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aggresivelyfriendly · 4 years

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Day Four: The One With The Metaphors

More wish fulfillment! I love this one, obvi- I love a metaphor. Anyway! Thank you so much to @dirtystyles for the read through and screams!

Send me screams! Reblogs are definitely love!

I’m starting a tag list as well for when I post- if you’d like- send me a note to add you! Thanks @awomanindeniall for the suggestion!

Elise woke up aware that something was wrong.

Amiss, that was a better word. Nothing hurt and she was supremely comfortable and warm, but something was off. It took a moment for her to puzzle it out.

The sun was high through the window, so at first she figured it was that she had slept in so unbelievably late. She'd been up to the wee hours last night. Elise could remember the clock on her iPhone saying 3:30am, lying in was not surprising, but a consequence. Her room was still, only her knee joints cracking when she stretched broke the silence.

The house was quiet too, but Harry had been a quiet housemate for the three days they'd been quarantined. He usually skulked about quietly in the morning to avoid waking her, and when she went down, he set about treating her like a treasured guest instead of the chick he sneezed on. Making her breakfast or doing her coffee immediately, like the world's best waiter.

Oh! That's what felt weird about today! She'd woken up in this stranger's bed in this stranger's house and didn't feel weird about it. There was none of the disorientation and then fear she'd got on the other mornings. The first one, she'd realized it wasn't her bed. Her bedding was an ombré of blues and purple, and while she liked the sheets, thought they were comfortable, she knew it would be hard to go back to them now. Harry's bedding was like the very plush stuff she had encountered when she went to see her one and only concert, by invite, of her friend Daphne. Elise wouldn't name the band. They'd stayed at a high end hotel. She'd been afraid to sit on the couch. She'd adopted an air of whatever by the time they made it to the bedroom, because she didn't want Daphne to notice how impressed she was. The friendship had petered out in high school, but they were buddies for a time. And Elise got used to her lifestyle, but never comfortable. She remembered the comforter in the hotel was down and over stuffed, and the sheets felt like a billion thread count. She doubted a cloud could feel better.

Harry's was better. In his guest room. Imagine what he had on his own bed! No- she wouldn't!

In any case, it was a glaring difference. On day one, or two, she'd need to nail down how to count the days, she realized, the blankets had caused a domino reaction. She'd reached behind her immediately and sighed in relief when she felt no body behind her. But they could have gotten up for the bathroom, maybe that's what had initially woken her.

So the next step in freak out containment was to smooth her hands down her body and confirm she was clothed. One night stands were not her style. It had happened once. Their sheets had not been this nice.

They had not been as nice as Harry in any way.

What would it be like to wake up, do her checks, realize she was in another's bed, and find it to be Harry. She giggled while she skipped down her own mental path. Waking up with Harry Styles, his actual bed, not the guest room one. That would have been a shock in every sense of the word. A pleasant shock, you might even do the walk of no shame from. In any case, this morning was different, but not that different.

Today, it just felt like this is where she woke up now. Her giggle broke the cold air, yeah, this was not a life she'd let herself get used too.

Poor international student and desert rat were still her bylines.

The plush bathroom was also amazing though, and she lingered over the heated floors. Just because she couldn't have them forever didn't mean she shouldn't appreciate them while she could.

It was 11:30 by the time she made it downstairs. In truth, maybe she was stalling.

She didn't want to tell him she disliked his favorite book.

Well, dislike was a strong word. The book was alright, but Harry loved it. Elise felt like he would want her to love it too. They'd found things in common yesterday and it was lovely and thrilling. His face would light up in a way Elise wanted to be the root of, but they didn't have this new thing in common. He made this happy puppy face, full of energy and youth when they hit upon a movie they both spent hours rewatching, or bands they loved, listening to albums on-repeat in adolescent bedrooms. She hated to tell him it didn't expand to Norwegian Wood. She'd even worked on a line to soften the blow.

I like the prose, but not the protagonist. That's what she would say.

Did Harry see himself as the protagonist? Did you have to identify with a main character to love a story? Maybe you did, though she didn't see herself as a swamp girl, like the main in the book she had recommended to him. She did feel like an outsider, she supposed. She suspected everybody did a little.

