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Jack dumps his bag on his bed, unzips it and pulls out his camera. The haus is quiet; too quiet. He had expected to smell baking, and is surprised at the way the smells of dust and the faint, peculiarly male whiff of locker-room put him on edge. He crosses the hallway, listens, pulls open Bitty's door. Bitty's hockey skates are on the bed, next to Señor Bunny. Jack breathes out a breath he hadn't realised he was holding. He smiles, an idea beginning to germinate. He snaps a photograph of the skates.
*****
Samwell is at its beautiful best. The Pond is frozen. "Need to get the ice cleared for shinny" Jack thinks. He wanders around campus, taking photographs here and there. He pops his head into Annie's, hopefully, but there is no flash of bright blond hair. He frowns. "Where is he?"
He ends up at the outdoor ice rink. The loudspeaker is playing pop music. He doesn't recognise the song or the singer; there was little chance that he would.
He stands on the outside of the barrier, both elbows on the rail, a half-smile on his lips. Bitty, on the far side of the rink, notices him and shows off a little; an outside edge twizzle, a short fancy step-sequence, a little jump, nothing too outrageous, nothing that will disrupt the flow of late-afternoon skaters around the rink. Jack has his camera out, taking photographs. Bitty will check Jack's Instagram later, but will only find one picture; himself, mid-twizzle, one knee bent, one foot off the ice. Only one photograph worth uploading from around ten or twelve, if he counted the flashes correctly. Jack doesn't show him all the pictures he takes, but he knows there is a folder labelled 'photography project' on the flash drive attached to his keyring. He wonders if any of the photos in the folder are of him.
Bitty grins as he heads toward Jack at speed, snowploughs, ice splintering and spraying up, bumps the barrier, too careless to worry about finessing the stop.
"I thought y'all were getting back tomorrow…"
Jack smiles, walks along the outside of the barrier as Bitty skates toward the exit gate.
"I thought I would surprise you." He blinks at Bitty's brief frown. "What?"
Bittle shakes his head.
"Nothin. I just…" He mock-scowls. "I'd have baked something if y'all'd've let me know you were coming back early. My reputation is at stake."
Jack shakes his head, bemused.
"It wouldn't have been a surprise, eh?"
Bitty smiles, cocks his head so he can see Jack's face. This close, he has to look up. The sun is behind Jack, casting his face into shadow. Bitty can't quite read his expression.
"Coming on?"
Jack shakes his head.
"No."
"One day you will dance on the ice with me, Mr Zimmermann."
"Not yet, Bittle. And not here."
Bitty resists the temptation to chirp Jack. The last , the only time he had persuaded him into figure skates in public he had flailed like a beginner, unused to the longer blades, had tripped on his toe-picks and fallen on his face. The resulting silent treatment Bitty got lasted as long as the black eye. The chirping Jack got from his teammates lasted a lot longer, although to be fair, their skating, with the exception of Holster's, hadn't been much better.
"The haus was very quiet. Is anyone else back?"
"No. Most of the guys are coming at the weekend. Shitty is due tomorrow. So were you, of course…"
"I thought you would be pleased."
Bitty grins.
"I am. I get you to have you all to myself for a few hours." He pauses. "Now, what shall we do with ourselves?"
Jack half-smiles.
"Faber is empty. Checking practice?"
Bitty shudders.
"I don't think so, sugar. Let me get these skates off." He sits on a bench and smiles as Jack sits beside him, thighs touching. "Any other ideas?"
Jack flushes, clears his throat.
"Eh…"
Bitty feels his own cheeks turn pink. He thinks he can get away with blaming it on the cold air.
"Cinnamon lattes and a walk by the Pond? It's frozen. Looks real pretty."
"Cinnamon lattes… ouais, okay."
*****
"You didn't make so many turns."
Bitty shifts a little to get comfortable under the weight of Jack's arm. The laptop slips a little, but Jack snags it with his free hand, steadying it before it can slide off the bed. Onscreen, Javier Fernández has just landed his second jump, a quadruple Salchow.
"I was a junior. I did triples…" he nudges Jack's armpit with his shoulder, makes him squirm a little. "And how do you know anyway?"
"Eh." Jack shrugs. "There are videos on YouTube. It is not hard to find you."
Bitty takes a moment to digest this new and slightly worrying information.
