icarus | SGA FIC: Out Of Bounds - John/Rodney

Chipping away at Out Of Bounds... ready for Nationals?

The story in one file up to an earlier chapter: Out Of Bounds.

Title: Out Of Bounds
Author: Icarus
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: John/Rodney
Summary: Caldwell's piercing hawk-eyes looked up. "You've got a champion in that lot?" he asked with an insulting amount of surprise.

A/N: Thank you to my tireless betas,

rabidfan and

roaringmice (our skating consultant ;). Welcome to the team,

tingler and

mariamme. You guys have been fabulous.

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. After a year of training and preparation... the U.S. Championships.

[Previous][Next]
Out Of Bounds
by Icarus

The following Wednesday, Rodney got dressed for work as if were a perfectly normal day. Although, all right, he might have woken up a little earlier than usual, early enough for John to cook them both a sit-down breakfast, which in itself was weird enough to make the day surreal. Snow flurries fluttered around the streetlight outside the picture window. He planted his elbows on the table and gave John his injunction for the day. "I don't want you to do anything. Tomorrow we have a ten-hour drive ahead of us--"

"Nine and a half," John interrupted, rolling the pepper mill between his palms. He set it down.

"I'll be doing most of the driving," Rodney reminded him.

"Make that eleven," deadpanned John-the-comedian.

"--We have a ten-hour dive ahead of us," Rodney continued a little louder, ignoring the peanut gallery, "so I want you to just... rest. Don't do anything. I need you to 'spoil before the race,' as it were. Got that?" He stood and grabbed his wheelie bag while shouldering his leather bag, which John insisted on calling a "man purse."

"I'm allowed to pack, right?"

"Yes, yes." Rodney made an absent swiping gesture at the air as he ducked out the door, gloved hand on the doorknob. "But nothing else. I'll be back at three."

~*~*~

Rodney might have spent the entire day glancing at his wristwatch, and his students might have gotten away with more goofing off on the ice than he usually allowed. Students were psychic and knew when you didn't have the energy to focus. Finally, he bundled the last petite creature into her pink snowsuit, handed her over to her mother and then stopped by his office. Caldwell was at their desk, bald head down, marking up some charts.

"The domain is yours," Rodney announced as he grabbed his leather bag (which did not look like a man purse). "For the next ten days anyway."

"Uh-huh," Caldwell grunted his disinterest.

"National Championships," Rodney explained, nose in the air, rocking back on his heels with a little bounce.

Caldwell's piercing hawk-eyes looked up. "You've got a champion in that lot?" he asked with an insulting amount of surprise.

"The tall one? Dark, rakish hair?" Rodney fluttered his fingers overhead in illustration.

"Sheppard?" Caldwell relaxed into a gracious smile as he eased back in his chair. "Well. Tell him I said good luck."

"Will do."

Rodney didn't quite skip down the hall after that, one didn't skip while pulling a wheelie bag, but it was a near thing.

He stopped by Mrs. Hurwitz's desk to let her and the rest of the staff know he was going to be gone the next ten days. Of course, everyone already knew that, but she beamed her warmest smile and wished them luck too. Rodney slung his scarf around his neck and stepped outside, momentarily startled to be going home during daylight hours. He'd canceled all his evening lessons to make sure they'd have plenty of sleep.

He found himself contemplating buying more grape juice, then wondering when they'd have the time to drink it. He stopped at the grocery store, settling on a cooler of healthy snacks -- and grape juice and pomegranate juice, pomegranate was good for concentration -- to keep John from eating junk on the road. Energy levels were largely related to diet.

So it was considerably later than three o'clock when he got home, a paper bag in his arms. He stepped into the living room to find all the lights on full bore. He turned slowly.

The living room drapes had been taken down.

Clean laundry filled the couch, partially folded. Including summer clothes that they wouldn't need for months.

Through the half-open bedroom door, the bed was stripped of its covers. The floor was antiseptically clean. He could even see under the bed. John was moving around in there.

John stepped around the door wearing a dirty white T-shirt and wiped his hands on his jeans. "You're home early."

Rodney stared at him in astonishment.

~*~*~

The following morning the house was in chaos. Rodney blamed it on John's cleaning – which was totally absurd. Obviously things were harder to find when the place was a wreck. Both suitcases sat flung open on top of the clean laundry on the couch. The two of them walked back and forth in front of the picture window, crisscrossing each other.

