[attr="class","thadmain"]Listen. He doesn’t do surprises. He likes plans. He likes numbers. Numbers are predictable.

But he also really, really, really likes Ash.

Everything was made all the more nervewracking by the fact that Ashley was very injured and slightly off balance, and his one good arm, which was usually useful or, at the very least, could grab Kepler for balance, was busy covering Kepler’s eyes despite his many protestations that he would keep them shut.

He was a lying liar liarface and even now was trying to sneak peeks through his eyelashes and the gaps of Ash’s fingers.

Then Ash dropped his hand and Kepler got to see what all the hubbub was about:

His first instinct is oh, no. Because he doesn’t know how to skate and the idea of flailing around on sharp objects terrifies him and Ash is already broken. But he looks at how excited his boyfriend is and his oh no turns into an oh, yes.

“O--okay,” he allows, and he makes himself smile because it is really nice, the thought of it and everything. He does appreciate all the work Ash put into this-- appreciates that someone cares about him. He's not unhappy with this scenario. Just nervous. As he is about most things. “Just… promise you’ll be careful? Don’t re-break yourself?”

He drops one hand to scratch absently at Maple’s ears.

“Do we rent skates? I imagine we would have to, right?”

[attr="class","thadpoke"]

[attr="class","thadmain"]“Oh, god, don’t tell me that,” he says, voice pitching up in a whine as Ash grabs his hand and leads him onward unto destruction. He follows in Ash’s wake, hurrying to keep up with his boyfriend’s excited energy. “Ashley, I think you know everyone on the face of the planet.” It really did seem that way, most of the time.

“I’m… uh, s-size… d-do you have a women’s 7 ½?” he asks the rental guy, voice barely above a whisper, face coloring red with more than just the winter chill.

He is presented with a pair of faded pink skates, stitched in tattered filigree of bows and hearts. Kepler eyes the blade part nervously as he picks them off the counter with a quiet thanks.

Cloud bursts from his Pokeball in a mess of blue sparks. The little seal makes a beeline for the ice rink where he slides smoothly onto its frozen surface, pushing from flipper to flipper to go in lazy circles around Maple.

[attr="class","thadpoke"]

[attr="class","thadmain"]Cloudstrike burbles a hello back, flourishing his frills with a flip of his fin as the two fast friends continue to spin merrily around each other.

“Th-thanks,” Kepler says, slightly mortified. He plops down on a bench, toe-heels his boots off, and cautiously slides one foot into the skates as though they were a monster that might bite him if he moves too quickly.

In the time it takes for him to put one on and grab the laces Ash is already up and wobbly. Kepler freezes in fear, totally prepared for his boyfriend to take a full-frontal fall and bash his brains out, or something equally as terrible.

“Uhh, okay, but what are you going to hold onto?” he asked, hands shaking as he fumbled through his laces. “Sh-shouldn’t you hold onto the wall?”

[attr="class","thadpoke"]

[attr="class","thadmain"]Kepler’s smile is the tiniest bit pained as his eyes go back and forth from Ash’s beaming face to the arm he still has encapsulated in plaster. Though he knows the injury had nothing to do with Ash’s balance-- his physical balance, at least-- the image itself was still an ironic one. He would have laughed if he wasn’t so petrified.

He reaches up to take Ash’s hand and braces himself with a deep inhale, exhale.

“Okay.”

That was part of relationships, wasn’t it? Trust?

“Okay.”

And, knees shaking, he stands, clutching Ash’s hand for dear life while also trying not to pull because he doesn’t want to be responsible for his boyfriend re-injuring himself.

He’s wobbly legged like a newborn Deerling, but he’s up. He opens his eyes (he hadn’t even realized he’d been squeezing them shut) and blinks.

“Oo-kay,” he exhales, looking up at Ash, “h-how do I walk in th-these bad boys?”

[attr="class","thadpoke"]

[attr="class","thadmain"]Ash makes a point of entwining their fingers, the slow curl and catch of glove against glove an unspoken promise. With patience and kindness, Ash talks him through the simple act of motorization on these ¼ of an inch thick death shoes (if Kepler sits and thinks about the physics too much he’ll get scared and back out).

