mads

And at the Pitt, you don’t have room for softness.

Jack Abbot notices everything about you. The way you triage with incredible efficiency. The way you steady shaking hands without making a show of it. The way you don’t flinch when someone yells.

He’s never noticed you squint.

Until today.

It happens mid-shift. A trauma rolls in, fast and loud and chaotic, and you’re at the bedside for nearly an hour straight. The air is dry. You blink too much. Your vision starts to blur at the edges. By the time you step out into the hall, your eyes are burning so badly you can barely keep them open.

You duck into the staff bathroom, hands braced on the sink.

“Not now,” you mutter.

The contacts have shifted and one is definitely torn. You recognize that scratchy, wrong sensation immediately. After washing your hands, you take them out carefully, blinking against the sting. The relief is instant—but so is the realization that hits you a second later.

You don’t have spares.

“Great,” you sigh, staring at your blurry reflection.

For a second, you consider just powering through it—squinting your way through the rest of the shift and pretending the sting in your eyes isn’t driving you insane. But you know better. You won’t last an hour like this, and the last thing you need is to misread a chart or medication label because you were too stubborn to grab your backup.

Which means leaving the safety of the bathroom.

You dry your hands slowly, take one last look at your unfocused reflection, and step back into the hallway. Without your contacts, everything feels slightly off-kilter—the lights too bright, the edges of people and gurneys a little too soft. 

You keep your gaze down as you walk toward the lockers, hoping no one stops you on the way.

When you get to the lockers it is mercifully empty. You crouch in front of your locker, fingers fumbling with the zipper of your bag until you find the hard case tucked into the side pocket. In it, wrapped in an old cleaning cloth, are your glasses.

You hesitate again before unfolding them.

They’re simple, with thin metal frames, a little too big for your face, the kind that make your eyes look wider and a touch more exposed. You slide them on and blink a few times as the world snaps back into sharp focus. The clarity is immediate, almost jarring.

There’s a small mirror on the inside of one of the lockers. You glance at yourself, head tilting slightly as you take in the difference. 

You look… different but not worse. Just less guarded somehow, like a layer you didn’t realize you were wearing has been peeled back.

You exhale slowly, straighten your shoulders, and throw the ruined contacts into a nearby trash bin, slide the glasses on, and step back into the chaos of the floor.

It takes exactly thirty seconds.

“Oh my God,” one of the nurses says dramatically. “You wear glasses?”

A couple of heads snap up from charts. Someone actually leans closer, squinting at you like they’re trying to confirm it’s really you.

Shen swivels in his chair, openly staring. “Wait, hold on. Since when have you been hiding these? This is a betrayal.”

“A betrayal?” You repeat flatly.

“Yes,” he insists. “We work twelve-hour shifts together. I thought we told each other things.”

You roll your eyes. “Can we focus on the patients instead of my face?”

“Sorry,” another nurse chimes in. “You just look… adorable.”

Adorable.

You groan. “If anyone says the word adorable again, I’m transferring departments.”

Ellis smirks at your irritation. “Noted. Adorable is off the table. We’ll workshop alternatives.”

There’s laughter. A few exaggerated double takes. Nothing malicious—just the kind of teasing that happens when something shifts in a place that rarely changes.

You try to brush past them, pretending none of this is getting to you, but the teasing follows like a wave. It isn’t cruel. It’s just new and impossible to ignore. And in a place where everything is routine and muscle memory, new stands out.

You adjust the bridge of your glasses self-consciously, wishing your face didn’t feel like it’s under a spotlight.

And then you feel it.

That shift in the air that has nothing to do with Shen or Ellis or any nurse.

You glance up almost immediately.

Jack is standing at the end of the nurses’ station with a chart half-lowered in his hand. He isn’t laughing or smirking or joining in. He’s just staring, his eyes fixed on you like he’s trying to recalibrate something he thought he understood.

His eyes drag over your face like he’s trying to recalibrate something. Like he’s seeing you for the first time.

“What?” You ask when you get closer, trying to keep your voice steady.

Jack doesn’t answer right away. He blinks, slow and deliberate, as if surfacing from somewhere else. “It’s just…” he trails off quietly. “I—”

His jaw flexes. You’ve seen that look before—usually right before he says something sharp or carefully controlled—but this isn’t sharp. It isn’t controlled, but instead stunned.

“You look…”

Your stomach flips despite yourself. 

“Different?” You offer, a hint of defensiveness creeping in.

His gaze softens, and the shift in it makes your pulse stutter. “Yeah,” he murmurs. “Different.” A small pause stretches between you before he adds, lower, “Good different.”

The hallway noise seems to dim at the edges. Someone wolf-whistles from behind you. “Oh, he likes it.”

You feel heat climb all the way up your neck. “Can we not do this right now?”

But Jack doesn’t break eye contact, and that’s what makes it unbearable. 

Later, when the rush finally ebbs into something manageable, you find a computer at the end of the nurses’ station and start charting. The department hums around you—monitors beeping, phones ringing, Shen arguing with pharmacy over speaker—but it’s background noise now. 

Your glasses have stopped feeling foreign on your face, though you’re still hyper-aware of them every time you glance down at the screen.

You don’t notice Jack approach until the chair beside you scrapes softly against the floor.

He pulls out the chair beside you and sits—not across from you or at the next computer, but right next to you.

“You don’t wear them often,” he says after a moment, voice low enough that it doesn’t carry past the two of you.

You keep your eyes on the screen, pretending your pulse doesn’t immediately spike. “No. Contacts are easier.”

“For who?” He asks mildly.

“For me.” You huff a quiet laugh. “I get less comments about my sight—or lack thereof—this way.”

He hums at that, but he doesn’t look away. You can feel his gaze tracing over your profile, lingering at the bridge of your nose, the way the thin frames rest against your cheeks. It makes your fingers stumble over the keyboard.

“They suit you,” he says finally.

You snort softly, trying to deflect the sudden tightness in your chest. “That’s not what everyone else thinks.”

“I don’t care what everyone else thinks.”

The words land heavier than they should. You glance up at him, and immediately wish you hadn’t. He’s closer than you realized, one arm resting along the back of your chair, his knee angled slightly toward yours.

“I like seeing your eyes like this,” he continues, voice quieter now, steadier. “They look bigger.”

Your heart stumbles. “They’re the same eyes,” you whisper.

“Yeah,” he says, holding your gaze. “But now I get to see them clearly.”

You swallow, suddenly very aware of how close he is, of how easily someone could glance over and notice the way he’s looking at you.

Your glasses slide slightly down your nose when you look back at the screen.

Without breaking eye contact, he reaches up. There’s a split second where his hand hovers, giving you time to pull away if you want to. You don’t. His fingers gently nudge the frames back into place, the touch light and careful.

It’s brief, but it lingers.

“You should wear them more,” he says quietly.

“So the entire department can keep bullying me?” You let out a small, shaky laugh. 

He almost smiles, something warm flickering in his eyes. “Let them,” he replies. “Gives me an excuse to stare.”

“You stare anyway,” you murmur before you can stop yourself, pulse ringing in your ears.

He doesn’t look embarrassed or caught. Just nods once, slow and certain.

“Yeah,” he admits. “I do.”

And the way he says it makes you think maybe the contacts weren’t the only thing that shifted today.

You lean into the booth, manicured fingers grazing the soundboard as you adjust the levels with careful precision. Trinity stands hip-to-hip with you, the mauve gloss on her lips catching the red and violet strobes that slice through the dark. Her sharp green eyes flick between the glowing monitor to the sea of sweaty bodies dancing below.

The club feels alive.

Velvet heat pressing against your skin, bass vibrating through the soles of your platform heels and straight into your chest. It syncs with your heartbeat, each drop of the song a pulse under your ribcage as you blend one track into another. Fingertips steady even though the night feels unhinged and electric.

Behind you, the DJ laughs too loud with his friends. Making you and Trinity look at each other and roll your eyes as he tips back a shot of tequila, salt clinging to his knuckles. The air smells like bad cologne, sweat, sweet perfume and citrus liquor. Intoxicating in the way only birthday nights can be.

From beneath the sweep of your mascara-heavy lashes, you catch Mateo tugging Victoria toward the dance floor. He spins her dramatically, and she squeals. That soft, shy laugh you all know so well, before Denis joins them. Arms raised like he owns the night as people gather to watch the three of them dance.

Your lips curve. Pride warms your chest. Victoria, your sweet, introverted birthday girl, is glowing.

Back at your booth, the chocolate heart-shaped cake sits slightly smudged but still beautiful. Thick purple icing piped in intricate swirls. The candles are gone now, but flecks of wax remain near the plate. Polaroids are scattered around it. Capturing hazy snapshots of flushed cheeks, glossy lips, glittery eyeshadow, duck faces, mid-laugh chaos.

In one, you’re kissing Victoria’s temple while Trinity kisses her other cheek. In another, Victoria and Trinity raise their drinks with Dennis throwing peace signs behind them. Another the cutely awkward picture of her and Mateo hugging.

You’d all done shots after she made her wish. Drinking tequila and chasing it with maraschino cherries and briny olives. Trinity insisting the sweetness and acidity helped. It didn’t, but the contagious laughter did.

Tonight was supposed to be uncomplicated. Just your friends, glitter, and growing older together.

Then Trinity stiffens beside you. She nudges your waist subtly and tilts her chin toward the crowd. Your stomach drops before your eyes even follow her gaze.

And there he is, Jack.

He’s weaving through bodies, dodging grinding bodies and spilled vodka cranberries. Jaw tight in that stubborn way you remember too well. Moving toward the DJ booth like the music parts for him.

Your pulse stutters. Then races. You can hear the blood rush in your ears, feel it in your throat. It’s ridiculous, how can one person hijack your entire nervous system?

“What is he doing here?” Trinity murmurs, leaning close. The rim of her cup brushes her glossy lips before she licks the tajin away slowly, amused.

“I don’t know,” you answer, but your voice sounds thinner than you intend. “He isn’t supposed to be here.” You add which is true, the only guest you invited was Mateo to surprise Victoria.

You smooth the satin material of your mini skirt instinctively. Adjust your hair, smoothing your palms over the shiny curls. Fix nothing and everything at once.

Trinity grins, eyes wicked.

“Oh please. It’s obvious.” She sways with the music, lifting her hands as the crowd below cheers at a beat drop. “He wants to make up.”

Jack is closer now, close enough that you can see the hesitation in his expression. The way his jaw tightens like he’s rehearsed something in his head a hundred times.

And suddenly the lights feel hotter. The music louder.

Your fingers hover over the controls, as if trying to gain some control of your emotions but your attention is nowhere near the music.

Because your ex is stepping up the booth, eyes still locked to yours. Looking up like he still belongs in your orbit. It makes your face feel warm under the bright lights. Trinity intentionally bumps her hip with hers, her hands grabbing your arm to pull you closer to her.

“Just kiss and make up. Admit it, you miss him.” Trinity whispers in your ear, and you bite your bottom lip.

Knowing she’s right, she’s always right.

The bass is so loud it feels like it’s rearranging your atoms.

You’re mid-transition between songs, fingers steady on the controls even though your pulse isn’t. When you see him again, this time closer.

One of the DJ’s friends near the booth steps in front of him immediately.

“We’re not taking requests.” He said bluntly, puffing a cloud of smoke.

“I just need two minutes,” Jack states, trying to look past him, trying to find you.

The DJ still standing beside you, already three shots deep. “Is he your dad or something?” He laughs to you and Trinity snorts.

Jack doesn’t laugh. He grips the railing instead, his shoulder shoving the DJ’s friend over easily. “Y/N, we need to talk.”

Trinity leans into you, her gold eyeshadow shimmering under the strobe lights. “Oh my God,” she breathes, delighted.

You pretend to adjust a knob you don’t need to adjust. Below, Jack argues again. One of the DJ’s friends tries to tug him back. But Jack stays.

His eyes roam over your figure, sweat perspiration on the bare skin of your waist and cleavage. Long legs bending at the knee slightly to the music, your hair bouncing along your back. His jaw locks when he sees the DJ next to you drink up your every motion.

He notices Santos is right next to you, grinding against your side as you both dance to the rhythm. Jack always looked up to Santos and you as his residents, you both had the drive and resilience as sharp as a steal arrow in the emergency profession. But you two together outside your shifts, Jack realizes, you both were reckless.

Your eyes finally find Jack’s. He doesn’t smile. He just mouths, please. You hate that is still has an effect that pulls at your heart, you can’t help but give in to him.

“I’ll be back in two minutes,” you whisper to Trinity, though it sounds more like you’re convincing yourself.

The bass drops. The crowd screams.

“I doubt it.” Trinity smirks, “Make sure you’re back for Crash’s countdown.” She says and you nod before you go with Jack.

It feels like someone just pulled the oxygen from the room when Jack pulls you close to him. His arm over your shoulders, glaring back at the DJ before guiding you outside the booth. The music dulls to a heavy thrum instead of a roar as you two find your way to the stairwell.

You don’t let him speak first and he doesn’t expect you to shove his arm off you.

“You don’t get to show up like this.” You say bluntly.

“I know.”

“No, I don’t think you do.” You snap in response.

He runs a hand through his grey hair, jaw locked in frustration. You clock it immediately. You always do.

“You started this first,” you continue, voice steady even though your chest isn’t.

You add, “You couldn’t straight up tell me we’re over so you just shut me out—and then blow up my phone for two weeks once I give you the same treatment? Fuck you.” shoving him to the side but he stands firm.

His face tightens. “Let me explain myself.”

“I don’t have time for you to explain your damn self.” You snap, already fed up with the conversation and heading out to leave before he grabs your arm.

His grip is firm, not enough to hurt, but enough that you can feel the tension coiled in his arms. His knee presses between your thighs, pinning you in place as he leans down just slightly. The air between you crackles with something unspoken.

"Make time." he says, voice low and rough, like gravel underfoot. "Because I’m going to be clear how wrong I acted." A pause. His dark eyes flicker over your face like he's memorizing it all over again.

"Don’t act like this isn't killing you too." He exhales sharply through his nose before adding, "You think I came here for fun? You think I don't know what a goddamn mess this is?" His thumb brushes against the inside of your wrist.

Almost an apology disguised as irritation.

“You suck at apologizing.” I said, my eyes still sharp as they avoid looking at him. His face inches closer, arms wrapping around you tighter. The closeness easing the hard persona you’re putting on for him.

His jaw ticks, a muscle in his temple jumping as he forces himself to loosen his grip, just slightly. But the way he crowds you against the wall doesn’t change.

"Yeah," he admits gruffly, "I do." A beat of silence where all you can hear is your own breathing and the distant thump of bass from below.

Then, with a roughness that sounds more like surrender than anything else. "...You want me to get on my knees? Fine. Tell me what fixes this." The words come out jagged, like they cost him something just to say them aloud.

My eyes finally lock with his and he doesn’t look away. He was always so good as holding eye contact sometimes it annoyed you despite always wanting it from a partner. However now you squirm against his knee, a pleasure building there.

“Shut up and kiss me asshole. We’ll talk later.” you grunted, annoyed but it never surprised you to want Jack. How he always made you forget about your worries even when he was on top of your list of problems.

Those words make the corner of his mouth twitch into a brief smirk. There was that fire he missed so much. The fire that made him fall in love with you in the first place.

His hand finds your jaw, tilting your head up so you have no choice but to look at him as he closes the final gap between you. He kisses you hard, the pent up desire and raw frustration from the past few weeks spilling into one desperate moment. His lips move against yours hungrily, and a rough sound leaves his throat.

"God, I missed you," he mutters between kisses.

“Just fuck me already.” You fire against his mouth. The espresso color of your lipgloss smudging against his mouth.

His hands in your hair, tugging slightly at the root as his knee continues to rub against my core. The material of my panties that cover your labia lips exposed with each second of you grinding against his knee. Wetting your panties until the uncontainable wetness soaks the cloth and seeps on Jacks pants.

His grip tightens in your hair, a sharp exhale through his nose as he feels the dampness seep into his pants. The bastard has the audacity to smirk against your lips, all arrogance and dark satisfaction.

"Fuck," he rasps, dragging you closer by the hips so there's no space left between you. "You really think I'm letting this go that easy?" A rough grind of his knee just to hear you whimper.

Then lower, right by your ear, “Gonna make sure every damn person out there knows exactly who got under my skin."

With that he lifts your hips up, your legs out of routine wrap around his waist as he grinds his bulge against your core. Your mini skirt does nothing at all to cover yourself with it hiked up above your hips. His comment echoing in your head, make you smile to yourself.

“Aww I got under your skin Jacky?” You murmur, one hand holding onto his shoulder and the other on his tricep. Your eyes peering down to watch him take himself his dick out.

His expression darkens at the nickname but there is no real malice behind it, not when you’re pressed this close. The way his cock strains against his zipper is proof enough if that.

His eyes locked in with yours, his breath hitching slightly because the way you look at him all drunk off of him. You were so fucking pretty.

“Yeah.” Jack grits out, free hand still stroking his arousal evenly over every vein and inch of himself. “Like a goddamn thorn.”

