![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
icarusYou can get caught up here: Out Of Bounds.
Title: Out Of Bounds
Author: Icarus
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: John/Rodney
Summary: Sitting in the dim light in the stands near the windows, a teenage John watched, fascinated, as a liquid slick formed across the ice, softening into puddles.
A/N: Thank you to my intrepid and hard-working betas,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dossier and rabidfan, who've earned their keep a dozen times over this week. A special thank you to the goddesses of randomness. You got your Tupperware, though I have no idea how puppies turned into hoses.
[Previous][Next]
Out Of Bounds
by Icarus
An engine rumbled somewhere deep inside the Schmidt Center, either the hum of a coke machine or the refrigeration on the rink, working overtime at ten p.m.
The last time John had been in a rink this quiet, the power had gone out during the Upper Great Lakes Regional Championships. Sitting in the dim light in the stands near the windows, a teenage John had watched, fascinated, as a liquid slick formed across the ice, softening into puddles. It had been fifteen degrees outside but indoors it wasn't cold enough to save the ice. Then the power had come back on and John had been the only one unfazed by the interruption, still steeped in the unnatural silence. It was one of his best performances.
The rink was huge, easily as big as the U of T rink John had practiced on for Worlds, full Olympic size with an arched dome dark overhead and arena style fold-down seats. It had spotlights instead of florescent panels, and ice as smooth as clear glass. John whisked around the far curve, exploring. Coming out of the turn, he hopped backward. He ducked down into a new variation on his sit spin, edge just skimming the ice, arms tucked in, the world spiraling around him. He stood up into warm eddies of air that carried down from the seats.
He wondered what kind of strings Rodney had pulled to get them into Schmidt Center after hours on a Friday night. Or where their vaunted choreographer had disappeared to.
"Sonja's elevated 'fashionably late' to the level of haute couture. She'll be here," Rodney assured him.
"You gave me hell when I was just five minutes late," John said.
"Yes, well, that's you. How's the quad salchow coming?"
"I'd rather shoot for the quad flip." John scowled. It was harder and also, no one had done it yet. "I was working on it before you derailed me by disallowing all jumps."
"And that went so swimmingly, too. Let's keep the jumps in the realm of probability, shall we? If you have both the quad toe loop and the quad sal then we can add another quad to your program."
"I thought we weren't going to rely on my jumps," John said, with a puzzled squint at Rodney.
"I said we weren't going to rely solely on your jumps," Rodney explained. "The goal is still to win."
John gave a satisfied nod, a faint smile warming him. The elevator dinged and the door rattled open.
"Ooo, it's so quiet," a woman, most probably the very late Sonja, called out from the elevator, her voice echoing. John eyed her with trepidation. She was a bottle blond and wore a short black coat with wide lapels and oversized buttons, and she was completely blase about being late.
"Oh, thanks for stopping by. We've only been waiting for you for twenty minutes," Rodney said, stabbing a finger at his watch.
"Hmm. You can take it out of my pay." Sonja disappeared behind the boards to put on her skates. Moments later she stepped onto the ice.
Rodney rolled his eyes. "Oh for... how are you supposed to skate in that?"
Sonja glanced down at her micro miniskirt and black nylons. She stroked over to where John and Rodney were standing, pushing with the power of a hockey player. "I will not be skating. I will merely observe—hello, John."
Her smile brightened as she held out her hand, palm downward. John took it, though he wasn't sure if he was supposed to shake it or what. She used it to pull him closer with a predatory gleam. John noticed her top was backless, too. Her hose had a seam up the back dotted with little black bows. She'd better not fall, was all he could say. Taking in her long legs and relative height next to Rodney, he finally saw past the dyed hair. It had been shorter and more gold in the video.
"You're Sonja," John said in a flat tone, still holding her hand as he slotted fact A, Rodney's former skating partner Sonja, with fact B, his choreographer Sonja.
John let go.
"Have you had a warm up, have you stretched—good," she said without waiting for an answer. She scratched her chin with a long nail. That much make-up had to get itchy. "I need to see everything you know. Top to bottom." She made a little flicking gesture.
Rodney interrupted. "We're far behind schedule, so I thought we could get right to choreo—"
"I must see what he can do."
Rodney nodded and waved a hand like swatting away a fly. "Yes, yes, that's why I sent you the avi files of all his performances."
"They were broken. I put them in the DVD player—" She shrugged, making a helpless gesture, her lips pursed. "—and the screen was blue."