“Oo-kay,” he says, wondering at what point Ash’s presence had made him mostly capable of only bisyllabic exhalations, “one foot in front of the other. Like in that… one movie. With the claymation santa and oh my god we’re going.”

He follows Ash, looking more and more like a barely postnatal ungulate with each timid step, his hips almost permanently jutted back, the hand not desperately clinging to Ash’s fingers thrown straight out for some semblance of balance.

“Oh my god, oh my god, ohmygod.”

Arms out like T-Pose? Check. One knee in front of the other? Like, directly in front? No, Kepler, that’s dumb. “If I g-get wobbly? I am wobbly! Oh, god, okay.” He squeezed his eyes tight shut and went to the edge of the ice and--

“--h-how do I get on the ice without-- falling, uh. Ohmygod.”

He put one foot down, and then the other, arm that was thrown out for balance coming forward in a panic to grab Ash’s forearm. The gentle shove had them sliding ever the tiniest bit, shifting away from the safety of solid ground.

He peeked one eye open.

“D-did I do it?”

[attr="class","thadpoke"]

[attr="class","thadmain"]Ash doesn’t laugh at him but Kepler catches the weight of it hidden behind his smile, and he supposes it is pretty fair. He’s not usually so vocal-- or, rather, no one is around to hear him be vocal (if a tree falls in the forest et-fucking-cetera)-- and he’s sure he looks fucking hilarious. But the nerves need an output.

Still, you did it, baby is fucking electrifying and in that moment Kepler thinks he can take on the world. Promethean metaphysics take a fucking seat, Kepler’s just cracked the code to the meaning of fucking life. Ash pulls him in for a hug and Kepler has no choice but to go (he wouldn’t have fought it, anyway) and crashes up against his chest with a laugh, though his legs are still stiff.

“I can’t believe I’ve done this,” he says, muffled into the fabric of Ash’s coat.

His boyfriend steals a kiss and then moves damnably far away (which in reality is just within arms length) and he’s holding Kepler like the latter is about to fly away, gentle in his fingers. Kepler makes a pained noise of assent and does as he’s told, T-pose activated, and he’s so distracted on not falling that he doesn’t get to look at Ash’s ass, which is a disappointment. He makes a mental note to pay extra attention to it later as he takes a big inhale-- the entire time he’s been slowly moving forward on momentum and glide alone).

He pins his navel to his ribs (that’s how you keep your core strong, right?) and flexes his ass cheeks and-- realizes he doesn’t know how to do that and move. “Okay, uh. Okay. Shit.”

He still didn’t move. He was afraid to lift his leg to do so. His balance was so precarious as it was.

“Okay. I can do this. I made it to METENO without a scratch. I can fucking. Ice skate.”

But his brain short circuits and instead of lifting a leg and marching as Ash as shown him his foot just goes forward and he does a little half-splits on the ice with a squawk and a rapid windmilling of arms. “Ohmygodohymgodohymgod.”

[attr="class","thadpoke"]

[attr="class","thadmain"]Things start to go pear shaped but Ash doesn't panic, just resets and moves in front of him, a new hand touches the beacon style-- giving him something to head towards. The gentle touch of snow behind him helps him get his shit in gear, and he realizes that he can sort of dig his skates into the ice to get some grippage and he, one step at a time, gets his knees back together.

"I'm-- okay," he says, doing a gentle reset, achieving T-pose status quo and getting his shit together. "I'm okay." It's more for him than Ash at this point, but hey.

People who don't fall right get hurt!

"Wise words from the man in the cast. Okay. Ass in. Arms out."

He takes the tiniest baby step. It's less of a step, really, and more of a shuffle, but it's forward motion, and he doesn't fall.

"Holy shit." He does it again. It's a side-bodied sashay, really, one foot propelling and one foot inching forward, but-- but it is.

[attr="class","thadpoke"]