Up and down, the sight practically mesmerizing you and you whimpered with the sudden pressure of him grinding his cock against your core. Making sure you feel just how hard he is for you, how fucking impatient he is for you.

“That answer your question?” He huffs in your ear, yanking your panties aside with rough fingers.

Jacks hands pinch your puffy pussy lips, making you squirm from the pain but moan from the pleasure that follows when his fingers glide against your slicked clit. You smirk and there’s little he can do about it.

Not when he’s already slipping a condom on and lining himself up. Dragging the head of his cock through your soaked folds into your tight hole with a filthy groan.

"Fuckin' hell— you feel that? This is what you do to me."

A sharp thrust forward and he’s stretching you open on one brutal slide. He bites at your top lip gently before moving to your neck, his beard scratching against your skin as his teeth graze your pulse point.

“Jacky.” You moan as he slips inside of you, and his breath hitches at the sound of his name. Like that, on your lips, is all it takes to undo him.

His thrusts get more vigorous as he’s practically fucking you like he owns you in this stairwell. Not caring if anyone comes in and witnesses you two. He couldn’t care less. All he wants is you, to feel you, consume you.

A shower of moonlight falls on the two of you, reflecting the glitter of your eyeshadow and the cool tone of his skin. Your nails dig in the muscle of his arms, moaning and whining for more. The hand not gripping your hip flies up to tangle in your hair again, yanking just hard enough to make you gasp.

"Louder," he demands against the shell of your ear, "Wanna hear how bad you missed this."

Every snap of his hips is punishing, no slow burn here when he's been starved for two weeks. Playing professional colleagues who hated each other after such a nasty breakup. Building noticeable and unnerving tension so thick a knife could cut through it. Robby demanded you two work out for the sake of teamwork and patient flow.

Now at this moment you two are resolving it and it sounds like skin-on-skin messiness. The slap of your wetness echoes off concrete walls as moonlight catches on sweat-slicked collarbones.

Jack’s gruff voice drops lower, "Gonna come so pretty for me after acting like I meant nothing?"

You grit your teeth at that because that statement could also apply to him. You dig your nails more into his skin, harsh enough to make him hiss from the pain.

The music is louder but in the stairwell it’s overcome by your moans and your pants for him. Pants for more of his cock, wanting more of the delicious friction of his throbbing member rubbing against your walls.

Jack’s not exactly quiet either, little gasps and grunts fall from his lips. The sound of your wetness against him and the way you're clenching around his cock driving him crazy. He's missed this. He's missed you. He's missed how good you feel on him, how he's the only one who gets to do this with you.

“Jack, fuck- Jack I’m close!” You whine, back arching against the wall as one of your heels falls to the ground. You don’t care, you just want the euphoria to wash you over.

His hand slides from your hair to slip between your bodies, fingers working against you to get you off faster. His free hand pins you down, pressing his weight down against with the hand on your hip.

"C'mon," he grits out. "I’m giving you more. C'mon, sweetheart."

With every circular motion of his hands rubbing your clit you’re pushed to the edge of your arousal and come hard around him. Your lips panting Jacky over and over until your fluttering walls calm down from your release. It’s not long until he releases into the condom with a grunt and pant of your name.

A few seconds of blissful silence, just breathing one another in while the sounds and smells of sex hang heavy in the air. It takes a few moments for him to catch his breath, but once the tension starts to fade and the adrenaline leaves his system.

Jack can't help but let his head fall forward on your shoulder with a weary sigh. "Damn," he mutters, voice still rough and a little hoarse from the effort. "…Baby, I really missed you."

You look down at him, sullen but your attention is immediately grabbed when the music gets louder. Remembering Trinity’s surprise for Victoria, your heart paces and you hope you’re not too late.

“I-I got to head back Jack.” You stutter, holding onto him. The soreness between your legs is enough to make you speechless and tremble under the weight of gravity.

With a smooth and slow motion, Jack pulls out of you and helps your shaky legs fit back on your heels. Fixing your mini skirt, your cheeks feel warm with your wetness practically soaking your inner thighs.

“I’m such a mess.” You whisper to yourself. You weren’t embarrassed, you never felt embarrassed with Jack. However you eventually will be when you rejoin your friends later.

He doesn't answer right away, his eyes soft but unreadable as they rake over you. He's a little disheveled himself, silver curls tousled and a blush on his pale face that’s creeping down his neck.

It takes another moment for him to answer as he wipes himself clean and refastens his pants, his gaze flickering back up to your face.

"Yeah," he finally manages, his voice still a little husky. He steps closer, reaching out to adjust the hem of your skirt with a rough touch.

"My mess."

He says before getting on his knees right in front of you, parting your thighs. One large calloused hand lifts your left thigh up so it rests on his right shoulder. Your brows scrunch in confusion but they relax suddenly when his tongue cleans up your wetness.

Licking the soft skin of your inner thighs and your honeyed, puffy overstimulated folds to get you clean. Humming at the taste of you Jack missed so much.

He’s determined to make sure you're taken care of, he even lets his thumb press against you for a few moments just to feel how sensitive you are. Smiling when your body twitches from the stimulation.

All the while, his attention remains fixated on you. Attentive gaze locked with your own. When he's satisfied that he's cleaned you up to his standards, which is no slick left on your cunt, Jack finally lets your skirt fall back down and stands to his full stature.

His expression is stern even as he reaches out to brush a loose curl of hair behind your ear.

"I've got a condition." He states, you roll my eyes at his comment.

“Don’t think you have room for making conditions Jack.” You said, trying to restore your breathing to normal to calm your heart practically beating out of your chest with every look he gives you.

Jack scoffs, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Unbothered by your defiance, that smirk is still there. Sharp and knowing because he knows how damn stubborn you are.

"Too late for that," he says gruffly, "You already came on my dick. You don't get to act all tough now." A pause as he steps closer again, crowding you just enough to remind you who's in control here.

"Condition is simple, next time? You answer my damn calls." He said, and you roll your eyes once again.

40 missed calls.

You knew he was trying to explain himself to you but him acting like you were a stranger at work didn’t encourage you to answer them. It also didn’t help that you acted worse, trying to hurt him more.

“And don’t think I won’t remember you saying that “we’ll talk later”. I’ll be waiting outside until your party’s over.” He said, walking besides you as his hands help you find your balance to walk normally with your heels on.

“You’re stayin’ over by my place. We’re going to talk it through in the morning once you’re sober.” Jack adds, rubbing the bare skin of your lower back before removing it slowly.

“I want to fix this.” He finishes, this time his voice more vulnerable. True and genuine.

His hand finds the small of your back as he guides you towards the door back to the club's main hall. The thumping bass is even louder now, the sound seeping in through the seams in the walls.

Jack opens the door and ushers you through before following after you.

“I’m not that drunk Jack— You don’t have to wait for me.” You explain.

“I know.” He shrugs. “But I will. I’ll stay here. When you’re done, I’ll make sure you and everyone else get home safe.”

You cross your arms, raising a brow. “We’re not helpless you know.”

“I didn’t say you were.” His tone stays gentle. “I just— I want to know you’re okay.”

The hallway light catches his jaw, but his eyes are warmer than they were earlier. You nod your head, understanding him.

“And don’t take drinks from strangers,” he continues, more-serious now. “Watch them pour it. Keep it in your hand. Hydrate between shots. Eat something if you can.”

You can’t help it, you laugh. “Are you giving me a lecture?”

“Yes,” he says without hesitation. “You and I both know how belligerent and stupid people who are under the influence can be— and I’m not done. Text me if you feel even a little weird. If some guy won’t leave you or them alone, I’m right here.” Jack added.

You step closer, just enough that he has to look down slightly to meet your eyes. “I can take care of myself,” you tell him softly.

Not defensive, just steady.

“I know you can,” he says. “That’s not why I’m staying.”

That makes your chest swell just as the music swells behind you. Someone inside shouts your name and you realize it’s Trinity.

You go on your tippy toes and hug Jack, wrapping your arms around his neck. “I will.” You say and you can feel his lips kissing your neck briefly.

“Have fun.” He whispered and you both share a smile before Trinity steals you away.

Giggling as you two walk back inside, through the dance floor to join Denis and Victoria on the floor under the lights. Olivia Rodrigo blasting through the speakers and Victoria smiles in delight as she dances with Mateo and sings along to the lyrics at the top of her lungs.

Your worries are now slightly eased and your attention back to enjoying your night and your friends. And you know once the night is over, you’ll be with Jack.

And you two will try to figure out the special mess that is love together.

A year later, Coach Fred Vasseur’s office. 

The place, once cold and sterile to your childhood eyes, was now cluttered in official papers, aging trophies, and small, personal touches: among them, a framed picture of you and him, years ago. Today, you were closer to blowing your twenty-fifth candle than you were to this moment, and it could have sent a nostalgic jab to your heart if you were the type of person to linger on the past, or to be touched by the warmth it betrayed behind his gruff demeanor. 

But you weren’t, and right now, Coach Vasseur wasn’t smiling. He looked like a man defusing a bomb, unsure of which wire would make you explode.

“I mean, it’s been a year, Y/N. I’m sure you can understand—”

“No, I don’t, actually,” you snapped, arms crossed tight over your chest. “And I sure as hell don’t understand why he couldn’t tell me face to face. For someone with such a big mouth on him, I thought he’d have the balls to back it up!”

Coach Vasseur sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, as if he were the one who had the right to be disappointed. You were the one left without a partner mere weeks before Regionals. You were the one clawing your way back into the world of ice dancing. You should be the one fighting off a headache. 

“Listen,” he restarted carefully. “You know how Lando is.”

You scoffed at him. “Yeah, I know he’s a fucking coward.”

Lando Norris was one of the very few people that stuck around in your life. Coach Vasseur introduced him after your last partner quit without warning. Nineteen years of age, and you could already read him like an open book: with his mess of unkempt curls planted at the top of his head and the wild gleam in his eyes, he was a reckless skater with something to prove. You could work with that. Recklessness meant desperation, and desperation meant obedience. He was eager to please, which also meant you could train him to bend backwards to fit your work ethic. He let you stretch him until his edges frayed, until his technique snapped into the precise lines you demanded. Lando was willing to endure it all.

He broke up with his childhood sweetheart and former skating partner to team up with you. He knew what you were worth, and what skating with you meant.

Despite what the regular outsider and gossip blog might think, you and Lando got along well. He cracked the tension in your jaw with jokes, and you kept him from spiraling with structure. Opposites, yes, but compatible nonetheless. You often went out to eat, and you’d pass the night discussing past Olympics performances on his couch when training wasn’t in the cards for the day after. He was the closest thing you had to a friend.

There had never been anything romantic between the two of you, apart from your shared passion for the ice. His playboy reputation often blurred to truth to the public eye, but you both knew where the lines were drawn.

Imagine your surprise when you found yourself like every other woman in his life: discarded without so much as an apology. Because that was who Lando Norris really was: a coward, a boy who ran at the first sign of discomfort. He left his childhood love in another country, closed the door on his one-night stands before the bedsheets cooled, and abandoned you at the first hurdle.

You should’ve known better than to hold someone like him to a higher standard. You only had yourself to blame.

Coach Vasseur closed his eyes for a beat too long, then exhaled hard through his nose. “The training and pressure last season was heavy, and you didn’t make it any easier by—”

“He knew what he was getting into,” you cut him off, eyes narrowing dangerously. “I’m not here to coddle him.”

“You’re not here to bury him six feet under, either!” Coach Vasseur’s calm front finally cracked, hands thrown upwards in exasperation. You didn’t flinch. “Merde, Y/N. Your temper was hell to manage last year, I honestly don’t blame him. With everything that happened and your recovery… I’m not even sure you can make it to Regionals, even if—”

Your patience, already thin and trembling, snapped.

You didn’t pride yourself on your forbearance. If there was one constant about you, it was your desire to get things done, to get your point across, and it translated by a natural disposition to irritability. Still, when it came to Coach Vasseur, you did your best never to raise your voice. He was part of the little mass of people to have earned your unwavering respect.

But bringing up your condition to prove a point was a cut too deep to forgive.

“I’m fine,” you gritted the words through clenched teeth. “I got the clearance to skate from the doctors, so I’ll skate Regionals. And when I win them, I’ll skate Sectionals. Same goes for Nationals. And I’ll win those, too.”

You pushed to your feet, the velvet of the chair leaving faint imprints against the back of your thighs, and stared down at Coach Vasseur. “So either find me a new partner,” you continued, “or I’ll find myself a new coach.”

You didn’t give him a chance to reply. Slinging your sports bag on your shoulders with a practiced swing, you turned around and made sure to slam the door of his office on your way out.

The wintry middle of September gnawed at your knuckles as you gripped the steering wheel of your car. Darkness swallowed the road, but you could’ve driven this route blindfolded, no matter how snowy the road or inky the night: from rink to home, home to rink— the asphalt had worn itself out under the weight of your wheels.

Coach Vasseur probably knew you were bluffing, you thought as you pulled into your driveway. He had raised you: as soon as you stepped onto the ice, practicing jumps and twists way above your level, with no equipment, until your knees bled, and categorically refusing any help from him, he had taken you under his wing. Although all the credits went to your parents, undeservingly so, he shaped you into the woman you are today, built you into something unstoppable. He knew you better than anyone, which also meant he knew damn well you would have a problem finding another coach.

But if push came to shove, you couldn’t allow his wildly unprofessional worry to put a strain on your already weakened career. If getting back on ice meant finding someone else actually willing to oversee your training and find you a new partner, then so be it.

Life was about choices. You weren’t about to make the wrong one again.

Your night routine was planned with mechanical precision: you’d take a scorching shower, then heat up your meal carefully balanced to the gram by the hospital dietician. You’d stare at the plate a bit too long before digging in. World Figure Skating Championships performances would flicker across your television screen to keep you distracted as the doctors advised. There was something comforting in mouthing the name of their turns, to count the beats per minute of their sequence and to see if the steps followed.

Thumb hovering on your remote, you scrolled over the most famous ones offered to you by the Youtube homepage. One all too familiar title caught your eye. Y/N Y/L/N AND LANDO NORRIS’ FREE DANCE TO ‘SKYFALL’ - NATIONALS 2024.

It played in your head without having to click on it.

The violin’s soft death rattle. The silence before the swell of the chorus echoing in your mind like the childish taunt of a music box. The sharp burn on the ice sinking its teeth in your spine. The blood. The hourglass crack. The end.

Buzz. Buzz.

Your phone vibrated on the coffee table, and your squeaky clean living room snapped back into focus. You blinked hard, grounding yourself, and reached for the device. You’d received an email.

FROM: [email protected]

TO: y/ny/l/[email protected]

SUBJECT: Partner Options (Important)

Y/N,

Before anything else: no, I still don’t approve of you jumping back into the season this fast. I think it’s too impulsive and borderline idiotic considering everything you’ve just come back from, physically and otherwise. But I also know arguing with you is useless and that you’ll do what you want, as always, because you’re a walking headache.

So, I dug through every viable skater not already locked into a Nationals program or an ISU sanctioned championship. The list is short, surprise surprise, but you’ve got four options. I’ve attached profiles and contact references for three of them, you’re free to take a look but I encourage you not to contact them until I get a hold of their trainers. You will scare them off.

I already got a positive answer from the fourth, so I took the liberty to schedule a session tomorrow morning at 7AM sharp. I figured you’d want to assess him yourself. Just keep an open mind: none of them will be Lando.

Turn the damn TV off when you’re done eating and go to sleep.

Coach F. VASSEUR | Senior Figure Skating Trainer.

ATTACHMENTS:

alex.albon_profile.pdf

oscarpiastriinfo.pdf

francocolapinto_ref.pdf

The ghost of a smile pulled at your lips. You hastily typed an answer, an efficient “Thank you”, and sat there with the weight of what it meant.

You were back.

You didn’t have a partner yet, but you would soon enough. And you’ll officially be back.

The title on the screen disappeared when you turned the TV off, and you slipped under the sheets of your bed. The nightmares wouldn’t vanish with one piece of good news, but it wouldn’t stop you falling asleep with a smile on your face.

There was a certain sanctity to the rink in the early morning. When the sky trickled a shade lighter and bled from the windows onto the ice, leaving space for the cold sun of winter to dribble through the fractures in the ice, remnants of yesterday’s routines and failures. The stands were empty, yet every successful parade made it seem like the seats unfurled in thunderous acclamations. It became something bordering on holy grounds, and you were its most devout preacher. You were always the first one walking in through the door. Even before Coach Vasseur, even before the maintenance crew as the lights were still flickering on, just to catch a glimpse of that eerily beautiful stillness and the space that was yours alone.

But today, someone had trespassed. The moment the clock overseeing the entrance struck 6:55AM, you stepped through the doors and saw two figures stationed near the plexiglass.

The first one was Coach Vasseur. Unmistakable with his smaller stature and slightly rounded back, his red quarter-zip sweater a staple in his wardrobe. The figure next to him, though, had you stumped: he had his back turned to you, and looked about ten centimeters taller which made his height difference with Coach Vasseur look almost comical. You assumed it was the infamous fourth option he’d told you about yesterday night.