"You play them on a computer, you ignorant technophobe." Rodney spluttered.
She gave Rodney a blank look. Then stared him down, her painted eyebrows arched. "My way is better. There is a magic in person." She pointed at John, every bit the ice diva. "You. Everything." She laced her fingers together and leaned her chin on them. "Impress me."
~*~*~
Sweaty and breathing hard, John landed his last jump. Not his prettiest landing but good enough for government work. He let his legs separate as he rolled across the ice and pushed them together for momentum, standing tall as he approached Sonja and Rodney. She was squinting at him with eyes unfocused, thumb and forefinger pinching her lower lip.
"Hmn. I can work with it," she said at last, and John detected a distinct note of insincerity. "And you picked good music," she added, brightening. "I have some ideas already. Now. What is your freeskate music?"
Rodney gave John a smug tight smile, with a sweeping gesture and the air of someone gladly throwing John to the lions.
John rubbed the back of his head, rumpling his hair. "It's a big decision. But I'm working on it."
"It's May." Her small red lips pursed in a sour expression.
John winced. He really didn't have an answer for that.
She waited, arms folded, tapping her finger on the crook of her elbow, as if John could produce his freeskate music on the spot, despite weeks of combing Rodney's CD collection. Then she smiled, firm and unfriendly. John had no idea what Rodney had ever seen in this woman. "You will have music for me next week, or else I will choreograph music that I pick. The cha-cha, I think." She wiggled her hips in a cha-cha move, then began to cha-cha towards the door.
"Where do you think you're going?" Rodney snapped, echoing John's thoughts exactly. They had his entire short program to choreograph.
"Out. Dancing. It is Friday night." She shimmied her hips, arms in the air. She snapped her fingers over her head to music that only she seemed to hear. "Would you like to come, John?"
The sultry look she gave him suggested the double entendre wasn't an accident. "Not right this second," John said.
Her eyes sparkled with humor. "Rodney? You are a stick in the mud. You should get out, meet some nice boys, or maybe some not-so-nice ones," she purred. She was all the way to the boards at that point.
"Some of us work for a living!" Rodney shouted at her back as she bent to take off her skates.
He and John had automatically moved closer together and exchanged a wary look.
She paused and peered over the edge, looking at John, then Rodney, then back again. John got that creepy-crawly feeling he got whenever someone learned he was a figure skater, the searching stare up and down his body as if he were tagged "gay" now, and all they need do is find the label. John's jaw hardened.
Her head slumped to the side in an expression of tired disgust. "You said that you two weren't sleeping together." She glared at Rodney, a fist on her hip, and she wagged a finger at him. "Do not use me to silence rumors."
"Rumors?" John said, eyes widening.
"Oh please, like I care enough about those halfwits to lie." Rodney rolled his eyes. "It just so happens that we weren't at the time."
"What rumors?" John repeated.
"Just the usual." Rodney examined his nails. "Attractive student. Handsome, magnetic, flamingly gay coach. It doesn't matter if it's true, they'd be saying it anyway," Rodney said, not at all reassuringly.
"So disappointing. All the ugly Russians are straight and all the handsome American skaters are gay." Sonja sighed. "You can both still come," she added, graciously.
John shot her a puzzled look.
"Dancing," she explained, with the unspoken "of course" clear in her tone. "There is this club where everyone dances with no shirts, almost no clothes." She eyed John's chest speculatively.
"Well, ah...." John winced, folding his arms tight.
"We have work to do," Rodney inserted quickly, sparing him.
"Tsk. Then you homebodies can take my skates for me, yes?" She stood on one foot, wiggling into her high heels. "It will save me a trip—thank you!" She held her skates high and then set them next to Rodney's backpack and John's boombox with a flourish. "You owe me details later, Rodney!"
"Yes, yes," Rodney said, swiping a hand tiredly in her direction.
Her hips swung all the way to the elevator.
By the time John glanced back, Rodney had left his side and was digging in his bag. He produced a bright red CD emblazoned Let's Salsa! With a smirk he told John, "I thought you should start practicing your long program music" and pressed play.
The chirpy salsa trumpets began the cha-cha. Rodney made an L with his arms a la Ricky Ricardo, wiggling his shoulders in amusement.
"Shut up," John said, but Rodney drew him into a spinning dance.
