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“Two adult tickets, please!” Gem says, holding up two fingers. The person behind the counter rings her up, and when her card goes through, they loop little red paper bracelets around her wrist, then Grian’s. They have two white arctic hare ears springing from their hair, which swivel around during the encounter, surely hearing much more than either of the pair could. They give Gem a thumbs up and a smile, pointing them off to the opposite side of the room where another person, seemingly human, stands with a wall of skates.
This whole thing was Gem’s idea; ice skating runs in her blood. She’s a natural, thanks to figure skating in her youth and years of growing up surrounded by lakes. She remembers using the ice to visit friends as a kid, spending entire days roaming around with a pack of bundled up little children. She’s far from her little hometown now, but happier to be near a big city and, consequently, more hybrids.
Grian’s a bit nervous, and it’s obvious despite his attempt to seem otherwise. She leads the bird by the hand over to exchange their shoes for skates, watching his feathers bristle evermore with each passing second. Grian is tropical, he’s not meant for the cold, which is something he said several times when setting up this date. He relented eventually, reluctantly, he knew this would make Gem very happy.
It’s not antler season, she doesn’t have any growing at the moment, but it’s still evident she belongs here by the big brown elk ears emerging from a cloud of orange curls. There’s also a stubby little tail hanging from a hole cut from her overalls, but it’s not insanely noticeable, especially in comparison to when she does actually have great big velvet antlers coming out of the top of her head. She’s not as bundled up as Grian, just in a pair of jean overall pants, green sweater and little green gloves to protect her hands from the ice if she were to fall, however unlikely.
Grian, on the other hand, sports a thick knit red sweater with another shirt underneath, a hat, scarf, gloves, and jeans. Under those jeans, Gem made him layer a pair of her own leggings to keep his lower half warm. Nothing can be done about his wings and tail feathers, so they are bare in the brisk air of the skating rink. Gem made sure to bundle him up in layers so he didn’t freeze his feathers off, but there’s only so much she can do about the nature of his hybrid species.
When they’ve each got a pair of skates, Gem teaches him how to lace them up. She holds his foot in her lap, and he braces against her to pull the laces as hard as he can. He ties them tight, and as he rises, Gem holds his forearms, giggling just the tiniest bit. His wings have extended outwards for balance.
“Are they tight enough? Make sure you can barely move your ankles.” Gem tells him.
Grian tests this, bobbing and twisting on his feet to see how far he can move his ankles around. “Alright,” He says, “That should be good.” He’s less wobbly now, having figured out how to hold himself so as to not fall over.
Gem lets go of his forearms, but stays hovering just in case he stumbles. They’re still on rubber flooring; it’s much easier than the ice for walking. Due to this, Grian seems more confident, leaving Gem to start waddling around the room as practice. It’s a bit funny, and it reminds Gem of a baby animal learning how to walk.
“You good, lovebird?” Gem laughs.
Grian stumbles then, caught off guard by the nickname. That one, specifically, is one Gem knows will make his face burn up red instantly, and she does it on purpose. He knows that. He still trips on his own feet, and squawks as his wings shoot out completely to flap him back upright. Gem laughs harder, lacing up her own skates with a practiced speed.
“Fine, thank you!” He chirps out, annoyed. His wings don’t fully tuck themselves away, at the ready in case another fall happens.
“Okay, let’s go skate!” She claps her hands, standing with a bounce in her step.
Grian goes pale and snaps his mouth shut. He reaches out for Gem, and she gives him a hand. They wobble—or rather, Grian wobbles, Gem is steady—out of the room, and into the main event of the evening. The drop in temperature makes Grian visibly shudder; Sympathetically, Gem uses her free hand to pat his arm. At the very least, once he’s on the ice and actually skating, it won’t feel as cold.
They step out into the ice, with a lot of flailing and fussing from the bird. Gem stifles giggles, watching him immediately attach himself to the wall, trying desperately to find stability. She does little half-circles around him, keeping close in case he fully falls. The rink is a bit empty, just a few people doing laps near the center. They keep to themselves, out of the way.
A flash of white passes by them, and Gem hears a sudden skid of ice as the person stops and twirls on their blades. She looks away from Grian’s spluttering to see a familiar face.
“Etho!” She shouts at the tall figure. Grian’s head snaps up, and he groans. He does not need another person seeing him right now.
“Gem, Grian!” Etho replies, taking his hands out of his jacket pockets to wave. His eyes squint, presumably due to him smiling under his face mask. “What are you two doing here?” He asks, head tilting to one side. He’s got his hair back in a big fluffy ponytail, and white fox ears sit high on his head. A poofy tail swishes in the air behind him, curiously. Gem can only be jealous, bigger tails are probably great for precise control while skating. Etho never got into figure skating like Gem used to, but she imagines having a longer tail would have turned her choreography up a notch.
“I’m teaching Grian how to ice skate!” Gem points to Grian, who’s still unsteady next to her. They’re slowly making their way forward though, and Etho skates backwards to keep up with their conversation. Grian feels like he wants to shove Etho over for the display of skill. He grumbles a bit to himself.
“Oooh, really? Is this a date? I wouldn’t want to interrupt.” Etho puts his hands up in front of him.