You dropped your sports bag beside the nearest bench with a loud thump. It echoed sharply across the hollow arena.

Coach Vasseur turned, arms already wide in a theatrical welcome. “There you are!” he called. “I got here a little earlier, needed to have a chat with our candidate. Everything’s set up for a test run. So, let’s get right to it—”

Something was off. 

Fred Vasseur was a good coach, and good coaches were never hasty. He was patient to a fault, balancing your fiery tendencies. And yet, here he was: hands waving, voice laced with exaggerated cheer and a stronger accent, eyes flicking toward the figure beside him.

And when he turned around, you were faced with the reason why.

His mess of brown hair hung over his forehead, a few longer strands hindering the ice of his green eyes. The traits of his face were sharp, sculpted in cold marble, and only the darker shade of the scruff on his chin and upper lip could indicate the year that passed since you last saw him. There was a quiet confidence in the way he stood, arms folded over his form-fitting black tee that did nothing to hide the strength behind years of training. Something a lot like amusement dancing in his irises as he took you in.

He opened his mouth.

“No,” you deadpanned.

You bent, picked up your bag, and turned around. You were leaving.

Someone behind you sighed, and a familiar, bitter chuckle echoed right after, the sound scraping down your spine like nails on chalkboard.

Coach Vasseur caught up with you quickly, steps heavy behind you. “Y/N, if you could just hear me out—”

You turned on your heels so fast your bag nearly swung into his head, grappling with both hands at the very last straws of respect you had toward your trainer. “I don’t know what possessed you,” you spat, “I don’t know what kind of delusion made you think this was a good idea—no, worse, an idea I’ll even entertain—but let me make myself clear: that is a categorical, unequivocal, absolute no.”

The arms of the older man fell to his side. “Y/N—”

“I would rather die than skate with Charles.”

The name fell out of your lips like venom. As if summoned by the curse itself, Charles walked toward you both. There was always something infuriating about the way he moved, so effortless and smooth. You briefly considered throwing your bag in his face.

Charles Marc Hervé Perceval Leclerc. Twenty-seven. Born in Monaco. Often a favorite for every championship and contest he steps foot in but rarely ever a gold-medalist. Fred Vasseur’s first miracle at turning a shadow into an unstoppable champion, a few years before you. Dubbed Lord Perceval by the media, a title he wore like cologne soaked in grace, in reference to his graceful, impeccable technique and the chivalry he treated his partners with.

Your first mistake was to think he might’ve ever looked at you the way he looked at them.

Even before Coach Vasseur took you in, Charles had always been an undesirable presence looming over you in the rink. He used to sit in the stands like a prince on a throne and watch you struggle with the feeling of the ice under your feet, but never moving a hair to help you— you wanted him to stop. After all, you were still a little girl learning where the edges of her body ended and the music began, and he was the older guy with the boyish grin, a story told many times before, so you’d blush whenever his eyes would follow you on the ice. That was an unwelcome distraction. Sometimes, you were convinced he’d do it on purpose. You’d mistaken it for interest.

But it wasn’t. You found that out the night you stood outside Coach Vasseur’s office. You’d been thinking about his offer all day, twisted the idea in your mind for hours as you counted the times your skates hit the ice. You didn’t need help, you didn’t need anyone: you could manage by yourself as you always did. But help would be appreciated, because you really, really didn’t know what the hell you were doing.

Through the glass door, you caught a glimpse of Charles already inside, in an agitated conversation with the senior trainer. From your hidden corner, swallowing you completely, you didn’t catch much of the conversation: they were speaking in fast, clipped French. Yet sometimes—as if habit cracked through the surface—came a few harsh words in English.

“Not fit for it.” “A waste of time.”

It didn’t take you a translator to figure out he was talking about you when your name came up in the next sentence. That his look wasn’t one of interest, but of contempt, because you weren’t worth more than misaligned steps and wasted breath.

That night, at the wise and wrathful age of eleven, you decided you wanted him dead. Barring that, you’d settle for a lifetime of proving him wrong, by engraving your name on every gold medal and trophy he ever coveted.

“Come on,” Coach Vasseur pleaded, snapping you out of your red haze. “The least you can do is let me explain.”

Your eyes darted to Charles. “Why can’t he do it? Has he gone mute?”

His brows shot up, the corner of his mouth pulling into a sarcastic smirk. “That’d be your dream, wouldn’t it?” he drawled with his stupid French accent. “But we figured you wouldn’t be too receptive to anything I had to say.”

“Look at you, making use of common sense.”

Coach Vasseur cleared his throat, clearly trying to defuse the fuse you were about to light. “Charles’ partner quit at the start of the season. We tried out a few other girls, but none of them met the level. It’s— been difficult.”

“What happened to her?” You didn’t look away from Charles, tone somewhere between vitriolic and concerned. His partner and him had been skating together for years, pairing a little over two months after you and Lando. She matched his style perfectly. The fact she’d quit so abruptly was strange, at the very least. “Finally got tired of carrying your ass?”

His smirk vanished. Instead, his jaw tensed, and that glint of sarcasm drained from his eyes. “She left for medical reasons. Something you don’t seem to know how to do.”

You moved without thinking—just a step, a breath away from getting in his face—but Coach Vasseur wedged himself between you as a human barrier, arms outstretched like he could stop a glacier from splitting, as if Charles wasn’t towering over him and glaring daggers at you.

“Bordel, vous allez pas me rendre la tâche facile,” he muttered in rapid French. It was enough of an annoying comment for Charles to roll his eyes. 

“Y/N,” your coach started more firmly, “he’s out of options. You’re his last shot.”

“He’s not mine, though.” 

Hefty silence dawned on the three of you.

You had the upper hand. You had three names: Alex Albon, Oscar Piastri, and Franco Colapinto. Three other shots at finding a partner, and you were damn sure all of them would be a thousand times more promising than Charles ‘Lord Perceval’ Leclerc.

Coach Vasseur’s expression tightened, and Charles’ eyes flickered to the ground for a fleeting second, a flicker of something suspiciously similar to hurt, before looking back up with eyes made of steel.

“Je t’avais dit que ça marcherait jamais,” he huffed at the senior trainer, barely loud enough for you to catch.

Coach Vasseur turned to you, hope still bleeding into the punctuation of his voice. “Y/N—”

“I’ll come back this afternoon,” you sliced through his plea. “For an actual training session. Text me or send me another email when the coaches respond.” And then, for good measure, you turned your full glare back on Charles. “Would hate to waste your time again.”

It was childish, maybe even acrimonious, but he stared you down, jaw ticking and eyes narrowing. Self-satisfaction lit up your chest in the form of a spark.

You left them both behind as you went back to your apartment.

Truth be told, underestimating Charles Leclerc’s relentless capacity for ruining your peace, and Coach Vasseur’s ironclad will to see his two prized drivers coexist, had been a fatal miscalculation.

As if the universe were offering a single, merciful olive branch after your fateful encounter, all three of your candidates replied the very next day.  Neither you nor Coach Vasseur spoke a word about that morning. Instead, you both funneled the leftover tension into assembling the perfect schedule for the week ahead. You thought, foolishly, he had let go of that presumptuous idea.

As soon as the honey-pale Monday morning poured through the frost-glazed windows of the rink, you walked in with relief in your chest. Today, you were meeting with Franco. Tomorrow, Oscar. The day after, Alex. Someone among them would stick, and you’d finally be able to pull free of the iron needles lodged at your extremities.

Coach Vasseur was already waiting in his office when you arrived, seated behind his desk like a general mid-battle. Across from him, in one of the stiff chairs, sat Franco Colapinto: young and fresh-faced, he looked like Teen Vogue centerfold with his bright brown eyes and easy smile. He kissed both of your cheeks, spoke in warm, lilting Spanish, and answered every question with eager precision proper to someone just unraveling the amp on their quest for gold.

You headed back to the rink together, skating bags slung over your shoulders. The session would be simple: a short, tango and ballroom-inspired rhythm dance to the final stretch of Objection (Tango) by Shakira. One hour and a half to get a feel for timing, coordination, and chemistry— the bare bones of partnership. You kept the conversation light, sitting on the bench to put your ice skates on. Except on the first row of the stands, right behind you—

“What the fuck are you doing here?” you spat.

—Charles sat. Arms crossed, legs wide, and looking maddeningly pleased by your reaction.

“Me?” he asked, faux-innocent. “Just here to watch. Fred asked for an external opinion. A more professional perspective, you know, so obviously I couldn’t say no. I might get on the ice after you’re done, I haven’t decided yet.”

If you were a cartoon character, smoke would come out of your nostrils. You’d spent an entire year carefully engineering your days to avoid him. Ever since you came out of the hospital and found out he’d taken your time slot. Now, you’d seen him twice in two weeks. 

Already, that was far more than you could endure.

You whipped around instinctively, searching Coach Vasseur’s expression for any ounce of support. The older man only exhaled the kind of sigh worn by a parent who’s spent too long mediating tantrums between two children far too old for those.

But what really made the glass tilt was when Franco extended a hand to the figure perched smugly on the stands. “Charles Leclerc?” he asked, starstruck sincerity in his voice. “I’m Franco Colapinto. Big fan of yours. Your last performance at the Monaco Skating Club Gala— woah. Phenomenal.”

The lazy upward curve of Charles’ mouth slid onto his face infuriatingly slow. Your stomach flipped, and your vision turned red.

“Okay!” you clapped once, slicing through the moment. You slapped Charles’ hand down under his offended yelp and took Franco’s. “Introductions are over. We have work to do.”

And work you did.

The moment your blades touched the ice, something felt off. Not wrong exactly, Franco was skilled, that much was clear, but there was a dissonance you couldn’t ignore. A subtle crack beneath the surface, invisible to anyone not intimately familiar with the language of the ice.

Objection (Tango) began pulsing through the arena, each beat a whip crack. At 180 beats per minute, it was no gentle warm-up; it demanded urgency and fire, much higher than was usually required in a rhythm dance to leave room for interpretation. You needed to see if Franco could keep up with you.

Technically, he could. His edges were clean, his knee-bend well distributed, and his turns properly initiated from the core. His timing was respectable, the twizzles solid. When you moved into the midline step sequence, inside mohawks into footwork proper to ballroom, he followed smoothly. But that was just it. It was reasonable.

You were razor-blade sharp, carved and counted each of your movements with intentions, all in diagonals and velocity. Franco, on the other hand, moved like melted chocolate: rich, but overindulgent. Where you punctuated the rhythm with snap and staccato, he drew out each beat, and it wasn’t what the song needed. His free leg extensions were too ornamental. His contact points, waist and lower back alike, lingered just a second too long. When you hit the final lift, a tango-arched rotational entry that should’ve landed with bite, his grip slipped slightly on your left hip. He recovered well, switching you on his other side to mimic another posture, but his hand took his time leaving you. It wasn’t unprofessional, but it wasn’t right.

But still, none of it unnerved you as much as the man in the bleachers.

Charles sat where he always did when he wanted to get under your skin: front row, elbows on his knees, his face unreadable except for the subtle downward tilt of his mouth.

He didn’t take notes. His eyes flicked over every step, every hold, every microsecond of your partnership with the same annoying focus he used back when you were sixteen and he was the boy with the triple twist lift you could barely master and were supposed to beat the day after. At times, he leaned over to whisper to Coach Vasseur.

It was something he did during your teenage years and early adulthood, leading you to throw a fit to Coach Vasseur about moving his training time far, far away from yours. The way he’d comment corrections about your lines, your posture or your late entry into lifts. Sometimes, he coughed to signal a mistake, just loud enough to cut into your rhythm. This time, though, it wasn’t your technique that drew his ire. It was Franco.

Every time the latter’s hand drifted a touch too low, Charles’ eyes rolled so hard you could practically hear the rotation. And while you agreed and knew exactly what he was thinking, the unspoken consensus between you two tasted like rust on your tongue.

You could’ve moved on if Charles Leclerc’s presence had ended with the two-hour disaster that confirmed Franco Colapinto was not, in any universe, the partner you were looking for. You walked out of the rink with a clipped goodbye, left one stunned Franco behind, and slammed the door shut on whatever silent war Charles thought he was still waging.

He didn’t leave.

The next morning, here he was again, this time for your trial session with Oscar. And again the day after, when you skated with Alex. He’d carved out a permanent spot in the rink’s ecosystem, a phantom judge with his hands folded like a prince behind the glass, that you couldn’t shake off without getting rid of something essential for nature to work.

To your surprise, things with Oscar went great. Clean rotations along with mirrored transitions that made your silhouette melt into one another during the non-touching step sequence. He had a quiet, clinical approach almost cold in discipline that echoed your own instincts. The fact you were the same age helped too: no breathless admiration. Just skating. You could almost picture the two of you on the competition circuit, arms raised beneath the spotlight.

That is, until Charles’ made the astute and completely innocent observation that Oscar didn’t seem to have a coach.

“My old coach and I didn’t see eye-to-eye,” the Aussie had answered with a shrug. “So I left. I’ve been looking for one ever since.”

Charles hummed thoughtfully, as if he was a professor nitpicking flaws in a thesis. “That’s why you weren’t signed up anywhere.”

The implication was a landmine, and it detonated in Coach Vasseur’s mind before you could cut the cable. He already had his hands full with two volatile skaters with no partners, which meant a disintegrating dream. Taking on another one needing individual coaching mid-season would be suicide.

Oscar left with a polite nod and no bitterness. You tried not to let the frustration show when the door clicked shut behind him.

Then came Alex. Alex was reliable. He skated the mechanics of the movements as if he’d memorized them down to the breath. But again, that was just it: it felt like he learned the art secondhand. His rhythm was leashed, skating with one eye on imaginary judges and the other on an open rulebook. His hands were too cautious, pressing around the connection rather than into it. You didn’t need a blank slate that you didn’t have time to sculpt. Regionals were approaching fast and every step forward had to be war-ready.

You let him go with a wordless wave, and he seemed to understand. There was no resentment in the soft smile he wore as he left.

By then, Coach Vasseur had retreated into his office, probably before the session even ended. He didn’t need to see it to know the outcome.

You stayed.

Collapsing onto the bench, you let yourself sink into the weight of three failed auditions. Your forehead met your palms with a heavy sigh. Your blades were still laced. The movements still flickered behind your eyelids as you enumerated the steps.

And Charles had outlasted them all.

“This one was hard to watch,” he commented quietly. He stood before you, back propped against the plexiglass, irritatingly unmoved.

A dry, bitter laugh slipped from your throat as you finally looked up. “Don’t pretend you wanted this to work,” you muttered. “You’ve probably been fantasizing about it the minute the tryouts started.” Slumping back against the cold cement of the bleachers, you waved a limp hand in his direction. “Just— go. If you’re here to gloat, spare me. I’m not in the mood.”

He stayed silent. You could feel his eyes on you, watchful and dissecting. Your chest still heaved from exertion, but you refused to let him see the shake of your shoulders. The hospital truly did a number on you.

Then, without a word, he extended his open hand toward you.

“Come on.”

Your gaze flicked from his face to the gesture. Then back again. “What?”

“I’ll do the routine with you.”

“Right.” A scoff tore from your lips.

“I’m not joking. Get up.”

You narrowed your eyes at him, disbelief settling behind your sternum. “You didn’t even learn the dance. I’m not spending another hour and a half teaching you.”

“I did,” he said. “I’ve watched you for three very long days. If you think I can’t match you because I haven’t practiced—” Charles leaned down, just enough for his breath to ghost your cheek. “You’re underestimating me, and I know you’re too good for that.”

His palm remained outstretched, patient but insistent. Every fiber of your being screamed to push it away with a slap on the wrist, that maybe you could still arrange something with Franco. Yet, a whisper brushed against the shell of your ear: One try. And if he failed to live up to your expectations, you’d have an actual excuse to discard him.

“So?”

Slowly, and still hesitant, your cold fingers meet the molten heat of his palm. You saw it flash across his face before he could swallow it: surprise, genuine and brief.

“One try,” you said, voice low as you used his hold to pull yourself upright. 

Now standing, you were level— well, as much as you could be with the dozens of centimeters he had on you. His eyes bored into yours, searching for any tricks behind your facade.

Finally, a slow, wicked grin spread across his face. “One,” he echoed.

One moment, your blades were clicking against the ice in preparation, Objection (Tango) throbbing through the speaker again. The next, Charles moved.

Without hesitation, he stepped into the abrupt rhythm, meeting your opening chasse with effortless confidence. And there it began. Charles didn’t match your steps, he answered to each of them: when you threw your weight forward into the first progressive sequence, he pulled you back in a perfectly timed transition, his edge deep, cutting through the ice.

When the tension in the song tightened, so did he— drawing you into the midline step sequence, he skates brushing yours with each daring cross. His style wasn’t soft, a conclusion you came to after many years observing it, but it was free and passionate and yet sharp, responsive. The tense chord of a violin. Your eyes met at the first drop and neither of you looked away.

