End of a Broken Heart

aka the crying fic

Johnny kicks open the door to his room and throws his bag on the bed, where it only bounces—doesn’t even make a sound. He should have thrown it at the wall or at one of those ugly bedside lamps; a crash would have been nice and appropriate right about now.

“Johnny,” Tara admonishes, “you’ll be okay. You worry too much.”

Johnny shakes his head. A lock of his hair falls in his face and brushes his nose, which pisses him off even more. Why the hell are his bangs so long? How can everything go wrong all at once—including his hair? This is a disaster. “No. I worry just enough.” He sniffs, checking once again—and yes, there it is. A tickle at the back of his throat. “I’m getting sick,” he confirms.

He stares at her, hands on his hips, waiting for her to say something—give him something to build a rant on—but she just looks at him, eyes huge and Bambi-like, and says, “Oh, honey.”

Johnny deflates—just like that; he can never get really mad at her. His hands fall limply to his sides, and he takes a step closer to her so she can envelop him in one of her warm, squishy hugs. She’s like a piece of home he can carry around with him, smelling of make-up and ice and Chanel No 5. It’s a soothing combination.

“I’m tired,” he mumbles into her mink coat.

“I know, sweetie,” she says, petting his hair with practiced strokes. “It’s just one more day, and then we can go home.”

Johnny sighs. “I wish Patti were here.” He pauses to think about what he just said and snickers into the fur. “I literally want my mom right now.”

Tara laughs at him—she does love making fun of him—and shoves him gently away. “I’d want my mom too, if Galina were after me.”

Johnny’s face falls. He’d almost managed to forget about Galina. If he actually gets sick, Galina is going to kick his ass. Hard.

Again.

(Or maybe he should say still, because she never really stops doing that.)

“We should tell her,” Tara says. “You can’t exactly hide it.”

Gritting his teeth almost hard enough to crack a canine, Johnny shakes his head no. “You’re not telling her anything. I’m going to get better.” He nods. That’s the spirit. He’ll get better and he’ll skate a clean program and then he’ll go home and vacuum the shit out of his carpet. And everyone will be happy. Except for Galina, because she doesn’t really do happy, but Johnny’s okay with her just being content.

Tara rolls her eyes at him. “You can’t will yourself better.”

Johnny crosses his arms over his chest. “Watch me.”

“Oh, that’s mature,” Tara says, looking him up and down with raised eyebrows. “Keeping things from your coach. I’m sure Patti would totally approve.”

Johnny huffs at her—he is perfectly mature thank you very much--and then clutches casually at his chest, trying to make it look like he’s taking his frustrations out on his Prada shirt. In truth, it feels like something inside his chest is trying to burst out, or he would never treat designer clothes that way. The feeling is a lot like rage—crying, throwing a fit, having a total teenager moment kind of rage—but it’s also possible that he actually caught an alien virus—maybe from Evan?—and a creature’s about to hatch inside him and break out of his ribcage any second, spewing blood and lung tissue everywhere.

He hopes it eats Galina if that’s the case. And then maybe Evan. And a judge or two.

It’s all too much, suddenly. He sits down on the bed and grabs the ugly green duvet cover in white-knuckled fists. “You know what the problem is?” he says, low and tight—controlled. Johnny knows all about control. His whole career has been built on control, and it’s all led here, to him putting on this front and trying to control a goddamn cold because—because that’s what he does.

“You’re sick and you’re tired and Patti isn’t here—”

“No.” He shakes his head. “The problem is that I feel like I’m sixty-five. Tara, I’m too fucking young to feel sixty-five.”

Tara looks confused. And a little bit scared. But Johnny can’t really bring himself to care about her sensibilities right now.

“I don’t even know why I’m doing this anymore,” he tells her. It’s not something he’s ever admitted out loud before, because how can he be burnt out at twenty-five, but it’s been at the back of his mind ever since— Well. For a long time now, anyway. Or maybe a short time; time itself has gotten kind of blurry, so who knows? “I don’t know what this all means,” Johnny says, gesturing to the room—indistinguishable from a million others he’s stayed in before, ugly wallpaper and gifts from his fans included. “I don’t even know what the hell I’m going to do with the fucking medal if I win. I’m just going through the motions, because, to be honest, I’m kind of scared of doing anything else at this point. What else do I have if I don’t have this? What’s my goal in life if I’m not skating for a goddamned medal?”

