Work Text:
Picture this for me:
The local rink in Sheffield has never seen such chaos. Four men, one dream, and zero balance. It's survived screaming children, hen parties with novelty tiaras, and the occasional over ambitious hockey dad who thought he was Wayne Gretzky reborn. What it had never prepared for was four grown men who had promised one million strangers on YouTube that they’d do an entire improv show on ice.
Sam, AJ, Tom, and Luke, aka YouTube’s most chaotic foursome, stand at the rink’s edge like penguins who had just realized water is wet. Each of them wear skates they’d rented from the counter. Each of them regret it.
"Gentlemen," AJ announces with the gravitas of a Shakespearean knight, wobbling as one skate slides forward without his consent, "we are about to make history."
“You’re about to make a hole in your trousers,” Sam shoots back, just as AJ yelps and clings to him like a koala. "Why do these feel like medieval torture devices?"
"They are medieval torture devices," AJ says gravely, as though he were narrating a BBC history documentary. "Invented by a Dutch lunatic in the 13th century. Designed purely to humiliate."
"Brilliant," Tom says, slapping his thighs and standing tall like a man about to storm the beaches of Normandy. "Let’s humiliate ourselves, then."
Luke is still fiddling with his helmet, the strap caught under his chin like a noose. "Do we actually need helmets? None of the kids are wearing them."
"Yes," Sam says. "Because if any of us cracks our skulls, the show is cancelled, and also our marriage."
That settles it. Helmets stay.
Tom, meanwhile, has launched himself onto the ice with the blind optimism of a toddler at a bouncy castle. He immediately goes horizontal. The crash reverberates across the rink like someone drops a piano. "I meant to do that," he groans, flat on his back, arms spread like he’s been struck down by a vengeful god.
Luke, ever the supportive husband, is doubled over laughing. He tries to skate over to help, but his feet start migrating in opposite directions. He’s suddenly doing the splits with the grim determination of a man who has gone too far to turn back. "I’m either discovering new muscles," he wheezes, "or tearing them."
By some miracle, all four eventually shuffle into the middle of the rink, clutching one another like a terrified migrating herd. Their plan is simple: practice a "grand entrance." Their execution is carnage. Sam tries to spin, AJ panics and latches onto his flannel, Tom barrels into both of them like a rogue shopping trolley, and Luke, late to the dogpile, just flops on top yelling, "Love tackle!"
They end up in a tangled heap, helmets knocking, skates pointing in every possible direction except vertical. The referee blows a whistle, probably out of pity.
And yet, somehow, they’re happy. Luke kisses Tom’s cheek as they’re peeling each other off the ice. Sam pulls AJ upright and they laugh so hard their legs give out again. They look like absolute idiots. They look like they’re auditioning for Bambi 2: Midlife Crisis Edition. But underneath the bruises and the bruised egos, there’s this unshakable joy, because they’re together, and because their fans are going to get the dumbest, sweetest, gayest ice show Britain has ever seen.
---
The First Step (and Immediate Collapse)
The four of them shuffles around the rink, holding the rail as if they were clinging to life. A teenage rink attendant watch, gave them a once over, and mutters, "Good luck, lads," with the hollow pity of someone who saw their disaster minutes prior.
One by one, they attempt to step back onto the ice. AJ went first, and within a single second, his left foot betrayed him. He swung his arms wildly, flailed like a malfunctioning wind turbine, and clung to Sam.
Sam shrieks: "Don’t bring me down with you!"
AJ: "In sickness and in....aaagh!"
They both went down in a heap.
Luke, watching this, laughs so hard he forgot to keep his feet steady. His skates slips, legs spread like Bambi mid growth spurt, and he slowly slid into a full split again. The expression on his face is halfway between agony and enlightenment. "I’ve… never… been so close to God," he wheezes.
Tom, the only one still upright, immediately decided he's now the professional among them. "Don’t worry, I’ve got this." He pushes forward with far too much confidence and promptly belly flopped on the ice, sliding several feet like a human curling stone. "Nailed it," he groans from the floor.
By the time they manage to crawl into a huddle in the center of the rink, children half their height are pirouetting around them like Olympians.
---
The Training Montage That Wasn’t
They’d plan a training session, maybe a montage, worthy hour of steady progress. What they got is thirty minutes of the following:
• Sam trying to spin, then toppling into AJ like a collapsing Jenga tower.
