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As the off-season began Chuuya was quickly finding out something about the rink where Fukuzawa trained his students: it was kind of fun.
They didn’t need to spend as much time practicing now. Dazai and Chuuya both had signed up for a few ice shows and were starting to plan their new programs, but in the early part of the off-season they didn’t dedicate too much time to either of these things, preferring to allow themselves some time to relax. They deserved it, especially after the exhausting marathon that was last season.
Because there was less focus on competitions and programs, Chuuya had more of an opportunity to see who his rinkmates were. Not everyone who trained there was coached by Fukuzawa, though most of them knew him and it seemed the coaches were friends. Compared to where Chuuya and Dazai had been training before, it felt like a really friendly atmosphere.
It was during one of Chuuya and Dazai’s more relaxed sessions on the ice that Chuuya met the ice dancers.
He didn’t know much about the other disciplines of figure skating. Pairs skating looked like something he didn’t really want to touch and ice dance was something he didn’t comprehend. Whatever the ice dancers were doing on the ice at any given moment looked beautiful — it was mostly actual skating without the distraction of jumps. But Chuuya could not look at an ice dancing routine and tell whether it was better than the others. The scoring system was a mystery to him.
During a short break Chuuya watched the two ice dancers do a run-through of one of their programs. They both looked slightly younger than Dazai and himself. The man was lanky and had hair that looked almost orange, while the woman had black hair that had been done up in a bun. She looked very refined.
The program was upbeat. Chuuya enjoyed watching as they launched themselves into a sequence of synchronized twizzles, spins that traveled across the ice. It looked impressive, how in sync they were. There was not a movement out of place.
“Think we could do that?”
Chuuya almost jumped at the sound of Dazai’s voice. He hadn’t expected Dazai to come up behind him like that, although Dazai had only left briefly to get some water.
“We can do that,” he pointed out. Twizzles without another person were often part of step-sequences and Chuuya enjoyed them.
Dazai scoffed. “So simple-minded. I meant do you think we can do them in sync?”
Chuuya turned towards him. “With each other?”
Dazai grinned. “Chuuya looked like he wanted to be an ice dancer and who would be a better partner than I, Dazai Osamu?”
“Anyone else,” Chuuya said.
Dazai looked heartbroken. “I’m hurt. You don’t think I can work with others?”
“No.”
“We’re dating. Surely that means something.”
“I —” Chuuya didn’t actually know if it did.
“Come on, Chuuya,” Dazai insisted. “It can’t be that hard.”
Chuuya had never tried to do something in sync with someone else, and he was sure it was the same for Dazai. There wasn’t really a reason to. Singles skating was something so individual that sometimes Chuuya forgot that skating with other people was a thing that people did.
“We can even ask them to teach us,” Dazai added.
“Ask — wait, we don’t even know who they are,” Chuuya said. “They probably don’t want to deal with our shit while they’re training.”
“I do know who they are,” Dazai said.
Chuuya glanced at him, curious.
“I can’t believe you don’t,” Dazai added. “Tanizaki Junichiro and Tanizaki Naomi, Japan’s top ice dancers and one of the few ice dancing teams that are comprised of siblings.”
“Huh?”
“Naomi-kun and Tanizaki-kun both started out as singles skaters but were so good at skating together they figured they could put that to use,” Dazai said. “And it’s good they did, because Japan only has like three ice dance teams.”
“Really?” That was a surprise to Chuuya considering how Japan seemed to have an endless amount of mens and ladies single skaters. It also partially explained why Chuuya didn’t know much about ice dancing.
“They’re moving Japanese ice dancing forward,” Dazai said. “They’re really good, which is popularizing the discipline, and gaining international attention as well, which in turn —”
“And you want to bother them with our bullshit,” Chuuya interrupted.
Dazai shrugged. “It’s the off-season.” He grabbed Chuuya and dragged him on to the ice before Chuuya could protest any further.
Not that Chuuya made a huge effort to resist. When he trained under Mori, doing something like this was unthinkable. They kept to themselves and weren’t allowed to waste time, even in the off-season.
And he was curious.
“Hey!” Dazai called out to the siblings. “I have a question for you if you have the time. I’m Dazai Osamu and this is my friend Nakahara Chuuya.”
The two of them stared as Dazai and Chuuya came to a stop.
“We know who you are,” Naomi said after a moment, smiling. Her brother looked star-struck. “You both did really well this season.”
“Thanks,” Chuuya said.
Dazai beamed at her. “And we know who you are too, considering how much you’re doing for ice dancing at the moment. It’s really amazing that —”
“What do you want?” Naomi interrupted.
Dazai blinked.
“We know who you are,” Naomi said, “which means we know that most of your flattery doesn’t come without a reason.” She didn’t seem upset about it, only amused.