“Johnny—”

Johnny holds up a hand to stop her. He doesn’t want to hear well-meaning platitudes. He doesn’t need sympathy. He’s just fucked up, and—willing himself better with the power of his mind or not—getting fuzzy with the cold. He shakes his head to clear it, but it only makes him dizzy. “I’m okay,” he lies. “I’m fine. I just need to sleep this off and not see or hear Galina for the next millennium.”

He lets himself fall back, too tired to get his legs up on the bed, and takes a deep breath. He’s going to close his eyes and go to his happy place, and when he wakes up, this will all be behind him. He’ll be strong. He’ll be happy. He’ll be fabu—

His phone starts ringing—Galina’s ringtone—and before he knows he’s moved, Johnny sees it flying across the room, towards the far wall. There’s a satisfying crash, and then the phone’s guts spill out onto the floor in surprisingly tiny pieces.

Tara looks shocked, lips open in a wordless cry, a hand pressed on her chest.

“For fuck’s sake, Johnny—”

Someone clears his throat. “Is this bad time?”

Tara stops—and so does Johnny’s heart. He would recognize that accent anywhere. Even his stomach recognizes it, starting to turn and clench alarmingly.

He and Stéphane stare at each other, completely ignoring Tara , and then, “Not at all,” Johnny finds himself saying. “Your timing is just perfect.”

~

Tara runs—the coward—mumbling something about explaining the demise of Johnny’s phone to Galina, and leaves Johnny alone in the room with Stéphane. Johnny has pictured their reunion many times—many, many times—though being wearily slumped on a bed had never figured into the scene for him. He’d thought they’d be somewhere more crowded, like a club or a party—a ball even—where Johnny would look fabulous and act aloof and pretend not to remember who Stéphane was. He can try to do that now, but he’s never felt less fabulous in his life, and he doesn’t think Stéphane is likely to buy an amnesia story.

The guy is naïve, not stupid.

Johnny sits up with a groan, his muscles protesting every move, and glares at Stéphane, who looks tense and worried. “You’re supposed to stop coming to the competitions once you retire. Didn’t anyone tell you that?”

“I came for you,” Stéphane says in that impossibly earnest way of his. “To watch you win.”

Oh, he did not just say—

“You’re going to get punched,” Johnny informs him. “Right on the nose.”

Stéphane’s face falls, his teddy bear eyes growing hurt. Johnny seethes quietly. Stéphane doesn’t even know the meaning of the word hurt. Johnny can teach him though, seriously; he has a mean left hook, and he’s been itching to use it on Stéphane for a long time now.

“You would not hit me.” It’s half a question, Johnny notes with satisfaction. And he totally would.

“Don’t push your luck.” He waves a hand dismissively. “And kindly fuck off.”

“Do you need—”

“I don’t need anything,” Johnny snaps. It’s been six months and three days since he’d decided that he would not need anything from Stéphane Lambiel ever again. He won’t allow himself to cave now.

“I am your friend. I would like to be—”

“Oh, no.” Johnny shakes his head, incredulous. “You don’t get to play the friend card now. We’re not friends. You lost that title—along with a couple others—when you lied to me.”

“I did not lie.” Stéphane sets his jaw, stubborn, determined and serious.

Johnny smiles wryly. There are no words to explain how much he doesn’t care about Stéphane’s decisiveness right now. “Oh, I’m sorry, you’re right. You didn’t lie; you cheated.”

Stéphane’s jaw loosens a little. “We were not together at the time,” he says, though it comes out really weak. Johnny can tell he’s trying to convince himself along with Johnny—which really shouldn’t make his heart twinge quite so much; but maybe that’s the alien virus again?

“Semantics,” Johnny says. “Do you know what that means? You should look it up.”

Stéphane shakes his head, running a hand over his brow. “I never meant—to hurt you.”

“Yeah, well, you did,” Johnny says, trying to sound detached—because that’s over now. Done and forgotten. Water under the bridge. “And now I don’t really care what you think, what you want, or how sorry you are. So if you would just go back to wherever it is you came from, I’d be very happy.”

“You are not, though,” Stéphane says, his voice down to an almost-whisper. “You are not happy.”

The audacity of the statement itself is infuriating, but the look on Stéphane’s face is what does it for Johnny. The guy has the gall to look sincere. “That’s none of your fucking business anymore, now, is it?”

“Johnny, I care about—”

“Well, you should have thought of that before you stuck your tongue down some girl’s throat!”

“I did not mean—”

“You told me you’d wait!” Johnny yells. He tries to turn away, look at something other than Stéphane’s face looking impossibly hurt, like Johnny just slapped him instead of stating a fact they both knew already. Johnny really didn’t want to do this. He did not want to talk about this. It’s humiliating enough that it happened, that he cared and trusted and was proven wrong; that he ended up getting his heart broken.

