Chapter Text
Neil loves running. There’s a freedom that comes with tying up his running shoes and hitting the pavement, able to go anywhere, under the power of his own body.
It doesn’t compare to the speeds he could reach skating.
He hasn’t so much as looked at a pair of skates in three years.
He hesitates outside the door of the recreation center. The building looks nothing like the ones where he used to skate—old reddish-brown bricks instead of glass and steel, short to the ground, and in desperate need for someone to smooth out the cobblestone leading to the building.
Palmetto’s speed skating team shouldn’t be anywhere near the building; Neil looked up the hours when he resolved to do this weeks ago, and they don’t meet on Tuesdays. His feet, however, haven’t gotten that memo, gluing themselves to the pavement in protest of this entire idea. He glares down at them.
It takes someone coming up behind him and clearing their throat pointedly for him to jolt forward, out of the middle of the doorway. A woman holding hands with a little girl wearing bright blue swim goggles on her head rushes past him. They disappear deeper into the building fast enough that the girl needs to run to keep up with her mother, leaving Neil with a racing heart a few steps inside the entrance.
Inside, the building smells like chlorine, momentarily stealing his breath as memories of his home club come flooding back. Unlike the dedicated oval he switched to at age ten, it also shared the space with a pool. He was there at least once a week from the time he was an unbalanced five-year-old, barely able to stand on skates, until the switch. He got to be a different person in that rink; a child playing games with the other skaters and getting help from his mom to lace up the skates, just like all the other kids.
He grips the straps of his backpack tightly and follows signs to the rink viewing area, up a ramp to the left and away from the pool. You’re fine, he reminds himself, you have a plan. All you need to do is follow it. This is nothing in comparison to the rest of your life.
Step 1: scope out the building when the team isn’t there.
He’s not sure what his end goal is. After high school, people usually only stick with it if they’re content doing it for fun or if they’re nationally ranked. He’s an unknown now. He doesn’t know if he’d even want to skate like that again. And he doesn’t think he can skate just for fun. But as much as he’s hesitant, speed skating used to be the only important thing in his life. He can’t resist the call of the ice anymore.
He walks past the rink with his gaze averted to find the back entrance to the building, glancing down the stairs to the first level—where the entrances to the skating rinks and swimming pool are—before turning back.
Neil watches the floor as he approaches the rink viewing area—a stupid avoidance strategy that’s only serving to blow this up into a bigger deal than it is. He takes a deep breath to steady himself when he physically can’t move forward any further without walking into the tables overlooking the viewing area. Then he looks up.
It’s none of the rinks he’s skated at before, and yet all rinks hold a certain amount of familiarity. There’s only so much variation that goes into a regulation sized ice rink and bleachers.
It’s surreal, being here.
He swallows and clumsily sits down without taking his eyes off ice. It’s less jarring than he thought it would be to settle at one of the tables, as if he’s a skater wasting time before his turn on the ice. It’s completely empty; the middle of the day on a weekday sees few bookings for ice time. Competitive figure skating from the local high school. A preschool learn-to-skate class earlier in the day. This area is blessedly quiet.
Not wanting to look at the rink anymore, Neil pulls out his laptop to give himself an excuse to focus on something else. Luckily, the rec center has free Wi-Fi, allowing him to pull up the portal to his online classes, and he attempts to ignore the giant slab of ice in favor of class work.
Said attempt at work is more reading the same instructions over and over as his gaze repeatedly gets drawn back to the rink than doing any actual work. The ice is smooth, no skate marks since the last time it was Zambonied. The first laps on fresh ice always felt a bit like flying.
It’s not the most productive he’s been, the rink not letting him forget it exists, but it’s decent for not being sure if he’d get into the building without having a panic attack or a flashback. He casts one last look back at the rink as he leaves. Maybe. Maybe this will be something he can have.
His old FBI assigned therapist would tell him off for building this up in his head, probably come at him with a fancy term and an unhelpful maladaptive thought process worksheet. Well, fuck you too Freddrick. Only one of us was tortured with a skate blade, and it wasn’t you.
