#glittercracker

“Wait, one thing first.” Shion reached back into the cupboard, and pulled out a gift-wrapped box.

“What is this?”

“A New Years present.”

“I’m pretty sure that isn’t a thing, Shion.”

“A birthday present.”

“My birthday was two months ago.”

Shion sighed, nearing exasperation. “Please, just open it!”

Nezumi pulled off the bright wrapping paper, revealing a cardboard box with a brand name and a size on it. His shoe size. He glanced up suspiciously at Shion.

“It won’t bite, Nezumi,” Shion said.

Nezumi opened the box. Inside was a pair of brand-new black figure skates. “Shion,” he began.

“Don’t argue! The rental ones are terrible, and you’ll have a much better chance of having a good time in these ones. Or at least not falling too much. Now let’s go!” Shion took the skates out of the box, snapped on guards and put them in his own skating bag, then grabbed Nezumi’s hand and pulled him out the door.

Nezumi was very quiet as they walked toward the center of town, where the outdoor rink had been constructed outside the Moon Drop. Shion kept stealing glances at him, hoping that he hadn’t pushed too far on this one. But the winter had already been long and cold, and he was desperate to get out of the house, to do something mindless and fun with his boyfriend.

He was hopeful that Nezumi wouldn’t entirely hate it, given that his demeanor wasn’t miserable, or rebellious – he had grown much more adept at reading the other man’s expressions since they’d been back together than he had been when they were younger. He didn’t know whether that was down to his own intervening life experience, or a softening in Nezumi. Probably a bit of both. At any rate, Nezumi didn’t look angry, but he didn’t look comfortable. He looked, if anything, like he was trying to solve a complicated math problem, and was stubbornly refusing to let himself ask for help. Whatever it was, hopefully skating would take his mind off of it.

Or, more realistically, attempting to stay upright. Shion still had bruises from his last few lessons, which he’d taken at a sports facility in anticipation of this grand opening. He wasn’t a city official anymore, but he was still a well-known figure, and if he had to attend this opening, he wanted to do it without entirely disgracing himself.

When they reached the rink, there was a line for tickets, but the woman at one of the booths recognized Shion and waved them through with a smile. “Lovely to see you here, Doctor,” she said.

“I wouldn’t have missed it. Wish us luck – it’s my boyfriend’s first time skating.”

“Good thing he’s with the best doctor in town, then,” she said, winking.

They passed through the gate and toward the seating area. Shion could feel Nezumi glaring at the back of his head, and he smiled to himself. Good: his words to the ticket lady had worked. Now Nezumi saw this as a challenge, and he wouldn’t give up easily.

They sat down, pulled off their shoes and began to lace up their skates. “Make sure you don’t lace them too tightly,” Shion told Nezumi. “They aren’t broken in, and they’ll hurt if you do.”

“Right,” Nezumi said, his skates already laced.

The tension looked about right to Shion, so he concentrated on his own. When he looked back, Nezumi had taken off one of the skate guards and was fingering the blade. “Careful,” Shion said. “I had them sharpened. They can cut you right now.”

“Hmm,” was all that Nezumi said, and he snapped the guard back on. Then, abruptly, he gave Shion a smile, something like mischief glinting in his eyes. “So – are you ready to show me how this is done?”

What, Shion wondered, did that look mean? Was Nezumi preparing to gloat in the likely event that Shion fell on his ass? Or was he planning to undermine all of this in some other, subtle, peculiarly Nezumi way?

Of course, asking would get him nowhere, so instead he answered the question: “I mean, I’m no expert, but I have more experience than you. Don’t be afraid to hang onto the boards. I wouldn’t hang onto me if I were you; that will end in disaster.”

“Right,” Nezumi said, as Shion wound their fingers tightly together and guided him toward the ice.

There were a number of people already out, most skating in perfunctory loops, little children clinging to the boards, and one or two more proficient skaters practicing spins or small jumps in the center. The rink had been built with a roof, but the sides were open to allow a view of the surrounding park, decorated for the holiday, its trees wrapped in multi-colored fairy lights that gleamed in the falling dusk. Cheerful music pumped from speakers overhead, and more strings of lights hung in loops from the roof. Still holding tightly to Nezumi’s hand, Shion stroked out carefully to join the flow of other skaters. He expected Nezumi to wobble, maybe to fall, but his balance seemed to be decent, even if he wasn’t moving very fast. Well, that made sense, Shion thought. He was a dancer, after all.

They made the rounds of the rink a few times, and then Nezumi said, “You must have learned more than skating forward in all those lessons. Why don’t you show me what you can do?”

Shion looked over at him. “Are you sure? I mean, is it okay if I let go of you?”

“I’ll stop if I have to,” Nezumi said, and there was a tone in his voice that matched the odd, bright spark that hadn’t left his eyes. It was almost – gleeful?

“Alright,” he said, crossing his arms and facing Nezumi down. “What are you planning?”

Nezumi blinked at him, all innocence. “Planning? What do you mean?”

“I mean, you’ve been weird ever since we left the house. And you have that look.”

“What look?”

“The one you have when you have a trick up your sleeve. Are you waiting to film me taking a nose dive?”

Nezumi smirked. “That’s exactly it. You got me.”

“Nezumi.”

“Just show me what you can do.”

Shion sighed, knowing full well that Nezumi was indeed planning something, also knowing that he’d never get it out of him. “Okay, well,” he said, “I can’t do much, but I’m learning crossovers and a two-footed spin.”

“Then let’s see them,” Nezumi said, skating alongside him far better than Shion had skated his first time out.

