fic: I Love You, I Hate You
Wednesday, 9 June 2010 23:30![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
extemporallyI Love You, I Hate You
gen, Johnny/Stéphane-ish
G
1997 words
Nominally betaed by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
strange_bt_true (by which I mean she changed like four things and asked me annoying questions), and audienced by yeats.
Written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
skategreat's cliche challenge, #45 Five things. Five times Johnny Weir fought with someone.
ONE
"I'm angry at you," Johnny informed his mother.
"Yeah?" his mom didn't even look up from snapping the ends off the beansprouts, which just went to show how much she didn't care about Johnny and the fact that he was, like. Angry.
"The only reason I'm not using the word hate is I know that's a very strong word."
"So it is."
"Mama, you're not even paying attention."
"I am!" Patti said, looking up finally, but Johnny noticed that her hands didn't stop moving. "Now, what were you saying?"
"See, you totally weren't paying attention," Johnny said, feeling triumphant and slighted at the same time.
"Oh, I really wasn't," Patti said penitently -- like she wasn't really sorry, Johnny thought, and when he peered at her face the ends of her mouth were twitching up like she was trying not to smile.
"That's it!" Johnny yelled. "I'm going to my room and I'm going to stay there forever!"
He stomped all the way up the stairs and tried banging his door, only it closed too softly for his liking. Johnny got up and slammed it shut again -- this time it made a satisfyingly loud bang -- before flopping on his bed and throwing the small wooden dolphin carving his mom gave him for Christmas at the wall. It bounced off with a hard thunk, and Johnny had to force himself to stay in bed instead of getting up to pick it up and check if it got chipped, or anything.
It was pretty tough. Johnny liked having things be where they were, but he felt he ought to express his anger. Feelings shouldn't be bottled up.
When it was time for dinner, Johnny tried giving his parents the cold shoulder, but it was pretty tough when they didn't seem to notice and kept asking him if he wanted any more carrots.
"I love carrots," Boz said, all of eight years old and completely oblivious, and Johnny scowled at him.
TWO
When Johnny was in high school he didn't have many friends.
Friends were for people who didn't have more important things to focus on, anyway, he thought when he bothered to think much about it. Like his family. And skating.
In his French class there was a guy who was pretty cool, and Johnny wouldn't call them friends, exactly, but they said hey to each other in the hallways and traded homework when one of them hadn't bothered to finish their fill-in-the-blanks, and sometimes they ate lunch together when Toby couldn't be bothered to go look for his regular circle all the way across the lunch room. It was cool, and also -- Toby was really, really cute. Johnny never told him that, of course, he had a sense of self-preservation, but it was a factor. Toby was kind of a jerk sometimes but somehow it was better because he was cute.
One day they argued about something stupid -- Johnny couldn't even remember what it was ten months after the fact, let alone ten years -- and they had a cold war of sorts. Johnny remembered leaving French as soon as the bell rang and feeling numb, then taking a deep breath and sweeping down the halls coldly. He closed his eyes and imagined he was striding to, like. Murderous revenge, and that was good because he really did feel like stabbing someone in the stomach. Maybe he was Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction.
He hadn't actually seen Pulp Fiction, but he'd seen the trailer. Uma Thurman lounging around on the mattress in her short black dress was bad, in a way that Johnny knew was really, really good.
The next time they had French class again two days later, Johnny was still in Uma Thurman mode. He and Toby sat together, which was unfortunate, but Johnny strode right in to French, mere seconds to spare, and only because there wasn't any where else to sit he chucked his exercise book down on the desk and got into his seat without looking either right or left.
"Hey," Toby said, smiling at him tentatively, and Johnny wasn't even interested anymore, "No more fighting, yeah?"
Johnny inspected his fingernails. He'd watched a lot of movies the summer before junior year, and he knew exactly how to fake feeling bored, even when his heart was hammering against his chest. "Oh, I don't know," he said. "Don't do me any favours, yeah?"
Toby looked away, like he couldn't figure out what to say, and the teacher entered, leaving Johnny feeling like he’d both won and lost something that moment. The week after that Johnny moved to another seat across the room and they never spoke again.