Did Harry feel ordinary, and torn between melancholy and merry? He seemed bright to her- like a little firefly in the dark, with his bright shiny teeth and crinkly eyes. She'd listened to his first solo album, it had been serious to say the least. Wistful, nostalgic, sad in mood, ultimately hopeful. Maybe that's what he was like inside, and he just wore an upbeat face. Was it a mask?

But Harry was anything but boring. He was extraordinary. She believed that long before she was stuck in a house with him. It had just been confirmed by proximity.

Elise felt like she should listen to his new album right now to get a handle on where he might be at the moment, or closer to the moment. She almost pulled it up of her phone.

Shaking her head, she existed out of Spotify, she'd have to listen to his new album tonight. Elise knew if she stayed up here much longer, her temporary housemate would be at her door. Probably with coffee, just as she liked it, and maybe even toast. Oooh, that sounded delicious, maybe she would wait.

She wouldn't.

Elise took light steps down the stairs, she had it in her head to startle Harry. It was a strange impulse, people always did it to her, and she always jumped a foot. Apparently, everybody always found that hilarious. She didn't. Must be being on the wrong side of it.

She was about to find out.

Except Harry wasn't in the kitchen where she had come to expect him in the mornings. Though there was hot coffee in the French press with her cup next to it. The mug that said more joy. She'd liked the sex one, but it made her blush a little, she avoided it.

He'd noticed her pink cheeks, given her the joy one, and sipped from the other, his green eyes over the rim, dancing at her reaction to every sip. She shook off the memory.

The first sip was hot and everything she loved about the break of day. Rich in smell and possibilities and full or flavor and energy.

Elise drank three more gulps before she set off to scare Harry. She poured carefully and was proud enough to do a tiny happy dance when she didn't spill any.

"Yay! Why are we twirling?"

That time she did jump a foot into the air, and she was glad she wasn't holding the mug to warm her hands like she usually did. It would have shattered on his beautiful floor, and she was sure it cost a million pounds. The floor, though the mug was designer, she knew. A mug couldn't cost a million pounds right?

"Jesus! You scared me!" Elise had a hand to heart, coffee dribbles on it.

"Sorry!" He didn't look contrite in the least. The purse of his lips trying to flatten them into a rubber band. How did he not know better? They didn't flatten, not effectively, ever. His lips weren't juicy persay, but they did seem a little overfilled, like an exuberant cupcake. This morning she noticed they were framed by extravagant scruff, it had been sprouting for a day or so, and honestly she thought it made his face look a little dirty, but today it was filled in, darker, and the frame around the fruited hues of his lips was distracting. As was the beautiful hazard of his curls on his head. All of it was better than the horror of his eyes.

When she was younger, and she'd jumped from Liam as her girlhood crush to him, it had been the green of his eyes. Later, when Taylor sang about them, Elise could totally understand.

She was a little breathless, from the scare, and there was still coffee to clean up. She shifted her eyes and grabbed paper towels.

"Well," he cleared his throat before he spoke. "I feel I owe you breakfast because I gave you a fright. You had a full English yet?"

She hadn't. "Isn't that a lot of trouble though?"

"Well, it takes a bit, I'm thinking we have the time though. And I wouldn't call it trouble, and we both have to eat, yeah?" He said this from the fridge where he was already pulling out the necessary articles. "And it's late enough that we should call it lunch too. You slept in today."

"I did." She nodded.

"Just exhausted, or?" He was slicing tomatoes. She was watching him. He had really long fingers. They curved around the tomato in a way that made her sad. Or curious.

"What?" He was really distracting today. She'd have sworn she was over this crush ages ago. She supposed the real person was different to the images she looked at and created in her mind.

"Why so tired today? Up late?"

Oh, he wanted to know about the book. "Yeah, um, I was finishing Norwegian Wood."

"Did you like it?" He was smiling like he knew the answer.

"Um, I liked the prose." She dissembled, left out the protagonist part to avoid offense.