“Most of my flattery,” Dazai said. Chuuya nudged him. “That being said...we were wondering if you could show us how to twizzle in sync. Chuuya doesn’t seem to think we can. I figured that if we both know how to twizzle, then we should be able to do it together, right?”
Naomi stifled a laugh. “That isn’t bad logic.” She didn’t say whether or not it was good logic, though, which worried Chuuya. “Let me see.”
“Come on.” Dazai pulled Chuuya towards one end of the rink. “We’ll begin skating across the rink and then when I say ‘go’ we’ll start twizzling.”
“Twizzling,” Chuuya repeated.
“Ready?”
Chuuya nodded, and Dazai started skating forward.
It wasn’t hard for Chuuya to keep pace with Dazai. They were both going kind of slow in anticipation of what they were about to try.
“Go!”
Chuuya started his twizzles without looking at Dazai. He assumed they were rotating the same way at the same speed, until he felt something crash into his arm. It was enough to knock him over and he fell. When he looked up, Dazai was also on the ice, giving him an apologetic smile.
“I was trying to get closer to you,” he explained, “and failed.”
“No shit,” Chuuya said. He stood up and brushed ice off himself. “Where we at least in sync?” He looked up at the siblings.
They both shook their heads.
“Damn it.”
“It’s okay, Chuuya,” Dazai said, looping an arm around Chuuya’s shoulders. “It can’t have been that bad.”
“It was bad,” Naomi said.
Her brother was still staring at them. “Are you dating or something?”
“Yeah,” Chuuya said, a bit defensive. “What of it?”
Tanizaki smiled. “I guess dating really doesn’t help that sort of thing.”
“Huh?”
“Some ice dancers are married,” Naomi said, “or in a relationship. Some people believe that can make for better teams, but it doesn’t. Your body language suggests that you’re close, but you still...can’t work together, apparently.”
“But all ice dancers can twizzle,” Dazai said.
“It’s a bit of a learning curve to get in sync with someone,” Naomi said. “We can’t exactly call out to the other person to tell them when to start. Having a set choreography helps with that, but starting and ending at the same time and actually being in sync while doing it is difficult.”
“We need choreography,” Chuuya murmured.
Tanizaki shook his head. “Just skate across the rink, and once you reach the halfway point you start. But you have to keep the same distance away from each other at all times, otherwise you might crash into the other person. And the same speed. And then you have to stop at the same time.”
“Sounds...okay.” It didn’t sound terrible, but at the same time it sounded very difficult.
“We can help you at first by calling out to adjust what you’re doing,” Naomi added. “So let’s try it.”
This time around, Chuuya found it easier to just skate since they had a concrete starting point that wasn’t Dazai just arbitrarily telling him to start. He went into his spins and couldn’t really see what Dazai was doing, since he was just a blur.
“You’re drifting, Dazai-san!” Tanizaki called out.
They stopped just before the end of the rink.
“I know you’re capable of not drifting,” Chuuya said.
“I don’t want to hit you,” Dazai said. “And I’m trying to keep the same distance.”
Chuuya figured that the hesitation caused by those two things were making Dazai drift off-course.
“Let’s try that again,” Naomi said.
They turned around and started across the rink again.
This time, once they started spinning, Naomi called out, “you’re both out of sync and one of you is ahead of the other.”
They stopped, and sure enough, Chuuya was ahead of Dazai by a few feet.
Naomi seemed to be deep in thought. “It seems like you spin a lot faster than your partner, Nakahara-san.”
“Partner,” Dazai mouthed, grinning.
Chuuya ignored him. “Faster?”
“You do spin fast,” Dazai said. “You’ve always been a faster spinner.”
“Let him see what you’re doing on your own,” Naomi said. “Then he can figure out what he needs to adjust.”
Chuuya wondered why he was the one adjusting his speed to match Dazai’s rather than the other way around, but maybe it was easier to get in sync when the speed was slower.
Dazai started across the ice, Chuuya following without spinning so he could see Dazai’s spins. They were, in fact, slower. Not by too much, but by enough that it would have been very noticable.
It was Dazai’s normal speed, too, but Chuuya had never put their spinning side-to-side to compare them this way.
“I see,” Chuuya said. He was capable of slowing down. It would just take more concentration.
“Let’s try again,” Naomi said.
They started again, Chuuya making a concentrated effort to spin at the rate Dazai had been spinning. It felt a bit weird to start spinning more slowly, but he got used to it.
He and Dazai reached the other end of the rink at the same time.
Naomi smiled. “That was almost there. Since your speed forward and your rotation are almost the same now, it’s easier for you two to get closer to being in sync. Now try to focus more on your partner so you start at the exact same time and position and maintain it, and then exit out of your spins at the exact same time.”