~*~*~
Rodney rolled John out, delighting in John's awkwardness, completely out of step with the salsa music, barely able to keep up with Rodney. John's ability to improvise had improved but that wasn't saying much.
"Now this is ice dancing," John chided him, chin dipped as he dug his skate in to stop. He shot a quick glance over his shoulder around the rink, eyes dilated.
Rodney sighed in disgust. He spread his arms and turned to indicate the vast open stands. "It's eleven p.m. in an empty rink."
"They probably have a security cameras in a place like this." John looked around warily.
"At the elevators, front entrances, and offices. And one by the coke machines." Rodney had helped open this rink and watched them build it. He ought to know. "What's with you? All they'd get is two men skating anyway."
"I'm not usually read that easily."
Rodney huffed a laugh, coming up behind John, arms around his waist and pushing them both forward into a glide with his back skate. "Sonja read me. I don't exactly have a poker face." John pushed on the counter stroke, gave Rodney a moment to catch up, and then they both stroked in time, inches apart. Rodney thought he'd give them full marks for that if he were a judge. "Arched back."
They both tipped back, their forward knees bent. John still required more verbal cues than Rodney would have liked.
"You're pretty flexible," John noted, glancing back at Rodney, comparing then increasing the angle of his arch.
"I used to be able to do an Ina Bauer," Rodney said. He admitted quickly, "When I was a lot thinner."
"I'll require photographic proof of that," John said, although he was smiling as they dropped out of the pose.
They swept around the curve of the rink. John put more space between himself and Rodney. "So she can read you."
"And she doesn't exactly mind my sexual preferences. People won't react as badly as you seem to think—no, I wouldn't put out a bulletin while you're competing, but—newsflash!—gay figure skaters aren't exactly uncommon."
John curled his lip. "That's the problem."
"What do you care what a bunch of perfect strangers think? The only people who matter are—" Rodney paused and mentally fast-forwarded through a dozen scenes of John naked in his house, not minding if the neighbors saw them, his perfectly normal nervousness about public affection in grocery stores, increasing to this near paranoia at the rink. "—Oh my God, that's it, isn't it? You haven't told them."
"Told who what?" John frowned, shaking his head.
But Rodney wasn't listening, eyes glazed as the facts fell neatly into place. "Of course. It makes perfect sense." He looked up as it hit him. He counted off key points on his fingers. "You moved to Canada when you could just as easily have trained in the states; U of T's only blocks away from Church street and the largest gay community in the city—you're not in contact with any of your friends back home, and the only thing you ever talk about with your family is," Rodney spun around, snapped his finger and pointed at John, "figure skating! That's your only potential leak. They don't know."
"Of course they don't." John stiffened. "It's none of their business."
"It's really not that bad," Rodney reassured him, chuckling. "It takes so much pressure off." He slid his head in a nod, one hand up, fingers spread, admitting, "Granted, I didn't have a lot of pressure since I thought they knew—I'd delegated the whole 'news breaking' thing to my coach and he bungled it, so it came out at the worst possible time, but my dad got over it eventually, mom was the same, and my grandmother? Grandma was great," he said, with a little slicing gesture, beaming. "She'd already put a down payment on that house with my winnings and planned to rent it until I finished college, but instead she let me stay there while the whole mess blew over with my dad."
"So you told your parents and things got so bad you had to move out," John said in a flat measuring tone, his eyes slits.
Rodney shut his eyes and licked his lips, reconsidering what he'd just said. He rubbed his chin. "This isn't convincing you, is it?"
"No, not so much."
"The circumstances were unusually bad. My dad was mostly upset that he sacrificed so much for the Olympics, I lost, and in the end my coach knew me better than he did." Rodney shuddered at the memory. "He wanted me to regress back to age nine so he could start over."
"So you wouldn't be gay?" John asked cynically.
"So I'd be his son and not Canada's favorite figure skater."
~*~*~
For the rest of the weekend Rodney had taken to taunting John with various renditions of the Cha-Cha-Cha, each worse than the next (his favorite was the one with the little bicycle bell), until John finally snatched away the headphones and pulled out towers of CDs. Within a few hours the coffee table looked like a scale model of a high rise development. Rodney was commanded not to touch anything; John had a complex system of elimination, with varying degrees of "Maybe."
He told Rodney, "It doesn't have to be ideal." He'd nixed Mission: Impossible sadly, even though in Rodney's opinion it was perfect. At that point Rodney threw up his hands and left him to it.