"You have your toothbrush?" Rodney shouted from the living room.

"Yes," John managed not to snap.

"Your new skates?" Rodney added. "You could break a blade, you know."

Total disaster. Just what he needed to think about. "Yes!"

"Socks--the ones without holes? I don't want ragged socks on national television," Rodney complained, digging up another worry.

John strode down the steps to the laundry room and fished warm socks out of the dryer. They all had holes in them. He rubbed the back of his neck in consternation. "Christ, Rodney, get out of my hair. It's handled," he said as he climbed the stairs back up to the kitchen.

"If you leave even one item behind we can't come back for it!"

"Give it a rest!" John bellowed in a drill sergeant's voice. Rodney fell silent. Which meant he was either hurt or pissed. Damn it. "Sorry," John said, running his hands down his face as he slumped into the kitchen chair. "I just want to get this show on the road."

But Rodney walked around with his lips sealed and chin held high for the next twenty minutes. John opted not to mention that the silent treatment was a big improvement. Hey, he wasn't stupid.

Finally, they were bundled up in the front entryway, stamping their feet against the cold as they pounded down the front steps. Leaving an hour late, too, John noted with a groan. He didn't want to try to navigate Milwaukee in the dark. He'd never been there before.

The Honda's tailpipe pumped wisps of white into the air as it warmed up, and Rodney slammed the hatchback shut. John squeezed his long legs behind the steering wheel, shoving back the seat all the way. Rodney climbed into the seat next to him and fussed with his seatbelt.

"Ready?" John asked. Then added with a sarcastic smile, "Has everyone gone potty?"

Rodney just rolled his eyes in response. One arm behind Rodney's chair, John backed down the driveway.

~*~*~

Inside the house, right next to the couch sat a garment bag, neatly folded and strapped shut. Air Canada tags dangled from the handle, along with a label that read Utrecht in large bold letters.

Twenty minutes later, the Honda pulled back into the driveway. John rattled the keys in the lock and shoved the front door open. "It's right here," he said, his voice betraying his relief.

Rodney stood in the doorway behind him, hands on his hips. "Oh, you don't need those, they just happen to be all your costumes!"

John snatched up the garment bag and pushed past Rodney. The storm door slammed shut behind him. "If you'd stop machine-gunning questions at me, maybe I'd be able to think in a straight line!"

~*~*~

The Milwaukee suburbs looked like anywhere in America, although the houses in the Midwest were a little older and smaller. The low contours of a blue-collar town with architecture from the 1920s and 30s rose up here and there, lit golden yellow. The scent of hops filled the air even with the windows up as they sped down I-94.

"Looks like your kind of place," Rodney commented as they passed the Miller plant, its smokestacks steaming white in the air. There was a dusting of snow on the ground.

"I want a beer," John said with a dry smile, then added as an afterthought, "Though, really, my family's more the Anheuser-Busch type."

A house alongside the road still had its Christmas decorations up. They were greeted with a fat plastic light-up Santa that swept by, appearing briefly in the headlights.

"There's a difference?"

~*~*~

The Ramada Inn was an orange monstrosity (Rodney's term, but John had no argument) with a sweeping central staircase and massive old-fashioned chandelier inside. The lobby buzzed with activity. Women in too much makeup towing irritable teenagers clustered around the long registration table just inside the hotel doors. Volunteers marked with dangling USFSA badges consulted lists of competitors, and John got in line. For reasons known only to the USFSA, there was a separate line for coaches over by the hotel registration desk.

John handed over his two CDs of long and short-program music, for which they traded him his badge and two others. John wondered how hard it had been to get skaters' music that they had to hold skaters' badges hostage. "Here's yours," the woman behind the desk said, counting them out like money. She gave him a professional smile. "If you lose it there's a fifteen dollar replacement fee ... one coach badge, which is available at coach registration table ... one chaperone ... and one guest."

Strictly speaking, Sonja was no one's idea of a chaperone but she deserved the free pass. John would meet up with Ronon later in the week.

"That's ridiculous!"

Rodney's snappish voice cut clear across the room.

"I'm Rodney McKay, three-time World Champion, former Olympian, trained and certified through the Canadian Figure Skating Association -- which has a far superior program to the Americans, by the way-!" Two volunteers behind the coach registration table leaned away from him, taken aback. "No doubt I have better credentials than anyone in this room!"

His wide gesture took in all the other coaches in line, who looked more surprised than insulted. For now.

