Chapter 39
“Hey, are we good?” Danny asks Sasha the following afternoon.
They’re on the couch in the basement, doing another round of cuddle recovery.
Danny’s zipped into his compression boots and propped up on a pillow against the armrest, while Sasha’s sitting between his legs, humming as Danny uses the massage gun on him—and on Buddy, who’s obsessed with the damn thing and came running over to the couch as soon as he heard the noise.
Danny loves this part of the day, and he can tell Sasha does, too, though he’d acted all above it at first. But now he’s the one who reaches for the massage gun after they’re done fooling around, and Danny can usually get a solid half-hour cuddle out of him before he starts fidgeting, so. Progress.
“Are we good?” Sasha echoes, twisting his head to look at Danny. This close, Danny could count all of his eyelashes, every fleck of forest green in his—wait, what was he talking about? Shit. Focus, buddy.
“Yeah, I feel like… things have been kind of weird lately? Like… I don’t know… we’ve been kind of arguing a lot?”
And it’s not just the big fights, either, like Sasha refusing to let Danny tell his parents and Danny fucking up by telling Emily.
It’s all the other conversations that feel as if they’re arguing under the surface, even though Danny can’t figure out where Sasha’s anger is coming from—like during their disastrous trip to the Armenian bakery, or at practice on Monday, Sasha insisting out of nowhere that Danny needed to change gyms.
Then there’s the fact that every time Danny brings up the future, Sasha brushes him off or shuts him down hard.
He couldn’t have made it clearer yesterday that he doesn’t want the same thing as Danny—or maybe it’s that he doesn’t think he can have it, because of how different the rules are in Russia.
Except Danny wasn’t talking about Russia, had really been asking if Sasha could see that life with him. Here. In California.
And more and more lately, it feels like Sasha’s been telling him no.
Judging by the awkwardness in Sasha’s expression, and the way he quickly turns his head back around so Danny can’t see his face, he’s been noticing the tension, too. Danny gives him a moment, but all he gets is a cautious shrug, like Sasha agrees but doesn’t want to admit it.
The silence stretches out into a full split.
“What are you thinking?” Danny finally asks, letting Buddy have a turn with the massage gun. As usual, Buddy goes crazy, spinning around to try and get the massage everywhere at once.
“I don’t know.” Sasha sounds apologetic, and Danny wonders if he does know but couldn’t find the right translation.
It’s hard to tell, sometimes, when it’s the language barrier and when it’s Sasha himself.
Danny still follows Kirill’s YouTube channel, and watching Sasha speak in Russian, hearing how much more confident he sounds, always makes him feel a little sad that he’ll never experience that version of his boyfriend.
“Well, what I’m thinking,” he says, dropping a kiss on Sasha’s shoulder, “is we only have a few days until you go home, and I don’t want to spend them fighting with you.”
Just acknowledging this makes him feel depressed, like Sasha’s already left even though he’s right here. Two weeks had seemed like so much time at first, and now it’s almost all gone, crumbling through his fingers like chalk.
“I don’t want fighting, either,” Sasha says quietly, his profile serious.
“Good.” Danny kisses him again, navigating up the curve of his neck, Sasha shivering the closer he gets to his ear. “Let’s just, like… enjoy this weekend, okay? And tomorrow…”
He’s still trying not to think about it too much, in case he psyches himself out—anal’s definitely like an advanced-level gymnastics skill, he’s decided—but he knows Sasha’s been looking forward to it all week, keeps seeing a small smile tugging at his mouth when they’re alone together.
Danny remembers feeling that same way when he was getting ready to lose his virginity in high school: the anticipation humming in his veins, the hyperawareness of his body and what he was about to do with it.
He wants to give Sasha everything. Wants them to be close enough, intimate enough to forget about the last few days, one shared breath at a time.
“No fighting tomorrow.” Sasha’s voice is unsteady, and Danny grins. He’s pretty sure he’ll be panic-googling how to have anal sex tonight… but right now, there’s a lot of other things he’d rather be doing.
“Exactly,” he agrees, leaning forward and breathing Sasha in, skimming his lips over flushed skin and sweatshirt-soft curls. Memorizing him like a floor routine, something he can visualize later with his eyes closed, again and again.
Maybe Sasha has the same idea, because he flips himself around, one hand braced on the couch, the other tugging Danny towards him.
His eyes rake over Danny, scrutinizing him with all the intensity of an execution-panel judge, and Danny almost drops the massage gun, catching it and pressing the power button with a shaking hand.
“Buddy, I’m cutting you off,” he manages before Sasha cuts him off—a kiss that takes Danny’s breath away, makes him forget about everything that isn’t the slow crush of Sasha’s lips, the heat of his thighs pressing Danny into the cushions.
The massage gun clatters against the carpet as Danny reaches for Sasha’s shirt, only for Sasha to push his hands away with a look that says You’re not in charge here. A look that goes straight to Danny’s dick, because Sasha doesn’t take the lead that often, and when he does—holy shit.
It’s kisses like sparks on Danny’s neck, soft bites that burn across his shoulders.
It’s Sasha sucking on a spot under his collarbone.
It’s more kisses down his t-shirt and then holy fuck Sasha’s tongue around his nipple, Danny making an embarrassing noise because he wasn’t expecting how good it would feel, even through the fabric.
“Uh—should I, um—” Danny says when it becomes clear this is turning into a blowjob, Sasha shifting back to give himself more room to work.
He gestures at his compression boots, assuming he should take them off before they get in Sasha’s way—they’re as long as full-leg casts, the nylon sleeves brushing up against his balls.
But Sasha shakes his head, then leans over to look at the control unit Danny left on the end table. Seeing that the massage cycle’s about to end, he starts it again—and this time, he doubles the pressure setting.