Chuuya didn’t know how to do that. He assumed he’d have to be looking at Dazai, and judging from what he’d seen Naomi and her brother doing earlier they wouldn’t be able to slow down to make sure. It had to look seamless. He wondered why he was holding himself to the standard of two elite ice dancers when he wasn’t one, but it seemed like it was in his nature to want to excel at whatever he was doing. Including synchornized twizzles.
This time, once they were halfway across the ice, Chuuya looked at Dazai and tried to match his movements. Except Dazai was looking at Chuuya and trying to match him, which meant both of them slowed down and lost their momentum.
“Shit,” Chuuya said.
“Try again,” Naomi said.
Chuuya was surprised that she didn’t have any changes for them, but maybe this was something they just needed to practice. They started again.
This time they didn’t lose momentum, but they weren’t quite in sync either. Chuuya found himself annoyed now that he was looking at Dazai and noticing where they differed and being unable to really correct for it.
This was taking a while. Chuuya felt slightly guilty. “I hope we’re not taking up too much of your practice.”
Naomi shrugged. “It’s your practice time too, right? And this is the most fun we’ve had with singles skaters so far.”
Chuuya wondered what other kinds of fun they’d had with singles skaters.
“Come on, Chuuyaaa,” Dazai said. “I won’t rest until we get at least one set of twizzles in sync.”
Chuuya shared the sentiment — actually felt like he needed to get one set of twizzles in sync in order to leave practice satisfied.
They crossed the rink a few more times, and while they were close, there was always just one small thing off. Chuuya couldn’t quite figure out what it was, but he felt it less and less as they kept going. His awareness of Dazai next to him increased, and unlike at the beginning it wasn’t bothersome or even unusual. He was just aware, and it felt more comfortable as time went on.
He couldn’t say for sure what changed when they went across the rink for the fifteenth time. Right before they went into their twizzles, Chuuya locked eyes with Dazai. It wasn’t long. It couldn’t be long, because of the speed they were skating at, but the flash of connection between them seemed to draw Chuuya to Dazai, so that when they started spinning, Chuuya was spinning as if he and Dazai were the same person.
Dazai must have felt it too, because when they stopped his eyes were wide. Then he broke into a smile, and they didn’t need Naomi to tell them that they’d accomplished their goal.
“You did it,” Naomi said anyway, right before Dazai threw his arms around Chuuya.
“You’re gonna knock me over,” Chuuya said, his voice muffled by Dazai’s chest, but he was really happy they’d managed to make it work. Their discipline was so isolating that it felt nice to accomplish something on the ice with someone else, and especially with Dazai.
Dazai pulled away slightly, and Chuuya took that opportunity to kiss him. Dazai deepened the kiss beyond what was probably appropriate for being in the company of others, and Tanizaki cleared his throat.
Chuuya pulled away. “Thank you,” he said to the two ice dancers. “That was a lot of fun.”
“Like I said, it was fun for us too. Right?” She glanced at her brother.
He nodded. “It’s not everyday someone comes to an ice dancer to ask to learn something.”
“Who knows,” Dazai said. “Maybe we’ll come back and ask to learn those spins you two do together where you hold each other. Or lifts. Do you think I could lift Chuuya?”
“No,” Naomi said. “He might be able to lift you, though.”
Dazai gasped. “I feel insulted.”
Naomi laughed and her brother checked his watch, looking surprised at the time. “Ah! We have to go, but we’ll see you again, right?”
Dazai and Chuuya nodded and waved goodbye as Naomi and her brother left the rink.
Once they were gone, Dazai turned to Chuuya and placed two hands on his shoulders. “Lead me in a dance, Chuuya.”
Chuuya laughed, but he placed one hand on Dazai’s shoulder and the other on Dazai’s waist. “We’ll fall.”
“I don’t mind falling with you.”
“How cheesy.”
Together they shuffled along the ice.
“Those stationary spins that they do together would be nice to do with you,” Dazai murmured. “I never get to hold anyone while skating.”
“It would be something,” Chuuya said. “We make a good team, don’t we.”
“A good team, good rivals.” Dazai grinned. “Like we were made to highlight each other.”
“We do, don’t we.”
“And yet, we can only ice dance together like two kids who just learned how to skate,” Dazai teased.
Chuuya abruptly dipped Dazai. It was hard to keep his balance, but he managed it, and he didn’t drop Dazai in the process.
Dazai looked up at him, his smile growing wider. “You take everything as a challenge, don’t you.”
Chuuya wanted to lean over and kiss Dazai while they were in this position but he knew he couldn’t manage it, so he pulled Dazai up again. “What of it?”
Dazai laughed and leaned forward so that their lips were almost touching. His eyes were bright. “I never want you to stop.”