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Nick silently curses the wind–mussing up his hair and whipping his scarf around–as he fixes on his skates, gloved fingers fumbling with the laces. The day is chilly, and if he didn’t have such a good reason to be outside in the biting cold air, he wouldn’t even consider stepping outside of his apartment, thank you very much. Except, he does have a reason; and, he has to admit, a pretty great one at that. A reason that has oh-so-blue eyes and a delicate voice and a crooked smile that just, sort of, warms up his insides as if the cold day blowing chills into his bones doesn’t exist at all. In other words, he has a reason named Louis.
Well actually, the reason is more the fact that he somehow agreed to teach Louis how to skate. Nick doesn’t quite remember agreeing to that in the first place, but he’s not complaining, because as he’s bent down to lace up his left skate now, he can see Louis out of the corner of his eye, sitting on the little bench beside him, and he realizes the distance between them isn’t very far at all; if he just scooted over a couple more inches their thighs would be touching, and, that doesn’t make his stomach flip, flop, and flutter, nope, not at all.
And with that thought, Nick’s cheeks are probably (definitely) pink, so he’s thankful that Louis is still concentrating on trying to tie up his skates. Nick stands up after fixing his laces, and wobbling a bit, redoes his scarf. “Need some help?” he asks Louis, watching the top of the beanie-d head and bare fingers messing up the laces even worse than before.
“No,” Louis huffs, “I’m fine. I can tie up my own skates.”
The tone of his voice is almost snappy, and Nick laughs, because he wonders if Louis’ ever gone skating before. Probably not, he figures, watching Louis sit back in defeat after a frustrated attempt to even out the length of the laces–only succeeding in pulling one of them out further–the grey knit beanie slipping over his forehead, just barely covering his blue eyes.
“Let me get it for you there, darling,” Nick smirks, and with an exaggerated flutter of his hand he kneels down to tie the laces.
(He finds it amusing that Louis didn’t protest, only looked at him with a look in his eyes; the same look Nick was given when he proved to Louis, after a good half hour of arguing, that tomatoes were, indeed, a fruit.)
The memory makes Nick chuckle, because Louis is just so stubborn and so annoying at times, yet (Nick hates to say it, because it makes him sound like a sap), so lovable. And it’s only because Louis is sort of wonderful and lovely and amazing that Nick even agreed to teaching him how to skate in the first place. Nick reminds himself of that (even though the blue eyes and that damned beanie is enough to make the words fantastic and sort of pretty and breathtaking pop into his mind). He hums quietly, focusing on the laces in front of him. But as he’s down in front of the younger lad, a bit of an absurd, sort of uncomfortable thought pops into his mind, because if he tilted his head up and looked forward, he’d be face to face with a lovely Louis Tomlinson’s crotch.
Oh, Nick says to himself, because he should not be thinking about these kinds of things (although it isn’t really his fault that Louis’ dick is in his face). Still, though; absolutely, certainly, definitely not. If Harry were here to bother him about this, then… Nick cringes inwardly; he’s sure Harry would hold this against him forever (as well as the fact that his face feels like he could fry an egg on it right now, and he’s probably hiding an A+ blush underneath part of his scarf).
He gets up rather quickly, as soon as his fingers leave the knot in the laces, and watches as Louis takes an experimental step with the skates on. The snow underneath his feet make a crunch, and the blades make thin, deep imprints into the ground.
Nick turns around to make his way to the edge of the pond, and holding his breath, steps onto the ice with one foot, then the other. He almost falls (almost), but catches himself just in time. The frozen pond is quite bumpy, and really not the best place to go skating, but it’s better than being all crowded in an arena in the big city.
Although a nice indoor arena sounds nice to Nick right about now. It’s far too cold outside, he thinks. But if the occasional gusts of cold air didn’t exist, nor the already dull throbbing pain in his ankles from his skates running over cracks and bumps in the ice, then Nick supposes the thought of coming out here more often would be a good idea.
But then Nick almost forgets why he showed up outside, in the middle of the winter, in the first place. He cranes his neck, looking over his shoulder, for Louis. For a minute, he thinks he may have lost the poor lad, but then, oh, there he is, sitting on the snow covered ground, now-mittened hands fiddling with his coat.
Nick skates with ease towards Louis, and he sees blue eyes turn upwards to look at him. “Well aren’t you coming?” Nick asks.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because this is stupid,” Louis says, and Nick furrows his eyebrows; isn’t this what Louis’ wanted? To learn how to skate? “Besides,” Louis continues, and Nick focuses on the words and the sound of the voice, and, red blush creeping up tan skin. “I’ve never skated before.”
“Oh.” Nick replies a little dumbly. He pauses a bit, before talking again. “But that’s why we’re here. So I can teach you how to skate. So that you can learn how to skate.”