• AJ attempting to teach "basic posture" while holding the rail for dear life.
• Tom screaming "For science!" before attempting to skate backward, immediately crashing into a wall with the force of a runaway trolley, and he immediately apologizes to it.
• Luke discovering that if he just lay flat on the ice and let Sam drag him, it's technically skating.
Their laughter echoes through the rink. Every crash, every yelp, every expletive turns into another round of cackling. They're idiots, but they're idiots together.
At one point, Luke tries to pull Tom upright and ends up accidentally yanking his husband into a full embrace. They topple together, still holding on, laughing into each other’s helmets.
"Romance is dead," Sam snorts, watching them sprawl.
"No," AJ corrects, grinning. "Romance just slipped and landed on its arse."
---
The Pyramid Scheme
About hour and half in, they decided, because clearly they haven't suffered enough, that they should attempt a human pyramid.
"Think about it," AJ says, pacing like a drill sergeant whose boots squeaked. "We open our live show with a pyramid. The crowd goes wild. We collapse, but on purpose. Perfect comedy."
Sam pinches the bridge of his nose. "You’re actually insane."
Tom: "No, no, I like it. I’ll be the base. I’ve got thighs of steel."
Luke: "I’ll go middle tier. I’m compact."
AJ: “I’ll take top. I was born to be majestic."
What follows could only be described as an act of war against physics. Tom crouches down, bracing himself. Luke gingerly climbs onto his back, wobbling. Sam tries to stabilize the both of them, skates squeaking in protest. AJ, beaming with unwarranted confidence, attempts to climb on top.
For one shining moment, they manage it. A pyramid of gay British comedians, triumphant in the fluorescent light of a public rink.
Then Tom's left skate slips.
The entire structure collapses like a cheap card table, scattering four men across the ice in a pile of limbs, helmets, and groans.
A child passing by claps. "Do it again!"
"Never," Sam barks from the floor, face pressed against the ice.
---
The Couples Skate
When the rink DJ announces, "Couples skate, everybody!" the four men exchange glances.
"Technically, we qualify four times over," Tom said.
"Quadratically romantic," Luke agrees.
They attempt to pair off, which mostly meant clinging to each other like baby deer learning to walk. Sam and AJ shuffles around the rink, hand in hand, laughing at how utterly incapable they are. Luke and Tom, meanwhile, decide to turn it into a competition: who could skate three feet without falling?
Neither succeed.
By the end of the song, they’d all reconvened in the middle, panting with exhaustion but glowing with joy.
---
The Final Disaster (and Triumph)
As their practice session wound down, AJ declares, "We need a grand finale. Something that says: Yes, we nearly died today, but also, we’re legends."
"Fireworks?" Luke suggests.
"Illegal indoors," Sam says.
"Confetti cannons?" Tom offers.
"Also illegal," Sam says.
AJ claps his hands. "Then we do what we do best: improv. On ice. Right here, right now."
And so, wobbling, falling, and sliding across the rink, they performed a five minute improvised soap opera about four gay astronauts stranded on Uranus. The audience mostly confused children and their parents—watched as:
• Tom dramatically flung himself onto the ice, declaring he’s been struck by an alien love beam.
• Luke attempts to skate in slow motion, narrating it as "zero gravity."
• Sam, adopting a ludicrous Russian accent, proclaims he's the villainous space captain who wanted to outlaw kissing.
• AJ, arms wide, yells, "Love always wins!" before collapsing in a heap.
The kids love it. The parents… tolerate it.
But for the four of them, it's magic.
---
Epilogue: The Ride Home
Later, piled into their car, skates in a bag and bruises blossoming on their shins, they laughed until their stomachs hurt.
Luke leaned his head on Tom’s shoulder. “We’re idiots.”
“The best kind,” Tom said.
AJ reached forward from the passenger seat to squeeze Sam’s knee. “We really are going to do this show, aren’t we?”
Sam, smiling despite himself, nodded. “Yeah. And it’s going to be the dumbest, funniest, gayest thing Britain’s ever seen.”
“Cheers to that,” Luke mumbled, half-asleep already.
And as the car rumbled through the streets, the four of them—ridiculous, bruised, but utterly inseparable—knew that no matter how many times they fell, they’d always pick each other back up.
Because that was the point. Comedy was easy. Love was better. And the combination? Absolutely unstoppable.