In those seconds, everything disappeared. The rink, the ice, Charles, and you. There was just heat. Mingling breaths. His hands found your waist for the rotational lift, fingers curling against fabric. You were airborne, then spiraling, and he never wavered.

He placed you down with more reverence he’d ever given your name.

A sharp lunge from you into a tango hold— his palm sliding to your ribcage, the other finding yours as you curved back into pose. Your faces were inches apart. His breath fast. So was yours.

Charles surged forward, dipping under your arm and taking you into a harsh diagonal step sequence. You moved like a single body split in two, trading dominance with each calculated glide. When you twisted away, he followed; when you spun, he caught you. When his fingers lingered, it was intentional. When they left, it was surgical.

You could feel the setting sun bleeding bright through the high windows, turning the rink into something otherworldly. Golden washed over you and him, painting his jaw, haloed your bodies. The cold air couldn’t reach you anymore.

The final movement came, his hand guiding your descent. A lift, clean and high, and the last beat hit as he lowered you, slow, until your skates kissed the ice again.

Silence, except from the way your heart thundered in your ears.

Charles didn’t let go right away. He just stared, heaving, his usual sharpness softened into expectation. And you… you hated the way your body betrayed your mind, how your chest rose and fell like he’d dragged the air out of your lungs himself. Because it had worked.

Worse. It had been perfect.

You swallowed around the ache. Your voice, when it finally came, was a whisper. “I hate you.”

Charles arched an eyebrow, breathless, the ghost of a smile tugging at his lips. “Does that mean I’m allowed to skate with you?”

You didn’t answer. You didn’t want him to have the satisfaction of knowing the answer firsthand, to see his shit-eating grin widen in this I-told-you-so way he perfectly knew how to wear.

But when you stepped out of the ice, Coach Vasseur was quick to hurry you both to his office and write Charles Leclerc’s name next to yours on your Regionals inscription form.

The training schedule fell into place within two days. Regionals were set for October 8th, leaving you with exactly two weeks and a half to craft and perfect both a rhythm dance and a free dance. An horribly curt timing. You’d train from three to six hours a day, six days a week. One day off for recovery, physiotherapy and whatnots. It was an erratic cadence, but one you wore as a fur coat: warm and familiar, no matter the dull throb in your ankles. Nothing you couldn’t handle.

And you were optimistic, as well. You were disciplined, and you’d bend until every bone in your body broke all over again to see the top of that podium. As for Charles… trust was still a foreign tongue in your mouth when it came to him, but you knew his language. Behind the charm and the fluid elegance of his skating, he was just as hungry as you. And hunger? That you could trust. You let that carry your optimism.

That is, until you started officially training as a pair.

The rhythm dance took priority— it would follow you through the entire season, with only minor tweaks allowed to the choreography. Better to master it now and fully. This season’s theme had been declared by the ISU earlier that year: Ballroom of the Screen. A breath of fresh air after the grumbling distaste over years of recycled styles (you still had nightmares about skating to Street Dance Rhythms.)

The brief called for ballroom: golden and viennese waltzes, argentine tangos, paso dobles, sambas, cha-cha-chas. The music was to be taken from films or televisions with a modern twist.

You liked rhythm dances. It was orderly without being suffocating with a kind of mathematical artistry: you could skate however you wanted so long as it was in conversation with the requirements: choreographic elements, twizzles, step sequence and pattern dance. The tempo had to meet the jury’s minimum BPM. You enjoyed it. It should have gone well.

Yet, the first fault line cracked open when it came time to choose the music.

“No!”

Charles threw his arms in the air in theatrical frustration. “I don’t get what’s wrong with Bridgerton!”

You stared at him from your seat in Coach Vasseur’s office as if he’d just sprouted a second head. Across the room, the man in question, long past the point of caring, had resigned himself to massaging his temples, fingers buried in the crease of his headache.

“There’s nothing wrong with Bridgerton,” you bit back. “I love the soundtrack as much as the next person. But come on, everyone is going to use it.”

Charles rolled his eyes. “I don’t see how—”

“They literally waltz to it in the show. I don’t get how much clearer I can make it for you. Do you need me to draw you a diagram?”

“That’s exactly why it’ll work!” he argued, gesturing wildly. “People will recognize it, we’ll get—” he looked around, searching for the word. “—momentum from the audience and the press! Popular votes matter.”

“What good are popular votes when every other pair scores the same brownie points for the same recycled idea? Are you even thinking?”

“I’m thinking, alright. I’m thinking you’re a—”

Coach Vasseur finally cut in. “I think that’s enough.”

Both your heads snapped toward him, whose head finally came out of the depths of his palms. “You’re acting like two children,” he said flatly. You huffed, crossing your arms in defiance and Charles sighed, petulant. 

“That said…” Vasseur gestured between the two of you. “Charles has a point. Choosing something the public knows well could work in our favor.”

The Monegasque threw you a smug look—

“However,” —and it fell right away as your coach turned toward you. “You’re right as well. It’s too convenient, and it’s going to be oversaturated. It won’t help you stand out among lookalikes.”

“So what then? Should we just skate in silence?” you asked, offering a tooth-achingly saccharine smile to Charles. “Maybe Wonder Boy here can whip out his piano mid-performance, really bring down the house.”

You watched his jaw tick. “Maybe if you had something to contribute other than your useless—”

“We need,” Coach Vasseur interjected again with the self-control of a saint, “something with recognizability and originality. Maybe a movie, something nostalgic to the greater mass, I don’t know, from the 2010s? Fitting the ballroom structure.”

With no other trail to follow, you and Charles begrudgingly began brainstorming until a fragile agreement settled upon you both: One Day by Hans Zimmer, from Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End. Just cinematic enough, punctuated with threadbare heartbreak. It was a solid choice. Coach Vasseur let you two go by saying he’d choose the song for the free dance by himself.

The next step was on-ice practice, and ‘catastrophic’ didn’t even begin to cover it.

Whatever uncanny alignment and chemistry glimmered during the tryouts had vanished. You might as well have dreamed it, because what remained was only… a mess. That was the only thing you could call it.

You were both seasoned skaters, but the moment your skates hit the ice in tandem, it fell apart: steps overlapped and blades clipped with one another. Transitions were clumsy: where you’d turn too early, he’d turn too late, and his fingers slipped during a lift. No matter how many times you restarted the pattern sequence, counting under your breath and grinding your teeth, it never landed. You’d tried, you were trying.

So obviously, that meant it was Charles’ fault.

You skated back to the board with a sharp pivot. “You’re rushing the beats,” you snapped, breath fogging the air. “If you’d just listen—”

Charles cut in, equally breathless, hands on his hips and eyes narrowed in disbelief. “You’re the one anticipating the wrong cue every single time. I’m matching you.”

“I’m skating the music, not you,” you spat, flinging a hand toward the overhead speakers. “Maybe, I don’t know, try listening to the tempo instead of your ego, for a change.”

“L’hôpital qui se fout de la charité, don’t you think?” he bit back. “You’re treating me like a training prop. This isn’t a fucking one-woman show.”

“It could be. It would’ve been better than this disaster—”

“Enough,” Coach Vasseur barked.

Both of you froze. He hadn’t raised his voice, he never needed to, but his tone was enough. You turned toward him, cheeks flushed from exertion and anger. His gaze flicked between you and Charles, unimpressed. “Go again,” he said simply. “You don’t need to like each other right now. Just move.”

You skated back to your mark with stiff motions and went through the steps again, biting your tongue with every slip. Yet, in your head, the decision had already been made.

If Charles couldn’t keep up with you now, then you’d just have to outwork him. Again. After hours, and alone if you had to. You’d run the choreography until it was etched in your marrow and it became something he was forced to rise to, whether it be by delusions of grandeur or self-importance. 

No misstep would be blamed on you this time around.

It started after your first week of training crumbled to an end. Regardless of what may go down during the day, the rink was lulled to sleep in the sweet embrace of routine: the fluorescent lights dimmed in slow degrees, final figures traced their exits through the doors, and Coach Vasseur packed up his clipboard and vanished the moment the last lamppost outside flickered dead. Yet, there was a small window of time between the soft mechanical whine of the ice-resurfacer and the final sweep of the janitor’s broom at the entrance. One during which the ice was empty.

Yours to take.

Technically, no one was supposed to be there, much less skate. The rink was considered closed to the public. But years of loyalty and proximity to Fred Vasseur had earned you a copy of the keys,  and having a duplicate meant going and leaving as you pleased.

So the habit bloomed. Night after night, after strenuous hours of training, you’d wait for the day to pass to come back for more. Sometimes, you came right after dinner. Others, when the stars already looked like pinholes in the sky.

Today wasn’t any different. You did come a little earlier than usual, but the pattern was the same: dropping your bag, plugging on the USB key, warming up off ice, changing and putting on your skates, a few slow laps to find your edges again, and once you were ready, fly. 

There was no room for hesitation. You demanded perfection from muscles too tired to object, carving each step sequence with the kind of grim precision only obsession could fuel. You skipped the lifts, naturally, impossible without a partner, but made up for it by abusing the sole of your feet with the twizzles and jumps. Every time your toe-pick kissed the ice, you took it as a cheer.

Your tightly secured ponytail whipped behind you as a makeshift metronome, your breath caught in the rhythm of the music. Every key of the piano from One Day pressed into your skin until the melody faded out.

Steps echoed behind you.

It was unmistakable, an unwelcome sound breaking the hush. You slowed, blade carving a long arc as you glanced over your shoulder.

There, behind the plexiglass, his silhouette backlit by the dull hallway fluorescent, Charles. Watching.

The silence between you stretched like a wire, only punctuated by the last notes of the orchestra from the speaker. You were still catching your breath, chest rising and falling  with the effort, while Charles stood still. Expression always so full of everything that it was complicated to pinpoint what transpired.

“What are you doing here?” he asked at last.

You scoffed, taking a slow curve toward the boards without touching them. “What are you doing here?”

“Middle school comeback? Nice.”

You didn’t dignify it with a response, and he exhaled a breath, stepping further into the rink’s edge.

“I was packing up,” he said. “Fred gave me a duplicate of the keys. I teach the late-night classes for kids. One parent stayed after for questions, so—” He shrugged, dug his hands in his coat pockets. “It took a while.”

You paused mid-glide. “You teach kids?”

Charles gave you a pointed look. “That’s not the topic.”

A beat passed. Your fingertips clenched into the fabric at your hips. Somehow, there was something almost embarrassing about being caught. You weren’t ashamed, but there was a strange feeling gnawing at your guts that you couldn’t quite place.

“Why are you here?” Charles asked again, more quietly this time. “Why are you skating our program alone? Outside of training time?”

You hesitated, standing there, catching your breath. Then, voice sharp, “Because someone has to.”

His eyebrows shot up, taken aback, but you rarely succeeded at stopping yourself from spilling out what you thought. Especially when it came loose.

“Because clearly,” you continued, skating forward, “you’re not taking this seriously. You’re half-assing the lifts, your posture’s slipping… Do you even want this?”

Charles stepped close to this ice as much as he could, fists clenching at his sides. “Don’t stand here and question my dedication—”

“Then prove it, Charles!” you snapped. “Because right now, I’m putting in the extra hours when you’re… where, exactly? I’m skating circles around your lack of effort!”

“Lack of—?” he repeated, almost laughing in disbelief. There was a dangerous edge to his tone and eyes that you never caught before. “You think I’m not taking this seriously, is that it?”

“You’re not!” you shot back, arms flung out. “You don’t act like someone who wants to win. You act like someone who’s just… showing off. This isn’t a catwalk.”

“And you act like someone who thinks she’s better than everyone else,” he spat. “You act like I should be grateful to skate with you. You don’t want a partner, you want a prop that you can manipulate through every step. And you’re mad because I’m not fitting into your twisted, obsessive pattern.”

“Oh, I’m the problem now?”

“Always have been,” Charles said, biting the words off. “You’re selfish, an egocentric maniac, impossible to work with—”

“Right,” you scoffed.

“—that’s what cost you the Nationals win last year, and that’s why Norris left you.”

Your blades almost slipped, as if he had physically slapped you. The words hadn’t completely registered. Not yet. But the meaning of them landed way before he threw them at you. In the anger in his eyes, in his stance, in the venom of his voice as he spat them at you.

“Fuck you,” you breathed out. “You’re undisciplined, arrogant, and you think a smile is enough to win you a spot on the big steps—”

“You don’t know anything about me,” he sneered.

“I know enough!” you shouted, voice raw down to the last vocal chord. “For instance, I know that if you were enough, we wouldn’t be in this position. I know that I have won everything except Nationals while you still have next to nothing to your name. I guess that’s the one thing Mommy and Daddy’s money can’t buy, huh?”

The specifics of his childhood escaped you, but the Leclerc family name was not unknown in these parts for the single reason it was synonymous with obscene wealth. You knew he drove a black Ferrari to the parking lot every morning, that he was taught piano before he could ride a bike, and got coaching sessions with legends like Lewis Hamilton while your knees were raw from begging for secondhand skate. You weren’t equal in the slightest when it came to your chances, and yet you were still better.

You didn’t care enough to regret it, it was the plainest truth. That’s what you told yourself. But the look on Charles’ face made your stomach twist into something foul. His eyes, usually so quick to burn, only looked betrayed.

You stood too close for comfort. His breath, ragged, fanned your cheeks as a warning sign. He stood grounded at the edge of the rink while you couldn’t tear your gaze away from his eyes, finally at your level from the extra height your skates granted you. As the air of the rink around you grew more glacial by the second, every particle of oxygen between the two of you seemed to tremble. Combusting with every inhale. You breathed him, and he breathed you.

Charles’ gaze dropped—you couldn’t tell if he was fixated on your lips or on the ice below you—before crawling its way back up to your eyes. “So that’s what you think,” he laughed. The sound echoed hollowly around you, even in the hush of his voice. “That I’m a spoiled, rich boy who burst into this sport and got here by accident, that I got lucky? Is that what it is?”

When you didn’t answer, he stepped closer.

“You don’t know half of the things I did to get here. I bled the same way you have, but I guess none of that matters unless I’ve got gold to show for it.”

You swallowed against the tightness clawing its way up your throat. “I think you’re not serious enough to understand what this means,” you whispered with the last string of restraint you could manage. “This is everything to me. I don’t have the time to babysit you, or be anyone’s cheerleader.”

“No,” he answered, and something behind his eyes cracked. A dam of sorts. “You’re not here to help. You’re here to win, and you’ll take everyone down with you for it.”

The words shouldn’t have hurt and still, a sharp sting bloomed behind your eyes. Tears, wholly unwanted, pearled at your lower lashes. You'd rather die than to blink and let them fall, to let Charles see that he had poked and kicked at each purple bruise you had and turned them a sickening shade of yellow. You wouldn’t give him this power over you.

Instead, you stared him down through the blur of your vision. Watching the tension in his jaw and the glassiness of the intense green of his eyes. Even his anger looked grayed, now, somewhat shaken. You weren’t the only one who bled in this.

It wouldn’t stop you from twisting the knife further.

“Well,” you said at last, your voice a threadbare whisper pulled from your chest. A dry, bitter laugh bubbled out your lips. “Now we both know what we really think of each other.”

Charles flinched— for what, you didn’t know. His lips parted, poised for whatever cruel report might’ve come next, but it seemed like fate had other plans. 

SLAM.

A thunderclap reverberated through the rink like a gunshot, cutting clean through the air between you. It was a boom, chased by the unmistakable sound of a door snapping into place. The, a soft, final click.

You both whipped your head toward the sound. The figure of the janitor, a spring in his step, was slowly disappearing from the entryway. Both your heads turned in unison.

At the far end of the hallway, past the curve of the rink’s exit arch, you caught a glimpse of the janitor. His silhouette bounced with jaunting finality, headphones in and totally unaware that he had just slammed close the door of the rink leading to the entryway. The entryway he was just leaving by.

The lights overhead flickered off one singular thing.

Your duplicate key, placed carelessly on the table earlier than evening when you’d been too eager to begin.

Panic struck you instantly. You took off the ice, skates still strapped to your feet, stumbling forward with wobbly blades. “No, no, no—”

“Be careful!” Charles hissed, quicker than you expected. He caught you mid-lurch, one arm wrapping instinctively around your waist as the other flew out to steady you. “Are you insane? Your ankle—”

“I can handle myself,” you spat, squirming free. The heat of his hand burned through the fabric on your side.

He clicked his tongue in frustration but stepped forward in your place, jaw tight as he wrapped his fingers around the door handle.

Locked.

Of course, it was fucking locked.

Quiet stretched between the two of you as you assessed the situation, broken only by the soft whir of the rink’s cooling system. Just behind the glass door, only a few paces apart, sat the key, mocking and utterly useless.

“Fine,” you muttered, exhaling sharply, “take your key, because clearly, we can’t use mine.”

Silence.

“Charles?” You turned slowly toward him. “Where are your keys?”

“I…,” he swallowed, gaze flicking sideways. “I left them in the changing room.”

You stared blankly at him. “You… you left your keys.”