John's head bobbed, the heavy headphones looking like rubber earmuffs. Rodney wasn't spared, however. John tapped a fast rhythm with his thumbs on his thigh and then, moments later, on the coffee table.
He reached over and clicked back through the tracks on the CD, his face intent. A smile pulled at the corner of his mouth.
"Hey, Rodney!" John said, unnecessarily loud. "Found it!"
"Take them off!" Rodney called back from the kitchen.
But John didn't seem to hear him though he pulled the headphones off anyway. He held the CD jewel case over his shoulder as Rodney wiped his hands on his jeans, walked over, and examined it.
"It's Japanese taiko," he said with some surprise, eyebrows raised.
"It's cool!" John said, turning around. He braced his elbows across the back of the couch, chin leaned on the cushions, looking up at Rodney, puppy-like.
Rodney made a pained face, reading the track list. "I... I don't know—this would be, well," he laughed halfway through the word, shaking his head, "it would be really hard."
John spun around to the stereo, still smiling, like he had expected an argument. "No, it's great." He pulled the plug on the headphones, his hand slicing the air downward in a quelling gesture. "Listen."
The Japanese taiko drums opened with a slow soft beat.
Rodney settled on the couch, crossing one leg over the other, wrist draped over his knee, ready to give John the benefit of his professional expertise. Which was, in a word, no.
Although John did seem pretty excited. That was new. Rodney rubbed his lower lip and asked, preparing to let John down gently, "So. Why this piece?"
"It's cool."
Rodney gave him an exasperated eyeroll. "It's cool. How?"
"You can't hear it?" John fired back. "It's like—look." He leaned forward, an elbow on his knees, hands spread, gesturing to try to explain. "Here." He restarted the music. The slow, steady taiko drums began again. "You've got a soldier downed in enemy territory, right? So at this point, here in the beginning, he's trying to be quiet. He stays under cover. You can even hear the bushes there.
"—and there. Right there, they've spotted him. The chase is on."
Rodney shook his head, taking a breath before John got too attached to this piece. "This is a brutal pace for a skater," he began.
"Yeah, well, so is escaping capture." John continued, ignoring Rodney, "So you're dodging back and forth here, zigzagging to evade the bullets—"
"Zigzagging to-? How do you know this military stuff?"
"How do you not know it? Anyhow, dodging and here, yeah, right here you're pinned down and you've gotta fight."
"And--?" Rodney prompted, getting into John's imagination despite himself.
"And, well, obviously you win. The other guy's dead so your cover's not blown."
"Obviously," Rodney said. He pointed out, his tongue in cheek, "What about this shakuhachi flute phrase? A bird-like victory dance?"
John winced. "Can we cut that? It's six and half minutes so we'll need to get rid of two minutes anyway."
"It's doable...." Rodney tipped his head and asked, "So now what happens?"
John blinked. He'd disappeared into the music, always a good sign when picking a piece. "Oh. Um. Well, that's a foghorn, so I guess that he had to break for the coastline all along."
"You," Rodney corrected.
"What?"
"Stick with 'you.' Think of yourself as the guy in the story."
"Okay. So he, I mean, I—" John shook off his confusion. "—you're really glad to see the coast because you're almost home free. But it's more dangerous because coasts are better defended."
"They are?"
"In a war? Yes. Rodney, have you never watched a single World War II flick? D-Day?" John said in disgust. He pulled his feet up on the couch and rested an elbow in his knee, pointing. "So this part with the hushed cymbals, you're trying to move fast and low, not be seen as you get out of there."
"And the cymbal crash?"
"You jumped a fence."
"Ah."
"And there's no way you're not going to be spotted, so you just make a break for it, full speed," John said.
"They're shooting at you?"
"Yep. But they're far away, so you've got a chance." John fell silent as the music closed.
"And then-?" Rodney prompted, his hand spiraling.
"The end."
"The end?" Rodney asked, sitting up straight. "Did you make it?"
"Yes." John nods. "Yes, definitely."
"Well, what happened?"
"The music doesn't say." John shrugged.
[Previous][Next]
Music:
La Mosca Tse Tse - Cha Cha Cha (at the rink)
Raul Casadei - Cha Cha Cha Della Segretaria (Rodney's favorite tool for harrassment)
Title: Out Of Bounds
Author: Icarus
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: John/Rodney
Summary: Sitting in the dim light in the stands near the windows, a teenage John watched, fascinated, as a liquid slick formed across the ice, softening into puddles.