He frowned over the bacon he was laying in the skillet. Round bacon still threw her off.

"The prose? But not the book?" He guessed.

"It was alright. I didn't really like Toru. He frustrated me."

Harry went to run his hands into his hair, and maybe it was the cooking, which she was thankful for or the new worldwide obsession with hygiene, but he stopped himself. "Oh, I quite like Toru. I think he is like, like most guys. And because you are in his head you kinda get why."

She wanted to tell Harry he was nothing like Toru, way more interesting, and for someone who apparently thought they were indecisive, he was really in charge of his life. That it wasn't a fluke, or luck, not entirely. That it was him. She wanted to tell Harry he was special.

"Did you like my recommendation?" She asked.

He made a funny face. Oh? He didn't. That miffed her a little and she suddenly understood his upset.

"Can I say the opposite? I like the story, and the characters, but not the prose." Oh she'd loved the prose style. The lyrical quality. Way more lush than his pick.

"We must just like different styles." She tried to shrug it off and was totally unclear why she couldn't. "I like my books to almost sound like they are lines lifted from a song."

"Oh, I kinda like minimalism, in songs too." Why did they both seem sad about it.

Breakfast was delicious, and it distracted them for a while.

When Harry was finishing up his last piece of vegan bacon ( he'd broken that to her after she'd praised it), chewing thoughtfully as a beaming smile lit up his face.

"I know- you find a song or album you feel like is exactly what you love, and I will too, and we can share. We may not ever like each other's books, but music, well I like all music." He was grinning and she thought the term firefly wasn't as apt as lightening bug.

"That's a great idea. Let's brainstorm and meet up in an hour." Her literal first thought was 1989, but she would not go there.

Nope.

Two hours later, she had a list of three albums, and trotted down the stairs to find him.

"Alright Styles, show me what you got!"

He looked up from the notebook he was scrawling in and he tried to smile.

"Hey, this is supposed to be fun Harry! It doesn't look like you are having fun."

He went to put the end of the pen in his mouth and moved it down to his chin. "This is harder than I thought. Only three? And I'm trying not to be too predictable."

"Just be honest," she shrugged, and plopped on the carpet next to him with her legs pretzeled, her air pods and her phone.

"I'll do one first. Are we doing the whole albums, or like songs that are great examples?" She asked as she opened her Spotify.

"Whole albums! What else do we have to do?" He quirked the more masculine side of his face and she realized she'd chosen to sit really close to him. It wasn't really necessary with the air pods, but he didn't seem to mind, he was leaning towards her.

"Alright, well let's go. I'll show you mine, then you show me yours, then again. Til we're done."

"Or naked!" He chuckled and she blushed, tried to hide it. He sobered and got back on task. "Can I have some honorable mentions?" He asked.

"Yeah, but those you gotta pick a song!" Elise nodded at her brilliant allowance.

"Deal!" He put out his hand and they shook. Then she placed an air pod in his hand.

"Let's go!" She pulled up the first album she had in mind. "This one is Oh Wonder's self titled."

"Oh, I know them a little."

By the end of it, Harry had scrawled his favorite songs, and downloaded a few.

"Good?" She asked.

"Yeah, they sound great together, and lots of metaphors."

"That's what I like!," she said.

"You'd like Arctic Monkeys, specifically AM." He told her, so she made a note of it. He'd already mentioned he liked them when he was younger. She knew of them, but they must have been much bigger in Britain or something, she'd download something.

And then he played her Astral Weeks, and they wound up laying back on the floor with the cord of his ear buds laying slackly between them. And she got what he meant about minimalism. She usually liked it wordy, got her emotion from lyrics, but she still felt a lot, even without the words.

"Alright, I feel like you are bringing the oldies, Styles. All of mine are this decade."

"Yeah, I thought about that, but I only have one from this decade."

She laughed, "I'll allow it. This one I'll bet you know." She put on Hozier and if she thought sitting so close had been overwhelming, him singing in his lower register, essentially in her ear was wholly distracting. He knew most of the songs.

"I feel like it's not my favorite, but it's clearly amazing!" He said when it was over.