“You’re not interrupting, Etho.” A big smile paints Gem’s face, lighting up the whole room.
Grian lurches forward again, hand shooting out to grab her sleeve. The spikes on the front of his blades got caught in some groove on the ice, making him stumble. He doesn’t go down, though, because Gem is holding him upright. Etho had also slid towards them, arms out for support.
“You gotta walk like a ‘V’, ” Etho backs up on the ice once Grian is settled once more, “Watch my feet.” He spins back around, slowly demonstrating how to maintain momentum.
Grian watches, taking mental notes on the way Etho is pushing his skates outward with every step. “Dude, you’re doing more teaching than my real date. Gem needs to be careful, or I’m going to run off with you instead.” He says after a couple beats of watching Etho’s technique, earning a “Hey!” from Gem and a huff of laughter from Etho.
“Oh snap, Gem! I’m stealing your man!” He says, tail swishing around playfully as he puts on a flourishing tone, “Come, Grian, let’s skate off into the sunset.” Etho’s hand extends towards him, but Gem bats him away.
“Right! Okay, that’s my Grian, thank you very much!” She takes Grian’s hand, lacing their fingers together. It makes Grian’s face dust pink, but nobody will ever know if it's the cold or being referred to as Gem’s Grian .
He really, really likes being someone’s Grian. Gem’s. Her’s. It makes him feel something pleasant swirling around in his chest, warm. He thinks Gem should call him that more often. My. Mine. He’s silently thinking very hard about Gem’s sudden possessiveness, and he almost misses Etho’s mischievous giggling as he skates away from the couple, leaving them alone on this side of the rink again with a “Take care!”
Gem rolls her eyes after him, turning back to Grian.
“I like being yours.” He blurts in a hushed tone, hoping nobody else can hear him over the AC. His face is red again, undoubtedly obvious.
Gem’s face warms and a grin breaks out, “Yeah?” She squeezes his hand, still laced with her own. Grian nods. “Alright, my lovebird,” She says in a soft voice, prompting Grian to look away and make a squeaky sound, feathers all fluffed up, “Do you want to try letting go of the wall?” His display is intensely cute. It makes her want to see how far she can push to fluster him further, but that’s just a sidequest. Her main goal, right now, is to make Grian feel confident on the ice. She can get him bird-brained later.
Grian does not want to speak. He wants to go home and not feel like a freezer-burnt chicken, curled up at Gem’s side, but that’s not happening right now. He sucks it up, taking a deep breath in and back out, before removing his hand from the wall. He tips slightly towards the ground and his hand slams back onto the ledge, but once he’s steady again, he lets go. Gem is beaming up at him, proud.
“Good job!” She says, “I’ve got you, it’s okay.” Now it’s Gem’s turn to skate backwards, Grian clinging to her arms much like he did to the wall.
“Oh, this is…This is straight-up torture, Gem.” He’s not feeling confident. He’s wobbly. Gem is sturdy enough to keep him upright, but he is not happy about his current predicament, physical closeness to a certain elk be damned.
“You’re fine, I promise! I’ve got you, I won’t let you fall.” Gem says with a big smile and a little wag of her tail, and despite Grian’s grumbling, she can feel them pick up the pace.
Grian’s learning how to hold himself, how to position his limbs on ice. It takes them a couple laps chock full of complaints opposed by sweet reassurances and praise, but Grian is getting the hang of it faster than Gem expected him to. His tail feathers might be helping, already made for counterweight purposes. Ice skating couldn’t be too different from flying, right? Gem decides to not ask that question, not prepared for an onslaught of flight mechanic information. Grian tends to be an info-dumper, and under normal circumstances, Gem would happily prompt him into it just to hear him talk. For now, he needs to focus.
Eventually, Gem is able to just hold his hand, skating next to him. They don’t see Etho anymore, he must have left at some point.
It’s sweet, and Gem thinks about how much she likes the way their hands fit together like puzzle pieces. She makes comments about his skating, correcting his posture or giving tips on how to move differently. When he does fix himself, Gem praises him and squeezes his hand. Then she remembers her sidequest, and ramps it up. In low tones, so as to not alert other patrons, she starts complimenting him. How his feathers look so pretty in the lighting, how nice he looks when he manages to pull off a little move she teaches him. At some point, he starts making tiny little bird sounds, so quiet she can barely even hear them. He’s blushing hard from her attention, and it's satisfying to the highest degree.
They do a couple more laps before Grian is pulling Gem off the rink, all fluffed up and sweaty from exertion. He tugs off some of his overclothes, setting them down on the bench they rest on. He’s definitely ready to leave, now. Gem had been teasing him— flirting —in hushed tones the last couple of laps, and he’s greatly flustered on top of everything else. They exchange skates for their shoes, make sure everything is where it’s supposed to be, and leave for the parking lot.
On their way out, Gem waves goodbye to the arctic hare hybrid still manning the register. They wave back. Grian barely notices. He’s sort of fixated on the idea of going home and kissing his girlfriend silly, at the moment.