A/N: Thank you to my intrepid and hard-working betas,
dossier and rabidfan, who've earned their keep a dozen times over this week. A special thank you to the goddesses of randomness. You got your Tupperware, though I have no idea how puppies turned into hoses. Previously in Out Of Bounds: Known more for his jumps than his artistry, figure skater John Sheppard hires ex-skating champion and "artiste" Rodney McKay to be his coach. Their teasing friendship warms into something more. Following a serious injury, John temporarily moves in with Rodney to begin skating full time. For the first time John has a real choreographer.
[Previous][Next]
Out Of Bounds
by Icarus
An engine rumbled somewhere deep inside the Schmidt Center, either the hum of a coke machine or the refrigeration on the rink, working overtime at ten p.m.
The last time John had been in a rink this quiet, the power had gone out during the Upper Great Lakes Regional Championships. Sitting in the dim light in the stands near the windows, a teenage John had watched, fascinated, as a liquid slick formed across the ice, softening into puddles. It had been fifteen degrees outside but indoors it wasn't cold enough to save the ice. Then the power had come back on and John had been the only one unfazed by the interruption, still steeped in the unnatural silence. It was one of his best performances.
The rink was huge, easily as big as the U of T rink John had practiced on for Worlds, full Olympic size with an arched dome dark overhead and arena style fold-down seats. It had spotlights instead of florescent panels, and ice as smooth as clear glass. John whisked around the far curve, exploring. Coming out of the turn, he hopped backward. He ducked down into a new variation on his sit spin, edge just skimming the ice, arms tucked in, the world spiraling around him. He stood up into warm eddies of air that carried down from the seats.
He wondered what kind of strings Rodney had pulled to get them into Schmidt Center after hours on a Friday night. Or where their vaunted choreographer had disappeared to.
"Sonja's elevated 'fashionably late' to the level of haute couture. She'll be here," Rodney assured him.
"You gave me hell when I was just five minutes late," John said.
"Yes, well, that's you. How's the quad salchow coming?"
"I'd rather shoot for the quad flip." John scowled. It was harder and also, no one had done it yet. "I was working on it before you derailed me by disallowing all jumps."
"And that went so swimmingly, too. Let's keep the jumps in the realm of probability, shall we? If you have both the quad toe loop and the quad sal then we can add another quad to your program."
"I thought we weren't going to rely on my jumps," John said, with a puzzled squint at Rodney.
"I said we weren't going to rely solely on your jumps," Rodney explained. "The goal is still to win."
John gave a satisfied nod, a faint smile warming him. The elevator dinged and the door rattled open.
"Ooo, it's so quiet," a woman, most probably the very late Sonja, called out from the elevator, her voice echoing. John eyed her with trepidation. She was a bottle blond and wore a short black coat with wide lapels and oversized buttons, and she was completely blase about being late.
"Oh, thanks for stopping by. We've only been waiting for you for twenty minutes," Rodney said, stabbing a finger at his watch.
"Hmm. You can take it out of my pay." Sonja disappeared behind the boards to put on her skates. Moments later she stepped onto the ice.
Rodney rolled his eyes. "Oh for... how are you supposed to skate in that?"
Sonja glanced down at her micro miniskirt and black nylons. She stroked over to where John and Rodney were standing, pushing with the power of a hockey player. "I will not be skating. I will merely observe—hello, John."
Her smile brightened as she held out her hand, palm downward. John took it, though he wasn't sure if he was supposed to shake it or what. She used it to pull him closer with a predatory gleam. John noticed her top was backless, too. Her hose had a seam up the back dotted with little black bows. She'd better not fall, was all he could say. Taking in her long legs and relative height next to Rodney, he finally saw past the dyed hair. It had been shorter and more gold in the video.
"You're Sonja," John said in a flat tone, still holding her hand as he slotted fact A, Rodney's former skating partner Sonja, with fact B, his choreographer Sonja.
John let go.
"Have you had a warm up, have you stretched—good," she said without waiting for an answer. She scratched her chin with a long nail. That much make-up had to get itchy. "I need to see everything you know. Top to bottom." She made a little flicking gesture.
Rodney interrupted. "We're far behind schedule, so I thought we could get right to choreo—"
"I must see what he can do."
Rodney nodded and waved a hand like swatting away a fly. "Yes, yes, that's why I sent you the avi files of all his performances."
