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Tommy knows, from the moment he wakes up, that he’s sick.
There’s a telltale tickle in the back of his throat that won’t go away. Eventually it turns to a scratch, like sandpaper, and then to a burn he can’t wash down with water.
This has happened before, he thinks as his nose starts to run, as his eyes burn and cheeks go hot. This has happened before, he thinks as the fever chills set in, as his limbs start to ache and coughs itch at his lungs. This has happened before, and he made it through. This has happened before, and he can still skate.
His practice isn’t until noon, but by the time noon arrives, he feels like he’s been taken out back and swirled around a gutter. His head pounds, brain physically pulsing within his skull, and every ten seconds he has to pause whatever he’s doing to cough into his elbow. He feels, quite frankly, like hell. Snotty, warm, and miserable. But he still has practice, and he’s never let this sort of thing stop him before.
He packs his bag with shaking hands and heads to the rink.
His parents aren’t home, a consequence of a three-day holiday they’d gone on while Tommy’s skating schedule wasn’t quite as intense as during the Olympics. Not nearly as intense, he thinks, because his old coach is gone and he has Eret, now. Eret, whose kind patience is a stark contrast to his old coach’s strict demands. Eret, who smiles at him when he makes a mistake, and offers tips to help him fix it instead of making him go again and again until it’s perfect. Until his chest burns and his legs feel like jelly beneath him. Until he physically can’t anymore, but has to anyway because, if he doesn’t, it just means more. More harsh words and cold glances. More skating and moving and repeating, again and again, and even after the hundredth rep it’s still not good enough.
Eret is not like that, and somewhere in the back of Tommy’s head, he thinks he knows that.
He thinks he knows—walking into the rink with glossy eyes and fatigued limbs—that Eret would let him go home if he asked. He thinks his new coach would understand. But there’s a difference between thinking you know and really knowing. And Tommy does not really know.
What he does really know is that, the last time he told a coach he was sick and asked to sit out, he’d been yelled at and forced to stay an extra hour after practice for being weak. He’d been criticized and berated, forced to work harder than all the days before, and by the end all he wanted to do was curl up on the ice and cry.
So, no, he doesn’t want to tell Eret he’s sick. He’s fine. He can still skate.
He’s early, as usual, so once he gets down to the ice he sets to his normal routine. He sits to lace up his skates, and ignores the dizzy, vertigo sensation he gets upon standing back up. It’s fine. It’s happened before.
He slips out onto the ice, and for a second, it’s easy to forget all the aches and pains. The swish of his blade against frozen ground is a familiar song, and the cool air enveloping his skin as he glides forward is grounding. Although he used to fear practices, used to think that skating would kill him, one day, he could never really hate it. Not truly. Somewhere, deep in his heart, there was always going to be a glowing spot of love for the sport he’d quite literally grown up practicing. It was his art. It just took a little melting to break through to it, sometimes.
That’s what he and Eret had been working on doing: melting the ice. Rediscovering the reason Tommy laced up his skates in the first place. Relearning how to make ice skating as painless as breathing.
Well, maybe breathing wasn’t quite the best example. Not when Tommy inhaled cold, dry, rink air only to immediately dissolve into a coughing fit.
Fuck, he thinks as he skids to a stop against one of the barrier walls. It hurts to breathe in here—the air too dry for his already itchy and congested lungs. It takes him an absurdly long amount of time to catch his breath, coughs wracking his body every time he thinks he’s finally recovered.
When he finally does suck in enough air, he slouches against the barrier and presses his palms to his eyes. The skin around them feels hot and inflamed. There’s no way he doesn’t have a fever. Distantly, he wonders if maybe it’s the flu.
This has happened before, he reminds himself right before the rink doors fly open.
“Tommy! You’re early!”
His new coach greets him the exact same way he always does: warmly, with a beaming smile and excited eyes. His enthusiasm is contagious. On a good day, it sinks into Tommy’s bones and makes him jitter, something akin to excitement racing through his veins at the prospect of taking that enthusiasm out onto the ice. On a bad day, it still serves to make him feel a little lighter, a little less anxious. At least for a little while.
Today, it does the same. Some small amount of weight drops from Tommy’s shoulders as Eret steps out onto the ice.
He’s in a good mood, Tommy thinks, observing his easy grin. His own mouth twitches hesitantly upward to match it, but that’s when it hits him. Like a flipped switch—the bitter, intrusive thoughts that had been pounded and practiced into his skull trickle in.