“But didn’t you see me just now?” Louis whines, kicking his feet a bit and almost hitting Nick with the awfully sharp blades on his feet. “I fell. And I haven’t even touched the ice yet. I already know I’m going to be completely rubbish at this.”
Nick is watching Louis pout, and he finds it sort of adorable. “Here,” he says, grabbing Louis’ arm and pulling him up (almost slipping and knocking the both of them over, but, thankfully not). “Let’s just try. Once.”
And one time turns into two and two turn into a dozen as Nick guides the other boy around the ice, skating, as well as falling and circling and sliding.
“Easy now, love,” Nick chuckles as Louis’ skates slip from underneath him for the umpteenth time, and Louis hits the ice hard once more. Low muttered curses are heard as he shakily stands up, brushing snow off his bum.
“This is too hard,” Louis whines, taking a mittened hand and pulling his beanie back down over his head, fixing it from when it slipped askew. Nick watches affectionately, thinking, all he really wants to do is kiss the frown off Louis’ face and snuggle up under blankets by the fire. But, he’s determined to teach Louis how to skate (and how to have fun skating), even if it takes all day.
So Nick just extends his own gloved hand out, pulling a pink-cheeked, pouting Louis closer to him. “Come on, you’re getting better already,” he laughs, pulling Louis along, the other boy looking quite skeptical. “Just one more try.”
Louis huffs dramatically, and pushes away from Nick, but, it doesn’t really go as planned as his arms go windmilling backwards, and then Nick’s laughing; Louis looks equally as ridiculous as a kitten with skates on, as he sits there on the ice, his last attempt at fixing his hat just mocking him now.
(Louis’ beanie is already back over his eyebrows, while his cheeks are tinged pink from the biting cold air; and Nick has to pinch himself, because yep, still as adorable as usual, if not more.)
And all of a sudden, a surge of… something rushes through him as Louis starts to stand up, long eyelashes brushing against his pink cheeks; Nick can feel a warm sort of flutter in his chest, muddling the thoughts and words running around in his head and making his own cheeks feel warm; and it sort of feels like he’s swallowed a giant sip of hot cocoa, this unexplainable tingling as it rushes through him and warming him up from his ears to his toes.
Louis stands up, clutching Nick’s arm for balance, and steadying himself so that he’s facing him too. Nick bites the inside of his cheek, because Louis looks like an angel for god’s sake, the sun shining weakly but making everything bright around him, the whole atmosphere seemingly directing all it’s light onto the blue eyed boy in front of him.
Louis shuffles forward a bit, and the next thing Nick knows, Louis is pressed up against his chest, their skates knocking together and making a horrid sort of scratching sound, but he barely even notices it because Louis’ lips are pressed against his; they’re absolutely freezing, and everything is just awkward, because Nick has to bend down quite a bit to kiss Louis properly, but then Louis’ tongue is there and there’s two arms wrapping themselves around Nick’s waist, and all awkwardness and coldness is gone, because this fantastic kiss is making Nick’s insides warmer than a heat wave in the summer time.
Well, until they slip and collapse backwards onto the ice, that is. The fall knocks the wind out of Nick, the warm fuzzy feeling replacing itself with cold spears up his back; and it feels like there’s a giant weight on his chest, but oh, right, Louis is on top of his chest.
Louis groans a bit, and then Nick realizes he’s landed on top of Louis’ arms, which were winded around his back before. “Fuck,” he mutters, sitting up, Louis just slouched against his torso, looking like he has no intention to get up.
Louis is mumbling into Nick’s jacket and he has to pull the lad away from his chest to hear what he’s saying. “I told you I was a horrible skater.” Louis says.
“Well,” Nick says, sliding away from a protesting Louis and quickly getting up, balancing himself after. “You’re not that terrible, darling. Besides, forget that, I guess I really fell for you there, huh?”
“Shut up, you wanker,” Louis says with a snort, as Nick pulls him up after him. His whole body’s a bit sore now, but he doesn’t really mind too much because Louis is still holding onto his hand, even though he’s gotten up alright. They slowly skate towards the edge of the pond, and the snow crunches underneath them as they sit back down on the bench to take off their skates.
“You are a rubbish skater, though,” Nick says suddenly, laughing at the sassy turn of Louis’ head and his eyebrows that shot up so fast they basically disappeared under his crooked beanie at this point (both Louis and Nick have given up on trying to keep it on straight).
“Shut up,” Louis says again, and Nick’s aware of how close they’re sitting once more.
“Make me,” he replies childishly, just barely a whisper, but it isn’t much longer after he gets the words out, that Louis is kissing him again, and his stomach is flipping again, and it’s snowing again, and oh.
Nick is sort of glad he decided to take Louis skating after all.