“Oh, fuck,” Danny says.
*
Sasha’s last day at Sunnyside feels like it’s on fast-forward.
One minute, he’s doing warm-up stretches with the campers; the next, he’s trading fist bumps, head nods, and Instagram handles with the team boys as they pack up their gear.
He’s just finished reminding Zack to continue his blocking drills when Nicole barrels into him, burying her face in his stomach and hugging him as hard as she can.
“Goodbye and thank you for helping me throw and I have a present for you,” she says in a single, muffled breath, and Sasha’s still translating when she hands him a drawing she must have done at home: two wobbly stick figures riding on grey sharks, “NICOLE + SOSHA” scribbled at the top.
He thanks her, feeling touched and—okay, fine, maybe a little emotional about it, his throat tightening as he hugs her back. He’s going to miss this tiny, shark-obsessed art critic.
“Are you coming back?” she asks, her head tilting hopefully.
Sasha can’t help it: he glances over at Danny, not even needing to search for him because, somehow, he always knows where Danny is.
Like right now, standing by the door with Angelo and a woman who must be Angelo’s mother, his face lit up as he tells her how amazing Angelo was today, how he’s “making some real progress on his circles, right, buddy?”, Angelo beaming with pride, gazing up at Danny like his words mean the whole world.
Sasha wants this every day for the rest of his life, no matter how much he can’t have it.
“Maybe next summer,” he tells Nicole, and after she skips away, he finds himself looking up at the ceiling and thinking, Please.
Practice goes by just as quickly, from stretching to conditioning, and then Coach Garrett’s shaking his hand, telling him he’s welcome back at any time.
Danny takes a picture of them—“for the ’gram, Coach, if you ever actually get on it”—and then there’s a swap, Danny and Sasha posing together, arms loose over each other’s shoulders.
Both of them flashing thumbs-up signs, bodies angled carefully apart.
Out in the parking lot, Danny realizes he’s forgotten his grips and disappears back into the gym. Sasha waits for him, leaning against the car and finally allowing himself to think about the fact that, in maybe as little as an hour from now, he’ll be losing his virginity.
It was too dangerous to dwell on it at breakfast, Diane informing them that she and Andy were going straight to the hotel from work; or on the drive to Sunnyside, Danny’s palm scorching his thigh; and especially at the gym, countless moments of eye contact between them, Danny’s smiles tugging at his stomach.
But while he’s managed to keep his brain occupied, his body’s been aware of it all day, an electric hum like fluorescents under his skin.
Even now, with the small parking lot empty, Sasha standing alone in what’s basically an alley between Sunnyside and another warehouse, it feels risky to let his thoughts wander too far ahead.
To imagine himself on his hands and knees, Danny pushing slowly inside of him, fingers curled tight around his hips.
The initial burn fading, then building into another kind of heat…
Fuck. Sasha better snap out of it, and soon, because otherwise Danny’s going to come back and find him hiding a hard-on behind his gym bag. He’s already halfway there.
Needing a distraction, he unlocks his phone and opens the photos app.
Before this trip, he’d never dared to take a picture with Danny, and now there are two in his camera roll: the one from today, and the one his mother had gotten of them on the pier.
It might not be much compared to the Instagram posts Kirill’s been doing with his latest girlfriend, endless carousels of staged kisses and flirty looks, but it’s more than Sasha’s ever had.
And he could be content with that. Should be content with that.
Yet some selfish impulse—or maybe it’s all this restless energy inside of him, needing an outlet—makes him bold enough to open Instagram.
Quickly, before he can change his mind, he pulls up the photos with Danny and Coach Garrett, then a group selfie that the team boys had insisted on taking.
He slots the one with Danny in the middle, after the group selfie, and writes a careful caption thanking Danny, Coach Garrett, and Sunnyside Gymnastics Academy for hosting him on his vacation.
He rereads the caption and reminds himself that this is normal.
That he’d made a similar post earlier this year, after a joint training camp with the German national team, and so had most of his teammates, including Kirill.
There’s no reason for anyone to get suspicious, or wonder why Sasha went to California in the first place.
Danny Hartman’s the best male gymnast in America, so of course Sasha would train with him while he’s here. It makes perfect sense.
His thumb still trembles as he hits the post button.
“Sorry, I was talking to Coach,” Danny says a moment later, popping back out of the gym with grips and phone in hand. “Next week’s gonna be…”
He trails off, squinting at his phone before he looks back up at Sasha, grinning ear to ear.
“Did you just put me on your Instagram?”
“Yes?” Sasha flushes under the intensity of Danny’s gaze, fumbling for something else to say. “If this is okay?”
Instead of answering, Danny glances around the empty parking lot and then strides forward, flattening Sasha against the car and kissing him like there’s no tomorrow.
Urgently, all-consumingly, his mouth hot, his hands leaving chalk prints on Sasha’s neck; the grip bag sandwiched between them, forgotten.
Sasha shouldn’t be letting this happen, never mind kissing Danny back.
They’re still far too exposed—he doesn’t like how many windows there are in the other warehouse, and what if Coach Garrett decides to go home instead of vacuum the gym?
—but his dick tells his brain to fuck off, for just one second, so he can enjoy this.
So he can hold Danny tight and know what it’s like to kiss him against a car, as if they had nothing to hide.
“Sash,” Danny says after they pull apart, but then he goes quiet, looking at Sasha and just—smiling, in a way that makes Sasha blush and squirm at the same time, because he doesn’t know what to do when Danny stares at him like that.
Finally, Danny says, “Let’s go home.”
He doesn’t say, “and have sex,” but Sasha can fill in the blanks.
He keeps his gym bag on his lap for the entire drive back.