THREE
Evan came looking for him the next day.
“I’m sorry,” he said penitently, and Johnny glared at him. It wasn’t a particularly glamorous moment for Evan to have caught him at, because they were at lunch and Johnny was half-way through chewing his mouthful of food, and of course Evan would choose to show up at that point.
“Don’t say sorry if you don’t feel it,” he said, and Evan coloured.
“I totally do!”
“You don’t sound like you do,” Johnny said, although Evan did really. He just wanted to give Evan a hard time, and why not, after what he said yesterday. It ruined the whole Champions On Ice tour for him retrospectively, to be honest. He thought he and Evan were friends.
Evan looked desperate, and Johnny could tell he was trying to cover that up because his face was twitching strangely. “What can I say to convince you that I am?”
“Nothing,” Johnny said stubbornly. He gazed down at his lunch -- fucking Evan, he thought they were friends, and then he had to remind Johnny how much of a closeted asshole he could be by telling Johnny that he’d get along better if he learnt how to be more polite and Johnny wasn’t exaggerating, he really wasn’t, when he said that people like that made him sick.
Johnny was always polite. His mother had taught him to treat people well when he was young. It was the other aspects of his personality that he wasn’t going to fucking regulate.
“I’m sorry,” Evan said, soft and tentative, still there, hovering behind Johnny.
Johnny twisted around. “It pisses me off when people I like do things I hate,” he informed Evan. “You’re my friend, Evan. I don’t need to hear bullshit like this from my friends, okay? I get it from other people already.”
“Okay?” Evan said. His eyebrows were drawn together, like he didn’t quite understand yet, like he was just going along with Johnny for the sake of it.
(Years later Johnny would think that maybe that was the turning point, maybe he should have taken more time to explain. Then he’d think that, well, if Evan didn’t get it then, he never would have.)
Johnny ignored the sinking sensation in his stomach, too relieved right then to think about anything else. He patted the seat next to him and said, “Sit down,” as bossily as he could.
Evan took a seat and smiled at him tentatively. Johnny smiled back.
FOUR
“You are three minutes late for ice,” Galina said loudly, staring him down, and Johnny knew. He knew. He hadn’t been late since their first training session, and he felt appropriately shitty about that. The morning had been a mild (if he was feeling inclined to let things go) to spectacular (if he felt like being dramatic and being honest about his feelings) disaster. He’d woken up on the achey side of the bed, and he hadn’t been able to find his car keys after that. Eventually it transpired that Paris had left them on the side table, instead of hanging them on the hook, last night after taking his car for a spin last night. He’d been too busy leaving (for his training session, which he ended up being late for anyway) to yell. Actually it was a miracle he was only three minutes late.
Anyway. This was terrible timing in more ways than one, because today Stephanie was coming over and they were going to show Galina his new costume for the first time. Pissing her off pre-emptively wasn’t going to be doing him any favours.
“I’m very sorry,” he said in Russian, lowering his head to show he was truly apologetic. Galina sniffed and pointed to the ice, and Johnny skated out.
“Run-throughs,” she said, and Johnny’s heart sank.
FIVE
It was impossible to be angry with Stéphane, but Johnny thought he was doing a remarkably good job of at least staying irritated with him so far. Stéphane made that easy, really -- monkey-clinging all over Johnny’s back and winding his arms around Johnny’s stomach when Johnny had made it absolute clear that he did not, not, not want to be touched.
“Ugh,” Johnny muttered, and glared at him. Stéphane grinned back unrepentantly. That was what Johnny always hated about Stéphane; that was: he didn’t seem to get it when people were legitimately angry at him. Johnny none-too-gently unwound Stéphane’s limbs from around him and skated off, only to be pursued by him. And that, okay, that was good, because Johnny could be furious with him now.
“Leave me alone,” he yelled, and Joubert blinked at them slowly from his corner of the rink as he passed it. Johnny was pissed off enough that he didn’t care who heard, even it meant more wary looks than he was willing to deal with later on. Johnny usually got on pretty well with Stéphane, all things considered. But when they didn’t, oh, man, they didn’t.
