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The first time something sticks, it’s punctuated by the clanging of vulcanised rubber ricocheting off corrugated iron. Rust particles briefly suspended in the air before inevitably succumbing to gravity and gracing the accumulating snow on the frozen pond surface. The corrosion stains an otherwise pristine blanket of white as each intake of breath from the grey-haired boy currently assaulting the abandoned shed wall with pucks does the same to the stagnant air.
Ivan briefly wonders whether this is an exercise in self-flagellation as he observes him collect the pucks and align them before firing toward the same corners of a goal crudely delineated by duct-tape. Like an autophagic serpent shoving its tail into its mouth, chunks of metal coming off in place of scales.
“Fuck! Shit! Ow!”
Ah. Maybe he wasn’t the only distracted one.
A stick rattles against the ice as the boy clutches unprotected knuckles, digits trembling and unnaturally bent after bearing the brunt force of a stray puck. Beads of blood meet the rust tinted snow, shedding an ineffective winter glove and cradling the injured hand against his chest. Little staccato breaths escape him as he grips the bent fingers, tears trailing across his rose-tinted cheeks. And pulls. A sickening pop breaks the relative silence as bones realign themselves; and Ivan briefly mourns the presumed disappearance of the most entertainment he has derived from a person that week.
However, rather than trudge dejectedly through the snow in the direction of home, nursing a bruised ego and body; he elects to curl his bloodied hand around the stick again. The white tape is peeling at the edges, marred with black discolourations and clinging to the Bauer imprinted across the handle. It’s a miracle that it hasn’t fallen off by now.
He wonders why the same boy preparing to test the limits of this snake’s maw, lining up pucks and leaving red streaks along the ice, refuses to give up on it.
As the evening supplants the last vestiges of dusk, and the ricocheting reaches a final crescendo before the absence of light forces it into its coda, Ivan is drawn to the constellations above. He recalls the city, scattered stars with cavernous gulfs of black between them. He had known this intuitively, what with the lack of light pollution, but it’s a different sensation to witness it himself.
The stars out here are clearer.
The grin he can just make out on the ice confirms it.
–
Ivan has inevitably found himself alongside Till once more, the smudge against the sky trailing behind a shooting star; an ephemeral existence of dust and stolen heat. In lieu of hockey practice and cursed with fingers that twitch at the prospect of prolonged stillness, he had suggested they make the most of the three fresh inches of snowfall. Amongst the sensations of gradually dampening boots, crunching snow and rising goosebumps, the space where Till’s fingers grip Ivan’s bare wrist serves as a grounding point. A solar body to orbit.
“I fucking hate this town.” Till mutters, having monologued about the idiocy of his teammates and their audacity to catch influenza for the entirety of their journey to the familiar secluded lake. He glances briefly at Ivan from his peripherals before focusing his gaze ahead once more, squeezing Ivan’s wrist almost imperceptibly tighter as he continues. “And, I mean, I’ve lived here my entire life. So you’ve gotta hate it ten times more than me, right?”
Ivan remains silent for a minute, fixing red pupils onto the gloved fingers he knows are littered with bandages underneath.
“Not really.”
He isn’t sure as to whether Till’s abrupt stop and release of his wrist is due to them reaching their destination or whether he’s responded unsatisfactorily. Such failures seem inevitable around him sometimes, parasitic words burrowing within his host; an inability to imitate mutualism that is the fault of nobody besides evolution.
Till turns to face him, blinking once before replying, “You’re weird.” and scrunching his nose. Ivan wonders if he would let him memorise the ridges with his tongue. Instead of walking into assured rejection and disgust, he simply mirrors Till’s slow blink.
“Well, whatever, I hate this stupid town. And eventually I’m gonna get out. I'll do literally anything if it means I get signed. Can you imagine playing hockey every single day? And I won't have to ever think about this place ever again.”
Ivan tilts his head slightly, conjuring hazy images from the singular Leafs game he’d attended while he still lived in Toronto. “... But you’re so scrawny?”
