"It's going to be fine, I'll be right there with you," Jisung comforted as he finished tossing the skate laces into a firm knot. He glanced up to the older sitting patiently on the silver bench, Minho's hands gripped tightly on the seat edge, his other knee not preoccupied with being held steady for lacing bouncing rapidly as he waited for the skate to be firmly tied off and secured around his ankle.

Minho leaned down as Jisung shifted back, his hands coming to pull at the tongues of the familiar pitch black skates worn with competitions on practices on hours poured into balancing on the thin blades his feet rolled atop of. As he shoved the tongue of the skates to the side, tucking his laces into the pocket of free air the two unequivocal parts equaled out to be, his fingers fumbled to ensure the boot was properly done up. The laces, ties and ticked, the tongue, sat and proper, the cushioned supports, firm and steady, despite the time last meeting those old friends being eons ago. Even after knowing all was right with his skates, Minho winced to the younger, "I'm going to fall and hurt myself again."

"What are you? An old man?" The younger stood up with a laugh.

Minho glanced up to him. His lips pressed together firmly.

Jisung crouched down again. He set a hand on the older's knee, eyes raking over the neutral mask concealing the older's face as his teeth nibbled into his lip. His own lip. Not Minho's. Jisung's teeth were nibbling into Jisung's lips. Of course he isn't biting into Minho's lip. Don't think weirdly, it's just your lips. He quickly shook the derailed thoughts from his head, his fingertips curling around the protruding bone of the older's knee as he inquired gently, "Are you really that nervous?"

"This is the first time I've touched ice with my skates in nearly a year," Minho laughed. That airy laugh he always presented. Somewhere crossed between a chuckle of amusement and a bittersweet scoff tangling in his throat, his breath huffing into the crystalline chill of the frozen ice rink waiting for him. Waiting for the gladiator. The old champion, fallen so far, slipped through the surface of the arena, past the sand and catching nets, sitting outside in the spectators seat. Sitting, his shoulders round and his face placid. His features pressed thin, until any hints of his true thoughts were iraticated. Inexpressible. The old gladiator hid the swells in his chest, though Jisung could catch the flickers of those yearning gleams chasing the torch flames reflecting on the ice to his eyes.

That arena used to be his.

That area used to belong to Minho.

Although he hadn't wished to retake his crown and ascend the throne to his previous glory, he said he didn't want to himself, there was still something there. Something which had been locked away. Hidden behind a lie he told himself and the unwanted questions. A fond stare which he used to polish the end of his blades with, sharpen the pointed end of his sword before the next battle, clean the silver slivers of the icing collected on the refined edges guiding his steps. Why had he concealed it as avidly as he did? Why did the gladiator, held on the highest pedestal, attempt to conceal his love? Despite knowing the answer, Jisung couldn't bring himself to accept the defeat. Not of Lee Minho. Not the defeat of the unstoppable champion he admired.

With a light groan reflecting the ache melting his thighs as he stood for the umpteen time, Jisung extended his hands. Palms up. Welcoming the older. His chest was growing with a warmth, a warmth that spread to the cold squish of his cheeks, until he felt his lips upturn at the older. He told, "And I'll be right there with you. Just like you were for me."

Minho glanced back to the ice rink.

Then down to the hands in front of him.

With a hesitance about him, he sighed and enveloped the hands presented to him.

Jisung choked back the grin that threatened to appear at the older's acquiescence. Instead replacing his own joy at the chance to skate with his idol, his friend, was Minho his friend? Not the point. He replaced that joy with a responsive squeeze of the warm hands wrapped tightly around his as he stepped back and hauled Minho to stand on the blades.