If I tell him I’m sick, I’ll ruin it.
If I tell him I’m sick, he’ll get mad.
If I tell him I’m sick, he’ll just laugh and tell me to go again. And again. And again. To prove I’m not weak. To punish me.
His smile slips away, but Eret must not notice, because his doesn’t waver. He skates across the ice to get to where Tommy is still standing by the barrier.
“Did you warm up already?” he asks, crouching to pull up the sweats around his ankles. His skates are old, unlike Tommy’s. They’re scuffed and marked, white bleeding into gray and brown at the heels where the color’s faded or worn off.
“There’s nothing quite like a well-worn pair of skates,” Eret had smiled on their third day of practice, right after noting Tommy’s nearly brand new pair of skates. His old coach had always liked him to have newer ones—even though they gave him blisters. He said they looked better on the ice. Cleaner.
Tommy’s current pair aren't quite new, per se. But they definitely aren't old. They're his Olympic pair. He’s had them for maybe three months. Of course, with all the intensive training he’d gone through for the event, they’d broken in quick. Still, they're nothing like Eret’s. Well-worn, well-loved.
They were getting there. Eventually, Eret said, they would get there. Then he wouldn’t have to worry about all the blisters.
“Uh, I did a lap,” Tommy mumbles, fidgeting in place.
“Okay. Let’s do a couple more laps and some stretches, then we can start.”
Throat tickling, Tommy swallows and bobs his head.
This is something else he’s had to get used to: his coach doing warm ups with him. He’s used to being watched, critical eyes trained on him at all times, but Eret takes his gaze off of him to skate with him instead. Sometimes they make a game of it by seeing who can complete a lap fastest. Other times they talk about their days while doing light stretches in the center of the rink. Sometimes, like today, they skate side-by-side in silence. It’s the comfortable type of quiet. The companionable peace that Tommy’s used to sitting in with Tubbo or Ranboo on late nights when they have sleepovers and take a break from talking to scroll their phones. Still, today, it makes Tommy nervous.
The air is eating at his lungs, begging him to cough. His eyes water from holding it in, but he’s too scared to reach up and wipe them. Just in case Eret catches on.
Instead, he holds it in. They finish the first lap and do two more before moving into the center of the rink, where Eret guides him through a quick couple of exercises before starting the lesson. By that point, Tommy feels like his lungs are about to burst. His nose is running, but he wipes it as discreetly as he can on the back of his glove, and doesn’t dare sniffle. His eyes are burning and the world feels ever so slightly loopy, but this has happened before. This has happened before, and Tommy knows that it doesn’t matter. It’s not important. Skating is important.
“How about we start easier,” Eret says, swiveling in a circle to face Tommy. “Some power rockers and cross strokes? Front and back? Then we can move into jumps. What do you think?”
Tommy nods again, not trusting himself not to cough if he opens his mouth.
And so it goes. For the next ten minutes, Tommy steers himself through power rockers and cross strokes. Realistically, they’re more advanced skills, but for an Olympic athlete they’re nothing. He does them easily, and complies when Eret suggests adding double three turns to the mix.
“Looking good!” Eret praises as Tommy makes it back to him again. “We can move on to jumps, now. And then, I was thinking… Are you okay?”
The subject change is abrupt. Like a deer in headlights, Tommy’s eyes widen, and he instinctively pulls his arms tight around his center. “Yeah? I’m– I’m fine. Whatdyou mean?”
“Your eyes just look sort of… glassy. Are you sure you’re okay? Does something hurt?”
Eret starts to skate closer, but Tommy slides back and he freezes.
“No, no. I’m fine. It’s okay. Just the cold air stinging my eyes, I think. What– What sort of jumps are we doing?”
For a second, Eret looks like he’s about to press further. His brow furrows, and his chin tilts down in this weird, contemplative way that makes Tommy’s heart skip a beat in anticipation. But, finally, he hums and skates back away from Tommy—giving him space. Not pushing.
“How about we do some axels and luxes? No need for doubles or anything fancy yet, but we can work our way up.”
“Okay.”