That night, Lola and the glint of a skate blade feature heavily in his dream. He jerks himself awake at two in the morning, sick to his stomach and struggling to catch his breath.
The nightmare is not surprising. Lola has made herself at home in them for as long as he can remember. Variations of this particular nightmare have joined the repertoire since it happened, though that doesn’t make it any easier to deal with when he’s hyperventilating and afraid to touch his face for fear of his fingers coming away bloody.
It’s worse tonight than usual, which is also unsurprising thanks to his little visit to the skating rink. It’s hours before he can manage to convince himself that he’s safe enough to fall back asleep, and even then it’s a restless sleep. He’s not looking to this being his renewed reality if he continues this plan.
Neil makes it a routine. For almost a month, he comes back to the rink on Tuesdays and Fridays and does his coursework. He starts recognizing the custodian and the person who works at the front desk, and a couple of the people that regularly come to swim. Combined with his Wednesday shifts as an interpreter at the hospital, and Sunday night dinners with Matt and Dan, it’s the most he’s gotten out of the house since he entered witsec.
He adjusts to it sooner than he wants to. It’s a good thing, truly. It means he’s not as affected by everything as he thought. That reassurance doesn’t increase his desire to leave his safe bubble of empty ice and distant parent-and-tot swimming lessons.
But staring at an empty ice rink is not the same thing as skating.
The fourth week once again finds Neil frozen outside the rec center. It’s a Monday and the evening, enough of a schedule shift to put him on edge even without the knowledge of what waits for him inside.
The speed skating team starts practice in less than half an hour.
He goes in the back door this time. There’s only one hallway and then the viewing area over the rink. He’s unlikely to encounter any skaters, who would need to be on the ground floor to access the ice.
“You’re being ridiculous. This is far from the hardest thing you’ve ever done,” he mutters to himself and forces himself inside, following the familiar path to the viewing area. It’s already more crowded than he’s ever seen it. Parents, mostly, by the look of them, but a blond man around Neil’s age has stolen Neil spot closest to the corner. He’s not even watching the ice, just staring down at the phone in his hand.
It’s extremely tempting to keep walking, go down the ramp, and exit the building.
Instead, he settles grudgingly at a different table, his back uncomfortably exposed to the blond man. It was either that or have his back exposed to more people, plus the hallways, but he knows he’s going to be on edge for the entire two hours he’s here.
Practice is still a while out, so there’s only a couple skaters who look like they could be coaches on the ice, accepting the blue mats passed to them. The mats go around the corners of the rink to protect skaters when they fall. Mats would have been nice the day Lola found him.
Not that they would have helped much. There’s only so much a mat can do if someone is actively attempting to hurt you.
The long blades of speed skates pull Neil’s attention jarringly. Which, honestly, what were you expecting? You decided to watch a speed skating practice. People are going to be using speed skates. Get over it.
Neil abruptly turns away from the rink, taking out his laptop to make an attempt at Spanish work, but it doesn’t take long before the children with knives strapped to their feet fill up the ice. From what he read online, this club runs two levels—a beginner and an advanced group. It’s a fairly small and unknown club, so they have to share ice time. The beginners are alone on the ice for the first half hour before the advanced group comes out and they’re on together for the other half of the hour. Once the beginners leave, the advanced group stays on for another hour.
It’s obvious that this is the beginner group by the number of young children who all skate half standing up, fumbling through crossovers that look like they require an immense amount of concentration to bring very little power. They’re cute though, and they look like they’re having fun. The coaches have constructed lanes using pylons to do drills and they’re skating slowly up and down them.
A small child with two long pigtails down her back crashes head first into the pads, and Neil finds himself having to suppress a flinch, but she bounces back up quickly and skates off again.
It becomes more real when the advanced skaters come out and start doing warm-up laps. They build up speed, blades digging into the ice on each stride, and all at once he has to escape to hyperventilate in the thankfully empty washroom.
He quickly sprints back, still breathing shallowly, when he realizes he left his laptop and bag out in the open in his panic. The blond man gives him a strange look but looks away disinterestedly when Neil meets his stare.
Neil decides that’s enough for the first day. The rest of his homework can be done literally anywhere else.