“You are angry, I can tell,” Stéphane said, following Johnny’s furious takeoff to keep pace with him, and they sailed across the ice fast, the other skaters making sure to keep out of their path.
“Duh,” Johnny spat, and he didn’t have to look to tell that Stéphane had a ridiculous puppy-dog hurt look on his face. He had to remind himself not to look before he started doing anything stupid, like forgiving Stéphane. That would just be against his principles.
“Johnny --” Stéphane said, right into the shell of his ear, and something hot and angry finally snapped behind Johnny’s eyes. He had boundaries, fuck you.
“Stop it,” he said, and pushed blindly at Stéphane. Either Stéphane didn’t see that coming, or Johnny must have exerted more force than he realized, but either way -- Stéphane got caught off-balance, and fell onto the ice.
Stéphane made a weird surprised sound like he hadn’t been expected it, and was more pained by Johnny’s unexpected betrayal instead of actually physically hurt -- and Johnny knew he couldn’t be hurt, that was just silly, skaters fell all the time. But what if he’d fallen on one of his worser bruises? Oh, shit, Johnny thought, and tried not to feel too guilty as he hovered over Stéphane and Stéphane clutched his thigh and moaned like an overdramatic football player.
“You’re not really hurt,” Johnny said, wishing he could sound more certain about it. “Get up.”
He extended a hand, trying not to look at Stéphane’s eyelashes as he did so. It was almost Pavlovian the way Johnny couldn’t look at his face, especially his eyelashes, when Stéphane was looking down, without melting a little. It was really unfair, and Johnny didn’t want to forgive him yet, so he looked away and kept his body apart even as Stéphane seized his hand gratefully and pulled himself up.
“Sorry,” Johnny muttered, and they started skating again. Much slower this time.
“And I am, too,” Stéphane said penitently. He laughed. “I haven’t fallen like this since I was a little child. Forgive me?”
Johnny tried not to smile, but he let Stéphane wheedle him into practicing their old pairs routine again. Stéphane didn’t keep his hands to himself again, but this time Johnny didn’t mind.
gen, Johnny/Stéphane-ish
G
1997 words
Nominally betaed by
strange_bt_true (by which I mean she changed like four things and asked me annoying questions), and audienced by yeats.Written for
skategreat's cliche challenge, #45 Five things. Five times Johnny Weir fought with someone.ONE
"I'm angry at you," Johnny informed his mother.
"Yeah?" his mom didn't even look up from snapping the ends off the beansprouts, which just went to show how much she didn't care about Johnny and the fact that he was, like. Angry.
"The only reason I'm not using the word hate is I know that's a very strong word."
"So it is."
"Mama, you're not even paying attention."
"I am!" Patti said, looking up finally, but Johnny noticed that her hands didn't stop moving. "Now, what were you saying?"
"See, you totally weren't paying attention," Johnny said, feeling triumphant and slighted at the same time.
"Oh, I really wasn't," Patti said penitently -- like she wasn't really sorry, Johnny thought, and when he peered at her face the ends of her mouth were twitching up like she was trying not to smile.
"That's it!" Johnny yelled. "I'm going to my room and I'm going to stay there forever!"
He stomped all the way up the stairs and tried banging his door, only it closed too softly for his liking. Johnny got up and slammed it shut again -- this time it made a satisfyingly loud bang -- before flopping on his bed and throwing the small wooden dolphin carving his mom gave him for Christmas at the wall. It bounced off with a hard thunk, and Johnny had to force himself to stay in bed instead of getting up to pick it up and check if it got chipped, or anything.
It was pretty tough. Johnny liked having things be where they were, but he felt he ought to express his anger. Feelings shouldn't be bottled up.
When it was time for dinner, Johnny tried giving his parents the cold shoulder, but it was pretty tough when they didn't seem to notice and kept asking him if he wanted any more carrots.
"I love carrots," Boz said, all of eight years old and completely oblivious, and Johnny scowled at him.
TWO
When Johnny was in high school he didn't have many friends.
Friends were for people who didn't have more important things to focus on, anyway, he thought when he bothered to think much about it. Like his family. And skating.
