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He's just curious, is all.
It's not like it's anything weird—he just wants to see how the guy skates, see what all the fuss is about, whether he's actually any good or what. Maybe Keiichi's not the best guy to ask about whether a figure skater is good, but the Youtube comments will help him out. And it's not like he's embarrassed about wanting to know, because it's not embarrassing—it's normal—but he doesn't want Kouichi to get weird about it either, so. He waits until after dark, until everyone's in bed, and then he pulls his covers up over his head and pulls up a video on his phone.
It can't be too long ago, because Rou doesn't look much younger than he is today—a little thinner, maybe, his hair a little shorter, but nothing drastic. He's not dressed as a cat or anything this time, just in trousers and some kind of weird long-sleeve tshirt with sequins on it—it makes him look skinny, kind of spindly, like if you shoved him he might just go down, no fight.
In the rink, the lights go down and the spotlight comes on. The crowd quiets down. Rou glides into a half-turn at centre ice. Looks up at the camera.
Keiichi doesn't really know how to describe what happens next: there's some jumps and spins that make people in the stands go crazy, and he can kind of see why; it's hard to get that much air, and Rou never seems off balance or even like he cares much at all what he's doing. It's like his body is being controlled by some external force, lifted and dropped and spun around, smoothly and elegantly and without any hesitation or apparent effort at all. There's some other stuff, too, that looks cool, even if the crowd doesn't react so much: a long bit where he makes a lot of sharp turns and reverses exactly in time with the music, in a kind of cool full-ice flow that makes Keiichi go back and watch it again just to see why it looks so slick, but he can't work it out. He closes out with another of those spinning jumps, lands with his knee bent, one leg kicked out. People applaud, throw roses on the ice. The lights come up. Rou bows and smiles, big and bright, waving both hands, and Keiichi pauses the video to stare at it because—it's wrong. He's seen Rou smile, way too much—a crooked, sliding curve that starts on one side of his mouth and slips across, a little smug, when he tips a pass or dodges a check. It's nothing like the smile he shows the judges. This is creepy.
He watches a few more videos, just to be sure. Some of them have silly costumes—spangles and spandex and huge flowing sleeves. Some of them he looks like he's playing dress-up as a normal kid, jeans and tshirts and carefully tousled hair (is that eyeliner? Keiichi rewinds to check). In all of them he skates like it's something that has possession of him, something he can't stop from happening. In all of them he turns that billion-watt smile on the judges at the end.
Keiichi feels weird about it. It's because it's fake, he decides: the skating isn't fake, it's smooth and even and kind of weirdly compelling to watch—he gets how you could want to watch it, almost gets why you could want to do it. But the smile is fake, and it's so obvious and ugly and so much worse than Rou's actual stupid smile that it almost pisses him off. How could none of them have noticed? Are they all stupid?
He wakes up with a start when Kouichi yanks the blankets off him, silent, at 4:30, and when he sits up his phone immediately tumbles off his chest and onto the floor. He scrambles for it before Kouichi can see what's on the screen, then breathes a sigh of relief: it's dead anyway. No evidence.
"Did you fall asleep watching porn," Kouichi says, bland and judgemental, and Keiichi blushes even though he didn't, obviously.
"No!," he yelps, which probably doesn't help his case. Kouichi just raises both eyebrows and says "Practice," which is totally unfair.
-
That Friday they play a full-ice scrimmage, third years against everyone else (with goaltending exceptions), and both Keiichi and Rou make the lineup—Keiichi starting, first pair, and Rou on the second line, centred by Kumano playing out of position. They're not usually out at the same time—coach likes to put out a checking line with the first pair for shutdown, and they stick to that rotation—but then in the second they decide to switch up the special teams, and suddenly Rou and Keiichi are both on the first powerplay unit.
There's no chance of them winning, but they're holding up better than he thought they would, down 9-3 after two. Kosugi manages to put in a fluky one-timer off someone's skate, and then Kai gets a stick in on Ushiyama and coach calls it tripping, and suddenly they're in position to halve the score. Nobody's been checked out, but suddenly it feels like the game is on the line—they won't be satisfied with losing 9-5, but it feels like it might mean something. As they set up around the dot for the draw Keiichi's eyes find Rou's, and Rou nods at him as though they have a play they're going to run—maybe it's a fake-out, maybe it's just boundless confidence, but either way Keiichi finds himself nodding back.
In the end it's not the prettiest goal it could have been. The puck comes up to Keiichi at the point, and he slaps it right into Kouro's left skate; it winds up loose on the Tsunemaru's pads and then everyone's crashing the crease, desperately hacking away, as the goalie flails and tries to cover. Keiichi drifts down into the high slot, betting his chance of getting back against the chance of a big rebound, hoping coach doesn't call him on it later. Nobody has any idea where the puck is.
The pass from Rou is a fluke, a no-look drop between the legs that's probably more a misplay than anything, but it lands square on Keiichi's blade and he wires home a wrister: top shelf, bar down, glove side.
In a real game, someone would probably call interference—Tsunemaru's staring down Ushiyama like he wants to put a bullet in him—but coach calls it good, and somebody hits the switch for the red light. Keiichi doesn't even know what he's yelling—he's just yelling, wordless, as he bounces off the endboards, yelling like they just scored the OT winner in the finals. Ushiyama comes racing in to lift him off his skates, scrub him on the helmet, and at the same time Rou is pointing at him, yelling back, equally wordless: he looks almost pissed off, spotlit in the spinning glow of the goal light, sweaty and wide-eyed and so, so happy, and Keiichi thinks: yeah. That's how you're supposed to look.
They lose 10-5.
Afterwards, Keiichi asks Rou if he wants to go get a milkshake.
Rou says yes.
It's a fucking spectacular day.