Chapter 19
“Hey, honey, how was gymnastics?”
“Hi, Mom.” Danny has about half a second to shut the garage door before Buddy and Luna make it impossible to get any further into the kitchen, tails wagging a mile a minute as they circle around him.
Luna wanders off after a couple of pets, but Buddy stays for kisses, looking up eagerly until Danny gives in and sits down.
“Hey, Buddy,” he murmurs, straddling his legs over the hardwood floor and trying to ignore the protest from his back. “Who’s a good boy, huh?”
Diane watches them, smiling as Buddy confirms his good-boy status by licking Danny’s face; but she doesn’t mention gymnastics again, and Danny can’t help feeling relieved.
He’s been giving his parents the same shrugs and one-word answers for a while—maybe even since tour ended, now that he thinks about it—and he always gets this weird tension in his chest when the subject comes up at the dinner table, like he’s suffocating a little more every time.
He’s not really sure why, because gymnastics is, like, fine.
He won the Winter Cup in February, and the American Cup in March; he spent the rest of spring buffing up his routines, working with Coach Garrett to maximize his scoring potential under the new Code of Points; and now he’s on maintenance mode for summer, at least until it’s time to start prepping for the National Championships in August.
If he wins again, it’ll be his fifth title in a row—something no American gymnast, male or female, has achieved since Blaine Wilson back in 2000.
The NBC commentators have been all over it, asking Danny at every meet how he feels about tying with his idol, and whether he might even go for six next year, if he wins this year of course, wink-wink, nudge-nudge, their smiles making it obvious what they expect from him.
He knows he should be grateful. There are guys who go their entire elite career without ever stepping onto that podium, guys who would kill to win the National Championships once.
But no matter how often he tells himself to appreciate what he has, the medals on his bedroom walls still feel like they’re looming over him when he wakes up, a daily reminder that dominating in the US doesn’t mean shit if he can’t back it up internationally.
Because he won them all last year, too—the Winter Cup, the American Cup, the National Championships, you name it, he swept it—and then he went to Rio, and he choked.
The mat under his hands. The ringing in his ears. He can’t breathe. He can’t fucking breathe—
“Hey, Buddy, wanna play fetch?”
Danny gropes around for a toy—there’s always a few lying within reach—and Buddy’s energy level instantly goes from ten to twenty, making it impossible to think about Rio anymore.
His hand closes over a rubber ball and he throws it, maybe a little farther than he meant to; but Buddy goes skidding after it anyway, and Danny lets out a breath, rubbing his chest before realizing what he’s doing and forcing himself to stop.
So yeah, maybe gymnastics hasn’t been all sunshine and roses lately, but whatever. Honestly, he’s way more excited about Sasha’s career right now.
Thanks to Yulien’s VPN wizardry, he’d managed to catch the Russian Championships in March—and Sasha had smoked the competition, walking away with the all-around title, a gold on vault, and a silver on floor.
Danny couldn’t understand a word of the commentary, but it was obvious the announcers were impressed; he’d noticed them mentioning Sasha’s name even when other athletes were performing, as if comparing the rest of the field against him.
Sasha hadn’t seemed fazed by it—“I won because Kirill and Ilya are injured,” he’d said, shrugging—but a month later, at the European Championships, he’d placed second in the all-around, proving it wasn’t a fluke.
On top of that, he’d busted out a motherfucking Blanik in the vault final: a beautiful double front pike, his body folded like a diver’s as he flipped through the air, earning another silver for his collection.
“We should get a grocery list going,” Diane says as Buddy returns with the rubber ball, depositing it eagerly into Danny’s lap. “Sasha’s going to be here on Saturday, did you ask him what he wants to eat?”
“Good boy, Buddy!” Danny strategically leans in for more doggo kisses so his mom won’t realize how much he’s smiling, but holy shit—he’s been counting down the days for weeks and now it’s T-minus two until he can finally see Sasha again.
“Uh, yeah, he said he was good with whatever, but then he asked if we had buckwheat? Do you have any idea what that is?”
“Buckwheat… is that one of those gluten-free things?” Diane frowns, worry flickering across her face. “He’s not gluten-free, is he?”
“No, I think it’s like a breakfast thing?” Sasha hadn’t really been able to explain beyond that, and Danny had gotten even more confused after googling it.
