a calf that's found itself on a ramp into a meatgrinder.
"I am not going to apologise for making you stop molesting me," Johnny says, breathing hard. "When you're sober, you'll thank me, because when you're sober, you would never, ever do that."
He fusses with his jacket lapels and runs a hand over his hair, trying to think. He wants to push into the crowd and pretend he hasn't seen Evan and try and salvage the remains of a not-entirely-awful evening, but. Johnny feels qualified to state that Evan Lysacek, in anything close to his right mind, wouldn't touch him intimately with a ten-foot pole, a sentiment Johnny shares and returns. Other guys, yes, maybe; that's between Evan and his closet door. Johnny, no. Therefore -
"Let me look at your eyes," he says sharply, and grabs Evan's jaw between his finger and thumb, trying to angle it so he can see better. Evan stands still and lets him maneuver his face docilely enough, but the light's too poor to tell anything about Evan's pupils. His eyes are really fucking dark to start with, anyway.
Johnny lets go and wipes his fingers off on his pants. "Did you come here with someone?"
Another dopey smile. "Just me."
And there goes Johnny's night.
He's not exactly Pollyanna, but he's his mother’s son, and he’s not enough of an asshole to leave anyone so completely fucked up on their own. Not even his worst rival. Not even pond scum. Not even Evan. Evan, who is currently trying to lean on him, like Johnny's not half a foot shorter than him, and rubbing his horrible face against the curve of Johnny's neck and the shoulder of his jacket, which is now completely irretrievable and will have to be burned. He weighs way, way too much for someone who is mostly just height.
"You live in LA, don't you? Evan. Evan." It takes a slap to get Evan's attention - a small slap against his cheek, nothing major, but Johnny's not going to deny it's kind of satisfying. He's not an asshole, but he's not a saint, either. "Stop acting like someone's roofied you, it's freaking me out. Do you remember where you live?"
"'M only tired," Evan says vaguely. He looks like he's losing focus again, and his arm is curling around Johnny's waist like some sort of hideous creeper, so Johnny slaps him a second time. It's still fun.
"Evan. Address. Why do they let you out without a collar?"
"Mm."
"I’m getting you out of here, okay?" Johnny means it in a 'give me your address now or forever hold your peace' kind of way, but Evan brightens a little like he thinks he's picked up.
"Your place?"
"Yes, Evan, to my place," Johnny agrees wearily, because he doesn't know what else he can do, and right now he'll pretend to agree to anything if it will help get Evan with his moony black eyes of horrifying emptiness out of there.
ii.
The taxi ride is a nightmare. Evan drunk and potentially roofied apparently equals an Evan horribly affectionate. Johnny could deal with grabby hands, but the way Evan keeps trying to hug him creeps him out, and he spends most of the short journey back to his hotel trying to shrug him off. When the taxi stops, he manages to find Evan's wallet in his back pocket, and abstracts a few notes; it's not stealing if the wallet's owner is right there, watching you take out the cash with a sort of blurry benignity, and you're paying for carting his drunk ass around anyway.
Hunting for Evan's wallet seems to have given Evan the wrong idea, though, or reminded him of earlier, unfinished business.
"Hands," Johnny snaps. "Oh my god, you drunken asshole, stop it, I'm trying to help carry your dumb ass, god knows why, and I don't need you making it more difficult."
"I'm not drunk," Evan mumbles. "I'm just tired."
"Walk the rest of the way to the elevator, then," Johnny says. He throws Evan's arm off his shoulder. Evan wobbles, takes a few faltering steps, and stumbles over his own feet. Johnny grabs his arm before he quite ends up in an ungainly pile on the carpet, and grimly hauls him upright. "See?"
"I only had one," Evan says, staring sadly down at his feet like they don't belong to him.