“They were in my jacket,” he snapped, defensive. “And you don’t get to criticize. Your keys are right in front of us.”

You could have dragged the argument, told him he never thought about anything, and he’d retort that you overthink everything, but you didn’t have the energy. Not when reality was slowly settling between the two of you. The realization unfolded in slow motion as you both stood there, helpless.

You were locked in. Together. For the night. 

A very, very long night.

Talk about team bonding.

The garish, red numbers of the digital clock glared at you from across the rink, burning their verdict into the silence: 1:03 a.m. The air was still unforgivingly cold, not showing any sign of warming up. Your stomach curled and snarled at you, empty from the dinner you never got around to having. You hadn’t seen Charles in nearly an hour.

Once the full scope of your shared predicament had settled, you’d both fallen into a wordless agreement to exist apart. He had taken to the bleachers on the right side of the door while you had silently claimed the left, allowing the rink to bask in the wreckage of your fight. You’d occupied yourself with your phone at first, spiraling through social media loops and watching ice dance routines on YouTube. Inevitably, your screen dimmed to black. When the low battery icon blinked back at you, Charles was nowhere to be found.

You could almost miss him. 

Not out of want, God forbid. You simply had nothing to do: your routine, as safe as it felt, was tucked inside of your apartment, in the heat of familiarity, as well as your books and your phone chargers. By vanishing wherever, he had taken all movement and left you with an eerie stillness. You resorted to the only thing that could slightly entertain you: tying and untying the laces of your shoes, that you traded for sneakers a while ago, to get rid of the uncomfortable feeling of unfamiliarity in your stomach.

On the twenty-fifth untying, a shadow fell over the rink lines, blotting them out with a familiar silhouette. You didn’t have to look up to know it was him.

“What do you want?” you asked. Your voice was stripped of its earlier venom, dulled now to a tired monotone. 

He didn’t answer. Instead, your right sneaker disappeared to leave space for a chocolate-flavored granola bar and small, crinkling bag of salt and vinegar chips. Your fingers froze. That got you to look at him.

“There’s a small door to Fred’s office back there,” Charles simply said. “The main one is locked like everything else though, but… I remembered he keeps snacks in his bottom drawer for emergencies. I’m guessing you haven’t eaten dinner, so…” he gestured vaguely at the items in his hands.

He held the snacks out to you. His fingers were pink from the cold.

You took the snacks gingerly, your eyes flicking up to meet his. Suspicion lingered. “Are you expecting something? Because if it’s an apology—”

Charles rolled his eyes in exasperation. “I’m not waiting for anything. I know better with you,” he muttered. “They’re not poisoned, by the way. Just… not healthy.”

There was something in the way he said it—how he sounded like the word unhealthy escaped him, his flat tone with a tinge of concern—that made your lips pull up with amusement. 

As the foil crinkled open in your hands, sound jagged in the quiet, Charles sank down beside you into the row of faded plastic blue seats. The hollow thud of his weight on the bench and the sudden warmth of his body next to yours against the glacial air made you shudder. You arched a slow, deliberate eyebrow in question as you crunched into the first chip. He answered with a small shrug, and held up a single, half-full bottle of Evian.

You didn’t say anything, just tilted the crisp bag away from you slightly, a near-imperceptible gesture of compromise, and he took a few while redirecting his gaze on the rink. The corner of his mouth twitched, not quite a smile, and he sank deeper into his chair.

For a while, you both chewed in silence. The overhead light cast a sterile glow over the frozen surface in front of you, refracting like stars trapped under glass. Your legs bounced in place for warmth, and your knee brushed his once, accidentally. You pretended not to notice. Charles took it as a sign to speak.

“Do you think he always eats this garbage?” he asked, gesturing at the foil bag.

You stared at him for a beat. Was he making small talk? You never made small talk. Much less with Charles Leclerc out of all people on this godforsaken earth. How did you even make small talk?

“Uh… Wouldn’t surprise me. His days as a professional skater are long past,” you answered, fiddling with the water bottle in your hands.

For some reason, it made him grin as he licked the salt from his thumb. “You’re not wrong.”

There was another brief silence, less stiff.

“So,” you said, stretching the word out awkwardly. “You said something about teaching kids?”

“You’re still onto that?” he asked.

Somehow, now you felt embarrassed to have asked. “I just… didn’t peg you as the nurturing type,” you justified yourself.

“I don’t know if I am,” he replied, popping a crisp into his mouth. “But at least I’m very good at making sure they don’t accidentally die.”

“Charming.”

“You’d be surprised by how fond they are of me,” he retorted, raising an eyebrow at you.

“Oh, I’m sure you’re just beloved,” you muttered.

Charles shot you a sideway glance, clearly amused. “The parents give me thank-you cards.”

You snorted. You couldn’t help but imagine him holding a glittery pink card with commercial pop escaping as he opened it. Charles cocked his head at the sound.

“I’ll have you know,” he opened the granola bar, “that I’m very good with kids.”

Your eyes must have betrayed your skepticism, because he nodded for effect.

“We’re not a big family,” Charles explained, “but enough so that I have… training. I have a younger brother, too. Arthur.”

“Oh.” You shifted in your seat, turning a little to face him— elbow resting on the back of the chair, supporting your head, carefully sitting back on your ankles. You realized that, for the many years you and Charles had shared half a life, you didn’t know much about him at all. “That’s nice. What does he do? Is he into sports too?”

“Yeah, he races. Formula 1.”

Your eyes widened before you could control your face. “Really?” F1 wasn’t really a breeze to get into, much less of a cheap sport.

“For Ferrari,” Charles nodded. Modest to a fault.

“Ferrari,” you echoed, a little stunned. That explained the car, you thought. “That’s… honestly crazy.”

“Even crazier when you think about the fact my parents wanted me to become the Ferrari driver.”

You chuckled at the idea. “I couldn’t imagine you as a driver at all.”

“You couldn’t?” Charles glanced over.

You shook your head slowly, lips curving imperceptibly. “No. You don’t look the part.”

“Wow, nice.”

“No, I mean—” You laughed. A real one, this time around, and no matter the volume of the sound, it bloomed and echoed loudly into the rafters. For the smallest second, Charles seemed to have lost all the quiet confidence he usually held himself with. “They all have this look about them. You know. Brash, sharp-lined… you’re not like that at all.”

There was gentle curiosity behind his eyes, now. “Not like that?”

You shrugged, taking another chip. “Physically-wise, I mean.”

He hummed, and there was the teasing in his voice again, lower than his usual timbre. His head cocked in sudden interest.

“Don’t make it weird.”

“I’m not, I’m not, but… what am I, physically-wise?”

You gave him a dry look, and yet the chill the screaming match had left in your chest had started to thaw ever so slightly.

“Is it hard to skate in those shoes?” you asked. “Must be awfully tight around the ankles.”

It was his turn to laugh, and you joined him, the melody curling and fogging up the air between the two of you.

“What I meant was,” you restarted once the laughter died down, “you’re brash and sharp-lined on the ice. You’re rough around the edges, even defensive, but it all works when you’re dancing. You belong on the ice, I couldn’t imagine you anywhere else but there.”

Charles stayed quiet for a long moment. His eyes washed over you, studying and pulling you apart like they did so many times when you were younger. Yet, something differed from your beginnings. You couldn’t put your finger on it.

His answer finally came in a whisper. “Yeah. Me neither.” Then, half pronounced through an inhale as he stretched his arms behind him— “We should take that up to my family, then.”

You tilted your head in interrogation. The fact he was mentioning his family all of a sudden was a strange occurrence, but you thought that maybe the setting was suitable for it: spent, sleep-deprived, stuck with nothing else to do but to talk to each other. The line of his profile was all soft shadows, and he was looking at you, weighing if he should continue. If you’d let him.

You gave him a nod.

“My parents didn't think the same. They thought it was useless.” Charles didn’t look at you anymore as he spoke. Instead, he seemed like he was reading the words off his eyelids every time he blinked.

“Everyone in my family is into motorsports, if the F1 thing didn’t give it away. Very deeply. It’s basically in our bloodline: Lorenzo, Arthur, even my uncle. I think they were hoping I’d fall into line and hop in a kart, but I didn’t want to.”

The honesty in his voice was new. The hesitation over the words got more intense, but they fell more freely, as if you weren’t there anymore. “They didn’t understand why I’d want to be seen wearing sequins. They didn’t get what it’s like out there. The rush of it— c’est enivrant. The lights blinding you so you skate on instinct alone, the cold burn in your lungs, the speed, the control. The blades become an extension of your body. How perfection sometimes is just… one lift ahead. The symbiose you have to reach with your partner, the way it only works when you both surrender to it. It’s—”

“Freeing,” you supplied. You knew exactly what he was talking about.

Charles turned to you finally, and his mouth twitched upwards at the corner. “Yeah,” he said. “That.”

He swallowed. “My mom, she was the kindest about it, but everyone else made it clear that I was wasting my time. They stopped paying for anything the minute I showed signs of… not moving. They told me I was on my own.”

You frowned. “You have a Ferrari, though.”

“Secondhand,” he replied. “From my brother. It’s a leftover.”

He let the silence stretch for a moment. “I still came to the rink, though. I handed him whatever allowance I had and asked me to teach me anything so I could prove my family wrong. So that I could be good. Great, even. I don’t know why he said yes, maybe he pitied me, but I’m glad he did what he did.”

“I worked every small job I could find like… I did catsitting. I barely passed high school because of that, and I basically lost all my friends. Except for Pierre, I think you saw him around.” You nodded. “When I turned eighteen, I got more serious jobs. Fred took whatever I had and made it stretch, but I paid him back when I started getting into competitions and scoring points. You know, making a living, being professional, and all of this.”

Charles paused, exhaling a laugh. “But no one in my family cared. They didn’t care that I was good, didn’t care that they could see me on TV too, or that I have a wall of medals in my apartment. It’s still ‘mon petit hobby’.”

It was hard to believe that the sharp, frustrating boy that you had always looked down upon on the ice could unravel into something else entirely. Yet, here was Charles Leclerc, made of bruises and defiance but stitched together by ambition, spilling hope all over the place like it sickened him to do it.

What do you say when your entire perception of the world is proven wrong in the space of five minutes? 

He rubbed his palm over his jeans absently, trying to shake off the cold.

“Sorry, I don’t know why I’m telling you this. It doesn’t make sense.” He ran a hand through his mess of curls and flashed you a lazy smile, but you could now see the tense edge of it.  “I think what you said about Mommy and Daddy’s money got to me. I just— I don’t want you thinking I don’t care. It means everything to me too.”

You didn’t know what to say.

Charles’ eyes were stuck to the rink, frost clinging to class, the confession still hovering between you. And while the weight of it was nothing short of hefty, everything felt inexplicably cleaner.

Your heart thudded heavy in your chest. You never told anyone that much— not Fred, who may have guessed parts of it by grappling at hints, not even Lando, when you spent nights talking twenty steps past exhaustion on his living room couch. Keeping everything close to your chest felt safe. But partnership, real partnership, required surrender. Charles had said it, you thought about it, it was evident. It required compromise, half-hearted agreements. It required you to tear away at your chest for parts, because if you were to give yourself to the ice again, you had to give something of yourself to him.

Somehow, the idea didn’t feel foreign. Somehow, it made sense: you shared half a life, you and him, whether you liked it or not. Charles Leclerc had been the only constant in a life that never let you breathe— through teeth and spit and lesions. It made sense that you were so nauseatingly similar.

But you weren’t quite ready for that yet.

Instead, your hand, trembling from hesitation, came to rest on his knee. An imperceptible scrap of your nail on his jeans, the slightest of heat amidst the cold. It was the most of yourself you could give him at the moment. Probably forever. Still, it felt so much like everything that your stomach lurched.

Charles looked at you, so much and so little going through his eyes, and you knew it was enough. As suffocating as it felt, it was enough.

You got up abruptly, taking your hand with you, and his gaze followed you as if you had taken something precious off him. “Come on.”

“Come on… what?”

You motioned toward the duffel bag still sitting by your side, yours. “I have my skates and my change. I’m guessing you have yours because I saw you had your bag.” He nodded, albeit slow with incomprehension. “Good. We’re locked inside a rink with little else to do, aren’t we?”

Charles still looked dazed.

“Put on your skates, Leclerc.”

“Now?”

“Yes, now.” You took a step closer and your voice dropped, earnest and electric. “We’re going to show them how great we are.”

He stared at you for a second longer. Then, wordlessly, got up to reach for his own bag.

And so you worked.

You carved pathways into the rink’s crystalline skin. The lines you traced weren’t simply lines, but a language, one Charles had to learn with each repetition and delicate press to your waist. He learned you not through words like you had just got to, but through weight lifts, through posture and poise. The trust embedded in each shared center of gravity. 

And you had to learn how to let go. Not of perfectionism, because there wasn’t much to do to remedy that, but of the hesitation calcified between your ribs. Loosening your grip on control and offer the other end to him by daring him to take it, which he did, slowly at first. Step by reluctant steps and glide by glide, until you both learned when to yield and when to take space.

The rink became a cathedral of sorts and the choreography became its scripture. The glint of his eyes before each lift and the tightening of your hand around his before momentum turned into motion were your confessions. You didn’t let the music start until his breath was in time with yours, until he could feel when you were about to push off a rocker turn blindfolded, collapse into a catch-foot lift. Only then did you allow it.

One Day started softly, the piano a trembling heartbeat beneath your blades. Your skates kissed the ice with surgical precision, gliding through curves. Charles shadowed you at first, the tension between you stretched taut like the moment before a storm breaks. But as the music built, so did he: he was no longer your shadow, he was your echo, your equal. He anticipated your shifts like he was born from your ribs. Hands brushed and eyes locked, and the world fell away once again.

No hesitation. Gravity surrendered for a heartbeat as he lifted you, spinned you around. You fell into the throw as if it forgave you personally, and landed with the softness of silk. You did it again, and again. For hours, until your throats ached, sweat cooled against your spines and the hunger sat ravenous in your chests was finally, if momentarily, sated.

And somewhere between the final spin and the way your bodies crumpled up in sync at center ice, laughter tore through the stillness, both giddy and breathless. You crawled, half-dragged, to the bleachers, legs trembling with overexertion and your old injury sending shock through your ankle. Charles was careful when he lowered you down.

That’s how you fell asleep. With one seat between you, at four in the morning, when the air was just above freezing. You didn’t feel it. The nightmares didn’t get to you this time around.

The sun was only a rumor beyond the windows when the heavy sound of the entry door cracked the silence. Coach Vasseur’s voice woke you up with no flourish.

“Qu’est-ce que— What the fuck are you two doing here?”

Your eyes fluttered open and Charles stirred beside you, both blinded by the early morning light and running on two hours of sleep maximum.

Still half-asleep, you murmured without thinking, “Training.”

Fred just stared.

“We were very productive,” Charles shrugged blearily.

And though you both looked like hell with your hair askew and bags under your eyes, you had never felt more confident.

You would have never thought for it to be possible, nevertheless be able to word it, but after that, training had been smooth sailing. For the first time ever since you crossed eyes so many years ago, you and Charles were working as a unit. Not as singular skaters and not as competitors trying to one-up another for the sake of ego, but tethered. As one and the same, much to Coach Vasseur’s surprise.

He nearly dropped his clipboard the first time you completed your program clean in rehearsal. Not only clean, but fluid. “Are you both concussed?” he had asked.

“No?” Charles had answered.

However, you didn’t. You were too focused on the fact that the ghost of his hand on the curve of your waist during the final pose didn’t bother you as much anymore.

The rivalry was still there, of course it was, but it had learned to coexist with something else now. There were unforgiving moments that still reminded you of what you were to each other: you’d nearly tumbled during a sequence, and he had hissed in your ear to “tuck your shoulders, I’m not carrying you to Nationals with a dislocated one.” Once, you almost shoved him off the ice during cooldown for trying to teach you about your own footwork.

“You were off time,” he simply said.

“No, you’re just not adaptable enough,” you fired back.

But still, there were some instances. He started arriving earlier than he usually did, always with two snacks with him. One for him and one for you, under the pretense that otherwise you’ll pass out with how hard you were pushing that day. You’d roll your eyes, open it, and wouldn’t thank him. The day after, however, when his laces snapped during warm-up and he had cursed loud enough for the entire arena to hear, you’d wordlessly lent him the spare ones you had in your bag.

Ten minutes later, you almost jumped at his throat for an offhand comment about your posture. It was a vicious circle.

The day before Regionals arrived with the careful settling of fall.

The middle of October brought with it a biting wind and the delicate falling of browning leaves. The wet concrete from yesterday’s rain was scattered with small puddles, the days shortened minute by minute, leaving more space for the night. Yet, the inside of the rink stayed the very same.

Lit up by the warm light of late afternoon, you were leaning against the plexiglass wall, arms crossed on your chest and watching. Coach Vasseur double-checked his checklist, muttering under his breath about IDs and back-up costumes. Charles was seated on the bench in front of you. Elbows resting on his knees, he absent-mindedly played with his rings, a habit you’d noticed when unrest grew in him.