"They were broken. I put them in the DVD player—" She shrugged, making a helpless gesture, her lips pursed. "—and the screen was blue."
"You play them on a computer, you ignorant technophobe." Rodney spluttered.
She gave Rodney a blank look. Then stared him down, her painted eyebrows arched. "My way is better. There is a magic in person." She pointed at John, every bit the ice diva. "You. Everything." She laced her fingers together and leaned her chin on them. "Impress me."
Sweaty and breathing hard, John landed his last jump. Not his prettiest landing but good enough for government work. He let his legs separate as he rolled across the ice and pushed them together for momentum, standing tall as he approached Sonja and Rodney. She was squinting at him with eyes unfocused, thumb and forefinger pinching her lower lip.
"Hmn. I can work with it," she said at last, and John detected a distinct note of insincerity. "And you picked good music," she added, brightening. "I have some ideas already. Now. What is your freeskate music?"
Rodney gave John a smug tight smile, with a sweeping gesture and the air of someone gladly throwing John to the lions.
John rubbed the back of his head, rumpling his hair. "It's a big decision. But I'm working on it."
"It's May." Her small red lips pursed in a sour expression.
John winced. He really didn't have an answer for that.
She waited, arms folded, tapping her finger on the crook of her elbow, as if John could produce his freeskate music on the spot, despite weeks of combing Rodney's CD collection. Then she smiled, firm and unfriendly. John had no idea what Rodney had ever seen in this woman. "You will have music for me next week, or else I will choreograph music that I pick. The cha-cha, I think." She wiggled her hips in a cha-cha move, then began to cha-cha towards the door.
"Where do you think you're going?" Rodney snapped, echoing John's thoughts exactly. They had his entire short program to choreograph.
"Out. Dancing. It is Friday night." She shimmied her hips, arms in the air. She snapped her fingers over her head to music that only she seemed to hear. "Would you like to come, John?"
The sultry look she gave him suggested the double entendre wasn't an accident. "Not right this second," John said.
Her eyes sparkled with humor. "Rodney? You are a stick in the mud. You should get out, meet some nice boys, or maybe some not-so-nice ones," she purred. She was all the way to the boards at that point.
"Some of us work for a living!" Rodney shouted at her back as she bent to take off her skates.
He and John had automatically moved closer together and exchanged a wary look.
She paused and peered over the edge, looking at John, then Rodney, then back again. John got that creepy-crawly feeling he got whenever someone learned he was a figure skater, the searching stare up and down his body as if he were tagged "gay" now, and all they need do is find the label. John's jaw hardened.
Her head slumped to the side in an expression of tired disgust. "You said that you two weren't sleeping together." She glared at Rodney, a fist on her hip, and she wagged a finger at him. "Do not use me to silence rumors."
"Rumors?" John said, eyes widening.
"Oh please, like I care enough about those halfwits to lie." Rodney rolled his eyes. "It just so happens that we weren't at the time."
"What rumors?" John repeated.
"Just the usual." Rodney examined his nails. "Attractive student. Handsome, magnetic, flamingly gay coach. It doesn't matter if it's true, they'd be saying it anyway," Rodney said, not at all reassuringly.
"So disappointing. All the ugly Russians are straight and all the handsome American skaters are gay." Sonja sighed. "You can both still come," she added, graciously.
John shot her a puzzled look.
"Dancing," she explained, with the unspoken "of course" clear in her tone. "There is this club where everyone dances with no shirts, almost no clothes." She eyed John's chest speculatively.
"Well, ah...." John winced, folding his arms tight.
"We have work to do," Rodney inserted quickly, sparing him.
"Tsk. Then you homebodies can take my skates for me, yes?" She stood on one foot, wiggling into her high heels. "It will save me a trip—thank you!" She held her skates high and then set them next to Rodney's backpack and John's boombox with a flourish. "You owe me details later, Rodney!"
"Yes, yes," Rodney said, swiping a hand tiredly in her direction.
Her hips swung all the way to the elevator.
By the time John glanced back, Rodney had left his side and was digging in his bag. He produced a bright red CD emblazoned Let's Salsa! With a smirk he told John, "I thought you should start practicing your long program music" and pressed play.
The chirpy salsa trumpets began the cha-cha. Rodney made an L with his arms a la Ricky Ricardo, wiggling his shoulders in amusement.
