Blades of Glory Pre-slash

[ordinaryanomaly]

Title: Without Reason

 

Author: ashleigh_lin

Pairing: quasi-C/J? Pre-slash...ish.

 

Rating: T for language and innuendo

 

Word Count: ~1,700

 

Summary: How do you teach someone to have fun? Can such a thing be taught?

 

*Author’s Note: It’s probably too serious for this fandom. I apologize. This was inspired by that unreasonably heartbreaking line of Jimmy’s: “But I’m a skater—there’s nothing to move on to!”

Disclaimer: Uh, I don't own it. But much like Hector, I wish I did.

 

“Chazz?”

 

BANG! “Ow! Shit, MacElroy, I thought you were sleeping,”

 

Jimmy sat up, half-heartedly rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “I was. What’re you doing?”

 

“None of your business,” Chazz hissed.

 

“Fine.” Jimmy deliberately raised his voice a decibel. “Then I guess you won’t care if I tell Coach--”

 

“Shhh! Jeeze you’re annoying. If you must know I’m going to skate,”

 

Jimmy furrowed his eyebrows. “But…we skate everyday. It’s, like, six o’clock. If you just a wait a few hours, you can--”

 

“I don’t mean skate for practice. That’s boring. And stressful. I want to get out there and skate for fun for a little while, you know?”

 

Frankly, Jimmy didn’t know. If he’d ever “skated for fun,” it had been so long ago it escaped his memory. Darren MacElroy had certainly not encouraged such ideas.

 

Jimmy had been quiet too long and Chazz was nearly out of the bedroom when he asked softly, “Can I come?”

 

Chazz winced. He was about to turn around and tell his “partner” in no uncertain terms that at least half of what made the practices so maddening was his presence, so no he damn well couldn’t come… What actually emerged from his mouth was slightly different.

 

“Just don’t get in my way,”

 

But Jimmy was hardly listening, already dressed and bundling up. “Isn’t that my line Michaels?” he threw over his shoulder. Chazz snorted. Okay so sometimes the kid was mildly entertaining. He was still mostly annoying.

 

There was a small, frozen pond down the lane from the cabin, and Chazz set a brisk pace. Neither man spoke on the way, each lost in his own thoughts. Jimmy was mostly wishing he hadn’t forgotten his Chapstick—he could feel his lips drying out already. Chazz was thinking about…well, Chazz was thinking about what he always thought about, and how he hadn’t got any of it in several weeks. Which was at least partially responsible for this little excursion. As much as he loved the ladies, not one of them had ever satisfied him as his Number One mistress did.

 

When they got to the pond there were several early-birds there already, primarily children accompanied by a few bleary-eyed adults. Chazz plopped down on a bench and changed into his skates, then pushed out onto the ice. Jimmy watched him for a moment before following suit. He was a little…not afraid, really, but nervous. Apprehensive. He’d never done this before. What were the expectations? What were the rules? Finally he decided to practice some of the movements he’d learned from Jesse yesterday.

 

He arranged his face into the familiar general smile and began the new portion of the routine. “Hey!” Jimmy jolted when he was interrupted and turned to see Chazz standing very near.

 

“What?”

 

Chazz was observing him with a slightly perturbed expression. “You’re not a performer here, MacElroy. There’s no audience and no judges,”

 

Jimmy didn't understand. “I don’t understand,”

 

Chaz huffed. “You don’t have to upstage me out here. No one’s paying attention,”

 

“But I wasn’t!”

 

“Uh-huh. Right.” The older man was scowling, and turned on his heel.

 

“I’ve never done this before!” Jimmy blurted before he could stop himself, then immediately wished he could call the words back. This would surely give Chazz loads more ammunition against him.

 

“Never done what before?” Chazz looked skeptical. Obviously the other man had skated before, so what the hell was he talking about?

 

“This! This ‘skating for fun’ thing!” ‘Okay Jimmy, zip it!’ his brain was screaming at his mouth. Said mouth apparently had no intentions of listening. Could a mouth listen? In any case, it continued. “When I was younger all I did was train for competition. There wasn’t any time for fun. And I don’t think my dad would have liked it.” Jimmy was looking at the ground by this time, scuffing his skates.

 

“Poor little rich boy!” Chazz scoffed.

Jimmy lifted his head so sharply he thought he might have gotten whiplash. “I knew you wouldn’t--”  But Chazz wasn’t sneering nor was there a trace of malice in his expression. He smiled a little and held his hand out, and Jimmy was slapped in the face by déjà vu. It was just like during Nationals. “We can do this,”  he’d said then, and he’d sounded so sure; Jimmy hadn’t had to think twice about believing him.

 

“You can do this.” Chazz’s impish wink proved the wording was purposeful, and Jimmy couldn’t help but smile back. He took the offered hand.

 

“There’s nothing to it. It’s just like sex,”

 

Jimmy yanked his hand away. “God, does everything have to come back to that with you?”

 

Chazz shrugged. “It’s my cross to bear,”

 

“Yeah, well maybe ‘bear’ it a little less around me? It’s so vulgar and…dirty,”

 

“Jeeze, you’d think you were a virgin or something, MacElroy,” Chazz snickered.

 

“So what if I am?!” Jimmy demanded tightly. “What’s wrong with wanting to wait for the right person?” His voice had become progressively higher in direct correlation with his rising indignation.