“We’re leaving in ten,” Coach Vasseur finally announced. “I hope you ate something, we’re not stopping on the way there.”

You rolled your eyes. “Yes, Dad.”

Coach Vasseur gave you a look, the deadpan one you’d give to a misbehaving child, and you raised your eyebrows in response. Charles snorted.

The car ride to the hotel—three hours from your home rink—was mostly spent in silence. Coach Vasseur drove, and Charles sat to your left, earphones nestled deep in his ears. You kept your face pressed to the glass. Outside, trees passed in soft, watercolor smudges of brown and rust, the hum of the engine enough of a music to soothe the faint ache of nerves in your stomach.

It was well past eight when the car finally rolled into the parking lot of a modest three-star brick building, tucked near a slouching gas station and a single sleepy pizzeria. The street lights were soon to be out, and you slid out the backseat with cotton legs. Coach Vasseur mumbled something about checking in and disappeared through the double doors.

Charles popped open the trunk. Your breath ghost in front of your face as you watched him haul out your bags. He passed yours to you without fanfare and the moment you accepted it, your eyes locked. Was this the moment you should make small talk? You couldn’t just stand in silence. You already did small talk. You could do it. Come on.

Charles watched you with unrestrained amusement as you opened and closed your mouth, searching for anything not too awkward to start a conversation with. Before you could dig a hole for yourself, the front doors whooshed open again and Coach Vasseur emerged. In his hand dangled a single, battered key card.

He held it out between the two of you.

You and Charles stared at it like it had grown teeth.

Coach Vasseur sighed. “Before either of you explode, listen. This was the cheapest and closest hotel to the rink, and it’s Regionals: everyone and their mamans booked it out weeks ago when we were still figuring out if you could fish out partners. There were only two rooms left when I made the reservation. One is mine. The other—” He gestured vaguely between the both of you. “Is yours. Together.”

The outrage was immediate.

“You selfish, betraying old man,” you blurted out. “You got a room for yourself?”

He simply shrugged, and took his bag from Charles’ limp hand. He had the audacity to start walking away.

“Can’t one of us switch with you, at least?" Charles called.

“I’m not sharing a room with either of you for my own sanity, I deal with your bullshit enough on the daily” Coach Vasseur replied over his shoulder. “Try not to kill each other.”

He vanished into the lobby with a speed bordering supersonic for a man his size, leaving you and Charles to stand outside in the cold, motionless. The key card glinted defiantly in the palm of your hand.

The hotel room, in itself, wasn’t so bad. Muted light poured from mural lamps, casting a warm, honeyed glow softening your exhaustion, not the medical white you’d often find in the many hotels you’ve been to in the years you’ve been dancing. A narrow hallway split off to the right of the door, leading to two modest bathrooms and separate toilets. The wallpaper was patterned in quaint brown damask, certainly a choice but strangely comforting all the same. Wooden nightstands, proudly vintage, stood on either sides of—

“You have to be fucking kidding me,” you breathed.

Taking up the center of the room like some perverse taunt was a single two-person bed. 

“He got us… a couples’ room.” Charles said at your side, each word spoken with precision, dumbfoundedly staring at the bed.

It could almost make you laugh if you weren’t so distraught by the entire situation, and if the uncomfortable pit in your stomach at what it implied.

“You know what?” You grounded yourself with a sharp inhale. “We’ll deal with this later. I need to change. I don’t know, brush my teeth, take a shower. Something, before we even begin to have this conversation.”

You vanished into the bathroom without waiting for his answer. The water hissed to life as you went through the rhythm of your carefully curated nighttime routine, meant to give you a safe sense of normalcy in the unknown environment, the ritual carved into muscle memory. It was less about vanity and more about control and repetition. Consistency over the chaos.

When you stepped back into the room, you settled in front of the vanity with your own products like you’d usually do. Charles had already changed into a simple black t-shirt and shorts, hair damp. He sat silently on the far edge of the bed, watching you silently go through your steps: cleansing balm, toner, essence, moisturizer etc

Then, as if curiosity got the better of him, he walked to your side. Squinting intensively at your serums, nearly putting toner in his mouth before you rolled your eyes and corrected him, ordering him to go wash his face before touching your products. Which he did, and you didn’t say anything when he started trying to mimic your routine like an annoying teenage boy. You just watched his silent performance, clearly too prideful to ask for help. It held some kind of endearing quality, you’d have to admit.

Eventually, you sat at the edge of the bed, back straight. Charles crossed the opposite side, clearly assuming that was his, and began straightening the covers, even fluffing his pillows. 

No way in hell.

“No,” your flat voice sliced the air. “You don’t get it. I can’t sleep with you.”

Charles’ eyes snapped to yours.

“Je crois que c’est la première fois qu’on me dit ça,” he muttered under his breath, punctuated with a laugh.

You squinted at him. “What?”

“Rien, rien.” He cleared his throat. “But I didn’t think it would be a problem. We slept together at the rink.”

“That was different,” you snapped, way too sharply for the current conversation. “That was… accidental. I was exhausted, my brain didn’t have the time to—” You stopped yourself, and pressed your tongue against the back of your teeth. “Whatever. It’s just not the same.”

His brows knit. “Why?”

I make noise when I sleep. I twist under the covers, I sweat, I wake up gasping for air. Because sleeping became mortifying the second I first woke up in that hospital a year ago.

“You’ll take the floor.” You forced your voice to stay even.

“You’re kicking me to the floor?” Charles asked, disbelieving. “I didn’t even propose to take it.”

“I couldn’t care less, Charles,” you sighed. “I’ll give you a few pillows, you’ll be fine.”

He crossed his arms tight on his chest. “You know, I did consider being a gentleman and giving you the bed. But right now, I’m thinking I’ll take it for myself.”

“No.” You turned toward him fully. “I am.”

“So… we’re sharing?”

“No.”

“You’ll be sleeping on the floor, then?”

“Food for thought, Leclerc: have you ever, ever thought you parents might have disinherited you because you were a pain in the ass?”

You never spoke of the topic again after the night spent at the rink. The snarl slipped out of you without a thought, more one of your regular jabs than anything really mean. For a second, you thought you’d gone too far. That is, until the Monegasque’s eyes narrowed right back, lips twitching into something almost satisfied. Without a word, he dropped into the bed with a theatric exaggeration, arms folded behind his head.

Very well. You knelt without ceremony, grabbed the pillow from “your” side, and flung them onto the carpeted floor with indifference. Then came the spare blanket from the dresser, without even throwing a glance in his direction. You were very bothered by this turn of event. You’d rather kill yourself than let him see it.

“Wait, really?” Charles asked, his eyes tracking your movements. “You’re actually going to sleep on the floor?”

“Obviously,” you replied, already smoothing over the corner of your blanket.

Charles let out a long sigh, more reluctant than the self-satisfied one from before. It ran down his spine and into his shoulders as he pushed himself upright. “Okay, listen,” he started, rubbing a hand over his jaw. “I still don’t really get why we can’t share the bed, but you’re not sleeping on the floor. Especially not the night before Regionals.”

You stilled, and he leaned forward, voice notably softer. “You said the other night was fine because you were exhausted, right?”

You nodded, cautious.

“Then I’ll exhaust you.”

Heat rose up to your cheeks at unimaginable speed. Your eyebrow flew upwards in surprise, and you could feel your stomach currently inhabiting your feet. “Excuse me?”

There was a second of confusion, until he fully scanned your face and realized what innuendo had transpired.

“I meant talking,” he snapped quickly. “I meant we’ll talk. Not— Merde, not that.”

Charles ‘Lord Percival’ Leclerc never was overconfident, just composed. So seeing him lose that composition over a sexual innuendo was nothing short of amusing. Was that how he always felt when his taunts got to you? 

Stunned into silence, you slowly lowered yourself to the edge of the bed once again.

“Right,” you said, trying very hard to bite back a smile. “Talking.”

“Don’t look at me like that. You’re the one making it weird, this time.”

“I’m not looking at you like anything.”

He shot you a look. You exhaled slowly, finally gathering your legs in front of you, the mattress dipping just slightly beneath your weight. The pillow you took with you from the ground crinkled with a clean linen sigh. Across from you, Charles hoisted himself up, legs stretched next to the empty space next to you. 

“What are we supposed to talk about?” you asked eventually.

 “I don’t know,” he shrugged. “Whatever you want.”

“... I’m not very good at that.” He frowned, so you explained. “Small talk. I’m not very good at it.”

Your confession came out quiet under the golden lights of the room. You didn’t even look him in the eyes when you said it. It didn’t soften Charles in the slightest, you would have despised it and crawled back to the carpet that very second if it had, but it did bring a smile to his lips. Not smug or teasing, but kind.

“I’ll do it for you, then.”

You had never known Charles to be kind. You felt like you hadn’t really known Charles to be anything until the past few weeks. You wondered if you could know him to be more.

He started. You didn’t talk about anything grand, and the topic of skating and families, fear and ambition had been silently banned. You didn’t change the world sentence by sentence. Instead, you spoke of little things: hotel soap always smelled strangely nostalgic no matter which roads you took, sweet and savory worked on pizzas only if it was goat cheese and honey, science could be poetic if you spoke if you were fluent enough in its language, the movie Sabrina from 1954 is an amazing piece of cinematography. It was aimless, volatile and strange, things you never usually practiced, and yet it loosened the knots in your spine.

Eventually, your limbs began to sink into the mattress as if you were dissolving into it. Charles’ sentences grew slower, less frequent. Yours trailed into silence. You weren’t quite sure who fell asleep first, but when dawn crawled through the curtains, the pillows you had put between you laid forgotten on the floor and your knees had shifted, inexplicably, into the space just shy of his.

Nightmares didn’t plague you that night either.

Your alarm blared at 5 a.m. The black coffee served at the hotel’s meager breakfast buffet offered no real reprieve from your sleepiness, caused by the long chat you had with Charles last night. Seated across you, he didn’t look much better, with his brown curls flattened into disarray and lazily chewing on his muffin. Outside the rink, the paparazzis clustered like vultures at the gate. They already had their lenses pointed, hoping to capture you and your partner— Fred Vasseur’s long battling protégés, newly stitched together on the ice. Catnip for speculation. The flashes sparked to life the minute you came into view, snapping you out of your haze. Charles reached out to guide you toward the entrance as Coach Vasseur cut through the press.

The rink was filled to its capacity. A hundred voices crowded the air, muffled through layers of anticipation. Every row sitting was brimming, their eyes hungry. There was a current here, invisible but undeniable, and you let it pass through you with an inhale. 

That was what made you feel alive.

Coach Vasseur had blocked your official practice the earlier he could, the seniors figure skaters getting the first half of the morning and the juniors the second. You didn’t waste any time: throwing a quick nod at Charles, that he gave you back, you veered off to the women’s locker rooms. 

All conversations, as scarce as they were, dropped the moment you entered.

You peeled off your coat and started undressing without so much as an acknowledgement to the women and girls around you. You didn’t have to lift your chin to know every pair of eyes had turned, in surprise, awe and unease alike,  and you knew why: your fall at Nationals had echoed loud in the figure skating world. The footage was commented on and replayed across the world. No one thought you’d be back so soon, some of them doubted you’d come back at all.

For their defense, it’s not like they knew how to behave around you before, either.

You laced your skates, counting each loop and rows, and stepped out onto the freezing rink by slicing a clean, lethal line. The first of the day, as crowds and competitors watched over you like voracious crows. Charles joined you long after and the minute his blades kissed the ice, your thirty minutes of training had started.

There was no teasing today, just as there were no sideways glances or biting remarks. All disagreements shifted to unwavering focus as Coach Vasseur talked you through the angles and the blade sync. You passed the bottle back and forth, traded observations in clipped, focused sentences. Last night had turned down the volume on everything that didn’t matter.

By the time you were eating lunch, hardly tasting the toasts and dried fruits, the day had begun to collapse onto itself. Hours melted into shapes and, without quite knowing how it happened, you found yourself in the rinkside curtain zone, near the entrance to the ice.

Your group warm-up had wrapped up thirty minutes ago. The boards around the rink pulsed with applause. Music from the routine before you still echoed across the space, muffled behind the thick divider curtain. The pair supposed to go after you sat a little further, quietly going through their steps together. Charles was beside you, costumes tightly zipped and posture perfect, both of your hands folded into your respective laps. The chill of the bench soaked into your legs, but you felt him— his thigh gently pressing against yours. It could almost pass as an accident if he didn’t nudge your knee with his, a sort of offhand reassurance.

You welcomed it.

“Now, taking the ice for their Rhythm Dance…”

The call stirred something visceral in your chest. Like sleeper agents hearing their codeword, you and Charles rose up. The velvet curtain fluttered against your cheek, its touch cool and grounding as you inhaled.

“Ready?” Charles asked.

You didn’t look at him. Instead, in a similar fashion to his, you let your pinkie brush against his. The light contact had him tense up beside you.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” you murmured.

“... Y/N Y/L/N and Charles Leclerc!”

The crowd swelled loud and wild as your names resounded through the cavernous rink. Without hesitation, you laced your fingers through Charles’, anchoring yourself to him, and stepped forward.

The ice opened before you like a vast stage set under cathedral light. You skated its perimeter within fluid arcs, Charles at your side as the spotlight tracked you both, casting long shadows in your wake. You saluted the crowd with your chin held high and bowed to the judges, unknown to you, with that practiced grace that made you look more sculpture than woman.

As you glided to the center of the rink, into your starting position, your mind raced with possibilities: your competition was good, better than other Regional championships you participated in. Their performances were almost faultless. They weren’t unbeatable, but the circuit you had raced with Charles had been unrelenting. You had been unrelenting on him and on yourself. Yet, even standing in the eye of the storm, hunger had not left you. You had to be back. You had to show them.

Charles met your gaze, a few steps away from you, and the world, the crowd, the judges, everything dulled to a faraway hush.

The lights dimmed subtly. The first cinematic note of One Day unfurled into the space, spilled ink seeping into the cracks of a page you were about to write. You exhaled once, and time folded inward.

He moved at the same time you did.

You carved love and devotion onto the ice, each turn of your blade more of a sentence than a step spoken only in a language dancers understood. Your deep edges were calligraphy, and Charles seemed fluent in the way he mirrored you, matching your rhythm with uncanny precision— never once ahead, never once behind. You pulled him into your orbit with the reach of your arm, spun away as the violins gained in volume, and returned. Your bodies moved like erratic breathing, like lips waging war against each other for just one more second, one more touch, one more and more and more.

Rotational lift, and Charles gripped your waist as he was begging for you to come back down with him, spinning you across the center as someone would descend into madness. You arched backward into the air, the sheer stretch of your form daring the laws of balance to test you.

You tilted as he brought you down. A slow fall into what could best be described as trust, and Charles was carving marble in the way he caught you. Your body skimmed low across the surface, wind grazing water, your leg sharply aimed skyward. The crowd gasped. You only heard them as the crashes of waves against rocks. He hoisted you up, one hand at your thigh, the other guiding your shoulders to pull you flush against his chest.

There were no errors. Not one breath you didn’t share, not one move he didn’t answer to. You were telling the story of a love turned into tragedy and yet every graze of his fingertips against your skin felt like a beginning. By the final crescendo, when the music, along with its emotions, intensified and your fingers interlocked in that last agonizing reach across time, you were mourning something and celebrating it all at once. 

The last note dissolved in the air. Sorrowful in how it dragged over the room, its people, you.

Your eyes never once wavered from Charles’ gaze. He threw you a smile, and you gave him a small one back.

The applause was thunderous.

Screams, whistling, shouts of your names weaving together until they were indistinguishable. The bubble you had skated inside popped all at once, replaced by the rumbling of voices demanding to be heard. The two of you whipped toward the noise. Head snapping in unison, you bowed deeply. Your hands remained intertwined, fingers still locked from the final note,  and your chests rose and fell together as if your lungs had forgotten how to work separately.

In the Kiss & Cry, you sank onto the narrow wooden bench beside him. Your limbs were still trembling from effort, and your ankle throbbed in a steady rhythm, but all was drowned out by the residual high of delivering a flawless performance. Charles’ thigh pressed solidly against yours, exactly like it had in the rinkside curtain zone. You didn’t move away and neither did he. Your eyes stayed locked on the screen overhead, the numbers still hidden from view, and each passing seconds felt like an hour. The longer they took, the warmer you and Charles’ contact point got.

Until finally—

75.88

The crowd roared.

You were first on the scoreboard with only one team left to perform.

The breath stuck in your lungs finally got out. You turned to Charles the same time he turned to you. The smile he threw at you was nothing short of characteristic: sure of himself, bordering on reckless. This time, you didn’t stare him down. This time, you matched it fully. The look between you was sheer, unbridled satisfaction. Damn right we did it.

Coach Vasseur’s hands landed heavy on both your shoulders, jostling you in place. “C’est ça qu’on veut!” he barked, shaking you both in quick succession. Pride, and maybe a speck of relief, radiated off him.

You let the smile linger only a moment longer before rolling your shoulders back and narrowing your eyes back at the score.