In his French class there was a guy who was pretty cool, and Johnny wouldn't call them friends, exactly, but they said hey to each other in the hallways and traded homework when one of them hadn't bothered to finish their fill-in-the-blanks, and sometimes they ate lunch together when Toby couldn't be bothered to go look for his regular circle all the way across the lunch room. It was cool, and also -- Toby was really, really cute. Johnny never told him that, of course, he had a sense of self-preservation, but it was a factor. Toby was kind of a jerk sometimes but somehow it was better because he was cute.
One day they argued about something stupid -- Johnny couldn't even remember what it was ten months after the fact, let alone ten years -- and they had a cold war of sorts. Johnny remembered leaving French as soon as the bell rang and feeling numb, then taking a deep breath and sweeping down the halls coldly. He closed his eyes and imagined he was striding to, like. Murderous revenge, and that was good because he really did feel like stabbing someone in the stomach. Maybe he was Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction.
He hadn't actually seen Pulp Fiction, but he'd seen the trailer. Uma Thurman lounging around on the mattress in her short black dress was bad, in a way that Johnny knew was really, really good.
The next time they had French class again two days later, Johnny was still in Uma Thurman mode. He and Toby sat together, which was unfortunate, but Johnny strode right in to French, mere seconds to spare, and only because there wasn't any where else to sit he chucked his exercise book down on the desk and got into his seat without looking either right or left.
"Hey," Toby said, smiling at him tentatively, and Johnny wasn't even interested anymore, "No more fighting, yeah?"
Johnny inspected his fingernails. He'd watched a lot of movies the summer before junior year, and he knew exactly how to fake feeling bored, even when his heart was hammering against his chest. "Oh, I don't know," he said. "Don't do me any favours, yeah?"
Toby looked away, like he couldn't figure out what to say, and the teacher entered, leaving Johnny feeling like he’d both won and lost something that moment. The week after that Johnny moved to another seat across the room and they never spoke again.
THREE
Evan came looking for him the next day.
“I’m sorry,” he said penitently, and Johnny glared at him. It wasn’t a particularly glamorous moment for Evan to have caught him at, because they were at lunch and Johnny was half-way through chewing his mouthful of food, and of course Evan would choose to show up at that point.
“Don’t say sorry if you don’t feel it,” he said, and Evan coloured.
“I totally do!”
“You don’t sound like you do,” Johnny said, although Evan did really. He just wanted to give Evan a hard time, and why not, after what he said yesterday. It ruined the whole Champions On Ice tour for him retrospectively, to be honest. He thought he and Evan were friends.
Evan looked desperate, and Johnny could tell he was trying to cover that up because his face was twitching strangely. “What can I say to convince you that I am?”
“Nothing,” Johnny said stubbornly. He gazed down at his lunch -- fucking Evan, he thought they were friends, and then he had to remind Johnny how much of a closeted asshole he could be by telling Johnny that he’d get along better if he learnt how to be more polite and Johnny wasn’t exaggerating, he really wasn’t, when he said that people like that made him sick.
Johnny was always polite. His mother had taught him to treat people well when he was young. It was the other aspects of his personality that he wasn’t going to fucking regulate.
“I’m sorry,” Evan said, soft and tentative, still there, hovering behind Johnny.
Johnny twisted around. “It pisses me off when people I like do things I hate,” he informed Evan. “You’re my friend, Evan. I don’t need to hear bullshit like this from my friends, okay? I get it from other people already.”
“Okay?” Evan said. His eyebrows were drawn together, like he didn’t quite understand yet, like he was just going along with Johnny for the sake of it.
(Years later Johnny would think that maybe that was the turning point, maybe he should have taken more time to explain. Then he’d think that, well, if Evan didn’t get it then, he never would have.)
Johnny ignored the sinking sensation in his stomach, too relieved right then to think about anything else. He patted the seat next to him and said, “Sit down,” as bossily as he could.
Evan took a seat and smiled at him tentatively. Johnny smiled back.