Wet sludge that he belatedly realises must be a snowball hits his face before Till is indignantly tackling him to the ground, dumping snow into his parka. Ivan retaliates with his own misshapen heaps, a poor imitation. Each roll indents the ground with their silhouettes, Till in front, followed by Ivan. It feels something like acceptance, this clumsy tango that neither of them quite understands. He mourns the body heat, but this will more than suffice.
–
He thought they had approached understanding once. Fingers on a wrist. Streaks of seafoam green and magenta like delicate gauze over a clear night sky. Laughter in sync rather than in canon for once. Two one way bus tickets. One unsightly grin. One furrowed brow. One boy returning home. One boy thinking himself foolish for believing he could ever have one.
Neither of them discuss it.
–
At a certain point, the stands become populated with enough girlfriends that it seems inappropriate to impose himself any further upon Till. As for family, well, Ivan cannot be considered an appropriate substitute. So rather than linger on the spit strings suspended from chapped lips or the indentations on a worn mouth guard, illuminated by dull rink LEDs; he idles in his car, completing calculus exercises on the dashboard until familiar knuckles rap against the frosted windows.
Till never bothers depositing his hockey gear into the boot, instead tossing the black nylon duffel onto otherwise pristine seats, now permanently scuffed by the cheap fabric. He allows Ivan to cover tournament and travel expenses, but bristles at gear, defending his pride and memories of his mother through adopting the only brands her meagre salary could afford.
Despite Unsha’s occasional disapproving remarks, he can’t bring himself to remove the stains.
He’s unsure as to whether it’s even possible.
When he had initially resigned himself to attending practices exclusively in the parking lot, he’d had to bear the weight of a dissecting gaze on him from the front seat, scrutinising him like the twitching glove of an opposing goaltender. Sharp eyes devoted entirely to Ivan.
Now, he remains relatively reticent; tension thrumming underneath the thick atmosphere of the heated car interior like the perpetual knots in Till’s abused muscles.
Ivan starts their post-game drill, passing thoughts in place of pucks.
“How was the game?” He tries, steadily tapping his fingers against the wheel as he reverses, briefly glancing at Till fidgeting with the slats on the air conditioning.
His left thumb hangs from his mouth as he absentmindedly chews at a nail bitten dangerously close to the quick. “Fine. We won, but not by much. Their defence fucking sucks but their goalie is like Carey Price reincarnated or something. You would know if you were-“
“Reincarnated? Isn’t he still alive?”
Till’s brow furrows. “What? I mean, yeah, of course. But not, like, literally- you know what I meant.”
“Mm.”
Silence briefly settles over the car before Till turns to face Ivan.
“… Are you gonna be there for the next game?” His eyes dart between Ivan’s facial features as he says it, anxiety or vexation leaking from his pores. He’s not quite sure which one it is; a failed scholar in the language of Till who has yet to discover his salvatory Rosetta Stone.
“Of course. Why? Are you trying out a new training technique? I understand hockey rituals, but even for you, walking through a kilometre’s worth of snow is a bit excessive, no?” The edge of his mouth tugs unpleasantly upwards. “Maybe you should get assessed for that hit you received the other day. You know, concussion symptoms can lay dormant sometimes.”
Ordinarily, he’d receive an eye roll in exchange; a swat to the hand if he was particularly tempestuous. Instead, his fingers abandon the air conditioner slats in favour of tapping frantically near the gear stick as he furrows his brows further. His nose is wrinkled.
“Not like that, I mean in the actual stands. Watching the game.”
“Hm. I don’t know. Hyuna will be there, right?” ‘General manager’, ‘talent agent’, ‘unnie’; Hyuna manages to juggle multiple titles with an admirable grace, whereas Ivan fails to even approach acquisition of the title ‘friend’. Perhaps a consequence of the grit required to claw one’s way to borderline superstardom in a market as undersupported as South Korean women’s hockey and the mental fortitude required to plunge herself into that world once more after a career-ending leg injury, recognising that same burning stellar core within a small boy skating until his blistering feet protested against outgrown skates.