He wants it in the past. He wants it done.

He clears his throat. “It’s not that I don’t understand. I understand that you got the chance to live your life after so long. It’s—it’s understandable.”

Or so Johnny has been told. Johnny’s a hopeless romantic himself, but Paris is much more practical. Paris had said that it made sense that Stéphane couldn’t hold out; he’d said that they were a pair of idiots to make that promise in the first place. Johnny trusts Paris. At least when it comes to men—and cosmetics.

“But that doesn’t mean I can forget. Or forgive.”

Johnny makes sure to look Stéphane in the eye. If he’s going to do this, he’s going to do it right.

“We are done, Stéphane. I’m not going to be your pretend-friend, just so you can feel better about what you did.”

Stéphane looks like he’s about to cry. Johnny had thought this would make him feel better, but it doesn’t. It feels more like someone’s pulling his guts out through his nose or something. Maybe he should have gone with the punch instead.

In any case, the worst is over now. He needs to hold his head up high and watch Stéphane walk out of his life once again. And that’ll be the closure he’s been looking for these last six months.

“Goodbye, Stéphane,” Johnny says pointedly, eyes going between the open door and Stéphane, and Stéphane takes the hint after a couple of seconds. He opens his mouth, but only manages a broken okay before he nods and turns to leave.

Johnny’s heart breaks all over again.

~

Johnny doesn’t cry after Stéphane leaves, which he totally counts as a win, but he doesn’t have the energy to get up, change, wash his face, put on his moisturizer, or do any of those million other little things he does every night, either. He just rolls over, wraps himself up in the cheap and uncomfortable bed covers, and goes straight to sleep. When he wakes up, still wrapped up tight in his cocoon, he can’t tell what time it is or where he is or what woke him up—until he hears the faint rustling sound, and Stéphane’s voice whispering, “I love you.”

Stéphane has said that to him before. It’s not like Johnny would have made such irrational promises based on guesses. They’d been in love—stupid, crazy in love. It was juvenile, yes, inevitable that they would act like a couple of teenagers, with the life they’ve lead, but that didn’t make it any less real—any less serious.

“I loved you, too,” Johnny says. He doesn’t turn around. He has no idea where this conversation is going, but he doubts that he’ll want to see Stéphane’s face by the time it’s over.

There’s a beat of silence, and then, “Loved,” Stéphane states, not a question, just confirming. Johnny chooses not to respond. The tense choice was intentional.

“You… never let me explain,” Stéphane says haltingly, unsure.

Johnny doesn’t respond to that one either.

“I was waiting. I did not change my mind. I never… changed my mind. Not then. Not now.” He pauses, then says, “I did not even know her name.”

Johnny smiles at his artlessness. That innocence has always been one of Stéphane’s most endearing qualities. It was also why the pictures had come as such a shock to Johnny when he’d seen them. It had never even occurred to him to doubt Stéphane’s honesty; it hadn’t even seemed possible that he would lie or cheat. Now Johnny knows better.

“You realize that actually makes it worse?”

“No, I…” Stéphane huffs, frustrated, and Johnny can almost see him running a hand through his tousled hair. “I did not know her. It did not mean anything.”

“Worse and worse,” Johnny says.

“I was out with my friends, and I… took something. I was curious. I wanted to try. And my friends… They did not know about us. They did not know to… to tell her no, and I was too far gone to… You have to believe me. I don’t even remember. I woke up at her apartment and did not know how I got there.”

Johnny bites his lip to keep the words from spilling out. He really does understand the urge to act stupid, to want to try everything you haven’t had a chance to, but still—the details hurt, even after so long. He can’t get the girl’s face out of his mind, can’t forget how seeing it made him feel.

“I called you. I emailed. I called Tara , I called Galina, you just wouldn’t—”

Johnny snorts. “You seem to have selective amnesia. There was a whole week you could have called and told me before I saw the pictures. I didn’t wanna hear your excuses afterwards. I still don’t. You lied. End of story.”

Johnny waits for a new wave of excuses, but it doesn’t come. After a couple of minutes, he thinks maybe Stéphane has left the room, but he’s too afraid to turn around and check. He doesn’t want to know if he did, and he doesn’t want to know if he didn’t.

“I was scared.”

Johnny lets out the breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. Still here, then.

“I was scared that you would leave me. I could not imagine…” Stéphane heaves a sigh. “I would have told you. Eventually. You know I could never lie to you.” A pause, then pleading, “You must know.”