The blond man becomes a regular fixture at Neil’s biweekly skating/homework sessions. Neil can’t figure out what his story is. He’s the youngest one, other than Neil, who gathers at the viewing area and stays for the full length of the practice, leaving only when hockey players take over the ice.
The rest of the viewers are firmly in the demographic of parents desperately attempting to balance their kids’ extracurriculars. Even when other maybe teenagers-maybe early twenties people sit down, they leave soon after to go to whatever extracurricular they’re at the rec center for. The blond man’s behavior is also strange for the fact that Neil has never once seen him looking at the ice.
Neil starts coming earlier to beat the blond man and claim his corner table. The first day he steals the table back, the man gives him the type of threatening look that he’s sure would make anyone who hadn’t lived the life that Neil has immediately switch tables. Possibly to one downstairs. Or out of the building entirely.
As it is, Neil turns back to his interpretation skills course module. (That doesn’t last long. It continues to be much harder to focus on school when skating is in his line of sight).
His routine slowly builds back up. Monday, Thursday, and Friday evenings are practices. Three days is a bit excessive when he’s not participating in the sport, even for him, so he goes Monday and Thursdays. Every time, the blond man is there, usually with a bag of candy from the snack bar, messing around on his phone or, infrequently, a laptop. Neil wonders if he’s a student at the university.
Allison would probably know. She seems to know everyone. Neil, however, has exactly zero plans to share his decision to stalk the skating team with any of his friends. Or to be subject to their questions about why he cares so much about a stranger. Neil couldn’t explain why he’s so fascinated by the man if held at knife point. Usually, people all blend together for him once he deems them to not be a threat.
His online university isn’t usually too bad since it has a fairly flexible course schedule. He started it last year while in the witsec safe house, his FBI agent deeming it to be less risky than moving cities and attending lectures with hundreds of other students. Usually, though, that flexibility means he pushes work off until the last minute and then scrambles to finish.
He probably shouldn’t have come to the rink today. It’s easier to practice a language when alone in his apartment. He shows up with a coffee in hand anyway. A degree in Spanish with a minor in ASL was not the smartest course to take virtually, but languages were all he was interested in when he registered. He hadn’t considered how much harder it would be to learn a language when he can’t immerse himself in it, and he hates that he’s not sure if it’s that, or if it’s his old brain injury still impacting him. The post-concussion syndrome is behind him now, but sometimes he wonders how healed he really is.
At least he can blame his procrastination on it. Even if he doesn't have proper pre-concussion study habits to compare to.
He’s never struggled so hard to learn a language as he is with ASL. At least with Spanish, he has the foundation from spending a brief amount of time in Spain.
Neil does his best to tune out the skating practice and the sounds of spectators around him as he studies for a comprehension test in his ASL class tomorrow morning, choosing not to care about the fact that he probably looks odd signing to himself. Or that other people might know ASL.
YOU SOMETIMES FEEL LONELY YOU?
YOU MAD, what-FOR?
YOU FEEL FRUSTRATED, WHEN?
YOU FEEL DEPRESSED, WHEN?
RECENT YOU INSULT ANY-ONE?
Neil doesn’t quite process the fact that he’s not alone until he looks up to find the blond man staring at him. When they make eye contact, the man raises his eyebrows to sign, “You okay?”
Neil’s cheeks heat. He can’t tell if the man means that genuinely or not, but he clumsily signs back, “Yes. Sorry. Class.”
“Did you forget that other people can know sign language?”
It takes Neil a second to put the meaning of the sentence together, unused to ASL signed by anyone but his prof and the students in his class who all sign relatively slowly, but he knows all those words.
“A little bit,” Neil replies, trying to communicate amusement.
The man signs something in reply that Neil has no hope of decoding.
“Sorry,” Neil signs again. “I don’t understand. I only know a little ASL.”
He can see the man sigh from a few tables over. Neil thinks that’ll be the end of it, but he gets up and walks over to Neil’s table, stopping only a few paces away. Neil watches him warily, unsure what he wants.
“Since you’re still learning sign, is talking okay?” He asks, signing and speaking at the same time.