But he’s been selfish enough. Regardless of the extent to which the other craves company, he can’t allow himself to potentially interfere with Till’s performance; not with scouts in attendance. Though he himself has never borne witness to the locker room talk, he’s gleaned enough from the way some of the defensemen target Till during his shifts and the blood on his knuckles; hits heralded by snide comments about communal showers and wandering eyes. He doesn’t want to contribute to the speculation.
He doubts Till would truly mourn his presence anyway.
The tapping abruptly stops as Till spits out his next words. “Whatever. Forget I asked.”
The pass bounces off Ivan’s metaphorical skate. No goal.
When Till exits Ivan’s car, the only gratitude he expresses is in the echo of a slammed door, rather than the slinging of a poorly executed final word.
–
Even the padded floors struggle to muffle the force with which stiff rubber slams into it, lower-body strength reappropriated to carve a path that extends beyond the boundaries of any game. Ivan is familiar with the rhythm at this point. Absorbing the auditory pattern of dull skates skidding along the ice in the stands and contriving ways to engrave it into his own sinoarterial node; a conduit for his heartbeat.
He barely manages a glimpse of Till, discoloured laces untied and skateguards haphazardly attached, before being unceremoniously punched along his jaw.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?!”
“Well, hello to you too.”
Till slaps him.
Ivan stumbles into the facade of the rink from the impact, gently pressing his thumb into the forming bruise as his head collides with the rough surface. “Why the hell did I have to hear from Hyuna that you were moving back to Toronto?! I don’t get it, can’t you just leave me alone if you hate me so much? What, is making fun of me just that entertaining to you? Is fucking with me worth that much of your precious time?!”
He’s visibly heaving now, each movement of his shoulders stilted like an unfinished zoetrope. It recalls memories of tears soaking into Ivan’s pajamas, tongue attempting to smooth planes of cut skin littered with bruises still bearing the ridges of a beer bottle. Though, on this occasion, the taste of blood in his mouth is unfortunately his own.
“I’m flattered you care so much, but I’m not moving back permanently, it’ll just be for the duration of my degree. Besides, won’t you be moving as well? I don’t see how telling you was necessary.”
Till’s eyes suddenly still, an action antithetical to a being so kinetic, lingering on the purpling skin. He briefly wonders whether he should brace for another hit. “Yeah, well, I didn’t fucking hide my lifelong junior hockey career from you! Why wouldn’t I care that you were leaving? I don’t know maybe I thought you could- fuck.” He stares directly into Ivan’s eyes, pupils reduced to pinpricks, tears trickling down scarlet cheeks. “What is wrong with you?!”
Ivan is perfectly aware of what will transpire after this reply, but there’s a reason he never pursued medicine. He has always been more adept at digging into wounds than healing them. “Most likely the same things that were wrong with me the first time you asked.”
The snowy discards from the zamboni cushion his fall as residually frigid fingertips pound on his chest, blindly grabbing at cotton and leaving a trail of fisticuff kisses. If he framed his torso, perhaps it could be considered a kind of imitation Pollock. Though he’s undoubtedly more athletic than Ivan, he still has a couple of inches on Till, utilising the momentum from an ambitious knee to the thigh to pin his swinging hand onto the rapidly melting pile of shredded ice. A choked kind of gasp escapes Ivan, something one suppresses with elocution lessons; more comfortably categorised as a final breath than a laugh.
Observing his struggle against Ivan’s grip, haloed by shades of rust from mingling blood and water, he wonders how the world serpent had ever managed to be slain after assuming its role as an apocalyptic horseman. He wonders how its boundlessness had ever ceased when he faces the vastness of its throat and simply sees an infinite black, engulfing and unrelenting. But perhaps someone like Till cannot be bound by the limits of human mythmaking, because when he feels exhaustion tugging at his eyelids and waning fists, he notices the evening sky.
Black and infinite.
Stars in its grasp. Bugs crawling beneath its gaze, waiting to be quashed.
They seem to always end like this, like how they began. Covered in blood in the pursuit of something like intimacy.
He finds he doesn’t mind that thought.