Chapter 11 #2
“No.” Sasha used to every once in a while, after competitions, until he realized it was just pissing him off.
He doesn’t need a bunch of anonymous assholes to tell him about his gymnastics, and neither does Danny.
“You should not read them too. Some people, they are… they are awful. But they don’t know anything. They can’t do one flip!”
“That’s, like, exactly what Matt said,” Danny mutters as he unlocks his phone.
“You should listen to him.” Noticing the Twitter logo on Danny’s screen, Sasha snakes his hand in and presses the home button, forcing him out of the app. “And me.”
Danny laughs, though his smile doesn’t quite meet his eyes, and he quickly changes the subject. “So, Euros is like, April, right? Is it on your birthday? We should totally do something…”
His enthusiasm lasts all of two minutes, which is how long it takes them to discover that the European Championships and the Americans’ Pacific Rim Championships are less than a week apart.
“Fuck,” Danny says, staring in defeat at his phone.
“I mean, I guess I don’t know if I’m gonna get selected, but…
damnit.” He rallies, though, before Sasha’s even had time to process his own disappointment.
“Well, we don’t have to figure it out now.
But you’re okay with that? Like, seeing each other before Worlds? ”
“Yes,” Sasha promises, and Danny kisses him.
It doesn’t go anywhere, but Sasha isn’t expecting it to; he just pulls Danny in and keeps him close, fingers in his hair because that’s what he likes, and lets him take as long as he needs.
“Hey, check this out,” Danny says eventually, tilting the phone towards Sasha again.
Sasha doesn’t get what he’s supposed to be looking at, unless it’s Danny’s background photo of Buddy and Luna, which he’s already seen before. He’s still confused when Danny swipes over to a screen filled with widgets, everything from the weather to a calendar to a clock—
“I set it to Moscow time,” Danny says proudly. “So now I can just, like, look at it and know what time you’re at.”
Sasha blinks at the clock widget, then blinks at Danny.
“Hey, I suck at math, okay,” Danny defends himself, blushing.
“And you guys don’t even do daylight savings, which is so confusing, cause then it’s like, okay, am I home or, like, in Colorado, or whatever, but then it’s also like, what month is it, and my brain is like, ‘Dude, what is happening,’ and it’s—” He breaks off, blushing even harder as Sasha starts to grin. “What? I’m serious!”
“Me too.” Sasha pulls out his phone and shows Danny the cities he has saved in his clock app: Colorado Springs, where the US national team trains together before major meets, and Newport Beach, Danny’s hometown in California.
He’s expecting Danny to laugh—both of them defeated by daylight savings, and Sasha doesn’t even have Danny’s excuse, since math was one of his stronger subjects in school—but Danny just stares at him, all starry-eyed and goofy-grinned, like one of the emojis he always uses when Sasha sends him a random dog picture.
Or maybe not quite, since those emojis have hearts floating on their faces, and…
Sasha swallows, because actually, it’s exactly like that.
“What?” he asks, fighting the urge to look away. Danny teases him sometimes for not making eye contact when they’re hooking up, and this is why—he feels too awkward, too exposed, never quite knows what to do with himself.
Something in Danny’s expression shifts as he opens his mouth, and in that last second of silence between them, Sasha has the sudden, wild thought that Danny’s about to say “I love you.”
And he freezes.
Because this thing with Danny—and that’s the first problem, that he doesn’t even know what this thing is.
He distinctly remembers Danny asking for a “relationship” in Glasgow, and he remembers agreeing, thinking he understood; but then he’d looked it up afterwards, scrolling through half a dozen different translations before realizing it could mean anything. Or nothing.
Sometimes Danny uses the word “boyfriend,” as in, “Cause I wanna talk to my boyfriend,” when Sasha asked why he was calling on a Tuesday instead of a Sunday; or “Good morning to my sexy, sassy boyfriend,” when he’d drunkenly dialed Sasha on his way home from a party.
And “boyfriend” is a lot less ambiguous than “relationship,” but it still doesn’t feel real to Sasha, because he can’t say it to anyone except Danny.
But whatever label they put on it, there’s an expiration date.
Even if they’re both lucky enough to avoid a career-ending injury, sooner or later, their bodies are going to give out on them; thirty’s well past retirement age for most elite gymnasts, and it’s rare for anyone to cling on much longer than that.
Best-case scenario, Sasha figures, Danny has four or so years left in the sport, maybe eight if he can last until the 2024 Olympics, and that’s a big if.
Sasha’s not sure he’ll last until then, and he’s only twenty.
Regardless of who goes first or when, either way, they’ll be retiring to opposite sides of the world.
Sasha’s not stupid enough to think anything will happen after that—or even realistically can happen, no matter what they might want—which is why he doesn’t think about it, period.
He only allows himself to imagine the future in one-year increments: the next World Championships, the next time he can see Danny again.
So Danny can’t fucking say he loves him, because it’s going to make it that much harder when this thing between them ends.
All this goes through his head, and he’s looking at Danny and Danny’s looking at him, and then Danny clears his throat.
“Nothing,” he says, lowering his eyes and leaning in, lips brushing against Sasha’s. “Just… never mind.”
Sasha can hear him swallow when they kiss, and he wonders what words, if any, are sliding back down Danny’s throat.
“Hey, Sash?” Danny asks a moment later.
“Yes?”
Danny’s eyes are still that vivid shade of blue, and Sasha tries not to stare, even though he wants to—he’s afraid that if he looks too hard, he’ll see whatever it was that Danny didn’t say. Then he wonders if Danny’s decided to tell him anyway, and his heart begins to race.
But all Danny does is kiss him again. “Thanks,” he says after, barely pulling back, his nose nudging against Sasha’s. “For being here.”
The words are warm on Sasha’s skin, and so is the relief that rushes through him, followed quickly by guilt. But it’s not like he knows, really, what Danny might have said; he’s only guessing, and he was probably wrong, because Danny can’t—Danny doesn’t—
He needs to stop thinking about this. Now.
“You’re welcome,” he replies, although Danny didn’t have to thank him, since where else would he be?
But he’s not sure if that’s the right thing to say, and if it isn’t, he’s not sure what he should say instead.
In the end, he just pulls the dog-haired blanket over Danny’s shoulders, accepting the fact that he’s going to have to brush himself off before he sneaks back to his room.
Danny goes quiet again, tucking his head down and breathing into Sasha’s shirt; and Sasha watches him, wishing he didn’t have to leave.