Shion sighed. Nezumi had definitely been born with unfair advantages when it came to using his body…at the thought, although he hadn’t said it out loud, he flushed crimson and stumbled on a crossover. He managed not to fall, and turned to see Nezumi smirking.

“Something distracting you, Your Majesty?”

“No! Of course not,” Shion said too quickly, and to cover his fluster he launched himself into a two footed spin – which was going relatively well, until he leaned too far back and lost his footing, sprawling on the ice.

“Honestly, Nezumi,” he said as Nezumi reached out a hand to him, “if you try to help me up, we’ll both end up down here.”

Nezumi’s smirk softened into a smile. “You sure about that, Your Majesty?”

Before Shion could answer, Nezumi had both of his hands and was pulling him to his feet, without the slightest waver in his balance. Once Shion was upright, Nezumi said, “Hurt anywhere?”

Shion shook his head. “There will be bruises, but – Nezumi, what are you doing?” This, as Nezumi pulled Shion close. He whispered in his ear, “Showing you how this is done.” And with a graceful sweep of one leg, Nezumi launched the two of them into a spin. Shion could only hold on, breathless and dizzy, when Nezumi finally stopped them, and dropped a kiss on Shion’s lips, parted in shock.

“Nezumi…you can skate?”

Nezumi laughed. “Looks that way, doesn’t it?”

“But…when…how…?”

Tucking Shion’s arm through his, he led them back into the stream of skaters, this time stroking out powerfully, nearly dragging Shion along with him. Then he whipped around so that he was skating backwards, holding tightly to Shion’s hands.

“No. 1. It’s so cold there for so much of the year, the lakes and ponds are almost always frozen. That’s how I started – because everybody did it. Then I realized I liked it. It’s like dancing, but faster!” He shifted his weight again, pumped a leg wide, and they were turning again, their joined hands the axis they spun around. “So,” he said as they slowed, “I got someone to teach me properly. I skated instead of acting while I was there…although it’s still acting, in the end.”

Shion could tell that people were stopping, staring, but he didn’t dare look away from Nezumi, who had gone back to skating backward, in case he lost his balance again. “All these weeks I’ve been taking lessons, and you didn’t think to tell me this? And if you like it, why were you such a brat about coming with me tonight?”

Nezumi grinned. “First question: if I’d told you, I’d have never heard the end of it. You’d have been pestering me to teach you every free moment, and, well, there are other things I kind of like to do with our limited free moments.”

Shion blushed again, and Nezumi skated a circle around him, then jumped, spinning twice in the air before he landed. “Second question…well, you didn’t need me to already be good at this.”

“What do you mean? I’m thrilled that you’re good at this!”

Nezumi sighed. “But I’m kind of not so thrilled.”

“Why?” Shion asked, honestly baffled.

“For so long, I made you think that I was better than you at everything. That you couldn’t even survive without me.”

Shion shrugged. “I couldn’t have, in West Block.”

Nezumi gave him a rueful half-smile. “Funny thing is,” he said, “I think you could have. You’d have had to learn some hard lessons but…” He sighed. “At first, I underestimated you. But not for very long. You’d have been okay without me. Better off, maybe. But I wouldn’t have been okay without you. And because I couldn’t admit that to myself, I let you, and me, keep thinking that you were helpless. That you needed me.”

Shion drew them to a stop on a quiet corner of the ice, taking off his gloves to cup Nezumi’s cold cheeks with warm hands. “I did need you. Even if I’d grown up there like you did, I’d still have needed you.”

Nezumi shook his head, but brought one of Shion’s hands to his lips, kissed it. “Do you know, I still wake up most mornings and think that I’ve dreamed all of this. That we could have ended up here…it seems impossible.”

Shion looked into Nezumi’s eyes, the gray dark in the shadows but sparked with constellations of light from the tiny bulbs glowing above them. “The only impossible thing was for us not to end up here,” he said softly.

He reached again for Nezumi’s cheek, but Nezumi caught his hand, held it firmly between them as he rummaged in his pocket with the free one. “Nezumi, what…?” And then Nezumi was slipping something onto his finger. His ring finger.

Shion hardly dared to look down. When he did, he saw a dark, slender ring on his finger. He held it up to the faint light. It was made of a strip of dark wood, banded by two strips of silvery metal. “N – Nezumi? Are you asking me…?”

“I don’t know. That depends on whether you’re going to make me get down on one knee and ask you in some god-awful, hackneyed words your grandfather probably used. Because if you are, then I want the ring back.”

“No! I mean yes! I mean – no you can’t have the ring back, and no you don’t have to get down on your knee or say anything else, and yes, I will marry you!”

“Marry me?” Nezumi asked with a gasp. “Shion, you thought I was asking you to marry me?”

Shion felt his stomach drop, his lungs freeze as solid as the ice beneath their feet. And then he saw Nezumi’s eyes, glinting with humor.

“Nezumi!” he admonished.

Nezumi laughed. “I’m sorry. I just couldn’t help – ”

Shion smacked him in the shoulder. “That was NOT FUNNY! And just for that, I am picking your ring, and you have to wear it no matter what it looks like. And the wedding outfits. And the venue – ”

“Shion,” Nezumi said, and then shut him up with a kiss. “There’s time enough for all that,” he said, pulling away, although Shion clutched at him to stay. “And time for more than this – ” he said with one more peck to Shion’s lips, “later. But right now, I think you’d better tell your adoring fans the good news.”

Shion turned, to see that the entire ice rink had come to a standstill, and was watching them curiously – hopefully. Shion rewarded them with a flashbulb smile. “Nezumi and I have an announcement to make,” he said.