Johnny shakes his head. He’s not going to feel bad for the guy who cheated on him. He is not.

“Johnny, I have been in love with you for a very long time,” Stéphane says. “You have no idea… I would have waited forever for you—”

“And yet you didn’t,” Johnny cuts him off.

Stéphane exhales loudly. Johnny imagines him slumping forward, defeated. It’s not a sight he ever wanted to see—and he still doesn’t, won’t look now.

“One mistake,” Stephane says after a long pause. “One little pill I should not have taken.” He sounds choked up, and stops, even though it sounds like he wants to go on. It’s a good thing, because Johnny’s not sure if he can stand hearing the rest of it. Patti had once told him that when you loved someone, their hurt became yours. Johnny had always thought she meant it metaphorically. How do people even stand this shit? Stéphane hurts Johnny hurts Stéphane hurts Johnny. It’s a never-ending cycle of hurt.

“Johnny.” A hand lands on his shoulder. “Could you… turn around? Please?”

Johnny’s heart speeds up immediately. This is it. This is where it ends. He fights with the covers—God forbid he would be graceful at a delicate time like this—and turns around in the bed, sitting up. It’s probably bad form to say goodbye lying down or something.

Stéphane tries to smile, but it doesn’t stick, falls off his face in a matter of seconds. Johnny has never seen him look so serious before. Stéphane has always been such a cheerful guy. He’s always smiling or grinning in Johnny’s memories, looking silly and happy. Even the night they had sex, he’d been joking, making Johnny laugh. The day they had promised to wait—until Johnny stopped competing, until they could come out and be together and normal and do everything they’ve been putting off, together—even then Stéphane hadn’t looked this severe. His lips have a downward tilt, his jaw clenched hard, and his eyes—his eyes are sad.

Making Stéphane Lambiel sad is right up there with killing Bambi’s mom in Johnny’s books, but what else is he supposed to do? They’ve made a mess of everything.

“You did this,” Johnny says, defending his actions to Stéphane—and maybe to himself, too. “I didn’t ask you to promise me anything, but you did. And then you went and broke your word. What am I supposed to do? What do you want me to do?”

Stéphane nods, shutting his eyes tight. “I know,” he says. “You have every right.” When he opens them again, he seems resigned. “Just… know that it does not mean I do not love you.” He reaches a hand out tentatively and wipes the couple of errant tears that have escaped Johnny’s eyes. Then he smiles, a real smile this time. “It is not your fault.”

Johnny shakes his head and feels a couple more tears fall down. This is what Paris doesn’t understand. Stéphane is special—beyond the hot-guy image Paris thinks is what got to Johnny. The way he touches Johnny like he’s precious, the way he smiles at him like Johnny’s the sole reason for his happiness, the way he takes care of him, the way he makes Johnny feel safe and loved and untouchable and so very touchable at the same time—and the son of a bitch had to go and spoil all that.

Hitting Stéphane is not as satisfying as Johnny had thought it would be, though that may be because he’s too weak to land a solid blow, and hitting him on the chest is not the same as punching his lights out. “You had to go and fucking ruin it,” Johnny says, and the sob stuck in his throat tears free when Stéphane catches his hand and pulls him closer with it, hugging Johnny to his chest, holding on tight.

“I’m sorry,” Stéphane says.

Fuck lot of good that does Johnny now.

~

Normally, it takes Johnny at least an hour to fix his face before competitions; this morning, he gives himself two. He takes a hot bath, because his muscles feel like they’re about to abandon his body and run for the hills, and raids the mini bar for ice to use as cold compress on his swollen eyes. His concealer creates miracles, and after putting the finishing touches on his make-up—and rather thick touches as they are—he feels like he can finally face the crowd and the judges and the cameras.

Galina, he’s not so sure about, but she’s surprisingly understanding that day and greets him with fresh squeezed pomegranate juice and a hug. Johnny doesn’t know what Tara has told her, and to be honest, he doesn’t care. He just wants the day to be over with as little fuss as possible so he can go back to his room and sleep for a couple of years.

He’s not falling-down sick, but standing in the middle of the ice, waiting for his music to start, he can feel the effects of whatever he’s managed to catch. His head is still fuzzy and his nose—though thankfully not stuffed—feels uncomfortably hot. He’ll probably end up slowing down after the halfway mark—he knows from experience what the slightest sickness does to his lung capacity—so he should start strong at least and maybe tone down the last half of his program as he loses wind.