 

Chazz raised his hands in the universal position for surrender. “Sorry, man. Didn’t mean any offense," In a very low voice he continued, “And it explains so much.”

 

“What was that?” Jimmy asked crossly.

 

“Nothing. Alright so, free-styling is easy. Just do what feels good.”

 

“What feels good? What does that mean?” Chazz might as well have stuck with his sex explanation. Both concepts were equally foreign. The few times he’d decided to go with a feeling in one of his routines he’d been harshly castigated by Darren for straying from the program. He didn’t even know if he could separate feeling from instruction anymore.

 

Chazz was at a similar loss. How was he supposed to explain feeling? Very suddenly he lost whatever jealousy he might have harbored for the prodigy and his “charmed” life. He actually felt kind of bad for the kid. Skating should be done first and foremost for enjoyment—everything else, competition and gold, though nice, was secondary.

 

“Just…just forget about routines and performing and do what you like. The ice doesn’t care if you land a perfect triple axle or if you’re smiling. It doesn't care about anything. So the only thing you have to do is skate for you.”

 

“Skate for me?”

 

“Uh-huh. Here,” Chazz grabbed Jimmy’s hand again and jerked him along—hard enough that the younger man had to windmill his other arm to keep his balance. “What--?”

 

“Skate for you,” Chazz said and shrugged, then let Jimmy go. He picked up some speed and pulled a single axle—nailing it of course—then stopped and began skating backwards. Jimmy thought he was singing something, but he was too far away to make out the lyrics clearly. At least he didn't think there was anything about "lady humps" in it.

 

Jimmy stopped watching his partner and began fooling around on his own. He was on a relatively isolated patch of ice—most of the children were further along, toward Chazz’s end. ‘Skate for me,’ repeated in his head like a mantra. He did a few spins and axles, but he mostly just screwed around, skating without performing. It was wierd. At first. 

 

He relaxed eventually, and began to really enjoy himself. He was having fun! He laughed delightedly as he went into one of his contortionist spins purely because he wanted to, and didn’t worry a bit about execution or how it would look to a judge or his fans. It felt…good.

 

“Chazz! I’m skating for fun!”

 

“Congrats!” the older man called back, and Jimmy didn’t even get offended at the tone that said Chazz was probably rolling his eyes. He laughed again.

 

“Hey! Can we try a throw triple axle?”

 

“Why?”

 

Yesterday, even earlier today, Jimmy might have said that they hadn’t completely mastered it yet, so of course he wanted to practice. Now, however…“Because I want to!”

 

“Ye-heah! Let’s do it!”

 

Chazz came to his end of the pond, because the move did require a certain amount of space to complete. They assumed the waltz position and soon Jimmy was sailing through the air—a bit too far, as Chazz had a habit of doing, but it was alright. He landed, wobbled a little, and stayed on his feet. Victory!

 

Then it all went to hell when some little urchin crashed into him, taking them both down. He heard Chazz snickering as he stood, and glared even as he helped the little boy up.

 

“That was so cool,” the kid said with a gap toothed grin. Jimmy guessed him to be about seven or eight.

 

“Thanks,” Jimmy smiled.

 

“Are you, like, famous or something? ‘Cause you should be. That was awesome!” he reiterated.

 

Jimmy stared at the boy, stared at all the people around, and realized none of them, with the exception of Chazz, had the slightest idea who he was. He waited for the jolt of despair that had always accompanied that realization in the past three years. But it never came. This time, instead of making him feel like a nobody-has-been it felt…well it felt pretty good. Freeing, like a release of pressure. Chazz was right. These people didn’t expect anything from him. They just wanted to skate. For fun.

 

And now, so did Jimmy.

 

“Hey!” The boy was tugging at his coat, and Jimmy looked down, happier than he could remember being in a very long time.

 

“Yes?”

 

“You’re pretty. Will you be my girlfriend?”

 

Jimmy blushed all the way to the tips of his ears, and distantly he heard Chazz fall to the ice howling with laughter. He sputtered at the kid, but didn’t answer. He turned around and glared viciously at the older man, who of course didn’t notice—he was still laughing—and stalked away. “Douche!” he called over his shoulder.

 

“See, see!” Chazz heaved through his mad chortles, “I told you MacElroy—you’re my pretty lady!”

 

“Shut up!”

 

“Aw, she’s blushing!”

 

“I swear, if you don’t stop right now…”

 

“What?”

 

“I’ll—I’ll…”

 

Chazz stood up and his eyes were sparkling with mirth. “What?”

 

Jimmy kissed him. Completely impulsively. It was chaste, close mouthed, and much too hard…but it was a kiss. And it left the great Chazz Michael Michaels speechless. “Buh-buh--” he tried but couldn’t seem to get anything else out.

 

Jimmy was quite stunned himself, and a little bit scared. Wait, that wasn’t right. He was stunned…and completely terrified.

 

“OW!!!!” Chazz burst out suddenly. Both men looked down to find the little boy from a moment ago glaring mutinously at the dark haired man.

 

“Hey! You can’t kiss my girlfriend like that mister. That is not cool!” Then he kicked Chazz again in the foot, toppling the big oaf.

 

This time it was Jimmy’s turn to point and laugh, as Chazz scrambled after the kid, cursing and making threats.

 

He wasn’t ashamed at all to admit it was partially in relief.

 

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x-posted like whoa--the cut goes to my journal.