"Sometimes it only takes one, buttercup." Johnny pushes him into the elevator. The creepy clinging continues when the doors close behind them, and Johnny stares blankly at his dulled reflection and tries to figure out how he ended up in a big metal box with his grabby-handed arch-nemesis. He’s going to curl up into a horribly violated ball just as soon as he dumps Lysacek somewhere. Maybe he can take an extra-long shower and use an exfoliating scrub. "Hands," he repeats, slapping them away, and thank god, the elevator stops.
Evan nearly goes down again, getting out, and Johnny tugs him ungently back to his feet. He tries to unwind Evan and prop him against the wall while he gets his keycard out, but Evan refuses to be unwound, so Johnny stands there fishing through his stupidly oversized purse with Evan Lysacek pressed against his back and hugging him around the waist, breathing moistly against the back of his neck.
He hates everything, especially the prompting of consciousness that made him hustle Evan out of the bar in the first place. He should have left him there to make a fool of himself in public and get his ugly orange face splashed all over the tabloids. Of course, it’s equally likely that Evan might have let himself get picked up by the wrong sort of person, and Johnny’s not quite bitter enough to wish that on him.
Evan starts kissing the ridge of his spine just as Johnny gets the door open, and he jerks them both forward with a force that’s at least ninety percent horror.
“Take your shoes off and just - lie down,” he orders.
“And my pants?”
“Whatever,” Johnny says. “I have to go hyperventilate in the bathroom. Take a nap.”
"You'll be right back?"
"I'll be right back," Johnny lies. He shuts the bathroom door, locks it, and pulls out his phone and hits speed-dial.
"Evan Lysacek is half-naked in my hotel room." He lowers his voice, but it doesn’t kill the frantic panicky edge to it. "I think he thinks I brought him here for sex-"
"Ha, ha," Paris says half a country away, sounding bored. "I totally believe you."
"Paris," Johnny says. Actually, this needs the big guns. "Justin. I am not lying to you. I ran into him at a club, and he was all weird, and I think someone gave him something because he was - he was just weird."
"So you decided to pick him up? Assuming I believe you, which I don't, your standards are seriously slipping."
"I couldn't just leave him there - I'm calling you for help, you asshole. I think he might have taken something. You know about stuff about that."
"Harsh," Paris says. "And also, like I have to dope my lays."
"That's not what I meant,” Johnny says. "Seriously, he's all strung-out and weird. What do I do?"
"Take embarrassing pictures of him while he's passed out?"
“Well, obviously, but that's not helpful!”
Paris sighs like his life is so, so hard. He’s not the one with an addled archrival invading his personal bubble. “Just watch him, I guess. Unless he's seizing or something. You think he needs medical help?”
“He’s not - no,” Johnny says. That would open up a whole new can of worms. “Wow, this is so unhelpful.”
“Love you too, baby, and fuck you,” Paris says. He sighs. “Call me back if you have issues.”
iii.
When Johnny cracks the bathroom door open, all he can hear is deep, even breathing. Evan is fast asleep, flat on his back in Johnny's cushy hotel bed. He makes an odd picture, fully dressed in black from his chin to his wrists, his stupid hat still squashed flat over his hair; like some half-ninja creature that's only human below his navel. From the waist down, he's all stupid whitebread boxers and long brown legs, all sinew and bone.
Johnny can't do anything about the turtleneck, but he removes the beanie, pinching the greasy thing fastidiously between his fingers. Evan doesn't lurch up and grab his wrist like he'd half been expecting, so Johnny tosses it into a corner.
Somehow Evan looks even more tired without it. His face looks like a dead thing under the harsh light, the skin pouching under his eyes like it's trying to slough away from his skull. The idiot has tried to fix it with concealer five times too pale for his skin tone. His eyes are faintly screwed up, like sleep is something that comes hard for him, that requires work, or something he has to actively resist even when he's passed out.
Johnny makes jokes about Evan being a robot or an automaton or whatever, but it's still weird to see him so completely there but not there, his face slack and blank. All he needs to complete the look, really, is his big hands crossed on his chest like a Crusader. Johnny almost freaks himself out with that thought, but then Evan's chest moves and okay, he's still breathing, he hasn't had some sort of mysterious overdose and left Johnny implicated in his death.