"Well, what's your favorite?" She sat up with him and they were facing each other, their knees were touching and her yoga pants were hot all the way up her thigh.

"This one." He spent a moment looking for his ear phones snake like cord and turned back to her. She was glad when he arranged them side by side before Harry Nilsson started to play.

"Like it?"

"Yeah-!" She butted into him with her shoulder. "He uses some figurative language." She raised an eyebrow.

"I suppose he does."

"But he does that sound thing you like." She mused.

"How do you know I like repeated sounds?" Oh, he looked amused.

"I like your first album." She confessed.

He bit his lip and dimpled and Elise had to turn away. This was normal. He was the only person she'd seen in days, and well he looked like, was, him. She was gonna forgive herself the butterflies. "Um," she picked her phone back up. "Do you want to get a snack? Or keep going. I need some water at least."

He was spooling up his cord and standing. "I got an idea." And he was gone before she could follow him. Elise sat for a moment. Should she follow him? He didn't really invite Her. Did you have to be invited to follow your de facto housemate? She supposed she'd just wait.

But that was an awful decision, because she just sat there and thought about how this quarantine day felt like the best date of her life. Dammit. She was gonna wake up tomorrow sad she wasn't in his bed. She could just tell. She was also probably going to have to touch herself to sleep. She knew exactly what she'd think about. It would be when she turned to her side and watched his mouth form around the deathless death lyric in Take Me To Church.

Elise was actually fanning herself by the time Harry came back in.

"Is it hot in here?" He asked.

"Oh, no, I was just dancing a little." God she was lame.

"Oh! Hold that thought for my last album. And I've brought provisions!" His eyebrows were so high and perfect. She liked his proud face.

He'd brought alcohol. That was exactly what her libido needed. Shit.

"Pick your poison. I have an excellent red, or we can just skip to the party with tequila shots."

"Yeah, no tequila, sun's still out."

"Oh, is this a rule of yours? No tequila until sundown." Why did he look like he found that hilarious?

"Not if you want me to keep my clothes on!" She resisted the urge to slap a hand over her mouth.

"Right!" he crowed. "Tequila it is!"

"No, no, I'll take wine." She pulled his hand down from opening the bottle of amber liquid and started on the darker bottle.

"You are a party pooper!" He laughed.

"Can we plan the tequila party for another day?"

"Oh, we should do that. I have a pool! We can make margaritas and lounge."

"Harry, it's March! In London," she added. Because it was definitely pool weather in Arizona.

"Well, I have a hot tub."

She swallowed and focused on getting the bottle opened. "Are you having what I'm having?"

"Yeah, I guess. But in a couple days, we are opening the other bottle, deal?" He handed her the waters he'd brought in too. She needed to drink that first, and between, and after. To slow her intake down.

"What's with you and hand shakes?" She laughed and handed him his glass instead of taking his dangerous palm.

"I dunno, gotta seal the deal!" He shrugged. "So what's next?"

"Right!" She scrounged to find both earbuds and they cheesed to the beginning notes of 'Red.'

"I already said you love her. Typical! And well, I can't blame you." He mused towards the end.

"Why?" She felt like that would be a slight, but he didn't say it like one. Typical stung just a little. Basic Arizona bitch sounded in her head.

"Just you like lyrics, and she is so clever and relatable, and I'm not an American, or a girl, but I imagine it's more specific to you." He titled his head.

That made her feel better. Was kinder than she'd been to herself. "Yeah, yeah, I've liked her since I was way younger. I saw her at a county fair really early on and fell in love."

"And you like this one better than her newer ones?" He asked. "I haven't gotten around to listening to Lover yet." He had a look that meant he may never. She wondered about that but decided to pull him from his dip in mood.

"Well, actually, 1989 is my favorite, but I thought it would be too weird to listen to that with you."

"Ha!" He burst out laughing at that, and they giggled helplessly, aided by the bottle of wine they'd finished. "Well, I'll thank you for that thoughtfulness. We need another bottle." He started towards the door. "But it's my favorite too!," he threw back over his shoulder as he got just around the door.

"I'll bet." She said to herself.

His last album was a surprise.