FOUR
“You are three minutes late for ice,” Galina said loudly, staring him down, and Johnny knew. He knew. He hadn’t been late since their first training session, and he felt appropriately shitty about that. The morning had been a mild (if he was feeling inclined to let things go) to spectacular (if he felt like being dramatic and being honest about his feelings) disaster. He’d woken up on the achey side of the bed, and he hadn’t been able to find his car keys after that. Eventually it transpired that Paris had left them on the side table, instead of hanging them on the hook, last night after taking his car for a spin last night. He’d been too busy leaving (for his training session, which he ended up being late for anyway) to yell. Actually it was a miracle he was only three minutes late.
Anyway. This was terrible timing in more ways than one, because today Stephanie was coming over and they were going to show Galina his new costume for the first time. Pissing her off pre-emptively wasn’t going to be doing him any favours.
“I’m very sorry,” he said in Russian, lowering his head to show he was truly apologetic. Galina sniffed and pointed to the ice, and Johnny skated out.
“Run-throughs,” she said, and Johnny’s heart sank.
FIVE
It was impossible to be angry with Stéphane, but Johnny thought he was doing a remarkably good job of at least staying irritated with him so far. Stéphane made that easy, really -- monkey-clinging all over Johnny’s back and winding his arms around Johnny’s stomach when Johnny had made it absolute clear that he did not, not, not want to be touched.
“Ugh,” Johnny muttered, and glared at him. Stéphane grinned back unrepentantly. That was what Johnny always hated about Stéphane; that was: he didn’t seem to get it when people were legitimately angry at him. Johnny none-too-gently unwound Stéphane’s limbs from around him and skated off, only to be pursued by him. And that, okay, that was good, because Johnny could be furious with him now.
“Leave me alone,” he yelled, and Joubert blinked at them slowly from his corner of the rink as he passed it. Johnny was pissed off enough that he didn’t care who heard, even it meant more wary looks than he was willing to deal with later on. Johnny usually got on pretty well with Stéphane, all things considered. But when they didn’t, oh, man, they didn’t.
“You are angry, I can tell,” Stéphane said, following Johnny’s furious takeoff to keep pace with him, and they sailed across the ice fast, the other skaters making sure to keep out of their path.
“Duh,” Johnny spat, and he didn’t have to look to tell that Stéphane had a ridiculous puppy-dog hurt look on his face. He had to remind himself not to look before he started doing anything stupid, like forgiving Stéphane. That would just be against his principles.
“Johnny --” Stéphane said, right into the shell of his ear, and something hot and angry finally snapped behind Johnny’s eyes. He had boundaries, fuck you.
“Stop it,” he said, and pushed blindly at Stéphane. Either Stéphane didn’t see that coming, or Johnny must have exerted more force than he realized, but either way -- Stéphane got caught off-balance, and fell onto the ice.
Stéphane made a weird surprised sound like he hadn’t been expected it, and was more pained by Johnny’s unexpected betrayal instead of actually physically hurt -- and Johnny knew he couldn’t be hurt, that was just silly, skaters fell all the time. But what if he’d fallen on one of his worser bruises? Oh, shit, Johnny thought, and tried not to feel too guilty as he hovered over Stéphane and Stéphane clutched his thigh and moaned like an overdramatic football player.
“You’re not really hurt,” Johnny said, wishing he could sound more certain about it. “Get up.”
He extended a hand, trying not to look at Stéphane’s eyelashes as he did so. It was almost Pavlovian the way Johnny couldn’t look at his face, especially his eyelashes, when Stéphane was looking down, without melting a little. It was really unfair, and Johnny didn’t want to forgive him yet, so he looked away and kept his body apart even as Stéphane seized his hand gratefully and pulled himself up.
“Sorry,” Johnny muttered, and they started skating again. Much slower this time.
“And I am, too,” Stéphane said penitently. He laughed. “I haven’t fallen like this since I was a little child. Forgive me?”
Johnny tried not to smile, but he let Stéphane wheedle him into practicing their old pairs routine again. Stéphane didn’t keep his hands to himself again, but this time Johnny didn’t mind.
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Date: Thursday, 10 June 2010 06:53 (UTC)