Wobbling at first as they stepped to the ice rink, the older's grip tightened as his face contorted into a distorted mess of fear about to be pummeled into the ground. Then, he stilled. Gradually, the shivers and shakes in his ankles, quirks and quivers in his arms, trembles and tremors in his expression, sifted out as he regained the unsteady balance on the thin blades. Once familiar, now a foreign tightrope he was attempting to walk on his own two feet. Unlike before, this time he wasn't alone. He wasn't needing to walk a fine line, his body suspended over the chomping bits of crocodile-like scores and the infinite fog extending as a city below his fluttering jumps, he wasn't alone. He was gripping tightly onto Jisung. Onto his hands, his wrists, the fabric of the sweater bundled on the folds of his forearms and his biceps, he found the rhythm of his steps again.

Or he had found the ease of the rhythm, the memories of how he was supposed to move, how he was supposed to be, until his blades had met the foe of the ice.

His foot slipped.

He grabbed onto Jisung, the younger immediately holding onto Minho's to catch him.

Minho steadied.

Then blinked at him.

Suddenly, Jisung was incredibly conscious of the hand on his lower back. Placed between his hips and his ribs, the clasp digging into his spine in a powerful yet delicate way. Pressed enough to stop his fall. Gentle enough to not leave any marks. It pulled him into the older, the hand pressing his chest flush into Minho's. And his own hands. Jisung's own damn hands which had a mind of their own. His own stupid grip knotted into the jacket covering the older's bicep and the lapels of his shirt collar hovering. They tangled, fisting into the fabric and almost tugged the older... Closer? Was he pulling Minho closer? Even after his fall had been stopped, was he still dragging himself into Minho? Is that what was happening?

Minho let go of Jisung, shifting back as he turned his gaze to another interesting spot in the ice rink. He scratched at a strip of skin behind his ear before clearing his throat of the apology, "Sorry about that."

Jisung allowed his eyes to narrow.

Was Minho... Embarrassed???

His eyebrow quirked, But is he embarrassed because he almost fell, or is he embarrassed because he was grabbing me like he was about to buy me dinner.

Somehow, Jisung couldn't find the will in himself to care if it was the former or the latter. The sight of the usuallh unresponsive and unbothered Minho being flustered was more than a welcome sight.

"No, it's okay," Jisung eventually answered with another smile threatening to appear. And, aiming to make life as impossible for Minho as he could manage, Jisung fished his hands down to Minho's. Intertwining their fingers tightly, their palms melting together as if they were the flakes of snow they stood on, he dragged the older's hands up and set them on his shoulders. He looped his grip around the older's wrists as the fingers held him. He held him. Minho held Jisung with that warmth. That reassuring honey twinged memories of home. Before he could swoon too much over the older and everything the older was from the tips of his toes to the final strands fraying from his head, Jisung grinned at him as the tips of his fingers slid along the older's wrists, "We can skate like this. And if we fall, I'll go down too."

"I don't want to hurt you if I slip again," Minho muttered as he looked down to the ice beneath his blades.

Jisung shrugged, "Don't go fast. Baby steps."

The older nodded a wordless response as his lips thinned out.

He kept his gaze down as they skated at a meandering pace. Their cautious glides wandering through the unknown frosted lands of forgotten wanders falling around them, white snow easily mistaken for the umbral glow of ash tumbling through their shuttering breaths and unsure steps. It was another world, a world paralleled to theirs, familiar, yet unrecognizable. A place they had been before; Reflections of glowing creatures stumbling aimlessly with their furry paws, lines of padded yesterday's chasing the path they had taken. They had been here before. At different times, in different worlds, separated by a classless wanderlust. They had traveled the charted arena, through the heavy branches of pine and snowflakes bundled in their hair, they had both traveled that cold alone.

This time, their journey wasn't alone. Perhaps that's why it had seemed too unfamiliar. They weren't alone, they weren't tilting their chins to those who judged them, they weren't smiling as the show never stopped. They were in a familiar world, together, as their bodies swayed. Swayed slowly, stayed slowly, as if they were dancing together to a soundless music of the winter wonders filling their heads. Relishing in the campfire heat radiating onto their skin, their tracks shuttered and swirled without reason. Without pattern. They didn't need a reason, or a pattern. They didn't care about finding one. Not in the glorified world of frost they chased. Not in the morning sun outside. Not in the future, the exploitative wonders waiting to nip their ankles. None of that mattered. Not then. Not now.