He needs to turn Evan onto his side. That's what you're meant to do with drunk people, but with Evan it feels like trying to turn the Titanic before it hits the iceberg, if the Titanic was a floppy deadweight that seemed to take silent and malicious pleasure in resisting his efforts. It takes a lot of tugging on Evan's arm and pushing at his shoulder, but Johnny finally does it.
"So beyond the call of duty," he mutters. After staring down at him for a few more moments, just trying to take in the absolute surreality of Evan Lysacek passed out in his bed, he moves away and takes up a perch on the uncomfortable armchair in the corner. Evan doesn't seem to be in imminent danger of choking on his own tongue, after all, which is not always the case when he's awake and talking.
He watches for a while. He’s not staying up just to keep an eye on Evan; there are important things he needs to do, like check his email. And Google himself. He fucks around on his laptop for a few hours, and despite his best intentions, he's getting dozy when the phone goes off.
It's the most obnoxious ringtone he's heard in his life; it blares tunelessly like some sort of air raid siren, at a frequency that could probably make your brains start bleeding out your ears. It’s also waking Evan up, and that’s not okay; passed out is like the only state in which Evan is barely tolerable. Johnny can’t allow that.
He manages to find the phone tucked into the pocket of Evan's discarded pants, and wrestles it out before it's rung for the third time, sliding his thumb over the touch screen and cutting the alarm short. He glances over at the bed, and watches Evan stop stirring and go back to sleeping like the dead.
Johnny's never seen someone sleep so hard. It's almost kind of pathetic, and he's not sure why. If Evan wants to kill himself with sleep deprivation, that's totally his choice. He's a grown man, and also an asshole. He runs his fingers over Evan's phone, though, and sets about trying to disable the alarm permanently and put the thing on silent. He tries 1985 first, because Evan seems like the sort of guy who would set his birth year as his code; then 0406, 2007, 2010. At '2576' the touch screen disappears, and Johnny grimaces in sour satisfaction.
He can’t find an extra blanket in the closet, and he’s not going to tuck Evan into bed. It might wake him up, and more importantly, Johnny desperately needs that layer of separation, Evan on top of the covers and Johnny under them. It’s not quite enough; the sort of thick blanket they use to put out fires wouldn’t be enough, but he’s not going to let Evan have his bed and sleep in the chair. He crawls in on the empty side of the bed, pulls the sheets up to his chin, and goes to sleep.
iv.
When Johnny wakes up to the muted chimes of his own phone, he finds himself staring at the back of Evan's head, his hair black and lustreless with sleep.
It's officially the weirdest morning of his life, and he's running so late for his brunch date that he can't even devote any time to freaking out. Evan doesn't stir when Johnny pushes back the blankets and gets out of bed. Johnny doesn't have time to be considerate, or motive, so he gets dressed and clatters around in the bathroom like normal, showers and blow-dries his hair and makes a pained decision between two pairs of pants and three pairs of pointed shoes without censoring himself or trying to be quiet.
Evan's still asleep when he's dressed and coiffed and ready to go, though. His face has eased a little, but there are still faint lines of discontent running from the edges of his nose to the sides of his mouth. His face is unimaginably sallow against the white pillowcase, and his mouth is a little open. He's probably been drooling.
Johnny looks down at him and wonders if Evan knows that exfoliation exists for a reason, and if he always looks grimy with uneven fake tan out of personal choice. You couldn't just not realise, could you?
"Lysacek," he says, raising his voice. "Evan. Wakey-wakey." He shakes Evan's shoulder. He doesn't have time for this. The frown lines in Evan's face deepen, and his eyes screw tighter, but he doesn't wake up. Johnny shakes him again. Nothing happens. He's going to be late, unless he leaves right now, and that's not the impression he's trying to give potential publishers.