"Shut up," John said, but Rodney drew him into a spinning dance.
Rodney rolled John out, delighting in John's awkwardness, completely out of step with the salsa music, barely able to keep up with Rodney. John's ability to improvise had improved but that wasn't saying much.
"Now this is ice dancing," John chided him, chin dipped as he dug his skate in to stop. He shot a quick glance over his shoulder around the rink, eyes dilated.
Rodney sighed in disgust. He spread his arms and turned to indicate the vast open stands. "It's eleven p.m. in an empty rink."
"They probably have a security cameras in a place like this." John looked around warily.
"At the elevators, front entrances, and offices. And one by the coke machines." Rodney had helped open this rink and watched them build it. He ought to know. "What's with you? All they'd get is two men skating anyway."
"I'm not usually read that easily."
Rodney huffed a laugh, coming up behind John, arms around his waist and pushing them both forward into a glide with his back skate. "Sonja read me. I don't exactly have a poker face." John pushed on the counter stroke, gave Rodney a moment to catch up, and then they both stroked in time, inches apart. Rodney thought he'd give them full marks for that if he were a judge. "Arched back."
They both tipped back, their forward knees bent. John still required more verbal cues than Rodney would have liked.
"You're pretty flexible," John noted, glancing back at Rodney, comparing then increasing the angle of his arch.
"I used to be able to do an Ina Bauer," Rodney said. He admitted quickly, "When I was a lot thinner."
"I'll require photographic proof of that," John said, although he was smiling as they dropped out of the pose.
They swept around the curve of the rink. John put more space between himself and Rodney. "So she can read you."
"And she doesn't exactly mind my sexual preferences. People won't react as badly as you seem to think—no, I wouldn't put out a bulletin while you're competing, but—newsflash!—gay figure skaters aren't exactly uncommon."
John curled his lip. "That's the problem."
"What do you care what a bunch of perfect strangers think? The only people who matter are—" Rodney paused and mentally fast-forwarded through a dozen scenes of John naked in his house, not minding if the neighbors saw them, his perfectly normal nervousness about public affection in grocery stores, increasing to this near paranoia at the rink. "—Oh my God, that's it, isn't it? You haven't told them."
"Told who what?" John frowned, shaking his head.
But Rodney wasn't listening, eyes glazed as the facts fell neatly into place. "Of course. It makes perfect sense." He looked up as it hit him. He counted off key points on his fingers. "You moved to Canada when you could just as easily have trained in the states; U of T's only blocks away from Church street and the largest gay community in the city—you're not in contact with any of your friends back home, and the only thing you ever talk about with your family is," Rodney spun around, snapped his finger and pointed at John, "figure skating! That's your only potential leak. They don't know."
"Of course they don't." John stiffened. "It's none of their business."
"It's really not that bad," Rodney reassured him, chuckling. "It takes so much pressure off." He slid his head in a nod, one hand up, fingers spread, admitting, "Granted, I didn't have a lot of pressure since I thought they knew—I'd delegated the whole 'news breaking' thing to my coach and he bungled it, so it came out at the worst possible time, but my dad got over it eventually, mom was the same, and my grandmother? Grandma was great," he said, with a little slicing gesture, beaming. "She'd already put a down payment on that house with my winnings and planned to rent it until I finished college, but instead she let me stay there while the whole mess blew over with my dad."
"So you told your parents and things got so bad you had to move out," John said in a flat measuring tone, his eyes slits.
Rodney shut his eyes and licked his lips, reconsidering what he'd just said. He rubbed his chin. "This isn't convincing you, is it?"
"No, not so much."
"The circumstances were unusually bad. My dad was mostly upset that he sacrificed so much for the Olympics, I lost, and in the end my coach knew me better than he did." Rodney shuddered at the memory. "He wanted me to regress back to age nine so he could start over."
"So you wouldn't be gay?" John asked cynically.
"So I'd be his son and not Canada's favorite figure skater."
For the rest of the weekend Rodney had taken to taunting John with various renditions of the Cha-Cha-Cha, each worse than the next (his favorite was the one with the little bicycle bell), until John finally snatched away the headphones and pulled out towers of CDs. Within a few hours the coffee table looked like a scale model of a high rise development. Rodney was commanded not to touch anything; John had a complex system of elimination, with varying degrees of "Maybe."
He told Rodney, "It doesn't have to be ideal." He'd nixed Mission: Impossible sadly, even though in Rodney's opinion it was perfect. At that point Rodney threw up his hands and left him to it.