“Yeah,” Neil answers solely in English. “I’m not—” he catches himself for a barely noticeable second. It’s been years and the reality of it still trips him up, even though it impacts his life every time he leaves the solitude of his apartment. But, he’s not, “—deaf. Spoken English is good. Uh, how about you?”
“I’m hearing.”
The man slips into the seat across from Neil without explaining his presence.
“No offense, but what do you want?” Neil asks, probably more rudely than advisable, but the man doesn’t seem to care.
“You looked like you could use some help. That is, if you were trying to ask if someone feels depressed, not feels naked? I might suggest leaving this public space if not.”
Neil grimaces. “Fuck. Yeah, I definitely meant depressed. This is for a class,” he volunteers uncharacteristically. “My prof probably wouldn’t be overly happy with me asking if he’s naked during the test.”
“I’d imagine not,” the man says drily.
“And you’d be willing to help me? Why?”
A shrug. “Bored. There’s only so much watching people skate around in circles I can stand without going out of my mind.”
Neil forcibly doesn’t defend the sport. If he’s been messing up that much, he might actually need the help. Besides, he’s been curious about this man for the last month, he doesn’t want to scare him away now that he;s sitting right across from him. “Well, as long as you think I’m going to be ‘entertaining’. I’m not going to refuse the help, uh, what’s your name?”
“Andrew. We’ll see about the entertaining aspect.” Then in ASL, “What’s your name?”
“Neil,” he says.
Andrew gives him an unimpressed look, and on a delay Neil finger spells his name out.
Andrew explains, thankfully not in ASL so Neil can understand the explanation, the difference between depressed and naked in ASL. It’s pretty interesting to watch. Andrew’s baseline expression seems to be apathy, but ASL necessitates facial expressions. The sad expression when he demonstrates depressed, then the more suggestive one—which Neil isn’t sure how he managed to make himself—to sign “naked.”
Andrew goes through the rest of the vocab with him, correcting Neil’s mistakes with a varying amount of patience.
It’s actually very helpful, which slowly increases Neil’s discomfort with the situation. Even though Andrew had said he’s helping because he’s bored, Neil still allowed a stranger to help him without giving him anything in return. He struggles enough as it is to accept Matt from help. Maybe that’s the key: Andrew hadn’t seemed like he’d care either way if Neil agreed to the help or not.
“So, have you recently insulted anyone?” Andrew inquires in sign.
“What?”
“Your vocab. Using it in a conversation tends to be the next step to learning it.”
Fair. He’d been thinking the same thing earlier after all.
“Probably. I’m good at insulting people.” Neil’s signs are slower than Andrew’s.
“Did you try to tell someone they’re shy and say—?” the next word is similar to shy, but faster and his hand is in a slightly different position.
“What does—” Neil does his best to repeat the sign, “—mean?”
“Whore.”
Neil snorts. “I hope not,” he says, making a mental note of that very important difference for his exam.
The stilted ASL conversation dwindles away by the time the beginner skaters leave the ice. Andrew glances disinterestedly at the ice as the advanced skaters start doing sprints. The lack of expression is somewhat jarring after the animation while using sign.
Neil feels confident enough in the tutoring from Andrew that he lets himself watch a few races. It looks like they’re doing sets of five laps. Neil had been great at the endurance events, and he liked them, but these short distances had always been the most fun. They’re where you can build real speed. He swallows uncomfortably.
He can feel Andrew's eyes on the side of his face but ignores it and soon enough Andrew pulls his phone back out.
Andrew stands up once they start clearing the mats of the ice.
“Thank you,” Neil says awkwardly before he can walk away. “You helped a lot. If I can return the favor. I mean, something of equal value but…” Neil trails off, recognizing that verged out of normal person territory and not sure how to salvage it. Definitely something Allison would tease him about.
Andrew shrugs. “I only did it to save whatever unsuspecting person you ended up talking to.”
“Well, thanks.”
Andrew leaves before Neil can finish packing up his laptop, so he doesn’t get the opportunity to walk out with him or notice if he collects a skater.