Tommy skates forward, doing a neat loop around Eret before starting his axel. He presses down with his feet and snaps his arms down, doing a quick one and half rotation in the air before landing on his left foot and gliding back, arms outstretched. The move is familiar, one he’d practiced over and over again with his old coach. One he’d performed. Normally, it’s one of his favorites simply because it feels like flying. Taking to the air makes him feel untouchable, and the glide after—when the world comes whirling back into focus—is where he exhales and lets it all go. Of course, with his old coach, he’d always been faking the relief. The soft sink into the ice had been material only—used to make his dance seem effortless. In reality, he’d landed every axel and panicked, immediately running over the million tiny things he knew he’d done wrong.
He still does that. He still notices his footing was a little wobbly upon landing, and he hadn’t quite tucked his knee high enough in the jump. Overshadowing that, though, is an overbearing sense of dread as he realizes the reason he’s wobbly is because his vision is still slightly spinning. He feels hot and sticky and sick, and all he wants to do is lay down and press his forehead to the ice. But—
“Good!” Eret cheers from across the rink. “Try your opposite side, now!”
But this has happened before, and last time Tommy tried to stop skating because he was sick, it hadn’t gone well.
So he sucks it up and goes again.
Skate forward. Press both feet into the ground, evenly spaced. Round your arms, then straighten. Squeeze up as you jump. Pull your knee higher! Do not come down until you’ve turned twice and then—
Tommy’s leg wobbles as he lands, fatigued limbs threatening to give out on him, and he stumbles out of the turn. He throws his arms out, using one to hold his balance as the other flies up to his head. He can feel his heartbeat pounding in his skull. It’s painful, dizzying, and his head feels like it’s being squeezed simultaneously with his lungs, which are still trying to force a cough out through his burning throat.
“Tommy!” Eret calls out.
Tommy’s too busy catching his balance and blinking away the lightheadedness to look up, but he hears Eret’s skates swishing against the rink. He’s coming closer. Oh no. Oh god. He’s going to be so pissed because Tommy messed up that turn and it’s normally not that difficult but he just feels like crap and it’s hot and his nose is running and—
“Sorry, I—” Tommy starts, but he shouldn’t have spoken, because now the cough he’d been pressing down—smothering—finally finds its way up. He coughs once, the sound dry and hacking, and then he can’t stop. He coughs and coughs, lungs spazzing as they expel the air he’d kept locked inside for half of his practice.
At some point, he feels Eret’s hand on his back. It makes him flinch, but all his new coach does is rub tiny circles into his shirt, patiently waiting for him to catch his breath.
“Sorry,” he mumbles out as soon as he’s got enough air. “Sorry, I didn’t– I messed up the turn– Let me try again and I’ll–”
“Tommy,” Eret interrupts, but it’s not harsh and condescending like his old coach would say his name after he messed something up. Tommy’s name drips from Eret’s mouth quietly, warmly, like he's pouring a cup of hot chocolate. “Tommy, don’t worry about that right now, okay? Can you look at me for a second?”
Finally getting his breath under control, Tommy straightens from his hunched place on the ice. Eret meets him, pressing a hand to his forehead and pausing before pulling back.
“Tommy,” he says again, eyes wide, “you’re burning up. Practically melting. Why didn’t you tell me you were sick?”
Tommy swallows around the burning in his throat. “S’not important. I’m still here. I can still skate. I just messed up that one jump. But I can go again.”
He meets Eret’s gaze warily, timidly, and waits for the inevitable. Waits to be called weak, or scoffed at, or—worse—to be told to do what he’d suggested and go again. Again and again and again.
This has happened before.
Instead, Eret’s brow creases. “What are you talking about? Go again? Tommy, I just said you’re melting. Of course that’s important. You should be resting.”
“Resting?”
Eret slides backward, and Tommy instinctively follows him as he skates toward the exit.
“Yes, resting. You know, staying in bed, drinking lots of fluids, taking naps.” Eret huffs an amused laugh. “Even Olympic-level skaters need to take care of themselves, Tommy.”
Tommy frowns. They reach the rink’s exit, and he stumbles out after Eret.
“Where are we going?” he asks, and this time he can’t help the sniffle that accompanies his words. “What about practice?”
“Tommy, you’re sick. We’re canceling practice.”
Tommy’s eyes widen. “What?” he exclaims, then sneezes.
Eret smiles sympathetically. “You can’t skate sick, Tommy. You shouldn’t skate sick. It’s not healthy.”
Somewhere in the back of Tommy’s fever delirious brain, he thinks he knew that. But thinking you know and actually knowing are still two different things.