"You googled me?"
His voice has an edge that Jack fails to hear.
"There are a good many videos. I was only interested in the skating ones."
Bitty lets out the breath he has been holding. For once, he is grateful for Jack's single-minded focus on a topic. He has been thinking about editing some of his more personal vlog posts, in any case. Jack has just given him a reminder to do it quickly.
"You found my vlog, then?"
"I looked at one or two of the videos. Baking, and Beyoncé…"
"That makes me sound really shallow…"
"I have not seen all of them."
"You won't" Bitty thinks. "And neither will Falconers fans or reporters." He makes a note to himself to take down any too-revealing vlog posts tomorrow.
"Why were you looking at my old skating videos, anyway?"
"I wanted to see how good you were."
"Oh. And your conclusion?"
"I am not an expert, of course. But your stats speak for themselves. You were good. Why did you give it up?"
"Coach never really took my skating seriously."
"I doubt that…"
"You don't know him, Jack. Football is everything to him. I was… I am a disappointment."
Jack frowns.
"You were a junior champion…"
"I might as well have been a beauty queen. It was the only thing he and mama fought about. Costumes, glitter…" Bitty shrugs. "When Coach got the job in Madison, it was too far for me to travel for training."
"But another trainer could be found, surely?"
Bitty shakes his head.
"Not at my level. Not locally. And Katya had other skaters to manage…" He laughs, sharply. "He wasn't even too happy with me playing hockey to begin with. A coed sport, for heaven's sakes. Girls as teammates! But I was never going to be a quarterback, and at least hockey was a team sport."
"There is no checking allowed in coed hockey…"
"No."
"Hmm. We should have had this conversation last year."
"You didn't have time for conversations with me last year, Jack."
"A good captain would have made time."
"You made time for checking practice."
"Speaking of checking practice…"
Bitty groans.
"Really? Tomorrow?"
Jack nods.
"We have both been off the ice for a while…"
"I was on the ice today…"
"Different ice. Different technique."
Jack puts the laptop down and lies back on the pillow. Bitty shuffles to get comfortable, head on Jack's shoulder, arm around his waist, one foot drawn up against the inside of his knee. Jack smiles, kisses the top of Bitty's blond head.
"Would you like to go back to it?"
Bitty frowns.
"That your subtle way of telling me I'm never going to be picked for the Pens?"
Jack flushes.
"I did not mean…"
"It's okay, darlin. Although I have no idea how Sidney is going to manage without me on his line…"
"Bittle…"
"Good Lord, Jack. I know I'm not going to be a professional hockey player."
"You miss figure skating. On the ice today, you were different."
"Yeah. But I've been out of it for too long now. You use your muscles differently in hockey. I don't have the flexibility any more. There's guys my age doing Biellmann spins alongside their quad toe loops…"
Jack winces.
"A Biellmann spin is the one where the skater puts their foot above their head, ouais? You could do that."
Bitty laughs.
"When I was twelve. And I used to cut my hands all the time. "
"Could you coach?"
Bitty dismisses the idea with a shrug.
"I've got at least another year before I have to think seriously about a career. I'm not like you, Jack. I'm not driven…"
Jack pulls the blankets up over them. Bitty feels the cold, and the temperature at Samwell drops sharply at night.
"For now, at least, you are a hockey player. Tomorrow we'll practice. Right now we need to get a good nights' sleep."
Bitty smiles in the darkness.
"Do we have to sleep right away?"
*****
"It is good for them. Stretches their muscles. An unfamiliar surface makes them think about what their feet do. The lack of boards makes them more careful with their passes…"
"Can't it just be fun? Does everything have to be a training session?"
"Hmph." Jack carries on taping his stick. "You are too frivolous. And that jumping should not be possible on those skates."
"The Daily wanted a picture, and it was only a double axel. " Bitty grins. "Ransom thinks we could make a play from some of my moves."
Jack half-scowls.
"He would make a good captain, I think."
"Yeah. But it'll depend on how the vote goes, won't it? There's Holster, and Ollie…."
"Eh. We will find out soon enough."
Jack leads the way onto the Pond. The ice is thick, and snow has been cleared for skaters. Bitty shivers, not just from the cold. "One more semester," he thinks."I have you for one more semester…"
*****
"I don't know if they're art, honey. Or even if they're good, by professional standards…"
Jack's lips quirk in a brief smile.