“Okay, okay, we still have the Free Dance to go through,” you reminded them both. 

It wasn’t over yet, and it would only be over for you once you’d put your feet on that top step.

The day after trickled down in near-perfect symmetry to the first. You and Charles went back to the hotel. Dinner was quiet but not tense, more of a worn-in ease. A shower took the edge of the lingering adrenaline. Neither of you surrendered to rest immediately: instead, you cleared a narrow patch of carpet in your room, marking through sequences for the Free Dance. You practiced your rotational lift, only to discover carpet was a poor substitute for ice. Still, you made do.

That night, Charles took the floor without a word about it. He tossed a few pillows on the floor and simply laid down. You fell asleep on the bed watching the slow rise and fall of his chest with something dangerously similar to gratitude lodging in your throat.

The morning of the Free Dance unfurled in the same ritual: Coach Vasseur checking you in, the muted hum of whispers following your steps in the changing rooms. Eyes lingered on you and your training because if your names and reputations hadn’t already carved you in the rink’s collective memory, your Rhythm Dance score had. You were now the team to beat and in the Free Dance, every breath could mean the difference between gold and silver.

It all blurred from there: your laces tied tight, the dark surge of Nothing Else Matters by Metallica and Marlisa wrapping around your two bodies. It had been Coach Vasseur’s choice, drastically different from One Day but allowed room for originality. Your program was fluid, miles away from the tragedy of the Rhythm Dance. You flowed into the first of your three lifts, Charles’ hands firm at your ribs as you rose, the centrifugal force spiraling you into the music’s swell before he set you down with barely a ripple in the choreography.

The step sequence and required twizzles were balanced: each entry seamless and each exit sharp. Your body draped across his shoulders steadily, your centers aligned perfectly… And yet, between the midline sequence and one of the final twists, there had been a hollow space where something more could have been. You hit the closing combination with breathless focus.

You knew Charles felt it too when you met his gaze in the Kiss & Cry, how they sharpened as you nodded. He could read your silence with no difficulties now: the Rhythm Dance had been the diamond. This? Though good, it was merely polished glass.

The score lit up once again in front of you.

98.55. 

You should’ve known the score would have been lower than expected. You had been too concentrated on making the Rhythm Dance work for the rest of the season. Bitterness overcame your tonsils even though the numbers were still brilliant, more than enough—

Your overall score climbed up to 173.43.

A double digit ahead of second place.

You secured gold for Regionals and a spot for Sectionals.

The arena erupted once again, and the warmth of it bloomed under your skin like a blush. You dropped your eyes to your lap, allowing yourself a small smile to unfurl in private. You were truly and undeniably back. The whispers, the doubters, the shadows of last year’s incident… none of it mattered, none of it ever did. You were proving them wrong because you were fucking great.

“We crushed it,” murmured Charles beside you, right in your ear as to be heard over the cheers. His voice was low, but laced with unbridled satisfaction.

You scoffed. “Of course we did.”

There was no venom in your intonation. He seemed to understand it by the soft roll of his eyes as he nudged your elbow with his.

When the podium ceremony began, you stood tall beneath the overhead light, the feeling of the gold medal piercing through your flimsy costume. Charles was at your side, and couldn’t help a half-smile, proud and cocky, from adorning his lips every time your eyes met. Coach Vasseur stood behind the board, breathing like a boulder had been physically removed from his shoulders. The applause rolled over you like waves, not as deafening as it had been right after your performance, but steadier, as an acknowledgement of what would happen next.

Standing on that top step, medal heavy around your neck, you felt inevitable.

The hotel room was quiet when you stumbled back in, the muted hum of the hallway fading as the door clicked shut behind you. You peeled the costume from your skin, still heavy with your competition perfume, its sequined edges pinching your ribs, and laid the edelweiss bouquet a fan had pressed into your arms gently on the vanity, its crimson petal catching the dim lamplight. The alarm clock on the nightstand glowed a steady 11:47 p.m. Interviews, the jury’s congratulations, stray conversations with fellow competitors… they must have stretched longer than you thought. You’d never come back so late after a competition before.

Maybe you’d allowed yourself to linger in the moment, just a little, before the hunger for the next battle started gnawing at you again.

Shedding your thighs for a loose tank top and pajama pants, you all but collapsed on the bed. That was when your gaze swept over the room— over Charles’ jacket slung over the vanity chair, his spare skates resting open-mouthed by the dresser. It was strange, you realized, how much quieter the room felt without his jabs and presence.

You didn’t know what brought up the thought. You had always thrived in silence.

You supposed it was because you hadn’t actually seen him since stepping off the podium, lost in the rush of medalists being herded towards cameras. You assume he had gone off to celebrate, with drinks and loud music, Coach Vasseur’s cavernous laugh for company. He seemed like the type.

There wasn’t anything you hated more than celebrations, with its meaningless conversations and overwhelming sounds. It was too much, not the good kind of deafening.

Still, you flicked on the hotel’s television, letting the late-night programming fill the quiet. Trying to ignore the odd, restless knot in your stomach.

The door clicked open not even seconds later.

Charles stepped in, framed by the hallway light. His hair was mussed by the wind outside, sticking out in dark brown antennas on each side of his head, and a small bouquet of white gardenias rested loosely in his hands. For a heartbeat, you two simply stared, neither moving.

“What are you doing here?” you asked at last. You realized your tone might have translated more aggression than you meant when he frowned, so you corrected yourself when you continued. “I thought you’d be out… celebrating.”

He shut the door with his foot, shrugging off his jacket in one easy movement. A faint, tired smile tugged at his mouth.

“Well,” he said, tossing the garment onto the chair and setting the bouquet next to yours on the vanity. “I’m not much of a party guy, actually. I thought about just going to sleep.”

You’d rather chop your own foot than admit it out loud, but you really needed to revise your judgement on Charles Leclerc.

Shifting in place at the center of the bed, you quickly became aware of what sleeping implied. He caught the flicker of hesitation on your face and breathed out a laugh, already ambling toward his self-appointed side and tossing his pillows on the floor.

“Ça va, ça va, don’t worry about it,” he said, tugging at the spare cover at the foot of the bed.

You hadn’t even begun to form the words, or even act on what you supposed you were to do yet, somehow, Charles already knew. The simple acknowledgement dried up your throat. It wasn’t guilt, not exactly, and not anything resembling pity. It wasn’t thankfulness either, but eerily similar to it.

The truth was probably simpler to ease out of your mind: that night at the rink, Charles had opened a door. And you, instinctively, had shut yours.

Surrendering pieces of yourself had never been in your nature. You were very aware of the walls you had built out of sweat, blood, spit and routine. Ivy had crept over them, hiding the jagged edges, painting them out to be almost gentle to the unknowing eyes, but you knew better. Within them was only you, snarling, untouchable. Safe. No one had ever felt sacred enough, good enough, to earn entry past those gates.

But perhaps that was never the point. Maybe they didn’t need to be sacred. Maybe they could just… be.

Because Charles had withstood your barbs and matched them without flinching. He had sweated alongside you trying to reach the perfection you so desperately sought after. He had fought, blades drawn, for the score and the glinting gold as ferociously as you had. And, when the moment came, he had laid a bare fragment of his past for you to keep and understand. You did, you do. It was, perhaps, the reason you had succeeded.

And now here he was, taking the floor after a draining program with three hours of car ride ahead of you tomorrow, without an explanation and without the faintest expectation of one. You felt that you owed him, as unshaped as the feeling was.

Your mouth opened before you could think better of it. Charles stilled, glancing up from his task, probably awaiting for the venom you’d trained him to anticipate.

Instead, you let the smallest part of yourself slip past the gates. You surrendered. A little.

“I have nightmares,” you blurted out as fast as you could. Your fingers tangled together in your lap, searching for an anchor that you always seemed to find in numbers. You started counting them. One, two, three, four, five… one, two, three, four, five— “Ever since the fall at Nationals last year, they’ve been… constant.” One, two, three, four, five— “It’s about…”

You swallowed without meeting Charles’ gaze, the count restarting like a metronome in your head. One, two, three, four, five— “I just— I thought if I got everything right…”

You couldn’t tell him what they were about. One, two, three, four, five— “I don’t want you to think I’m making you sleep on the floor to be difficult. I mean, I could, but that’s not it. I just… I toss and turn, and I wake up suddenly… I don’t want people to see me when I’m like that. Especially you.”

One, two, three, four— A hand came to rest above yours. 

Lifting your head, you finally met Charles’ eyes. There wasn’t any pity there, or judgment of any kind. Instead, the pads of his fingers pressed gently on your knuckles, firm enough to still the restless twitch of your fingers. Keeping you from counting. Grounding you. He didn’t scrutinize you, or study you, trying to decrypt what any of it meant and if he could fix it. He just… observed.

Rare were the times you lacked words. Against everyone’s wishes, you always had something to say. This time, however, you did not. Your lips parted, yet air was the only thing that escaped. It was just you and Charles, his words and your confession, the weight of his palm warming your skin.

It was too much. Far too much.

You scoffed, slipping your hands away to your side to toy with the bundled sheets at your hips. Anything to shatter the heat and cool them off. Charles nodded slowly, and although you couldn’t decipher what it meant, you somehow knew he wouldn’t be pushing for more.

He pivoted, throwing back some cushions on his side of the bed.

“Do you want to go to that pizzeria place next to the hotel?” Charles asked. His tone was lighter, parodically so. “Celebrate? Without loud music and Fred’s bad jokes?”

You narrowed your eyes at him in disbelief. Truth be told, you had a hard time telling if he was actually inviting you out of the irrefutable goodness of his heart (note the sarcasm) or if he saw how uncomfortable you were, squirming on the mattress, and trying to fill the space. “And you were the one calling Coach Vasseur’s crisps ‘garbage?’”

“I’m normally careful, sure,” he shrugged, throwing you a sideway glance. “But Sectionals are a month or so away, and you don’t get gold every day.”

You snorted. “Speak for yourself, Leclerc.”

Somehow, your bite got him to smile.

You hated celebrations, you really did. So you couldn’t really process why you were stepping into the hot, yeasty air of the pizzeria. You were still in your pajama pants and your flimsy tank top, him still in his very expensive skating costume, both with puffer jackets thrown on your shoulders as the world’s strangest disguise. The two of you looked ridiculous.

The place was half-empty due to the late hour, the hum of the fridge behind the counter and the orders coming from the kitchen filling the quiet between your bursts of conversations. You talked, like you did at the rink, like you did the first night at the hotel. You enjoyed talking to Charles, you noticed, a concept that would have mortified you a few weeks in the past. The goat cheese and honey pizza was greasy, your chair wobbled uncomfortably, and you had the only booth whose light was completely broken, leaving you to converse in hushed tones amidst the semi-darkness. In some way, it made laughter easier. Jabs looked more like jokes in the shadows.

For the first time in forever, you felt lighter.

The second part of your season arrived hand-in-hand with the determined establishment of the cold. October made way for the chill that often accompanied the beginning of November, and so the world shifted accordingly: the trees around the rink shed themselves of their amber coats in whispering drifts, the sky weeped more often than it smiled, your early mornings began in the company of mist and fog clinging to the ground, and Charles Leclerc’s presence was no longer a daunting weight on your day-to-day.

In fact, though you hardly believed it at first, you caught yourself seeking it.

Regionals left you with a tang on the tongue, one you rolled over for days afterward trying to name. Turns out, being proven wrong still tasted awfully bitter, and you despised it enough to swallow it whole in hopes to never admit it aloud, but the lingering flavor of the aftertaste became more bearable when the truth was sugary.

Charles Leclerc was not the disaster you’d made him out to be.

He was not lazy. You’d seen it in the pearl-sheen of sweat along his hairline during practice, in the way his chest heaved with effort when you drilled the same step sequence over and over. He was not arrogant, not when he absorbed your acute critiques with a high chin, not when he refused to step off the ice until his form was clean enough to look inhuman. He’d known, without saying so, that something had been missing in the Regionals’ Free Dance. He could anticipate your every movement without so much as a hitched breath. Charles Leclerc, you realized, was the kind of person you didn’t mind being around. 

And you began accepting it—albeit reluctantly—when it came to choosing the song for your Sectionals’ Free Dance.

“Do I have to worry about you guillotillining each other this time?”

Coach Vasseur’s voice cut through the office’s air. You and Charles, sitting in your usual chairs across from him, both turned your heads toward each other before snapping back to your coach.

“I think you’re looking for the word ‘beheading’,” you corrected flatly.

“I don’t think that’s a real word,” supplied Charles.

Vasseur looked between the two of you, fingers steepled in front of him. “I think I liked it better when you were beheading each other,” he grumbled. “At least choosing a song will be less of a pain, now.”

It wasn’t.

Not because of meaningless bickering, although that habit remained intact, but because you simply couldn’t settle on one song. Everyone agreed on the concept: something more grounded, faster and rougher, as to offer a counterpoint to the more airy routine of Nothing Else Matters. Except no one had railroaded the choice for you like Coach Vasseur had before Regionals, so you were drowning in options with no real starting point.

Which was how you ended up at Charles Leclerc’s apartment, of all places.

Simmering over separate playlists would’ve just wasted more choreographing and practice time, and you needed to get over those fast to salvage the missing points from the Regionals Free Dance. You needed to narrow the field and test how the music felt on both of you before skating to it. Two brains were better than one, or so Charles argued when he suggested holing up somewhere for the night to hash it out. Against all odds, you agreed. 

You’d gone home, thrown a few things in your duffel bag, and he’d pick you up.

His building was tucked away from the city, a low structure in dark, sultry wood shadowed by the forest that edged the road. The drive from the rink to his place was spent cycling through potential program songs, only commenting to express disappointment, refusal, or straight up disgust. The final straw came when Charles suggested The Adults Are Talking by The Strokes because no, you weren’t skating to that. He sulked, refused to play anything else for the rest of the ride, and you laughed at his childishness.

His apartment was smaller than you expected. It was subdued, with muted dark floors, light furnitures, and clean silver accents in the open kitchen behind the living room. At first glance, it could’ve been mistaken for minimalism if it weren’t for a few select details, cutting with the idleness, that were so undeniably him: a battered piano resting against the wall, a red sweater tossed over a white armchair, trophies gleaming on the TV console, and—

“You have a dog?” was the first thing you asked as you shed off your shoes at the entryway.

A worn dog bed sat beside the shoe cabinet, flanked by bright, thoroughly chewed toys. The fabric was embroidered in lopping, flowery letters: Leo.

Charles glanced over his shoulders as he hung up his jacket. “Yeah. Léo,” he repeated, the name wrapped in the jaunty curve of his accent. “He’s at the vet for the night. I left him alone for one afternoon and he managed to swallow a bee. In November.”

You snickered, to which he only smiled. “I didn’t peg you for the dog type.”

“So I’m not nurturing, I’m not the type to own a dog…,” Charles enumerated, walking to the kitchen. “What am I to you, then?”

Good question.

An acquaintance. A partner. A rival. A friend, maybe? The only person who stuck around long enough to get the tiniest sense of who you were. He was something to you, that was for sure.

“Exasperating,” you answered instead.

Charles huffed out a laugh. “Just make yourself at home.”

Easier said than done.

There wasn’t any home except for your apartment. You could make do with hotel rooms if you followed your pre-established routine, sure, but following that routine in a completely unknown space was a different obstacle. Clutching the strap of your duffel bag, you glanced around, shuffling from one foot to the other, searching for  some clue of what you were supposed to do. As if he sensed your discomfort, Charles turned around from the kitchen.

“If you want to get changed into something more comfortable, the bathroom is on the right,” he offered.

You nodded stiffly and escaped down the hall, trading your sports set for pajama shorts and a sweater. Even then, the fabric didn’t anchor you, it only made you more aware of how far from your usual environment you were. You padded back out, stopping in that liminal space between the kitchen and the living room. Charles was at the stove, a wooden spoon in hand, steam curling above him.

“You can hook your phone to the speaker,” he said without looking up. “We can brainstorm while I cook. Is pasta alright?”

“... Uh, sure,” you answered, dragging the vowels just enough for him to turn around and throw you an amused glance.

It felt strange, trespassing into someone’s evening like this, but you found the JBL speaker and tapped in your Bluetooth as you settled on one of the kitchen stools. One song after the other, you queued up potential tracks you had carefully stored in a playlist, elbows on the counter. The kitchen smelled faintly of garlic, and the low amber light from the hanging fixture made everything feel more lived in, closer. Sometimes, you’d reject a song after five seconds and sometimes, Charles would nod and hum along, brows furrowed in thought. You had to hide how absurdly triumphant you felt when he’d grin the times he liked the song.

When the pasta was ready, Charles grabbed two plates and turned toward the kitchen island, just to stop in his tracks. You looked up from your playlist at the sudden cessation in movements. His eyes flicked over you for a fraction of second: socked feet tucked beneath you, hair thrown in a hasty ponytail.

You frowned. “What?”

“Nothing,” he said too quickly. “It’s just… nothing.” He set the plates down in front of you, his movements brisker than before, and slid onto the stool in front of yours.