He ducks his head and fidgets on his skates.
“I’m sorry.”
A warm hand lands on his shoulder. “Don’t apologize. It’s not your fault. And anyway—”
Tommy looks up, and is met with a kind smile and scheming eyes.
“—I have a better idea for what we can do today. Come on. Sit down and take off your skates. Let’s get out of this freezing cold rink.”
<<>>
Fifteen minutes later, Tommy finds himself inside a tiny café just outside the rink with not only Eret, but the whole SMP hockey team. Techno sits to his left, Wilbur on his right as they drink hot chocolate and warm lattes. They’d brought his jersey with them, and Tommy had quickly slung it over his head and burrowed himself into its warmth as they all settled in. Wilbur also brought a red and gold, fleece blanket “for the chills,” which rests over Tommy’s knees as he quietly sips his hot cocoa.
“And then, you’ll never believe this, Tommy,” Sapnap blathers. He’s been rambling about some hockey game he watched yesterday ever since they arrived, and maybe Tommy would find it interesting if he hadn’t been feeling so drowsy. The combination of the warm café, jersey, hot chocolate, and his family surrounding him forced him to recognize the fatigue he’d been dealing with all day. He’s exhausted. And—as Sapnap rambles on and Wilbur presses closer, offering him a shoulder to lean his head against while he listens—he has a feeling the whole team knows this.
He leans his head against Wilbur’s shoulder and sighs, sinking into the booth they’re all crowded inside. Eret’s across from him, sipping lightly on some sort of herbal tea he’d ordered. George and Quackity sit beside him, and Sapnap beside them. Schlatt’s squished next to the window, right next to Technoblade, and then there’s Tommy and Wilbur. Wilbur, who had brought ibuprofen. A godsend, honestly. It’s only been a few minutes since Tommy took it, and he already feels ten times better.
Better enough to fall asleep, actually. Better enough for his eyes to droop, hands loosening their hold around Wilbur’s blanket as he drifts dangerously close to unconsciousness.
“Is he asleep?” Schlatt whispers at some point, and only then does Tommy realize his eyes have slid shut. He’s too tired to bother opening them, though.
“Yeah,” George whispers back. He laughs a little—quiet and fond. “You guys think he dribbles?”
“Be nice. He’s sick,” Wilbur hisses, but he’s not actually mad. Tommy can tell.
The shoulder he’s leaned against shifts, and an arm wraps around his shoulders, pulling him closer.
“I never would have held practice if I’d known,” Tommy hears Eret sigh from across the table. “He was obviously struggling with something, but I didn’t realize he was sick until I felt his forehead.”
“Don’t worry about it, Eret. He probably just didn’t tell you cause he was scared,” Techno says.
“I wish he wasn’t.”
“Me too. But that doesn’t change the fact that he is, and probably will be for a little while longer. At least you brought him here. Showed him you care. You’re a good coach.”
“… Thank you, Techno.”
Silence falls over the table, marred only by the sipping of drinks. Tommy debates opening his eyes and contributing to the conversation, but it seems like a real effort. Plus, he sort of likes this half awake, half asleep state he’s in. Drifting, suspended. Like the middle of an axel jump, right before the world spins back into view.
“We should draw a mustache on him,” someone says.
“Sapnap!”
“What!”
“I can’t wait for the whole team to get sick so we can pass it on to Sapnap and draw mustaches on him while he naps.”
“Hey, personally, I’d love a mustache.”
“Yeah? Come here and let me give you one right now.”
“With what, George?”
“Mmm… My coffee grinds.”
“Ew, that’s gross.”
“Come heerreee Sapnap, Sappy-Nappy, Snapchat—”
“George!”
“Shh! The kid’s fucking asleep, and you two have the audacity—”
“How are we going to leave? Are we supposed to wake him up?”
“Nah, I’ll just carry him.”
Buried under a warm blanket and jersey, with hot chocolate in his stomach and a significantly less painful headache, Tommy can’t help but think about how this never would have happened with his old coach. With his old coach, he’d still be on the ice. He’d still be smothering his coughs and forcing his legs not to tremble. He’d still be facing a pounding headache without the relief of ibuprofen, or the warmth and security of a family surrounding him, or the sympathy of a new coach who cares about him. Because Eret, he now really knows, cares about him.
This has never happened before.
He hopes it’ll happen again.