"I'm surpirsed it's not Stormzy Everybody here talks about him all the time." She mentioned when they started.

"Nah, though I love him, and his music, he's very clever. But Kendrick is more honest." They danced to the upbeat songs and Harry shocked her when he pulled her close and danced up on her a little. She tried to chalk it up to the wine, but the feeling of his thighs cradling her ass was gonna follow her into her bedroom, into sleep, and maybe forever.

By the end of the second bottle, they'd gotten the munchies and were raiding the fridge.

"Should we do take out?" He asked.

"Nah, let's cook something." And they spent an hour making squash stuffed with quinoa scented with maple syrup. He was a good cook too. Fucker.

"Can we do my honorable mentions now?" He asked after they had popped the third bottle of wine and were sleepy and full and a little wine drunk.

He was on the couch and she was sure her jaw was gonna unhinge when he stayed stretched out and opened his arms like he wanted her to come lay with him.

"Do you want to?" She made some idiotic motion between them.

"Yeah, I sat my headphones down in the kitchen and can't be fucked to go get them. We can just play it out. Come cuddle me."

How could she say no to that. Should she disclose her ear buds were nearby? What didn't he have ear buds? She went to him and laid down. Because the opportunity was too compelling.

They listened to Dark Side of the Moon, well he did and she mostly listened to his heart.

When he put on Otis Redding, well, she already thought she was in trouble. She was hoping he hadn't given her coronavirus, but if he kept acting like this, she was gonna have caught more than a bug, and she was sure it would last more than 14 days, or three weeks, or however long the world was on pause.

Feelings didn't have a pause.

She was trying to figure out if she was too tipsy to get herself off him gracefully, when she realized he was asleep. She looked up at his smooth face, all gorgeous angles and bright spots.

She was infected.

Elise was steady on her feet while escaping up to her room. She was less steady as she revisited her morning musings. Harry wasn't a Toru, he wasn't an Everyman, he wasn't like anybody she'd ever met.

He was lightning in the night.

Elise was surprised she hadn't gotten anxious yet? Normally she would be itching to go, do. She wasn't even missing the parks she had on her list of things to do. She felt content.

It must be that she felt excited most days to go downstairs, to see what she and Harry would get up to on any given day of their quarantine. She had loved dance time tonight, and she'd plug in headphones and share conspiratorial smiles over Harry Nilsson with Harry Styles any day.

There was a part of her that wanted to listen to this with him. Have him explain it to her. She'd liked it the time she had listened. Liked the singles enough to stream and download them.

Elise imagines laying next to him on the couch as the"dun-dunnnunas" started playing in her ears.

She didn't think much at any sensations for the next forty minutes, she let herself drift away on Harry's Fine Line. She had to listen again to answer her earlier question about whether Harry was melancholy or merry.

He was both, she decided.

Maybe he just needed to see that he was a fine line too. And the duality between sad boy and pop star was what made him everybody's favorite fixation.

Elise knew she was a fine line as well, she hoped she ended up alright.

#harry styles #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles fanfic #quarantine fic #day four #the one with the metaphors

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elanorjane · 5 years

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Drinking Do’s and Don’t [Chapter 2/3] [Love on Ice series]

Summary: This would have been written for June’s @a-monthly-rumbelling non-smut prompt “drinking, karaoke, dancing, kissing, date” if I had gotten it in on time. Part of the Love on Ice series, wherein disgraced ex-pairs figure skater Gold is hired to coach ice princess Belle and her partner Gaston to the Olympics. If Gold and Belle don’t kill each other first.

AO3 Link

Due to her training, Belle didn’t often get the opportunity to drink. Her birthday party had been the exception. She remembered vividly how gutsy the champagne had made her. She’d felt no shame in stalking her coach in the secluded nook of the hallway or how effortlessly the flirtatious words had left her mouth. Despite her uncharacteristic boldness, she’d woke up the next morning hangover and regret free. Her feelings behind her suggestive actions had only been the truth, after all. Her work with Archie made verbalizing her thoughts and feelings while sober easier now. Yet these particular feelings about Gold still needed some lubrication to process.