"You are not my responsibility," he tells Evan's mutinously sleepy face. "I have done everything I can. I have gone beyond the call of duty. If you sleep through anything important, it's your own stupid fault."
Evan can let himself out. He shakes Evan one last time, for good measure, and because it's fun, and when it proves as fruitless as his earlier attempts and results only in Evan making a small grumbling noise and pressing his face into the pillow, Johnny really really has to go.
v.
He finishes up a very successful power-brunch at around three, and forgoes the pleasure of window-shopping on Rodeo Drive in order to duck back into the hotel and make sure that Evan hadn't trashed the room or any of Johnny's belongings before he left. He really doesn't expect Evan to still be there, let alone still passed out, but when he slides his key card through the lock and pushes the door open there's still someone in his bed.
"Motherfucker," Johnny mutters under his breath, and strides over. Evan is still breathing. Actually, Evan is snoring, a faint nasal whistle that makes Johnny want to kill him worse than usual. "Wake up," he says loudly. "I know you like to be the best at things, but sleeping is not a competitive sport. You've had nearly twelve hours, get the fuck up."
Evan's head flops back and forth when Johnny shakes him, and the snore stops, but when Johnny lets go he just makes a protesting sort of noise and tries to roll over and bury his face in the pillow.
"I'm through babying you," Johnny tells his insensate face. It's a final warning, but Evan doesn’t hear it.
He marches into the bathroom and fills up a glass of water. When he comes back out, he takes aim. It's a beautiful square hit that catches Evan full in the face, and Johnny sets the empty glass on the nightstand and steps back, watching with a certain dark pleasure as Evan splutters into wakefulness.
His long limbs thrash around like a spider having a spasm, and there's water running off his face and onto his neck and slicking his fringe to his forehead. Tiny droplets scatter off his eyelashes when he blinks wildly, clearly trying to figure out where he is and what just happened.
Johnny steeples his fingers in their black faux-leather half-gloves and strikes a sinister pose, waiting for Evan to focus on him.
"What," Evan says blankly when he does. His face kind of freezes with horror, and okay, maybe Johnny's kind of glad he gets to be here for this, after all. Evan's eyes move from Johnny to the hotel room, back to Johnny, down to his own bare legs, back to Johnny, and then to his own hand when he reaches up and pats the wet hair on his brow. His eyes go back to Johnny, wide with surprise and sharp with a certain hostile, suspicious edge that had been missing last night.
Johnny's almost relieved to see it. Something is right with the universe again. "Hello, Sleeping Beauty," he says, his voice sharp and sweet. "I thought you were never going to wake up."
One day someone should tell Evan that his frozen, blank expression is not the poker face he clearly thinks it is, but it's not going to be Johnny.
"What-" Evan stops and clears his throat. "What am I doing here? What the fuck is going on?"
"Darling, I'm hurt," Johnny says, just for the fun of watching Evan glance down again and back at him, clearly putting pantsless and Johnny Weir together and coming up with ?!!! "Don't tell me you don't remember our night of passion.”
Evan’s confused expression curdles into terrified disbelief.
"We didn't," he says, like if he can say it firmly enough it’ll be true. Fascinated, Johnny watches him flush a dull brick colour. It starts in his ears and at the line of his shirt and creeps up his neck, and the more Johnny stares the deeper it gets. "I wouldn't."
Johnny raises an eyebrow, and, impossibly, the flush deepens. "Sure about that?"
"I wouldn’t." Evan clenches his jaw. "Tell me what I'm really doing here."
"Well, you wanted to," Johnny says, carefully popping the little buttons on the back of his gloves and pulling them off. He smoothes them out, folds them and lays them carefully on the nightstand beside the water glass, and flashes Evan his best and most poisonous smile. "Luckily, I have standards."
Evan snorts, and Johnny restrains himself from pitching the empty glass at him. “Then why am I here?”
It’s a good question.
"What do you remember?" he prompts, half because he's still enjoying being unhelpful, and half because he's genuinely curious.