The next practice, Neil claims the corner table and Andrew sits a few spots down, slowly eating a packet of skittles. A small pile of the green ones grows on a napkin in front of him, which, perplexingly, he eats after he finishes the rest of them. The time after that, Neil is running late, and while he beats most of the parents there, Andrew smirks at him from the corner table as he’s forced to find a seat without the wall to his back.
Not long after that time, it’s Andrew’s turn to be later, and properly late at that. By the time he arrives, all the tables overlooking the rink are full. Neil notices immediately when Andrew gets there. Andrew barely breaks step as he takes in the seating situation, walking confidently to the table Neil is at.
He cocks an eyebrow at Neil, who nods mutely, pulling his laptop closer to himself to give Andrew room. It surprises him that Andrew chose to sit with him. Even with the one day he helped him, Neil got the impression that he’s a private person. Though maybe Neil is somehow the best option if the choices are him, a random parent, or the stands in the cold ice rink.
“Being late is one way to get access to this table.”
Andrew rolls his eyes. “Like the reason you like this table is to have your back facing the entire room. You’re still in the prime spot.”
Neil jokingly presses a hand to his heart, a gesture he obtained from Allison. “Call me out, why don’t you.”
“You started it. I was perfectly content to allow our table feud to go unmentioned.”
“Yet you’re the one calling it a feud.”
Andrew scoffs.
Neither of them picks up the conversation again and Neil reluctantly turns back to his laptop. He has a paper due in a couple days that he needs to stop ignoring.
Sitting at the same table becomes part of the routine after that. Neil isn’t sure why Andrew keeps choosing to sit with him, but he can’t say he minds. As much as he’d like to deny it, Andrew has become somewhat of an unwitting quasi emotional support for the whole facing his trauma thing. Sometimes talking to him is enough for him to forget where he is for snatches of time.
Neil learns that Andrew does in fact go to the university in Palmetto and that he’s at the practices because he drives a friend. He doesn’t outright call the person his friend, but Neil figures that’s what annoying roommate and bane of my existence means.
When Neil misses the bus a few weeks later and loses the spot against the wall again, he automatically sits with Andrew. Even if that does mean his back is to the rest of the rec centre.
“You’re late,” Andrew comments, taking a bite out of a KitKat.
“Missed my bus,” Neil grumbles. “And running that far with my laptop is cumbersome enough I ended up waiting for the next one.”
“Running,” Andrew repeats. “That’s some dedication for a little speed skating practice.”
“I like running. And, I just said I didn’t.”
“But you thought about it,” Andrew says, like the idea itself is unbelievable. “About running a route that’s long enough to take a bus. What makes these practices so important to you anyway? All you do is class work. You can’t even be driving someone if running here was a serious option. Not that I’ve seen you with anyone.”
“I could ask you the same question. I haven’t seen you with anyone either.”
“I’ve told you I drive someone here,” Andrew says, unimpressed.
“Uh. I focus well here,” Neil says, skipping over 99% of the truth.
“Better than a library? And only for these practices in particular?”
“Hey, you don’t know that I don’t watch the figure skating or hockey practices as well.”
“Do you?”
“What is this? An interrogation?” Neil asks. He’s only half joking; Andrew has him pinned with an intense look that makes his exposed back prickle uncomfortably and makes him wish he hadn’t gotten so comfortable sitting here.
Andrew shrugs. “Just curious. You do come and watch children skating around bent over in skin tight suits for no apparent reason.”
“What the fuck. No. That’s so fucked up. Why do you even sit with me if that’s what you think I’m doing? No. I used to speed skate growing up and homework is less boring with skating as the backdrop. It’s not exactly a popular sport to be able to find it on TV often.” 30% more of the truth.
Andrew considers him a moment longer. “Okay. I played hockey for a few years in high school.”
Neil gets whiplash from that topic change, but he isn’t going to protest if Andrew is done with the previous line of questioning.
“You know, when we were kids, we used to say that if speed skating were easy, they’d call it hockey.”
“If you’re trying to offend me, that’s not going to work. I didn’t stop playing because I thought it was interesting.”
“And yet you spend half your week hanging around a skating rink.”