With time, Minho began to even the strokes of his blades. No more stutters or slips, although he remained to move with an extreme caution.

"There you go. You're getting it again," Jisung smiled, a timid giggle bubbling from his lips as he watched the older's nose scrunch and his eyebrows furrow with a concentration the younger had only witnesses from Minho when he played his mobile rhythm game. He grabbed the older's hands, ensuring to rub creative circles into the tense muscles of the palms as he lifted them from his shoulders and looped his fingers around the flinching uncertainty of Minho, "Is it as bad as you thought it would be?"

Without bothering to glance up from the laces of his old skates, Minho grumbled, "No, I guess it's not that bad."

Jisung squeezed the older's fingers.

They kept their pace. Steady, never pressing, never pushing too fast. The older's eyes remained casted to his laces. Jisung remained gawking at the top of his head, watching the waterfall of hair tumbling in front of his eyes swing from side to side as they skated around the ice rink.

Gradually, Minho's hands began to slip away from Jisung. He began to find his own rhythm. The specific balance his own blades called for when he skated before, when he skated now, and as he skates in the future, if he ever knotted the loved laces again. With time, with each thought-out lap around the outskirts of the ice rink gaining more and more speed, Minho exhumed the confidence he had buried so deeply; Dragging the corpse of the passion he had bonded and tossed aside along the snowy banks from the depths of the frigid water he scratched atop, relearning and retracing the abandoned tracks he had left in the arena's sand as memoirs of his battles fought. His battles won, carved eternally in stone. His battles lost, the few and far between. His hesitance uncovered it all.

Although Jisung tried to keep himself near Minho, in case he slipped again, in case he fell, in case he had reinjured himself, in case an alien abducted him, soon he was met with the sight of the older's back speeding ahead of him. With every shove of the ice underneath his weight, Minho regained the speed he had lost. He rediscovered the top of the ice, the grooves and divots, the tracing lines and shimmering flecks shredding on his blades, the harmonic lullaby of their sounds reaching their ears, filling the silence of the rink. He rediscovered it all. The wingspan of his arms, the swirling pace of his steps as he skated backwards, the spiraling of his wrists.

Jisung halted himself in the rink as he watched Minho pass him once again.

He watched the grin growing on his features.

A child-like wonder and this... Glittering? A shimmer in his eyes.

No, it was more than that.

Like Minho had been staring at the night sky, a wonder and adulation overtaking a hopeless dark as glimmering stars danced constellations on his fingertips. Like Minho had seen the child-like glory of holiday lights hung from roof awnings and trees, their brilliance dazzling in the cheerful laughter twinkling between those they loved. Like Minho had been lost, swept among the neon shine of a mystical city wrapped in the silent comfort of strangers that warped around him and he had become them; Another stranger, entranced in the halos. Like Minho stood at the forefront of a shimmering lake as the sun refracted on the peaks of water. Like Minho was the freshly fallen snow, glistening.

But even then, nothing could describe that expression.

It was as if Minho had been freed.

Liberated.

As he watched the older, Jisung couldn't help the swell of warmth enveloping his chest. He couldn't help how his breath caught in his lungs.

Grinning as he was, his movements unrestricted, his worries emancipated, Minho was beautiful.

He set a hand over the thumping of his racing heart threatening to burst from his chest.

To Jisung, Minho was beautiful.

He was snapped violently from his gawking when that same hand was snatched up, and he was being pulled as Minho skated backwards across the ice. His hands gripping the younger's, as the latter had done for him before. His blades grinding against the ice as he spiraled them towards the middle, his speed slowing as he asked, "Why did you stop? You were the one who was so adamant about me getting back on the ice."

"I'm just," Jisung paused for a moment before concluding, "Thinking?"