Evan looks at him, and Johnny raises his eyebrows a little higher, waiting. Somehow, it works. "The show," Evan says shortly. "Taping, getting changed, and going out. I had a few hours free-"
Suddenly Evan looks horrified, and Johnny wonders what just shook loose inside his bleary little brain.
“I ran into you in a bar,” he says, truthfully enough. “Somewhere in West Hollywood, actually. You were completely shitfaced."
Evan grunts. "And you, what, decided to separate me from the herd?"
"You hit on me," Johnny says, and the way Evan flinches again is beautiful. "You rubbed your dick on my leg and then you slobbered on my neck. So naturally I decided that you were probably on something, and I didn't want to leave you in the club to make a public spectacle of yourself, because I'm a sucker. I totally should have."
"I don't believe you."
"I don't care. Believe whatever you want."
Evan still kind of looks like hell. He shakes his head back and forth, slow, like some sort of sacrificial animal brained by a mallet. "I don't get it," he says. "Why would you-"
"My mama brought me up right," Johnny says. "And it was a golden opportunity to take photos of you passed out in your underwear and share them with the internet."
The lost expression clarifies into vindication even as Evan goes chalky under his glaze. "You asshole," he says. "If you-"
"It was a golden opportunity," Johnny says over the top of his inarticulate threats. "Unfortunately, I don't actually know how to upload photos to the internet, so I had to let it pass."
Evan stares at him a little longer. Then he shakes his head again. "I don't have time for this bullshit. Where's my phone? What have you done with it?"
He glares around the room, and then his eyes catch on it, lying on the floor. He snatches it up, and then turns the glare at Johnny. "It's dead," he says accusingly, pressing the button a few more times, as if that's going to get a different result. The little picture of a depleted battery comes up again.
"I killed it," Johnny says. "It was a deliberate and premeditated attack - for fuck's sake, shaking the baby is not going to help it, Evan. I'll plug it into my laptop, give it here."
"What?"
Johnny shrugs one shoulder. "You can go take a shower while it charges. You look like an actual dead thing."
Evan hesitates, like he suspects a deep-laid trick.
"I'm not messing with you," Johnny says. He feels very tired. Dealing with Evan is emotionally exhausting. "Your unwashed state just offends me."
Evan gives him another suspicious look, but he goes. It's very hard for a person to stand upon their dignity or to make a particularly dignified retreat when they're missing their pants, and from the stiff set of Evan's shoulders, he knows it. The bathroom door closes behind him with a gentle click.
vi.
Johnny sits with his legs draped over the side of the armchair, watching Evan's phone charge. When it has enough power to start up, it starts vibrating like a mad thing, in a distinctly ominous manner. He's still watching it buzz and buzz when the running water in the bathroom cuts off and the door opens again, bringing with it a faint miasma of steam.
"What are you doing?" Evan asks loudly, and Johnny rolls his eyes at him. It's patently obvious he's not doing anything. "Did you read my messages?"
"Yes, Evan, I read your messages."
Evan squints like he’s trying to figure out what Johnny’s angle is; is he admitting the truth and trusting that Evan won’t believe it? Is he lying and hoping to make Evan paranoid? Is he assuming Evan will trust that he’s lying and therefore assume he's telling the truth when he's really lying?
"Put some pants on," Johnny suggests unhelpfully. Evan startles a little as he reaches over to take the phone, tightening his grip on the towel preserving his modesty like Johnny's going to peel it off with a sideways glance. Flattering himself, jesus. There's already way too much naked Lysacek in Johnny's immediate periphery - he can see about half of Evan's gross tattoo, which is fifty percent too much - and the last thing he wants to see is more.
Evan's grasp on the towel slackens as he flicks through his messages, and it sags dangerously low on his slim brown hips. He still manscapes to the last inch, Johnny notices, and wonders if Evan justifies his absurd vanity by telling himself it'll make him more aerodynamic on the dance floor or something. He can see all of the tattoo now.