She reached across the table and wrestled a beer pitcher to her side of the table and filled a plastic tumbler to the brim. She didn’t know if you were supposed to sip beer or not but the mouthful she took that made her cheeks puff out was flat and strong and gross. She thought about going to the bar and ordering something fruity but the bitter taste matched her sour mood, so she drank.

The libations weren’t for her own feelings, she decided. She was clear about those. She’d even worked them through with Archie because Gaston was sick of hearing the ticker tape of “he loves me, he loves me not” constantly running through her head. Archie warned her against using the L-word, but this wasn’t a girlhood crush either. It was Gold’s feelings, or lack thereof, that drove her to drink. She wasn’t imagining the spark between them. Yet he snuffed it out at every opportunity. She didn’t think it was out of disinterest. More like fear. She got it, a skater and coach embarking on a relationship was dangerous, least of all because of the strain it could put on their working relationship. It was also a little taboo because of their age difference, but she wasn’t a minor by any means.

Usually abstinent, the beer quickly went to her head so she studied him openly down the row of tables, not caring if anyone, including him, caught her. He was sitting among the coaches and he didn’t look as miserable as she felt. He wasn’t the life of the party, but he chatted with the group and even laughed a few times. He never laughs for me . Belle took another deep gulp. She noticed he didn’t touch the light colored beer in front of him, just fingered the glass. He was from Scotland, he probably hated light beer.

Could it be he was uncertain of her feelings? Is that why he wasn’t making a move, or at least meeting her partway? She thought she’d done everything imaginable, include throw herself at him at her birthday party. Had he thought she was drunk and didn’t know what she was saying? What more could she do, show up to his hotel room wearing nothing but a bow? It was an idea and, yes, she wanted him that way but not only that way. She also wanted to be able to talk to him like a human being. Belle suddenly missed practice. If she was on the ice, she’d be too focused to obsess like this.

It wasn’t long before he made an excuse to go to the bar. Her suspicions were confirmed, she knew wasn’t a beer guy. He walked directly past her without once glancing her way, leaned across the bar and spoke low to the bartender, who nodded and turned away for a moment. He returned with a short glass filled with something brown. Instead of returning to the table, he settled onto a stool and gazed up at the television over the bar that was playing the week’s soccer highlights, not in a hurry to return to his raucous table.

It was the ignoring her that did it. If he’d shot her even one of those half smiles he’d given her when he first entered the bar she could have lasted the rest of the night on that memory alone. But no, he was back to pretending she didn’t exist outside a rink.

Well, the alcohol inside her decided, if he wasn’t going to come to her, she’d go to him. She was allowed to talk to her own coach in public, there was no rule against that. It wouldn’t look weird to anyone. In fact, it would be weird if she didn’t say anything to him.

She marched up to the bar, but hesitated behind him. She didn’t know what his reaction would be. Go away little girl? Would he say something cold and unfeeling like he normally did? Pretend they’d never skated together? Make an excuse to leave? The bottle the bartender had poured from looked expensive so he wouldn’t be in a hurry to leave his drink before he’d finished it. Now was her moment. She boosted herself onto the stool next to him.

He acted surprised to see her there, like he’d forgotten she was even in the bar. She could go back to the hotel right now and spend the night feeling sorry for herself for that reaction alone, but she charged ahead anyway. Her thoughts were taking an extra few seconds to reach her mouth and he struggled to fill the silence.

“Nice job on the ice today,” he told her.

Belle was unimpressed. She knew she was a good skater. Everyone told her. Been telling her that her entire life. The gold medal sitting on top of her suitcase proved that. She didn’t want to talk about stupid skating.

“I know,” she replied brusquely.

He blinked at her blunt response.

Is this what a date with him would feel like? Is this as close as she’d ever get, this stilted conversation? Was she wrong and their connection was limited only to the ice?

“I didn’t know if you were coming out or not,” she tried again. “I stopped by your room but nobody answered.”

“I was at the gym.”

So that explained the strength she’d felt in his arms when he’d tossed her on the ice. That also partly explained how he spent his time when he wasn’t standing at the edge of the rink glaring at her.