Minho prompted him again, "About?"

"Things."

"You're blushing."

Jisung quickly covered his face, "I am not."

"You are, your ears are red," Minho countered cleverly. He rounded off another spiral around the center of the rink, the final circle rounding off the ends of his speed, killing off the space distancing them as he spun Jisung once more around him before bringing in the younger skater close, halting them both. Even after that had stopped, he seemed to inch closer. Scooting a few centimeters toward Jisung as he reached for the younger's waistline and brought him close, arms chasing around the lithe frame as he held the younger. He kept his hands a steady presence, one that rocked them back and forth, one that pressed them closer together. He muttered, "Come on, what are you thinking about? Me?"

If Jisung thought his heart hadn't exploded already, it certainly did then. The strong arms wrapping around him like a warm blanket warding off the cold of the rink, the gentle scent of vetiver infecting his nostrils, the faint sound of the older's own heart pounding against his, just, it was perfect. This was perfect. This was perfection.

Jisung buried his face into the crook of the older's neck, forgoing any sense of shame doting his cheeks as he gripped at the thick fabric of the riding jacket, "I want you to be there when I win my first gold at an international championship."

"What about after?" Minho articulated, his tone dropping low into a whisper as the weight of his head bumped into Jisung. The vibrations from his voice rung loud in the younger's ears. It droned profoundly through the older's chest, through his throat, to Jisung's mind, the constant note reassuring him as the older seemed to worry, "Will you want me around you, even after you win your first gold medal?"

"I want you there, at every competition," Jisung poured, "I want you to watch me from the side, and I want you to know that I'm thinking of you."

His grip on the older tightened.

"So, uhhhh... Um, I guess I'm asking if, you know, you could... Stick around? Me? A bit longer?"

The arms enclosing him escaped as Minho gently pried away from him, replacing the grip to rest on the crook of the younger's neck as the other hand gently brushed the strands of brown hair back. His eyes flickered through Jisung's features, a quiet fondness observing the finite details collaborating to make him everything he was under that unrelenting gaze. That burning intensity, as if his stare could seer the younger alive, as if him, his heart, his mind, was being pulled by an unbreakable gravity towards Jisung as he brought a hand to gently rub at the younger's cheekbone. That same comforting touch. Yet, like his eyes, there was this odd intensity in the patterns he drew along the unblemished skin. A heat collapsing Jisung into his touch. Into his eyes. Causing his knees to feel worthless, the only hope to hold himself up being the grip he kept on the older's shirt.

Minho leaned in.

The grip Jisung kept on him tightened.

He hovered there, impossibly near.

But he didn't come any closer.

Despite the tenseness in the older and the shimmer in his eyes telling Jisung that all he wanted to do was to bring him in, hold him in his hands, kiss him gently, he didn't. Minho simply continued to hold him, continued to chase his gaze across the landscape of the younger's face, learning him by the pads of his thumbprint and the gentle ghosting of his steady breath fanning over Jisung's cheeks.

Finally, Jisung quirked an eyebrow as he mumbled, "Are you going to kiss me, or...?"

"Well," Minho sighed as he shifted back, "I didn't want to without asking and I wasn't sure if I should ask because I didn't know how you'd take it."

"You can."

"I can?"

"You can kiss me. I want you to kiss me."

Minho nodded. He leaned in again, his comforting hands cupping delicately at his face as he brought the younger close and-

Jisung started giggling.

Minho pulled back as a smile overcame his features, "Stop that. Stop laughing, I don't want to kiss your teeth."

"I'm sorry, give me a second," Jisung spoke between his giggles. He bit the inside of his cheek to halt his flurry of bubbling laughter, his chest inflating, deflating, inflating, deflating, choking around uncomfortable hiccups forcing his chuckles to continue spouting from him like the never-ending stream of a plaza fountain. He inhaled heavily, holding the breath for a few beats before sighing it out, repeating that same monotonous rhythm once, twice, three times, again, again, until his breath returned to normal. Until he had regained control over the giggles freely living him. He fidgeted with his lips for a few beats, pressing them together, grinning, before he sighed one last time and decided, "Okay. I'm okay now. We're good to go."

