Chapter 17 Stefan
Stefan
Evan goes to bed shortly after dinner. Alone. I can't even be all that disappointed about it. He looks exhausted. We have a few days, leaving plenty of time for me to do my best to seduce him.
Because I am absolutely going to try to seduce him while he's here. The more time I spend with him, the more I want him.
He's so easy to be with, too. We fell back into our old rhythm so quickly, and it's—nice. Dangerously nice.
And when he comes down the stairs in the morning wearing leggings and a loose white t-shirt, I'm ready to drool. His thighs. His ass. His package. Evan should only ever wear leggings. Even when he adds a hoodie to go outside, leading the way to my car, I can’t stop staring at the half of his ass left uncovered.
I've seen him in tight joggers before. Costume pants that are just as tight. I've even gotten brief glimpses of him in nothing but boxers. But the fabric of these leggings shows him off so much better, hugging his curves like they're second skin. And that is far too appealing.
For the most part, I manage to keep my eyes off him as he does his warm-ups and stretches.
It's hard, though—almost impossible. I could watch Evan warm up forever.
The way his body moves when he stretches.
I thought I was flexible. I've had to fight a constant hard-on since the moment I saw him at the airport.
Impressive yoga positions are not helping.
I catch myself staring yet again. Fuck, Evan's going to kill me if he keeps bending like that. I have to look away for my own self-preservation.
To top off his streak of perfection, he's a joy to skate with. From time to time, my parents pop in, exchanging a few words, introducing themselves properly, but for the most part, it’s just us on the ice.
It's amazing. For the first hour or so we just fool around, learning to skate around each other, talking, showing off.
We spend almost as much time laughing as we do actually skating, the sound echoing off the walls.
I stop when Evan flows through a step sequence like he’s sunlight on water. He’s focused on what he's doing, so as soon as he's finished I raise my voice, pointing at him from halfway across the rink. "That. I want you to teach me that."
He glides around the arena, coming to a stop in front of me. "That step sequence? It's nothing special. It doesn't pull a grade four on its best day."
"No. I mean, not really. I want you to teach me how to move the way you do."
Evan's brow creases. After a moment he shrugs and says, "Honestly, I'm not positive how to do that. I guess a lot of it is transitions and edges and we could learn those, but actual movement on the skates? I don't skate like everybody else."
"That's the whole point."
Evan's dark eyes light up in amusement. The crease in his brow doesn't let up, though. "No, I mean, I genuinely don't skate like anybody else. I wasn't trained by a coach. I'm self-taught, at least when it comes to the basics."
"You're what? How?" I can't begin to understand.
Not with parents who had me in skates before I could walk.
My first memories are on this rink, them patiently teaching me the basics.
The fall that sprained my wrist. The time I crashed into another kid hard enough that both of us had to go to the hospital.
The pride in my parents' eyes at my first successful single toe loop.
Then the double and the triple. Even years later, long after she quit coaching me herself, Mom had stopped what she was doing to cheer me through my first quad.
She hadn't wanted me to try the quints. Too dangerous, but I didn’t let that stop me. I'd never let danger get in my way. If I could do it, I would. It was the first jump she wasn't with me when I first succeeded, and I think both of us regret that.
"About how every kid learns to skate, I guess. I just started skating."
"But you said you went to a rink. Weren't there instructors? Something?" No way someone can get as good as he is without training.
His smile is almost gentle, as if I am very, very confused. And he's being very, very polite about it. "Not every kid at a rink gets a coach. A lot of times it's just open for them to skate. For fun, you know?"
How is skating for fun as a child a completely foreign concept to me?
I've always enjoyed skating, of course I have, or I wouldn't have kept doing it. But nobody ever questioned whether I would love it. I never had an option not to. I’ve just always skated, improving over time, working my way up the ranks, learning enough physics to do the impossible.
I think about skating as a child, on a public rink, without a coach, just to be on the ice. It is a world so different from mine that it's almost incomprehensible.
Evan must note the confusion in my eyes. "If it helps, I didn't actually start at the rink. I only started going when I was like twelve. There's a pond at the farm we live at that freezes over, so I skated on it every winter."
"That really doesn't help. If anything, it makes it worse."
He laughs, light and free. Then he pushes off, still watching me as he skates backwards, flowing like silk across the rink.
"Watch my feet." I force my gaze down towards his feet, where they should have been all along.
"You see that little movement I do at the end of every stroke?
" He's moving slowly, letting me get a good look every time he pushes off.
After a few seconds of focus, I pick up what he's talking about. It's minor, so minimal no judge would notice. A little extra curve to his stroke. It's not efficient, not the ideal foot position drilled into me from the start. "Yeah, how come nobody trained that out of you?"
"They tried." He moves back to me, a rueful smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "It's a lot better than it used to be, but it's still there. It'll never go away. It's part of how I skate."
"And that gives you superhuman grace?" The smile widens a little, even as he shakes his head.
He skates backward again, soaring into a turn.
Another. A switch in direction and edge.
And now I know what I'm looking for, I can see it.
How that little inefficiency, that tiny extra curve on the rocker, lets him turn more naturally.
Lets his movements flow through to one another in a way that nobody else could do with a more standard push.
"Holy shit." It's barely a breath, full of awe.
"That's amazing. It's so subtle, and yet it makes such a difference. "
"Yep." He skates back in to me. "It's why I'm not sure how I can train you. The last thing we want to do is mess with your basic skating technique. You'd basically be starting over from ground zero, and the way you skate is already incredible. So that's a no go."
"I don't know. If it could make me skate like you, it might be worth it."
I glance up from his feet, now doing crossovers and scissors in a small circle around me, just in time to see him shaking his head before he says, "No way, I'm not going to be responsible for messing up the great Stefan Petryk's skating. The world would kill me. And they'd be right to."
A short laugh comes from behind me, and we both turn to see my dad standing at the edge of the rink watching us. "I agree with you, son. I've put too many hours into my boy’s technique. No messing up."
Evan shares a smile with him. I appreciate that they’re getting along, but—Do they have to do it by making decisions for me? As if I can't make up my own mind about what I want to do.
To prove to both of them that I’m an adult who can make my own decisions, I take a few strokes, trying to incorporate Evan's movement.
It's weird. It goes against everything I've been trained into.
I've spent my life trying to be perfect, efficient.
And this is really just excess movement, even if it flows better.
I can understand how he uses it, how that dynamic plays out, even in a single trip around the arena.
I skate back to find both of them frowning at me. Yeah, yeah, annoyed them both, whatever. Dad motions to the ice, clearly asking if he can come out with us. Evan gives him a nod. And a smile.
Well, shit, they really are going to get along, aren't they? It's a good thing, objectively, but Evan's mine. I don't want to share him with my dad.
As elegant and powerful as ever, Dad glides out onto the ice to meet us. It’s the way he's trained me to skate, ingrained in me. The quality that won him his Olympic gold.
"How does it feel?" Dad asks. He's still frowning, but I grin at him anyway.
"Terrible," I respond. "But I understand how it works. What's different about it. It's pretty cool.”
Evan smiles cautiously at me. "So you're not planning to take it on?"
I shake my head. “No. Fuck no. I'd have to change everything from the ground up. But it's interesting to try.”
They both look relieved. Did they really think I was going to change everything about my skating? Probably. I have been known to be impetuous from time to time. "So that's part of it," I add, “but what's the rest?”
"What do you mean?" Evan looks over at me, brow pinched again.
"I mean, I understand how this makes you more... I don't know. Flowy, I guess. But it's definitely not the only thing you do that makes your artistry what it is."
Evan frowns again. "Well, no, but I think it's the main thing."
Nope. He’s so fucking modest. "I think you're overestimating the power of a flick."
"A flick. That's what we're calling it?"
I shrug, laughing as I move out. Dad and Evan follow more slowly, side by side. Which is just weird. "If the shoe fits," I call back to them.
The unlikely pair start talking, heads together as they skate around the rink. I want to go interrupt them, get my Evan time back, but he’s enjoying himself, and I won't take anything he enjoys away from him. Even if seeing them together makes me itchy.
I'm sure they're talking about me, about my skating. Just like any two coaches would. Finding holes, proposing solutions.
I fly through a couple of quads, just to show off, then skate back towards them. "Ok, you told me you could at least teach me the transitions. So let's do that."
“Anything in particular?”
Evan's smile is far too intimate, and I'm going to be hard again in no time if he isn't careful. Does Dad notice? I sneak a glance over, but he's just watching us. Face a calm, unreadable mask. What is he thinking?
“How do you make your Ina Bauers so fucking graceful?”
When Evan grins at me, that bright light in his eyes, the world shifts on its axis all over again.