He swiveled in his stool and looked over his shoulder at the tables of skaters and coaches. People had dispersed around the room and weren’t paying a bit of attention to them. Ella was sloppy drunk across across the table, laughing uproariously at something Ariel and Eric’s couch had said. Gaston was over in the corner playing darts with a group of other skaters.

Was he worried about someone getting the wrong, or better yet right, idea about them? Why should they suspect anything? Who, besides Gaston, would think she was sitting next to him because she wanted to date her coach?

“You don’t you play with your friends?” he asked, but not unkindly. He wasn’t trying to get rid of her so much as giving her an out, which was laughable. He’d watched her professionally for months. He should know by now just how tenacious she could be when she set her mind to something.

“I’m where I want to be,” she assured him. When they’d first met he’d accused her of being a stuck up, prissy ice princess. She used that tone to her advantage now. She wanted what she wanted and she wanted it now. They were alone. Outside a rink. Finally . Just because this wasn’t a traditional date, didn’t mean it couldn’t turn into one. They weren’t a traditional couple anyway.

She caught a hint of a smile, as if he was amused with her answer, but he hid it behind his glass as he took another drink. She want to get another one out of him. One he couldn’t hide. She used the edge of bar to spin herself towards him and squared her shoulders. “We’re getting a room later,” she announced.

The amber liquid stuck in his throat. It bubbled up out of his mouth and back into the glass. He coughed so hard a stranger leaned across an empty stool and clapped him on the back until Gold held up a hand to signal he was fine.

“A what?” he sputtered. His panicked eyes sped around the room, clocking every skater and coach within hearing distance.

“A karaoke room,” she clarified. “They have them upstairs to rent. We’re all going in on one.”

The alarm drained from him, but he didn’t look any more thrilled. In his competition days, he’d been the consummate performer. But the idea of Gold singing “Billie Jean” in front of crowd of skaters made her giggle.

“Planning on singing a duet with LeGume?” his voice was hoarse from coughing and it came out like a growl. There was that familiar sneer, the bitterness that tinged the end of all his sentences. Before, she wasn’t able to see past his tone. She’d been too annoyed at him for barking at her in practice. Maybe it was her work with Archie that made her see through him now. If he thought she’d be scared off, he was mistaken. She was done playing around with him. If she didn’t get a straight answer from him about his feelings one way or another she’d burst.

“I don’t want Gaston,” she told him. “You know I don’t,” she added quietly, some of the wind gone from her sails.

That dumbed in into silence. Better that than the wrong impression. Belle played with the hem of her skirt. Maybe it was time to slink off the bar stool and back to the hotel. Gold beckoned the bartender over for a fresh drink. Belle was steadying herself for as graceful an exit as possible when Gold pointed his thumb at her. “Pink Passion.”

The bartender nodded and started taking a number of bottles off the wall. It took her a second to realize what he’d done. He’d ordered for her. Her heart soared. The confidence with which he requested her drink was terribly attractive. It was like a date, not that she’d been on many. She kind of missed the whole holding hands in a movie theater and going for milkshakes kind of dating. She’d trained and competed her way right through it, with nothing but trophies to mark her pre-teen and teen years. Now she was thrown in the deep end with grown-up dating. She wanted it. Desperately. But it was like learning how to ride a bike without training wheels first. She was constantly plagued with nervousness and uncertainty.

The glass the bartender placed in front of her was Barbie pink with a lemon twist garnish. “It’s almost too pretty to drink!” She grinned down at it for a moment before leaning over and sipping the rim. It tasted like peach and some sort of berry and lemon. It was refreshing and delicious and took that disgusting beer taste right out of her mouth. She closed her eyes and hummed in approval. Now she understood why people drank. This was good.

She studied his profile while he stared into his drink. His long hair obscured most of his face and his ever present scruffy beard concealed a great deal of the rest. She supposed he thought it made him inscrutable. “Want him or not, he’s your ticket to an Olympic gold medal,” he told her, bringing them back to her skating again .