It’s a short drive home, and they make conversation about the experience. Gem praises him all over again, making his eartips burn in contrast to his light grumbles. He’s barely holding it together, but he pulls the car into their driveway eventually, takes them home safely. He doesn’t know if Gem is even aware of how crazy she’s making him, and she’s not even trying that hard. She’s just slipping in pet names. And being nice to him. And holding his hand while skating with him, making sure he didn’t fall, being possessive of him—playfully with a friend, but possessive nonetheless.
When they’ve both changed into house clothes and Gem has ordered dinner off a delivery app, Grian is at a point where he cannot keep himself off Gem any longer. There’s a warmth encompassing his brain, soupifying his thoughts into a steady stream of Gem, Gem Gem. He pulls her into a kiss, right in the hallway between their bedroom and the living room.
She giggles into it, pulling away for a second to say, “You couldn’t wait until after dinner?”
He shakes his head, “Nope,” He pops the ‘p’, “I missed you.”
“I’ve been with you the entire day!” She says stubbornly, pointedly ignoring the way Grian is looking at her, pupils blown.
“I missed kissing you.” He corrects, eyes lidded.
Now it’s her turn to blush, slapping his arm lightly. She rolls her eyes and tugs him back down to her by the front of his t-shirt, slotting her lips into Grian’s. She backs Grian up until he gently makes contact with the wall behind him, careful to not put pressure on his folded up wings.
Grian kisses playfully, full of nips and distracting touches—his fingers skate along her sides, brushing up against ribs, digging his thumbs into her hipbone to feel along the groove between her stomach and her side. He knows she likes it, too, because she kisses with more hunger, sucking in breath whenever she can so she doesn’t pass out. Every time he nips at her bottom lip, her jaw, her neck, she feels dizzy, knees wobbling. Grian’s love language is touch, and Gem is obsessed with that. She indulges him whenever she can. She likes making him feel liked. It does have drawbacks, however, such as making her sleepy when he idly plays with her hair, or making her heart race whenever he pulls her into hugs, or rests his head on her shoulder, or slings an arm around her in public. He makes her feel like her veins were replaced by live, sparking wires.
Grian’s still slumped against the wall when Gem decides to move her kisses elsewhere. She uses her nose to nudge his jaw upwards, planting her lips on his rabbit-fast pulsepoint. He freezes, hands tightening their grip on her hips by a noticeable percentage. A chirping noise bubbles from the back of his throat, and she can feel the rumble on her mouth. His wings thrash against the wall, preybrain in overdrive. Gem smiles, and takes a bit of skin between her teeth but does not bite down, just gently holding him there. She feels him shakily exhale, pride thrumming through her bones at his reaction, and lets go of him, leaving little kisses around the spot she threatened.
To hit the final nail in Grian’s coffin, her hands snake around him. She lightly traces her nails around in circles, petting into the feathers at the base of his wings with an air of coincidence, like she wasn’t even trying to rile him up. It makes him feel like he’s going to pass out in her arms.
He attempts to match her energy, catch up to her, when he was the one to start this in the first place. Grian’s brain is, simply put, on another plane of existence, and he fails to figure out a way to regain control of the situation. Gem’s gentle sighing and fond giggles set his blood on fire, she’s all he’s able to focus on at all. She’s pressed against him, trailing open-mouthed kisses on his neck, his collarbone, no doubt leaving little red marks on the thin skin. His head thumps against the wall and he stares at the ceiling above them, trying (failing) to collect his composure.
She uses both of her hands to reach up, pull his head back down to her so she can pepper kisses on his face in between each word of a sentence that pushes its way through the cloud over Grian’s mind. “You’re really cute,” She murmurs to him, “So pretty.”
He almost scoffs, broken out of his haze only just a bit by the absurdity, because for her to call him cute and pretty is madness to him. To him, Gem is quite possibly the cutest, the prettiest. Her praise makes his head swim, but the words themselves are not lost.
“You—Funny of you to say that,” He says with an exhale, twirling a bit of her fiery hair in his fingers, “I could say the same thing.”
She makes a distinctly Gem noise, sounding something like an “oif” before she stops her kisses, holding his face in both hands and staring into his eyes, jewel-toned green meeting a deep, swirling brown.
“I love you.” She says, voice strong and unwavering, full of fondness and warmth. It tugs at Grian’s heart. He places his own hands on her wrists, just hanging off them, feeling her pulse.
He suddenly feels very shy, like he can barely meet her eyes. They’ve said I love you many times in the past, it’s not anything new or big, but she’s looking at him so intensely, with so much love written on her face it catches him off guard for a moment.
“I love you, too” He replies eventually, because it’s factual. He wants to keep kissing her. He wants her to keep doing whatever the hell it was that made him feel like putty in her hands. He wants to continue making out with her until they’re both breathless and as red as Grian’s sweatshirt.
The doorbell rings, and their bubble is shattered. Gem pulls herself off Grian with an annoyed groan and leaves him cold in the hallway to collect their food, but not before leaving him with a heated promise to resume after they’ve eaten their sesame tofu.
Grian puts his head in his hands and inhales, exhales. He tucks his wings back in neatly, pushes off the wall, and ignores every thought in his brain screaming for Gem to come back and kiss him stupid.