The songs from your playlist kept on weaving in and out the soft clink of cutlery as you ate. Surprisingly, the pasta was really good— though you figured it was hard to mess up pasta. Charles, however, insisted he actually did mess it more often than he liked to admit, and that he’d had his fingers crossed the entire time it boiled. The mental image made you promptly choke on your forkful.

By the time you both finished, the island held empty plates along with two glasses of water and a complete drafted list of Free Dance contenders in your Notes app.

Never Let Me Go by Florence + The Machine

My Immortal by Evanescence

The Great Gig in the Sky by Pink Floyd

The Adults Are Talking by—

“How did you even add that?” you demanded, shoving your phone under his nose. “I barely looked away from it!”

Charles chewed on the last bite of his pasta, entirely too pleased with himself. “When you let me add my songs to your playlist.”

You squinted at him and deleted the title from the list. “We are not skating to The Strokes. How do you even want to skate to it? How can you be a figure skater and have zero sense of rhythm?” you poked, halfway between teasing and aggravation.

“How can you be a figure skater and have a stick up your—” You shot him a glare. It didn’t wipe the smug grin off his face, but it kept him from finishing his sentence. “It’s my favorite song,” he said instead.

Grumbling something that you didn’t even comprehend yourself, you took a sip of water. When you looked back up, he had leaned back, arms crossed on his chest, eyes betraying curiosity.

“What’s yours?”

You frowned in incomprehension. “My what?”

“Your favorite song.”

There was a small drip of sand in your internal hourglass before you could settle on an answer. No one had ever asked you before. Not with real interest in you, anyways. It was always about songs you could skate to, pieces that matched a program’s tempo. You didn’t even know if you had one. You had to pause before one track resurfaced.

“... Hardest of Hearts. By Florence + The Machine. I think.”

It felt like you gave all too much of yourself away with that answer.

Charles nodded. Without comment, he reached over, gently plucked the phone from your hands, and tapped the screen. Seconds later, bass escaped the speaker, followed by Florence Welch’s voice spilling into the air. You rolled your eyes at him, but the corner of your mouth betrayed you, pulling into a smile you didn’t feel the need to hide completely.

By the time you migrated to the couch, the music had become background noise to your conversation instead of the sole focus of it. You curled into one corner, a pillow with a suspicious amount of dog hair hugged to your chest, while Charles sat on the other end, long legs sprawled in the space between you. Somewhere along the way, your talk of music had detoured into a ramble about Chopin, which you only half-followed because Charles kept slipping into French mid-sentence.

Talking with him was easy, you thought, and the truth in that statement surprised you by its simplicity. No matter how boring the topics were, if there was even one, the conversation never was.

“What do you even do for fun?” he asked suddenly, as if the thought had been simmering for a while.

“I like watching ice dancing routines,” you answered, vaguely gesturing to the black TV screen in front of you. “I like studying them, really.”

Charles chuckled, rubbing his eyes. Only then did you catch the time on the oven clock: 2:30 a.m. “It doesn’t surprise me at all,” he muttered. “You have a… uh… one track mind?” You nodded. 

“Some might just say determined,” you countered. “You know, the recipe to success?” 

“Right,” he smirked, not looking impressed in the slightest. “Really, though, what do you do outside of skating?”

Again, a pause. You opened your mouth only to close it again on a whole lot of nothing. The silence stretched just long enough for him to raise a brow, lips twitching.

“Oh wow,” he teased. “Do you even have hobbies?”

Your wince answered before your words did. “... Ice skating.”

It took a second for Charles to realize you weren’t joking, enough for you to feel the weight of the quiet yourself. You couldn’t blame him. It was the first time in your life you’d been confronted with the fact that, outside of figure skating, there was… nothing. No favorite song of your own, no hobbies that didn’t orbit around the rink— watching routines, reading biographies… That was it. You’d never thought you needed more, it was your passion, your entire life. Yet, the truth sat sour on your tongue.

Charles caught the shift in your instantly and his teasing softened into sharp decisiveness.

“Okay. Okay. Have you ever heard of padel? I’m finding you something else to do.”

That snapped you out of your spiral. “Oh, please,” you scoffed, and hurled the pillow at his head.

“I’m serious!” he exclaimed, catching it and firing it right at your chest.

The back-and-forth escalated quickly. One lob turned into a harder throw, which turned into a yelp and a laugh from you as he retaliated. The sound spilled into the dim-lit room, unguarded, and you could’ve sworn Charles paused for a fleeting second. You grinned and whipped the pillow back at him, cheeks aching and breathless from your game.

By the time the night wound down, the two of you had narrowed the Free Dance down to one track: Hardest of Hearts.

Figuring out the choreography was a delicate endeavor. Your style of skating wasn’t meant to fit the more aggressive side of this type of dance: you thrived in barely there lines and skimmed the pads of your fingers over the ice. You didn’t deliberately crash into the music. Charles, however, found his footing infuriatingly quick with cross rolls deep enough to carve trenches. It was his style, his domain, and something you had a hard time adapting to as you fought to keep your body reverting from habit. Having your song playing on the speaker didn’t help the frustration blooming in your guts.

His corrections didn’t help.

At first, you’d met them with teeth with a clipped “I know” or a muttered “I’m working on it” whenever he pointed out a dropped shoulder or a rushed bracket— never malicious, just an adjustment. You weren’t used to being told, on the ice out of all places, what to do. You were usually on the top of your game. Yet, the air between you and the Monegasque never became overly acrimonious.

Between repetitions and endless resets at the top of the sequence, Charles’ patient “Again. You’ve got it,” sounded less mighty than you made it out to be. Something had started to loosen and while you still bristled now and then, the bark had started to loosen.

The first notes of Hardest of Hearts swelled from the speakers. You launched into your opening, knees flexing deep into your edge, feeling the aggressive bite of your blades on the ice. Charles’ hands found yours seamlessly, his weight perfectly countering yours in the curve you traced. You could hear your breaths, low, over the melody. Three rotations, clean and centered. 

“Get lower on this part, left arm higher— there,” his voice cut through, right as you came out of the spin. You adjusted, lowering your upper body and squaring your shoulders toward the curve of the rink, and felt the position lock perfectly under you.

The final sequence hits, your blades hammering out a quick set of steps, before the music dropped into the glide that closed the program. Charles’ grip tightened just enough on your hips for you to anchor the last position together. You didn’t even realize the “Thanks” had slipped out until you saw the corners of his mouth twitch in pleasant surprise.

From the plexiglass walls, Coach Vasseur raised an eyebrow. “Are you feeling alright?” he called out. “Normally you’d have bit his head off for that.”

You rolled your eyes as you coasted toward him, but there was an undeniable truth to it.

The ice was not the only place you and Charles had grown closer. The more the days went by, the more time you spent together outside of it. Turns out, he held onto his promises: after a few days of insistent between-the-lines, you had caved for his padel proposition— apparently, the conversation you had in his apartment had made him hellbent on finding you something to do outside of training. And if there was something you learnt about Charles in all those years of back-and-forth was that his faith was not easily shaken.

But the amount of it he put in padel was dreadfully misplaced.

“This is such bullshit!” you exclaimed.

Your racket hit the ground with a noise that startled the people playing on the field next to yours. Charles’ laugh echoed from the other side of the courts, and you threw the neon ball at him in hopes to shut him up. He only narrowly dodged it. Shame.

“You’re saying that because you’re losing.”

“Don’t act all high and mighty when you’re just as much of a sore loser.” You pointed a finger at him, which only caused his eyebrows to raise in mock surprise. Me? Little old me? Never!

Yet, you came back to the padel court every Wednesday, and you learnt with renewed fervor each time that he could only match with barely disguised ecstasy. Because there was just something about playing with Charles that made you feel the same way skating with him did: tethered and anchored down, so much that you didn’t have to grip the world with nails and teeth and beg for it not to go on without you anymore. You could only allow yourself to hope he felt a similar way.

His apartment became yours as well, little by little. It started when he offered to review the past choreographies of your upcoming Sectionals rivals, a proposition concealed with teasing about your encyclopedic knowledge. Halfway through, he mentioned your apartment and in shunning that idea as fast as you could, you found yourself in front of his building.

Nobody ever stepped foot inside your apartment. Not Lando, not Coach Vasseur, your parents had never even learned where the address led to— not like they would’ve come knocking. It was your home, yours alone, and the safe perfume of solitude clinging to the walls… you couldn’t imagine anyone breaching it, let alone breathing the same air. Charles didn’t push, didn’t ask. Instead, he opened his door.

What was supposed to be a night of studying quickly turned into a glass of white wine, the golden liquid swirling into two nights, spiraling into three, five, uncountable shared evenings on his couch. You couldn’t tell how it came to be, just that it did: after padding around awkwardly around his apartment for a week, you could now go through the intricate steps of your night routine without so much as a dismaying spike in your guts. Open the cabinets and know where his cans of Celsius were, walk barefoot in the kitchen. Warmth settled instead, replacing the gut-tightening discomfort of the unknown. Familiarity. And Charles would be there, scrolling on his phone next to your body on the couch, or talking to you with his back to the bathroom sink while you meticulously applied your peppermint scented night cream.

“I don’t get how you do that every night,” he mused once. “That’s so much effort.”

You dipped your fingers in your precious blue tub and, before he could flinch away, smeared some on his cheek. His nose scrunched up at the punch of the smell. “You should get to it. I can see razor bumps forming from here.”

Charles huffed. He pretended not to care but you caught the subtle way his eyes flickered toward the mirror in search for the truth. Minutes later, he was perched on the counter, knees brushing your hips as you demonstrated the proper technique, reminiscent of the night you had to walk him through every step as he toyed with your products. It felt strange, to share something so personal. His ridiculous dedication to it made up for the outlandish knot in your chest.

It didn’t stop just there. The pattern kept on going, intricate and stretching far beyond what you already had, like a tapestry of moments: Charles kept pulling you into things you’d never have tried on your own. You spent an afternoon hiking, an actual free day you somehow didn’t spend overexerting yourself on the ice, and that you actually walked without any obligations motivating you. Another time, it was video games on his battered old console, your competitive streak clashing with his as your avatars tumbled off a pixelated cliff.

Part of you was quietly convinced he was trying to find you a hobby that didn’t involve blades in the slightest— except for cooking, but you both quickly established you weren’t any good at making something else than pasta. And maybe, although you’d never tell him face to face, it was working. In those moments, spent laughing until your lungs and voice gave up before your amusement did, you felt something you hadn’t in years: yourself. Whatever that meant.

But no matter what the day held—practice, activities, or the steam of a cup in a coffee shop—it always seemed to end in the same way: back at his apartment, sprawled on the couch with low music, some thread of conversation carrying you into the small hours of the night so you could sleep peacefully.

Tonight was not any different. Except maybe for the melody escaping the living room.

Even though you now spent the most of your time in Charles’ apartment, rare were the times you actually slept over. However, when whispers spilled deep into the night, the Monegasque would offer you his bed and gracefully take the couch— a chivalry you couldn’t help but poke fun at, recalling what happened at Regionals. Your teasing ended quickly when he calmly reminded you that you were taking his bed.

So here you were, tangled in sheets still cradling his heat, the deep wafts of warm amber slipping into your senses as you curled up in an oversized shirt you’d left in his wardrobe one or two weeks ago. You would have found Morpheus if the door, that you accidentally left ajar in your wake, didn’t let out the painfully familiar notes threading into the quiet. At first, you thought it was the speaker that you perhaps left on by mistake, but you remembered Charles switching it off. 

Curiosity took over before sleep did. Wrapping yourself in one of the lighter blankets, you padded down the short hallway.

The living room was steeped in comfortable shadows, wrapped in the warmth preserved by the central heating and the residual, strange intimacy of hours spent talking. A single beam of moonlight filtered through the crooked blinds, the faint particles of dust making way for it to settle over the vintage piano pushed against the far wall. 

Charles didn’t notice you.

His hair was mussed from sleep, or the lack thereof, and his gaze was fixed not of the keys themselves, but somewhere deeper, on the music that lived behind them. His hands moved in swift yet unhurried arcs, almost gentle, as if coaxing the melody out of the instrument, drawing silvery threads of sound from the black and white ivory. The notes resounded like crystal into the stillness, ringing clear before dissolving into the next. He swayed back and forth to every inflection. The rhythm either tugged at his entire frame or brushed over his wide hands. You’d known Charles could play, but you’d never heard him. Now you understood the sailors handing their last breath to the sea for a siren’s song.

The melody gradually faded out of hearing, leaving the air dense with a strange kind of melancholy. Charles exhaled as though returning from something far away. You should have left, went back to his bed and fell asleep, because it really did feel like you were walking on something you had no right to breach.

Instead, your voice threaded softly through the atmosphere. “It’s beautiful.”

Charles jumped at the sudden sound of your voice, although you had tried your best to keep it as soft as you could manage. His head snapped toward you, eyes catching in the strip of moonlight that carved the room in two. He blinked. Once. Twice. His gaze skimming over your face, your hair messy from his bed, the loose fit of the shirt, and the bare skin of your legs peeking from underneath the hem. He looked almost dazed. As if you were an apparition he had to convince himself was real. His voice was hoarse when he spoke up.

“I’m sorry, did I wake you?”

You shook your head, the lie slipping easily. “No, not at all.” You didn’t want him to feel guilty.

“Was it… nightmares?” he asked. The way Charles’ voice softened around the word, as if he wasn’t sure if he could speak of it, made your heart halt for a fraction of a second. He took your silence as confirmation. “Do you need something?” he pressed gently. “Water, maybe? Or I can make some tea, put on some music, or—”

He was already turning to the kitchen on his bench, words spilling faster from his mouth than his thoughts could corral them. That instinct of his to do, to try and try and try was so transparent your mind threatened to forget how to respond. 

You took an hesitant step forward, the moonlight slowly drenching you in its light, and that was enough to pull Charles back into the present. His eyes flicked to your movement, and he stopped mid-offer.

“Neither,” you said. “Don’t worry about it. I just… tend to wake up in the middle of the night.” You hesitated, fingers curling tight in the blanket draped around you. “But… Thank you. It’s— uh— sweet of you to ask.”

An awkward silence settled until your eyes drifted to the piano. “It’s beautiful,” you repeated. Faced with Charles’ confusion, you explained further. “The music. It sounds sort of familiar.”

“Oh,” he drew the sound out,realization dawning as he flicked his eyes to the piano and back at you. A sheepish, somewhat boyish smile tugged at his lips. “That’s because it is. Think.”

You hesitated, retracing the melody in your mind as you stepped closer. The polished wood gleamed under the thin stream of moonlight, your fingertips trailing across the ridges as though the texture might help summon the memory. You could see it clearly. The rhythm, how his fingers had moved, the soft curve of the melody coaxing shivers out of you. Charles watched every small motion, lips parted, his eyes helplessly caught on your nails brushing the varnished surface. Delicate.

That’s when it hit you. “You learnt Hardest of Hearts?”

Barely concealed pride flared across Charles’ features at your recognition. “I always learn my program’s music,” he admitted, tipping his chin toward the scattered sheets on the ground beside him. “It helps me get in the space and understand the rhythm better.”

“That’s… amazing.” 

The praise slipped out without much thought. Reflex almost had you dressing the sentiment in sarcasm, something about how self-absorbed you had to be to do that, but your heart wasn’t with it. Because you understood the effort. Because the small, genuine smile on Charles’ face left your protest stranded on your tongue.

Your gaze fell to the pile of music sheets. The top page was worn at the edges, yellowed out by time, the paper smudged and annotated in messy handwriting— the room was too dark for you to make out what it said. The title, however, was clear enough: Pas de Deux, Tchaikovsky, The Nutcracker. Your chest tightened. You’d skated to it when you were younger, the boy’s name whom you partnered with lost in the meanders of your mind. For all the hours you spent watching him back, you knew with certainty Charles never had.

You didn’t ask why it was there.

“Do you want to try?” he asked quietly.

“Playing?”

“Well, I don’t plan on making you try another sport so late…” A teasing glint surfaced in his expression.

A chuckle broke out from your lips. “I never played before.”

“You’d never hiked before either,” he countered smoothly, leaning an elbow on the piano’s edge, “and you survived.”

You did. You were still alive.

The creak of the bench died down in the little space there was between Charles’ body and yours as you sat down next to him. The blanket slipped from your shoulders, landing with a muffled thud on the floorboards, but the green of his irises was fixated on you. The amber lingering on his bedsheets now enveloped you, the warmth you found sinking on his mattress now pressed against your arm, your leg.

“So,” you whispered, wavering. You pressed the first key in front of you, and the sound reverberated all around you. “Where do we start?”

“It’s just like skating,” Charles whispered back.

He slowly pressed the key next to yours. Just like at Regionals, your fingers brushed imperceptibly, and yet the smallest of contact was enough for your throat to constrict, for his breath to hitch. With nothing awaiting you on the other side of the curtain the night had draped around you, it felt like you were sharing a secret that was just yours to hold.

Everything made perfect sense after that.