"Excuse me," John said. He edged around the competitors. People had turned to stare.

"I'm sorry, but we require a USFSA membership card—" a skinny young woman in an ill-fitting blue sport coat said. Braver than John would have been in her shoes.

"What?!" Rodney spluttered.

"Hi," John said, cutting off the impending explosion with a palm on Rodney's chest. "What seems to be the trouble here?"

"These clueless idiots say I'm not a certified coach! Me!" Rodney said, red-faced and furious. His voice had shot up into the squeaky range. "When these Americans don't even require any training at all -- you just send in a membership fee and toss up a shingle! Canada has higher standards. There's a rigorous training program, and you even have to declare which track you're teaching!"

"Now, Rodney, let's not insult the host country before the competition even begins," John said, slinging an arm around his shoulder. Rodney was vibrating with rage.

The woman behind the desk seemed to sense an ally and turned to John, with a wash of relief going over her face. "We have to have a USFSA membership card to register all coaches. It's a requirement."

"You know, somehow, it's hard for me to imagine that Rodney's the first international coach to ever attend Nationals in all U.S. history," John said in a lazy drawl, leaning on Rodney. "And we didn't have any trouble at Sectionals," he pointed out with an apologetic shrug. The woman straightened, her lips thinning in a clear warning sign, so John added in his nicest, let's-smooth-all-the-ruffled-feathers tone, "Tell you what. Why don't you pass the buck to your supervisor so you can help all these nice people who are waiting in line behind us?" John wrinkled his nose at her. "Let the boss deal with the sticky stuff. That's what they pay him for."

Of course, they were probably both volunteers.

Her supervisor turned out to be a gawky man in his mid-thirties with thinning brown hair, wearing an identical blue sport coat. After a brief discussion they established that, yes, in fact, Rodney was a real coach. That the Americans did recognize the legitimacy of the Canadian Figure Skating Association, especially given that the International Skating Union was the governing body of both. Then John got politely chided (only semi-jokingly) for hiring a Canadian coach in the first place -- which was none of the guy's god damned business, especially since he didn't know John and had no clue about John's circumstances. Jaw clenched, John took a deep breath and plastered a tight smile in place. He patiently waited for them to cough up Rodney's credentials, and then, badges in hand, he dragged Rodney over to yet another line to check into the hotel.

John grumbled at the ground, kicking his bag forward another few inches, "It wasn't like people were lined up around the block to coach me...."

"Really?" Rodney asked, head tilted with a puzzled expression.

John scrunched up his face and looked away, hands in his pockets, before admitting, "Yeah. I got something of a reputation for being a pain in the ass."

"No!" Rodney said with wide-eyed vaudeville insincerity. John cuffed the back of his head.

~*~*~

"Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sport ... the thrill of victory ... the agony of defeat ...."

The skier exploded over the edge of the jump and the montage shifted to the spinning logo for the figure skating championships.

"This is ABC's Wide World of Sports!"

The theme music played, and images of Kyle Fletcher's victory leap at the end of last year's championships were followed by a teary Yvonne, her face in her hands on the podium at Worlds. They showed Mike Estey's terrifying backwards fall, actually bouncing off the ice, which had left him injured and struggling all season. The scene shifted seamlessly to two announcers paired up in front of the rink.

"Welcome to the State Farm U.S. Figure Skating Championships. Tonight we begin with ice dancing. I'm Frank Larson...."

Rodney glanced over at John who'd sprawled on his back, spread-eagled on top of the bedspread, still dressed, his face flopped to one side. His lips were parted and he breathed softly, not quite a snore. All the lights were on, and he'd left the bathroom fan running (which meant it was probably lethal in there).

With another quick darting look at John, Rodney edged the volume a notch higher, as loud as he dared. Then tucked a pillow under his chest at the foot of the bed, his ankles crossed in midair as his bare feet kicked a little. It would be fun to have an ice dance team to coach.

[Previous][Next]

Current Mood: calm and tired
Current Music: Mozart - Concerto For Clarinet & Oboe

Page 1 of 2 << [1] [2] >>

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

ca-pierson.livejournal.com

I love the nervous energy between the two of them in the beginning of this part and how they nearly forget John's costumes, I think that serves to show more than anything how much this means to John.

And that they don't think Rodney's a real coach is funny :D.

From:

Students? I like to think of them as "test subjects".....

SGA FIC: Out Of Bounds - John/Rodney - NC-17 overall

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags