FroggTales

Title: Acceptance is a Four-Letter Word (part 2)
Author: thefrogg
Beta: None yet
Disclaimer: Never happened, never will, and I don't own these people. Although sometimes I wish I did.
Warnings: weirdness (as if that's unexpected with me as an author), angst
Summary: Johnny Weir refused to let go of his Olympic dreams, despite age and injury. Five months before the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, he stopped talking to anyone outside his coach. Now he's in Sochi early, and the rest of his generation of skaters are determined to find out why the last of them still competing has gone missing in spirit, if not in body.

Tanith knocks quietly on the door; Stéphane lets her in, no, drags her in, one hand clamped on a wrist and stopping her just far enough inside to close the door behind her. “I—Stéphane, where is—“

“Shhhh, he is sleeping. I just…you can see he is in one piece, and help me with making the bed. Yes?” There’s something manic, something determined in his eyes. It’s the same expression that had been in Stéphane’s eyes some two-plus years before, when he’d…

No. Tanith takes a deep breath, shoves those thoughts aside. “Let me see him?”

“Just. Try not to wake him?”

Tanith nods absently, craning her neck as if to see around Stéphane. “I thought you said—“

“In the bathroom.” Stéphane steps backwards, across the open doorway, and Tanith realizes the shower’s running.

Tanith’s first glimpse of Johnny makes her brain seize up, breath catch in her throat. Her heart seems to stop momentarily, build up pressure, and she can’t suppress a sharp, mournful cry – he looks so wrong there, lax, lying on the floor, and she can’t tell why, her eyes can’t translate the dark strips of visible skin, the fan of his tail, the shadows under the towels, and all she can think of is blood.

“Oh my God,” she moans helplessly; it’s too much like her nightmares, too much like the nightmares much of the skating community has had these past two years, and she goes to her knees, reaching out to touch, to make sure he’s alive. “Johnny?”

“Tanith!” But Stéphane’s hiss of warning comes too late.

Johnny flinches to awareness, looks up blearily, and freezes. “No. Sté…no, no, nononono…” He shake his head wildly, lifting himself on his elbows, shoving backward so his tail slides awkwardly up the side of the tub in his effort to get away.

“Johnny, I—“

“Go away.”

Tanith jerks back as if she’s been slapped, eyes going blurry with tears and finally, finally, she starts seeing properly, realizes why Johnny’s so desperate to get away from her. Knows what he thinks he’s just seen on her face, in her eyes. “Johnny, I thought you were hurt, I thought you were dead, this is—this is amazing, I—“

Johnny’s tail is thrashing now, slamming the side of the tub and the wall next to it, threatening to pull down the shower curtain until Stéphane carefully steps over Tanith to shut the water off with one hand and corral Johnny’s flukes with the other arm and start rubbing again, so not above using Johnny’s sensitivity against him. The wet towels are a mess, lying in sad piles and puddles on the floor, most of Johnny’s lower body exposed.

“Johnny, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean—that wasn’t what you thought, I swear,” Tanith whispers over his quiet, gasping sobs; she only knows he’s crying from the jerky movements of his shoulders and the hitch in his breath, because he’s long since collapsed flat on the floor again, and faces away from her, toward the corner under the sink. She looks up helplessly at Stéphane and cringes at the banked anger in his eyes, knowing there will be little if any help from that quarter as he carefully resettles Johnny’s tail and covers it with the towels again. “Johnny, please, you’re my friend. You think I’m going to hate you because you’re some kind of merfolk? I thought you were hurt again, I never want to see you hurt, not ever, not like that.” Johnny’s shivering under her fingers as she risks a delicate touch to his shoulder, but he doesn’t flinch, doesn’t pull away, and she counts it as a win.

Stéphane mutters in Swisse, something dark and full of murderous implications, Tanith’s sure, as he gets to his feet, and stalks out of the bathroom with a “Do not touch the tail,” snarled down at her just before he vanishes from sight.

“I won’t, I won’t, I promise, I—oh, God.” Tanith’s still rubbing Johnny’s shoulder, fingertips brushing the curls at his neck now and again, and Johnny’s reached up to wrap one semi-coordinated hand around her calf, nails digging into her thigh. “Here, let me…” She straightens her legs, feeling her pants soak through in odd places from the mess of water on the floor, but ignores it as Johnny inches himself closer until his forehead rests against her thigh, one arm around her waist.

Johnny says nothing, just lies there and lets Tanith pet him as Gaga goes on and on in the background, until there’s a knock at the door a nd soft voices in the foyer and a too-reconizable Russian accent.

“Evgeni, Johnny’s fine,” Tanith says clearly, even though she knows it’s a lie; he’s too thin, even for a figure skater, and he has to be a wreck emotionally, between the Trophee Eric Bompard ’10 and the accident and five months of self-imposed isolation and now this, but she doesn’t want a repeat of her own horrified reaction. Johnny’s gone rigid under her hand, and she finds herself whispering, “It’s okay, it’s all right, Johnny,” and rubbing up and down his spine before there’s a soft exclamation in Russian from somewhere above and behind her. She twists around and up to see Evgeni pinching the bridge of his nose, a small half-smile, half-smirk of amused affection on his lips.

“Now why does this not surprise me?”

Johnny lets out a muffled snort of laughter, which makes Tanith squeal – it tickles, and she swats him gently in the shoulder, more of a pat, really.

“Let me get this straight. The magical zebra in winter isn’t…actually magical, but the Swan turns half-dolphin.” Evgeni follows it up with more in Russian, which has Johnny shaking in helpless giggles and clutching at Tanith’s leg. “Someone explain this to me!”

Stéphane slaps his shoulder hard enough to make him jump and spin halfway around in surprise. “I think you just did. Now, help me move him to the bed? Much more comfortable with pillows.”

Evgeni nods. “We can do this.”