"Ready?"

"Mhm."

Minho leaned in.

He started giggling again.

"Jisung, I swear-"

"I'm nervous, okay! I've never kissed someone before."

"Close your eyes then," Minho grinned at him, "It'll be a surprise."

The younger nodded, teeth digging hard into his lip as he silenced his giggling for the second time. He let his eyelids slot close, his world devolving into a pitch black darkness. The only reassurance he was given being the guiding hands of Minho holding him. Seeming to realize something, Jisung frowned and hummed, "Don't run off."

"I'm not going to run off," Minho laughed.

Then,

Nothing.

As Jisung squeezed his eyes tightly shut, he was met with a stark silence. An uncomfortable void of any life, lingering in the ice rink as he waited. And waited. And waited. Waited for the hands cupping his cheeks to do more than their thumbs rubbing patterns into his cheeks, waited for the chest pressed against his to do more than pound wildly, waited for the knees bumping against his to do more than sway to steady the balance of their owner standing on his skate blades. Yet, nothing. Nothing but the hands cupping his cheeks, reassuring that the older hadn't completely ditched him alone in the ice rink, nothing but the chest pressing against his, nothing but the knees knocking against his, nothing but the gentle puffs of breath smoothing across his features.

Minho was close. Extremely close, and yet he wasn't doing anything. Jisung could practically feel the lips covering over his, hesitating there. Not moving closer, not moving farther away, simply staying. Staying tantalizingly close, as if they were waiting for him to come to them despite knowing he wouldn't. Despite knowing the restraints the heat in his cheeks and the dust on his ears kept on his actions, locking him down to the compliancy of closing his eyes and waiting. And waiting. And waiting. Too nervous to initiate. Comfortable in a way to trust Minho. And still, nothing. The darkness had quickly become a familiar and sore sight on the back of Jisung's eyelids.

The older's clothes rustled as he shifted. His blades sliced against the ice. His breath rung constant.

He was right there.

And he wasn't doing anything!!!!!

Jisung's fingers dug into the older's riding jacket.

With a huff, he peeped open an eye and started, "M-"

A pair of lips cut him off.

They swallowed down the strangled peep of surprise his throat squeezed out, tenderly faint as they pressed against his. Simply, an embrace. Lingering there for a moment, barely long enough for Jisung to move his hands from the older's back to his chest, his grip tangling there to bring him closer. Further into the kiss as that warmth lit his nerves alive.

And like that, Minho pulled away.

Though he hesitated, his forehead against Jisung's as he breathed, "Was that fine? You okay?"

Wordlessly, Jisung blinked at him. At Minho in all his beautiful perfections and flaws, at Minho and what made him him. This time, it was him succumbing to the throbbing of his eager heart. It was him breaking underneath the melting warmth of the older, it was him curling his fingers into the fabric of the shirt, it was him dragging Minho back in, it was him wringing their careful steps back into a kiss, it was him pressing his body as close as he could manage on the ice as the older clutched at his waist to welcome him in, it was him tilting his head, it was him deepening the kiss though he had only seen how it was done on movies, though it was Minho who moved their lips in rhythm.

At some point, they eventually had to yield to the ache of their lungs.

Minho pressed his forehead again to the younger's, his voice slow with something like love as he pleaded, "I want to stay with you."

Still attempting to catch his breath, Jisung shoved his lips into a smile and nodded eagerly. He wrapped his arms around the older again, bringing him into another tightly bound hug he accepted without hesitation. His eyes slowly slotted close as he fell into the embrace of security.

The chill of the ice nipped at his nose and ears.

Yet all he could think of was the heart throbbing against his, and warmth of the arms holding him steady.

❆❅❆