Andrew points at Neil in agreement as if to say ‘and yet’.
“What position did you play?”
“Goalie.”
“Oh, what made you choose that position?”
“I was assigned it. They thought I would beat up the other team otherwise.”
Neil opens his mouth to ask more questions, but Andrew holds up a hand to halt him, saying, “No more skating questions,” and feigning intense interest in the remainder of his KitKat bar.
Neil drops the topic in favor of cajoling into practicing a sign conversation, which doesn’t take nearly as much effort. Until he asks what hockey is in sign language that is, and then Andrew studiously turns back to the chocolate bar, pretending the small amount of chocolate is enough to occupy both of his hands.
Neil looks it up instead. As well as the words for skating, ice, and speed skate. Andrew doesn’t seem impressed by his newfound knowledge.
As the weeks go on, Neil finds himself beginning to look forward to his time at the rink, and for more than watching skating. During the winter break, Neil finds himself pleasantly surprised that Andrew is still there, sitting in the same spot and not-watching a reduced number of skaters.
Neil spends Christmas with Matt. It’s the first he’s celebrated in his memory, and it’s nice to spend time with his friends, even if it does fall on a Thursday and cancel skating.
Andrew is…interesting. He likes their conversations, and he likes that they can sit in silence. He likes when Andrew gets a certain look and signs that man has toilet paper stuck to his foot almost too small and too fast for Neil to catch.
They don’t always talk. Sometimes an entire week will go by where they sit at the same table without saying a word. Sometimes Andrew suddenly says something like, “Aaron nearly burnt the dorm down this morning,” and Neil learns that Andrew has a twin brother.
He’s never gone out of his way to connect with someone this way. The only friends that Neil made before Andrew were Dan, Matt, and Allison, and none of them were on purpose. Matt made friends with him in an online chat room that Neil largely lurked in to try to stave off the boredom of being stuck in a safe house. With Matt came the rest of the little group. He only met them in person two years later, and they still don’t know that he used to skate or that he was in witsec with the honor of being connected to multiple mafias.
Not that Andrew can know either, but Neil gets the feeling that Andrew sees into all the little cracks caused by choosing to hang out at a skating rink—by excited children running past yelling, skates tied to their bag whipping around, and the buzzer that never fails to make him jump—and sees something closer to the truth than Neil would like. Neil sees through some of Andrew’s front in return, but Andrew doesn’t ask about his stuff, so he doesn’t broach the topic either.
It’s when Neil arrives after Andrew and has to sit with his back unprotected again, that he realizes he’s let himself get too comfortable in this stage of his plan. Because he’s barely uncomfortable being so exposed. He normally hates having his back to a crowd, and that feeling has only intensified at the skating rink.
The realization that he trusts Andrew to warn him of any threat hits him just as hard, and he almost gets up again.
Andrew’s sharp eyes follow his movements as he deliberately bends to take his laptop out of his bag and places it delicately on the table. There. Can’t run away if he’d be abandoning his things. Neil squeezes his hands together in his lap and he avoids Andrew’s eyes as he tries to make a decision.
“Are you going to make me ask?”
“What?” Neil asks, distracted and only processing Andrew’s question after he replies. He stands by that reply though.
Andrew rolls his eyes. “What’s got you so on edge?
“Will you go to a public skate with me?” Neil asks before he can talk himself out of it. This will be committing to it. “You don’t have to.”
“Why?”
“Why the public skate? Or why am I asking you to come?”
Andrew imperceptibly furrows his eyebrows. “If those two things are different, then both.”
“Because…” Neil trails off, unsure how to explain. Or even if he can explain.
Any words he can find get lodged in his throat and he picks up the rest of the thought in ASL. “Because I need to go. And I don’t want to go alone.”
Andrew doesn’t answer right away, and Neil sits deliberately still to avoid fidgeting under his gaze. “Okay,” Andrew eventually agrees. He doesn’t ask why someone who used to skate, who has proclaimed that he’s been watching speed skating lessons because he likes the sport so much, would need a chaperone to go skating. Neil is grateful. He already feels too exposed and the thought of skating is slowly closing his throat.