He looks up to spot Galina right as his music starts, since his mom isn’t here to offer support. His eyes land on her, standing strong and tough, then move over to Victor, whose face is betraying his nervousness—to people who know how to read him, anyway. Then his eyes catch on a third person, standing next to Victor, and he almost stumbles on his first step. Stéphane looks nervous, too, arms crossed over his chest protectively, but he also looks fierce and focused—like he’s trying to help Johnny along just by watching him very intently.

Look away, Johnny tells himself. This is not the time to let his relationship troubles get to him. Look away and don’t fall down. He nods, going into his first spin, and lets the roar of the crowd turn into a chant in his ears. Don’t fall down. Don’t fall down. Don’t fall down. Johnny. Don’t fall down.

Then of course he goes and does just that.

Not right away. His toe loop is a bit wobbly, but he does the rest of his elements clean, and he’s just beginning to think that maybe he can get away with minimal damage here when he stumbles on his triple axel landing and ends up on his ass.

There’s really no way to gloss over this one.

He doesn’t want to get up, is the thing. He wants to sit there on his ass until everyone has gone home, and eventually die of pneumonia from sitting on the ice for so long. He’s a professional; it’s probably not even seconds before he stands up; but it feels to Johnny like he stayed there for hours, debating. Thankfully, his body knows that giving up is not an option and doesn’t let him take that kind of time.

If Johnny were going to give up after falling down on his ass once, he would never have made it here—wouldn’t have a room full of medals at home. He would have stayed on that cornfield in Nowhere, USA, where his soul would have eventually withered and died from stifled creativity. Giving up is not in Johnny Weir’s blood. He’s built this life for himself with sweat and tears and bruises in all sorts of unexpected places. He knows that when you want something, you don’t sit down and give up, or whine and wait for someone to hand it to you. You reach out and take it.

And when you fall down, you get the fuck up.

So Johnny gets the fuck up.

He doesn’t fall down again, though there’s a scary moment when he gets dizzy and sways from side to side as he bows. He cuts the waving short out of fear that any more time on his skates might just end in him leaving the ice on a gurney.

He’s not getting a medal for this program, no way no how, but his coach greets him with a warm hug, reminding him once again that he loves her for this just as much as for the bitch from hell persona she wears on a day-to-day basis. Victor hands him a tissue and tells him he did good, clapping a hand on his shoulder and pulling him into a one-armed hug.

That’s when he sees Stéphane—over Victor’s shoulder—gazing at him from a ways back, staying out of the cameras’ line of sight. Johnny doesn’t know how he managed to sneak in here, and he doesn’t care. He cares about little else but the way Stéphane’s proud, nervous, tired gaze makes him feel. It makes him want to crawl into Stéphane’s lap and let him sooth away the fatigue. It makes him want to go over there and ask for a hug. It makes him want to… reach out and take it.

He hears Galina call after him when he breaks away from them to walk towards Stéphane. He doesn’t look back; she can’t exactly tell him off in front of the cameras. Well. He hopes she won’t, anyway. Stéphane looks nervous when Johnny stops in front of him, close enough to touch, but not quite there, and glancing at the camera following Johnny, he lets a polite and pleasant smile take shape on his lips.

“You did great.”

Johnny studies his face. He didn’t get a chance to properly take it in last night. Stéphane looks older, though it’s only been ten months since they last saw each other. And he looks as handsome as ever. Johnny’s fairytale prince.

“I fell,” Johnny says simply.

Stéphane shrugs. “It happens.”

Johnny chuckles. “It happens,” he repeats. Stéphane stares at him, confused, but Johnny can’t stop chuckling long enough to explain.

“What?” Stéphane asks finally, fidgeting uncomfortably. He never did like being in front of the cameras off the ice.

“You fall down, then you get up and keep skating, because you love it, and you don’t give up on the things you love,” Johnny explains, looking into his eyes imploringly, willing him to understand.

“Oh.”

Johnny pushes back a stray lock of hair from Stéphane’s face and steps closer. “Are you with me?” he asks.

Stéphane nods, says, “Yes,” and leans in.

Their lips meet just as Johnny’s scores are announced.

The crowd goes wild.

~

“You understand this doesn’t mean that you can keep falling down? There’s a limit to falling down. Or your ass will start complaining and people won’t believe that you can skate a clean program and—”

“Yes,” Stéphane interrupts Johnny’s babbling. “I get it. I do.”

Then he pulls Johnny into his arms and lets him cough into his sweater.

“I think I’m sick,” Johnny mumbles.

“It’s okay,” Stéphane tells him, dropping a kiss on his head. “I got you.”

The End

April 6th, 2010