"Lardo helped me mount and hang them. They don't have to be art. They just have to get me a pass."
"They're not all yours, though, are they? What was the assignment brief?"
"A comparative study, my own work contrasted with mass-media shots of the same subject."
"You used the Daily picture from the Pond."
Bitty looks more closely. The exhibition shows skates; picture after picture of skate-clad feet. One of two of just skates, hockey skates, figure skates. In none of the pictures are the skates touching ice.
"And some stills from my old videos…"
"For the mass-media shots, yes. And video from our own games. The others are my own. From the public rink, from training…
"And from sneakily filming our checking practice. How did you do that?"
Jack shrugs.
"I set the camera to record before we started. I did not know if there would be anything usable."
"I like them. " Bitty smiles brightly, his voice is a little brittle. "And no one needs to know they are me."
Jack flushes.
"You know why…"
"Yes. But I don't have to like it."
*****
Bitty leans against his bedroom door. He can still hear the post-game celebrations from downstairs. Chowder was star player in this game. A shutout.
He should go back to the party, but suddenly, he can't face it. He picks up his old figure skates, climbs out of the window to the reading room; drops the skates down onto the old green couch, evicted for the night onto the porch; follows them carefully.
The back doors are unlocked. Faber is empty, the building semi-dark. The ice is perfect; the zamboni has done its work for the night. Bitty feels a small twinge of guilt at sort-of breaking in, and a bigger one at marking the smooth surface, but there are no more games or competitions now for a while; a few blade marks won't spoil anyone's scores.
He finds a playlist on his phone, puts in his earbuds and throws himself into the music. He powers through a half-remembered routine, Freddie Mercury belting out "The Show Must Go On " in his ears. He holds his position in a blur spin, lands a double axel, flubs the follow-up triple toe-loop and falls.
"Tabarnak!"
Bitty startles as big, strong hands grasp his arms to pull him up. He shrugs his assailant off, pulls out one ear-bud.
"I'm all right."
"You fell hard, Eric…"
"Eric?". Bitty thinks. "You always call me Bittle." Aloud, he shrugs off Jack's concern.
"Story of my life, sweetheart. Falling hard is what I do."
"You will have bruises."
"I'll put some ice on them. My pride hurts more than my butt does. "
"It was foolhardy, Bittle. What were you thinking?"
"I wasn't thinking. I just…" Bitty notices that Jack is wearing figure skates. "You haven't just come for a last look at Faber. You saw me leave. "
"Yes. With your skates. I thought perhaps…"
"Dance with me."
"There is no music."
Bitty unjacks his earbuds, turns the phone volume up as far as it will go.
"Now there is."
He stands, takes Jack's hand and leads him around the rink. Jack is steady on his feet. Bitty turns to face him, catches the other hand, skating backward.
"You've been practicing."
"Ouais."
"Were you ever going to tell me?"
Jack nods.
"When I was sure I would not fall."
"But not yet. And you're going to leave…"
"Samwell, yes."
"And me?"
"That is not my plan."
"Your plan…"
"Will you come to watch me play?"
"Sure. If I'm not playing myself." Bitty pulls Jack closer. "It will be real strange playing without you on the ice."
Jack bends, slips, recovers and lands a kiss on Bitty's ear instead of his mouth. He smiles, a little sheepish.
"I play better when you are on my line. I don't know how good I will be with strangers."
"You'll get used to it."
"I suppose so."
"You excited?"
"Excited? Eh…"
Bitty rolls his eyes.
"Stupid question. You ready?"
Jack nods.
"Everything is packed. I have an early start tomorrow."
Bitty bites his lip. Flushes. Looks down at the ice, a little on edge.
"Best not waste the rest of the night, then."
They exchange their skates for shoes. Jack puts his arm around Bitty as they walk back from Faber. At the haus, the party is still in full swing. Bitty sighs.
"You go in first. Here, take my skates. If anyone says anything, you can say you went to pick up some stuff you'd left in the locker room."
"You think I'll leave you out here alone in the cold?"
"I'll be fine. I won't be too far behind you." He sniffs. "Just far enough so…"
Jack shakes his head.
"No, Eric…Bitty. We'll go in together."
"Are you sure?"
"Ouais"
"Okay."