The towel dips a little lower still when Evan's phone starts ringing in his hand, loud and angry. Evan looks at the screen like he might look at a poisonous snake, and makes no move to answer it. His obnoxious ringtone blares and blares.
"Are you going to get that? It's getting really annoying."
Evan keeps staring wordlessly at the phone. Johnny’s kind of impressed by the expression on his face; it’s an actual expression. He thought Evan wasn’t allowed to have those anymore.
The ringing stops, and there's a brief, blessed pause.
When it starts again, Johnny loses patience and grabs for it. He doesn't recognise the number when he answers, but it's not like he would.
"Hello," he says, and steps nimbly out of the reach of Evan's abnormally long arms when Evan tries to grab it back, much too late. "Evan Lysacek's answering service, Johnny Weir speaking. Sir Lysacek is detained in a state of undress, can I take a message?"
There's a deep, dead silence. Evan makes a sort of inarticulate gurgle, and on the other end of the line someone asks "Is this some sort of sick joke?"
“Do you want it to be?”
"Turn it off," Evan says frantically, and the panic in his voice is so real Johnny hits disconnect without thinking about it. "I can't believe you just did that!"
"Live in the now, Evan," Johnny says heartlessly, tossing the phone back at him. It's a hard, fast throw, and he's annoyed when Evan catches it one-handed without fumbling. "You weren't answering, so don't get mad at me. Who was that, anyway?" The voice had been almost-not quite familiar. It set alarm bells ringing somewhere in Johnny's hindbrain.
"Scott," Evan says, pauses, and when Johnny doesn’t blink, he stresses, "Scott Hamilton."
Johnny laughs. "You're kidding." Evan just looks at him, and it's clear from his expression that he's really not kidding at all, and it's not like he's ever been noted for his highly developed sense of whimsy. Johnny stops laughing. "Seriously?"
"I can't believe you just did that."
"Me neither, but I'm so glad I did," Johnny says, a little hysterically. "Oh my god, can you imagine his face?"
Evan moans, and Johnny feels a faint twinge of conscience. He quashes it.
"Why was he even calling? Does he keep tabs on you a lot? I mean, it wouldn't surprise me if he trailed you around recording your every golden breath and bowel movement, but -"
Evan scrubs a hand through his hair and stares at Johnny like he's the stupid one. "Right now he's my boss," he says. "I had a flight out first thing this morning to meet up with the tour. And I missed it."
"I did try to wake you up when I left for lunch.” Johnny shrugs. "You were hibernating. It was weird." Evan doesn't say anything. "Sorry?"
There's a long pause. It seems horribly unfair that Johnny actually been trying to do the right thing. Maybe he was born under an unlucky star that doomed him to walk a crooked path for all of his days; it's not the first time he's thought that, the way his best and most disinterested impulses sometimes coil back on him and come out wrong.
"It's not your fault," Evan says at last. It sounds like it pains him to admit that, which Johnny can empathise with. "I still would have missed it. It was a six AM flight. Even if you'd woken me up then-"
"I turned your alarm off," Johnny says, because a concession deserves a confession. "Last night, this morning, or whatever. You looked so tired, I just." He shrugs.
"Oh," Evan says. "Maybe it is your fault, then."
"You were exhausted." Ungrateful asshole. "Excuse me for caring, but you just slept twelve hours, and if I hadn't thrown water on you, you'd still be in dreamland. You clearly needed it, and fuck you, what the hell where you doing at a gay bar at nearly two in the morning if you had a flight at six, anyway?"
"I had time!" Evan folds his arms. "We finished taping at midnight and I needed- I blocked the time out," he says defensively. "I had time to get off fast and get to the airport. I was going to sleep on the plane then hit the ice- Wait, you threw water on me?"
It's so stupidly Evan of him to zero in on that, and to not have realised it for himself already. He shakes his head, looking bewildered, and Johnny wants to toss him out a window. "God, you're an asshole."