John's head bobbed, the heavy headphones looking like rubber earmuffs. Rodney wasn't spared, however. John tapped a fast rhythm with his thumbs on his thigh and then, moments later, on the coffee table.
He reached over and clicked back through the tracks on the CD, his face intent. A smile pulled at the corner of his mouth.
"Hey, Rodney!" John said, unnecessarily loud. "Found it!"
"Take them off!" Rodney called back from the kitchen.
But John didn't seem to hear him though he pulled the headphones off anyway. He held the CD jewel case over his shoulder as Rodney wiped his hands on his jeans, walked over, and examined it.
"It's Japanese taiko," he said with some surprise, eyebrows raised.
"It's cool!" John said, turning around. He braced his elbows across the back of the couch, chin leaned on the cushions, looking up at Rodney, puppy-like.
Rodney made a pained face, reading the track list. "I... I don't know—this would be, well," he laughed halfway through the word, shaking his head, "it would be really hard."
John spun around to the stereo, still smiling, like he had expected an argument. "No, it's great." He pulled the plug on the headphones, his hand slicing the air downward in a quelling gesture. "Listen."
The Japanese taiko drums opened with a slow soft beat.
Rodney settled on the couch, crossing one leg over the other, wrist draped over his knee, ready to give John the benefit of his professional expertise. Which was, in a word, no.
Although John did seem pretty excited. That was new. Rodney rubbed his lower lip and asked, preparing to let John down gently, "So. Why this piece?"
"It's cool."
Rodney gave him an exasperated eyeroll. "It's cool. How?"
"You can't hear it?" John fired back. "It's like—look." He leaned forward, an elbow on his knees, hands spread, gesturing to try to explain. "Here." He restarted the music. The slow, steady taiko drums began again. "You've got a soldier downed in enemy territory, right? So at this point, here in the beginning, he's trying to be quiet. He stays under cover. You can even hear the bushes there.
"—and there. Right there, they've spotted him. The chase is on."
Rodney shook his head, taking a breath before John got too attached to this piece. "This is a brutal pace for a skater," he began.
"Yeah, well, so is escaping capture." John continued, ignoring Rodney, "So you're dodging back and forth here, zigzagging to evade the bullets—"
"Zigzagging to-? How do you know this military stuff?"
"How do you not know it? Anyhow, dodging and here, yeah, right here you're pinned down and you've gotta fight."
"And--?" Rodney prompted, getting into John's imagination despite himself.
"And, well, obviously you win. The other guy's dead so your cover's not blown."
"Obviously," Rodney said. He pointed out, his tongue in cheek, "What about this shakuhachi flute phrase? A bird-like victory dance?"
John winced. "Can we cut that? It's six and half minutes so we'll need to get rid of two minutes anyway."
"It's doable...." Rodney tipped his head and asked, "So now what happens?"
John blinked. He'd disappeared into the music, always a good sign when picking a piece. "Oh. Um. Well, that's a foghorn, so I guess that he had to break for the coastline all along."
"You," Rodney corrected.
"What?"
"Stick with 'you.' Think of yourself as the guy in the story."
"Okay. So he, I mean, I—" John shook off his confusion. "—you're really glad to see the coast because you're almost home free. But it's more dangerous because coasts are better defended."
"They are?"
"In a war? Yes. Rodney, have you never watched a single World War II flick? D-Day?" John said in disgust. He pulled his feet up on the couch and rested an elbow in his knee, pointing. "So this part with the hushed cymbals, you're trying to move fast and low, not be seen as you get out of there."
"And the cymbal crash?"
"You jumped a fence."
"Ah."
"And there's no way you're not going to be spotted, so you just make a break for it, full speed," John said.
"They're shooting at you?"
"Yep. But they're far away, so you've got a chance." John fell silent as the music closed.
"And then-?" Rodney prompted, his hand spiraling.
"The end."
"The end?" Rodney asked, sitting up straight. "Did you make it?"
"Yes." John nods. "Yes, definitely."
"Well, what happened?"
"The music doesn't say." John shrugged.
[Previous][Next]
Music:
La Mosca Tse Tse - Cha Cha Cha (at the rink)
Raul Casadei - Cha Cha Cha Della Segretaria (Rodney's favorite tool for harrassment)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-07-19 04:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-19 08:26 pm (UTC)