Chapter 22 #2
Thankfully, it’s enough for Danny. “Aw, you like Sasha, don’t you,” he croons, kneeling down and taking over the petting.
Sasha surreptitiously wipes his hand on his shorts.
“Of course you do, Buddy, you’re the best boy, aren’t you?
Yeah, that’s right, you are—I told you you were gonna love Sasha…
I told you Sasha was gonna give you the best treats… ”
“Danny?” Mrs. Hartman asks after several seconds of this. “Do you think you could get off the floor so Sasha can come in?”
“Huh? Oh, sorry!” Danny scrambles to his feet, moving aside to let Sasha off the welcome mat. “Come here, Buddy…”
Sasha takes approximately two steps forward before his progress is halted again, this time by Mrs. Hartman hugging him. “Sasha, it’s so good to see you,” she says as he awkwardly hugs her back.
“Thank you, Mrs. Hartman—”
“Oh, please, call me Diane, we’re not formal here. Danny, why don’t you take Sasha’s suitcase up to the guest room—also, where’s your father—”
“Present.”
Mr. Hartman walks through a doorway at the opposite end of the kitchen. He looks exactly like Sasha remembered: an older, still disarmingly handsome version of Danny, a touch of grey at the sides of his light brown hair and smile lines around his sparkling blue eyes.
“Welcome to the doghouse, Sasha,” he says, coming over to shake hands. “The humans just live here.”
After a beat, Sasha catches the joke, but he barely has time to laugh before Mrs. Hartman—Diane—ushers him the rest of the way into the kitchen, which is bigger than his entire apartment.
“Danny will give you the tour,” she says, and then she proceeds to do it herself, pointing out the industrial-sized refrigerator, a stove that looks like a space station, and the pantry cabinets that somehow have their own room off to the side of the kitchen.
“Help yourself to whatever you want, everyone’s pretty much on their own until dinner—oh, and before I forget, we have the buckwheat for your breakfast, I wasn’t sure if you made yours with milk or water so I got some extra milk just in case—honey, you’re not gluten-free, are you?
Okay, good, Danny didn’t think you were, but I wanted to make sure.
That’s why we’re doing chicken tonight, I figured I’d better be safe—”
“Diane?” Mr. Hartman calls from the kitchen. “Speaking of chicken, we might want to get that on the grill…”
“Oh, shoot, you’re right!” Diane hurries out of the pantry; Sasha trails in her wake, not knowing what else to do. “Danny—is he still upstairs?”
Much to Sasha’s relief, Danny reappears just then, Buddy nosing at his heels. After a rapid-fire exchange between him and Diane that Sasha doesn’t even try to keep up with, Danny says, “Come on, I’ll show you the rest of the house.”
Sensing this might actually be the quieter option, Sasha follows Danny out of the kitchen.
They pass through a grand entryway, with a curving staircase and a giant chandelier, before heading towards the rooms on the other side of the house; as they walk, Buddy nudges between them, trotting so close to Danny that it reminds Sasha of a cat winding around its owner’s legs.
He can’t figure out how they’re not tripping over each other.
“Does he always do this?”
“Oh, yeah, all the time—here’s the dining room—he gets, like, separation anxiety when I leave for gymnastics meets.
It was actually, like, really bad when I was in college—here’s the living room—my mom literally had to, like, medicate him my freshman year, poor Buddy.
So yeah, now he basically follows me around whenever I’m home—here’s the family room… ”
Sasha can’t believe how many rooms the Hartmans have, or how much furniture is in them.
The living room and the family room alone contain more sofas than there are occupants in the house, himself included, and that’s not even counting all the tables, chairs, and dog beds in between (or the giant television in the family room, which as far as he can tell is the only distinguishing factor from the living room).
Everything coordinates, too, from the curtains to the cushions, beachy blues and sandy whites tied together with ocean-themed knickknacks: wooden sculptures of seabirds, starfish scattered across bookshelves and end tables, picture frames dotted with seashells.
If it weren’t for the dog toys on the carpets, or the stockpile of foam rollers and resistance bands next to the television stand, the whole place would look like a magazine spread.
“Okay, so that’s the downstairs—well, except for the laundry room, but whatever—bathroom’s over there…
oh, and there’s the backyard.” Danny gestures casually out the window, and Sasha’s jaw drops at the enormous brick patio, which has a cabana-covered table for four, a grilling area, and—he squints—is that a bar?
Further back, a set of stairs leads to a sloping green lawn, sheltered from the neighbors’ view by a landscaped selection of shrubs, hedges, and trees.
Jesus, and he’d always thought American movies were exaggerating about their houses.
He tries to imagine giving Danny a tour of his apartment—showing him the pullout bed in the living room, the balcony stuffed with storage boxes, the cramped bathroom they’d all have to share—and for the first time in his life, he feels…
not quite ashamed of his home, but embarrassed by how small it would seem to Danny.
And then he snaps back to his senses, because what the fuck? Danny’s never going to visit him in Moscow. In fact, Danny’s never going to set foot in Russia, period. Not if Sasha can help it.
“Sash? Ready to go upstairs?”