"If I'm an asshole, you're a crazy person," Johnny says. "I'm a crazy person, and I'm telling you that. You know that insane schedule wouldn't have worked out, even if you hadn't gotten yourself roofied --"
Evan flushes. "No one roofied me," he says. "I was really, really tired, and I don't have much alcohol tolerance anyway-"
"One beer?" Johnny asks. "One beer?"
"It was more than one!" Evan tightens his grip on the towel again.
Johnny glances down, and then hastily glances back up, and there’s a weird moment where they blink at each other, realising that they've been having an actual, extended conversation during which Evan has been basically naked.
The awkward moment is interrupted by an unearthly sound; a faint but hideous growling.
"Is that your stomach?"
Evan claps a hand to his midsection, looking vaguely embarrassed. "Um."
"Maybe you should go get something to eat," Johnny says. He looks at Evan significantly.
Evan stares back. His eyes are slightly less glassy than they were last night, but they're still dark-circled and confused, and totally not drawing the conclusion Johnny wants him to arrive at.
Subtlety is so overrated, at least where Evan is concerned. "You have a wallet! And a brain, presumably. Use them. Go away."
"I don't have a car," Evan says. "Well, I don't know where my car is. Or my pants."
"Your pants are over there." Johnny jerks his head. "Behind the chair. You should be scourged for wearing drawstring stretch pants to a gay club, by the way. Call a cab." He hesitates, watching Evan trying to pull on his pants and keep his towel firmly in place at the same time, like an awkward dance-of-the-veils. "What are you going to do?"
"Eat something?"
Evan was dropped on his head as a baby. There is no other explanation. "No, you moron," Johnny says, very slowly, so there's no chance of Evan misunderstanding him except through sheer willfulness. "About Stars on Ice. Your show tonight."
"Right now?" Evan shrugs, straightening up like he's come to a conclusion. The pants seem to have given him confidence. "I'm not going to do anything. They're used to doing shows without me, they'll survive."
"What?"
"They can do it without me," Evan repeats. "It's not like I'm skating every date, anyway."
"Oh my god," Johnny says, staring at him. "I think your wiring has fried. Isn't that unprofessional? What about the tiny ice-skating babies waiting to get a glimpse of their great Olympic hero? What will you do without your nightly dose of ego massage?"
"They'll have to go without," Evan says firmly. He looks shifty. "Stop trying to make me feel bad about this decision."
"I'm just finding it hard to believe that you're in any way serious.”
"I'm taking a night off. People do that."
"People do that," Johnny agrees. "It's just, I've thought you were many things over the years, Evan, but never a person."
"God, you're an dick." Evan shakes his head like it's still news to him. "I'm serious. I missed a professional commitment. Scott probably thinks I missed that professional commitment in order to sleep with you, shit." He takes a deep breath. Then another. Then a third. "My schedule is completely screwed up and my dance partner probably wants to kill me, along with everyone on the tour. Even if I flew out now, I wouldn't make it, so there's nothing I can do about that right now. I’m going to take a night off, and not think about this mess, and let things take care of themselves for a while."
"Whoever the sports psychologist was who taught you to verbalise your emotions, they should be stripped of their qualifications, dipped in tar, and rolled in feathers." Johnny shivers. "Do you know how creepy it sounds, listening to you work through your mental breakdown in that flat, emotionless voice? It's like a cyborg having a meltdown."
"I am perfectly fine," Evan says, still terribly calm. "I'm just taking a night off." He strides over to the desk and starts patting the papers there. "Have you seen a room service menu?"
"No," Johnny says, and it's not about the menu. "No, no, no."
"I feel like pizza. If I'm letting things go tonight, I should get to eat something bad, right? Maybe Chinese. Or maybe -- you know what I miss?" Evan asks, ignoring him. "Chocolate cake. Chocolate cake that's really rich, so you feel full after one or two bites, and then you keep going. We could get cupcakes." His toothpaste-ad smile is slightly unhinged.
"You're not ordering room service, you're leaving," Johnny says. "Right now."
Part Two