“Hm.” Diane starts tapping on her phone, and eventually Danny gets up to look over her shoulder, both of them squinting at a picture of brown kernels. “Well, I’ll add it to the list,” Diane says after a moment. “He didn’t want anything else?”
Danny shakes his head. “Can we do steaks?” he asks hopefully. “And Dad’s burgers?”
“Sure, I don’t see why not.”
“Oh, and can we do Grandma’s cabbage rolls, too? I bet Sasha would love those, his mom’s always making, like, cabbage soup and stuff when he’s home—”
“Honey, what’s with the red carpet?” Diane’s laughing, but there’s a curious note in her voice that makes Danny realize he might be going overboard, especially since he’s kind of been talking about Sasha a lot lately. Like, a lot. “I don’t remember Matt ever getting the cabbage rolls.”
“Yeah, well.” Danny seriously hopes he’s not blushing right now. “I don’t know, I just… I want him to like it here.”
Diane pats him on the arm. “I’m sure he will. But tell you what, I’ll make the cabbage rolls if the two of you help.”
“Deal.” Danny grins at her, feeling like he’s a kid and it’s Christmas and he got a puppy all at once—the kind of heart-racing, can’t-sit-still excitement that’s going to write itself across his face if he isn’t careful.
Or maybe it already has, because Diane gives him a half-amused, half-confused smile before pulling up the grocery store app on her phone. “Okay, so we’ll need buckwheat, steaks, ground beef, hamburger buns—I’ll get the whole-wheat ones for you and Sasha—cabbage, what else?”
“Uh…” Danny blanks, because he’s just remembered that he should probably pick up condoms. And lube.
Which are definitely not going on his mom’s shopping list.
Hoping his cheeks haven’t gone red, he bends down and scratches Buddy behind the ears, squeezing the rubber ball again. “Hey, Buddy, ready for round two?”
Buddy’s always ready for fetch, like that’s not even a question, so Danny tosses him the ball a few more times while his mom works on the grocery list. As he’s waiting for Buddy to come back, he scrolls through his messages, smiling at all the photos Sasha’s sent him over the past week and a half.
There’s Sasha and his mom at the Griffith Observatory on their first day in Los Angeles, the city sprawling behind them as they squint and smile at the camera; Sasha doing a handstand at the castle in Disneyland (“Kirill told me to for vlog”); Sasha and Alina again, arm in arm in front of the Full House house in San Francisco (“We took hundreds pictures”); and then from this morning, the two of them on the seawall at the Children’s Pool in San Diego, a pod of sea lions sunning themselves in the background.
Danny’s favorite photos are the ones that have the best view of Sasha.
Throughout the trip, he’s gone from pale to pink to…
well, still pretty pale, though not as much as usual—a flush of color in his cheeks, t-shirt tan lines on his arms and neck.
But what Danny can’t stop looking at are those beautiful fucking curls, longer and wilder than he’s ever seen them before, cascading down Sasha’s forehead and almost covering his eyes.
He has so many thoughts about what he wants to do with those curls, like running his fingers through them while he kisses Sasha, or tugging on them while Sasha blows him (not enough to hurt, obviously, just, like, enough to be hot).
Or grinding down on Sasha and burying his face in them, breathing in that nice shampoo smell, and wrecking them a little more with every thrust…
It’s probably a good thing that Matt calls him then, cause he really doesn’t need to get a boner when he’s like ten feet away from his mom.
“So, Jules wants to know what you want to do for dinner when we’re in LA,” Matt explains as Danny mouths Matt at his mom, who mouths back Tell him I said hi. “She’s gonna make reservations.”
“Already?” Matt and Julia aren’t flying over for her sister’s wedding until the end of August, a week after the National Championships. “My mom says hi, by the way.”
“Sup, Diane. Dude, please just give me something, she’s, like, freaking out about this trip. It’s like, the bachelorette, the rehearsal dinner, the wedding… you don’t even want to know how many spreadsheets she has right now, it’s insane.”
“Oh, man.” Danny nods at his mom, silently passing on Matt’s greeting, and tosses the ball again for Buddy. “Um, wanna do Mexican? I can look up some places.”
“No, don’t, she’s gonna want to pick it.” Matt’s sigh echoes through the phone. “I think this micromanaging thing is, like, her way of coping, or like not coping, with all the crap that’s been going on.”