Sasha blinks. Sees the headline—“President denies imprisonment, torture of gay men in Chechnya”—like it’s tattooed on his eyelids. Blinks again, barely hearing himself as he says yes.
The Hartmans’ second floor has a wide carpeted hallway running down the length of the house, decorated with family photographs and artfully arranged sitting nooks that Sasha will never, not once, see anyone use over the course of his visit.
“That’s my parents’ room,” Danny says at the top of the stairs, nodding to the left. Sasha gets a brief glimpse of a master suite with billowing white curtains and a balcony before Danny saunters into a room opposite the staircase. “And here’s yours.”
It’s another immaculately decorated setup, with framed beach landscapes and enough pillows for at least five more beds. Sasha’s suitcase is already beside the closet, and he glances at it, wondering if he should take out the wine he brought for the Hartmans now or wait until it’s closer to dinner.
“If you wanna unpack, go for it. I’ll hang.
” Danny punctuates this statement by flopping onto the bed, grinning at Sasha in a way that looks like an invitation.
Sasha swallows, reminding himself that the door’s still open (he could close it) and the Hartmans are right downstairs (busy making dinner)…
“Is he okay?” he asks suddenly, distracted by the sight of Buddy. Instead of following Danny into the room, the dog’s stalled on the threshold, standing there like he’s on high alert: ears flattened, eyes fixed on some invisible spot by the window.
“Oh, yeah, no, he never comes in here,” Danny explains. “When he was a puppy, this snake got in through the window and he tried to play with it and it bit him. Luckily it wasn’t poisonous or anything, but yeah, he got really freaked out. Look, he won’t even come if I call him. Buddy, come here!”
Buddy ducks his head, avoiding eye contact with Danny as he shuffles away from the door.
“Wow.” Sasha wonders if all dogs are this neurotic or just American ones.
“Yeah. Aw, it’s okay, Buddy, you don’t have to…”
While Danny reassures Buddy that he’s still a good boy, Sasha unpacks his suitcase, hanging his clothes in the closet and setting the wine aside for dinner. Once he’s finished, he looks at Danny, who’s now recapping a snake video he saw on YouTube.
“…and the iguana, like, sprinted across the beach and all these snakes came out of, like, literally everywhere and then—oh, are you done?” he asks, noticing Sasha watching him. “Sweet. Wanna try out the mattress?”
He waggles his eyebrows, looking frankly ridiculous—not that Sasha’s in a position to judge, since he’s already glancing at the door and weighing the odds of one of Danny’s parents coming upstairs. If they did, the guest room would be right in front of them…
“Where is your room?” he asks.
Danny grins, then slides off the bed. “Come on, Buddy,” he says, unnecessarily, the dog at his heels again the second he walks out the door. “Oh, there’s your bathroom, by the way.”
Sasha’s still processing that—his bathroom? How many bathrooms does this house have?—when they reach an open door at the end of the hall, Buddy racing ahead of Danny to jump onto a large bed with a navy comforter.
Christ, there’s another bathroom in here, too.
“Yeah, so, this is me,” Danny says, though Sasha could have figured that one out on his own—the wall opposite the bed is decorated floor to ceiling with gymnastics paraphernalia, the light blue paint barely visible beneath all the medals, ribbons, and trophy shelves bursting with first-place finishes.
There’s a haphazard collage over a desk, featuring posters and magazine clippings of Danny’s favorite gymnasts: Kohei Uchimura, Epke Zonderland, and a bunch of Americans Sasha doesn’t recognize except for Paul Hamm (who infamously and undeservedly beat the great Alexei Nemov at the 2004 high bar final in Athens, therefore making him Kirill’s second least-favorite American after Danny).
And, of course, Blaine Wilson.
Sasha eyes the glossy photos of Danny’s childhood crush: shirtless and sprinting down the vault runway; shirtless and sweating through an iron cross on the rings; shirtless and sprawled on a couch, looking suggestively at the camera.
He remembers that last one—Danny had shown it to him in Nanning, right before nervously confessing that he wasn’t straight—and he finds himself wondering what Blaine looks like now, if Danny ever runs into him at competitions or shows.
“Whatcha lookin’ at?” Danny comes up behind him, sliding his arms around Sasha’s waist.
Sasha doesn’t want to admit the truth, but he can’t think of anything else to say with Danny so close to him. “You have a lot of Blaine Wilson pictures,” he finally mutters, embarrassed.
Danny laughs. The sound does something to Sasha’s stomach, just like the hands slipping under his shirt. “Jealous?”
“No,” Sasha replies, though he might be. He strongly suspects Blaine is taller than him.
“You know he’s, like, in his forties, right?
” Danny murmurs, his breath hot on the back of Sasha’s neck.
“I mean, I’m not saying I wouldn’t, but…
I like guys more my own age. Like, I don’t know, maybe two years younger?
” He starts kissing his way up Sasha’s throat, spreading goosebumps everywhere he goes.
“With really nice hair?” His teeth find Sasha’s earlobe, biting just until he draws a gasp. “You know anyone like that?”
Sasha doesn’t have enough brain cells left to answer that question. He can only stand there, breathless and trembling, as Danny’s fingers trail down his body and slip into his shorts…
“Boys! Dinner’s ready!”