“Funny, I thought that’s what you were for,” she retorted. If he insisted on talking about skating, it was going to be about his, not hers. She fingered the rim of her glass. “Is that all your partner was to you, a ticket?” That was low of her, she knew he had been married to Milah, but she bristled at Gaston, her closest friend, being referred to as nothing more than a tool.

He chuckled ruefully. “That is all I was to her,” he lifted his glass, “in the end.” He brought the drink to his lips.

His vulnerability, even if it was hidden behind bitterness, cooled her annoyance. “What happened?” she probed gently.

“You saw it.” It was a statement, not a question. He suspected she’d watched his disastrous last Olympic performance. Last performance period if YouTube was anything to go by.

“I don’t believe it.” It was true. The skater she’d been with on the ice was not the same one she’d seen in the grainy footage. Belle knew firsthand how a skate could go from bad to worse, but what she’d seen had been something else entirely.

He smiled, but despondently. It was possible he was the saddest man she’d ever met. “Oh, believe it, dearie.” The sympathy she was feeling must have shone in her eyes. His elbow dug into the bar when he pointed at her. “Don’t,” he ground out.

Belle quickly schooled her features. She got it, he didn’t want anyone pitying him. Belle had experienced no worse feeling than stepping off the ice after a bad skate and seeing all those compassionate, pained faces. He stared at her for a long time to make sure she’d wiped any and all compassion off her face. Belle struggled. She was a naturally expressive person so she could only manage so much.

He decided something then, like a man standing on the edge of the Golden Gate Bridge who’d committed to jumping. “She told me as we were about to step onto the ice that she was leaving me.” He muffled any further words with his glass.

Belle tried to imagine herself getting terrible, life altering news right before a competition. Then he had to immediately skate with his soon to be ex-wife no less! What a bitch. He was better off without her as far as she was concerned. “You never thought of getting a new partner?”

He shook his head. “When I commit to something, I commit to it. I retired that day. I only put skates back on recently.”

It took her a minute to process the implication of his words. Twelve years. He hadn’t laced up a pair of skates in twelve years. All this time he’d stood on the sidelines while she and Gaston flew around the ice free as birds. Huh. “No wonder you’ve had a stick up your ass.”

He almost choked on his drink again.

“How could you not skate?” Belle demanded, completely riled up about the entire travesty. Belle sometimes dreamed of not competing, definitely taking a few weeks off, but never quitting skating cold turkey. “How could you let her take that away from you? Didn’t you miss it?”

He shook his head, “Honestly, no. I had a son to raise on my own.” She had heard of this son in New York. These simple words did nothing, she was sure, to illustrate the struggles of single parenthood.

“But you could have found another skating partner,” she argued. She knew their age gap made it impossible they could have ever have been partners, but Belle liked the daydream of having the ability to be his partner on and off the ice. “We’re good together,” she offered shyly as an example. “We don’t even need choreography.” She was aware it sounded like she was suggesting they also wouldn’t need choreography for something else as well. That they’d be good in bed together. But, thanks to the Pink Passion, Belle realized she meant the statement both ways. By the narrowing of his dark eyes and the tick of his jaw, she thought he might have caught her double entendre. Belle leaned forward on her stool. She heard the squeak of his bar chair as he shifted his weight but she didn’t dare break their eye contact.

“Belle, c’mon!”

Belle blinked hard, jumping in her seat. A group of skaters and coaches stood at the foot of the stairs under the blinking karaoke sign. They waved her over excitedly.

Belle’s heart fell. She knew, without even looking at him, that the spell had been broken. Wherever their conversation had been going, the others had effectively thrown a bucket of ice water on it. She slid off her stool and moved to follow the group disappearing up the steps. A couple steps away she looked over her shoulder at Gold, slowly sipping his drink. He was alone, like always. Even in a group he stood apart somehow. She didn’t care what kind of spin he put on it or walls he put up. He was lonely. She bit her lip, catching his gaze and letting her eyes slide from his, down to his scuffed brown boots and back up again. “Aren’t you coming?”

#fic: Love on Ice #Love on Ice series #Rumbelle #Rumbelle fic #Rumbelle fanfic

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