This is the story which proves I am seriously crazy because, yes, it is an ice skater au. And it is cracky but hopefully it will also be fun ;) It is very loosely inspired by The Cutting Edge.
Just a word of explanation before we start: the story in present time takes place in 2013 for Olympic years purposes. The flashbacks are in italics and will be out of order and mostly cover 1997 and 1998. Again, it's out of order. The past will be reconstructed piece by piece ;) Trust me a little. We're going experimental with this. I tried to make it clear when everything takes place past-wise.
Also, I did a looot of researches but I am not an ice skate expert so you will have to excuse any inaccuracy. The vocabulary was also specific and I found that challenging so if you spot mistakes or anything that seems odd, don't hesitate to (kindly) tell me since I'm still not native ;) I think it should be okay but you never know =)
Rating is T but there will be hint of smut at several points, I just don't think it's worth a M. If you think it should be upped, just drop me a line. =)
I want to save a special word of thanks for 100years-to-live who was this story's cheerleader and who helped a lot to keep the crack alive – and to push me down the ice skating trash can. And, of course, a huge thank you for Holycheekbones who made the amazing cover image for this story and I loved it sooo much.
Last thing, some of the performances described in the story are inspired by real routines. In which cases, the vids will be included in the tumblr posts so check that out if you're interested ;)
And the very last thing I promise and then I'm done babbling, I really had fun writing this story and I hope you will have fun too. It features Everlark more heavily than I usually do but it came that way. Hayffie will still be the main pairing though.
Enjoy!
Fire And Ice
1.
"Oh, for fuck's sake!" Haymitch shouted, his voice booming loud enough in the stadium to cover the music. "Get your shit together, Katniss!"
Not daring to take her eyes away from Peeta for too long, Katniss threw him a dark look nonetheless, putting more strength in her kick but ultimately knowing she wasn't cutting it. She went for her double loop automatically, already dreading what would come next, and, sure enough, Peeta outstretched his hand, waiting for her to take it…
She could practically feel their trainer glowering at her from the stands.
She reached out, grabbed Peeta's hand, felt his muscles tensing as he got ready to pull her closer to lift her, and she tore her hand away, coming to a stop. Peeta winced and stopped too. So did the music.
She put her hands on her hips and waited for the shouts that never came.
"I'm trying." she said defensively.
"No, you're not." Haymitch scoffed. "If you think that's going to win you Nationals…"
"We won Regionals." Peeta pointed out.
Their mentor waved that off with a dismissive hand. "No competition. And now everyone's waiting for you because of her. And no amount of Girl On Fire routine will get you the part this time. You've got a little press attention, now you've got to step up to the plate or I don't know what we're doing here…"
"He's not on the beat." Katniss grumbled. "I can't trust him to lift me up if he's not on the beat."
Peeta tossed her a kicked puppy look but she crushed any guilt she could have mustered in the bud. He seemed to have had a free pass with Haymitch ever since they started this thing a few months earlier. It was Haymitch who had found her Peeta to partner with. It was Haymitch who always insisted she didn't do everything in her power to make this work even though their performance at Regionals, Girl On Fire, had gathered a lot of attention – and that was on her, not on Peeta. It was Haymitch who kept repeating they weren't good enough.
"He is on the beat." he snarled predictably. "The boy's not the problem here. You are."
Katniss narrowed her eyes at him. "Well, you know what? I'm done."
"Like hell you are!" Haymitch snapped but she was already skating away toward the door. "Get your ass back here!"
She ignored him. She also ignored Peeta's calls for her to come back.
She didn't need them to remind her they were only three months away from Nationals, she knew. She also knew losing at Nationals wasn't an option. There was money to be made and Prim would eventually need to go to a fancy medical school.
It took her a long time to cool down and wander out of the locker room, long enough that the hockey team was practicing and there was no more trace of Peeta or Haymitch. She sat in the stands, watching the boys train with something akin to envy, waving back at Gale when he spotted her.
She wasn't surprised when she felt a presence looming next to her but she refused to look up.
"It's just not working out." she said.
Haymitch eased himself on the bench next to her and rubbed his hands together to warm them.
"It's not working out because you don't want it to work out." he insisted.
"Not true." she retorted, stubborn to the last.
He sighed and fished a flask out of his pocket. They watched the hockey team in silence for a while. He occasionally sipped some liquor and she pretended not to notice how shaky his hands were.
"He's good." he commented eventually, nodding to Gale. "Your friend."
She chose not to understand the implications. Gale was her best friend and that had nothing to do with anything. "I'm better."
"Should have stuck to hockey then." he snorted.
"Doesn't pay enough." she shrugged. Not when you were a girl anyway. She had been playing hockey for almost as long as she remembered, she had switched to figure skating only at sixteen when it had appeared obvious she would go nowhere with a stick and a puck. Katniss had never been good at school but on the ice? On the ice she was great. There was something to be done there, coaches had insisted. She had won a few junior competitions as a solo figure skater. After a few seasons in junior league, she had tried senior competitions, she had been noticed by the federation, and she had gradually decided she would make a living out of it because there was a lot of money to be made once you were renown enough to get big sponsors and she had a little sister to get through college. Prim was her top priority. Always. She needed to win at Nationals for her. She needed to make a name. "You're not doing your job."
It was Haymitch's turn to shrug. "When you came to me, I told you I was out. You insisted."
The man from the federation who had noticed her at her last solo competition, Plutarch Heavensbee, had referred her to Haymitch. He had said Haymitch had the abilities to make her one of the greatest so Katniss had gone to his house and had hammered on his door until he opened it.
She liked the idea of being coached by Haymitch truthfully. Haymitch Abernathy was something of a legend in the figure skating history. First of all, he had been trained by Mags Cohen – who had won two Olympic gold medals and was now coaching Finnick Odair and Johanna Mason who had scored a gold medal in the last Olympics and had became the youngest medaled contestants ever while they were at it.
Besides, like her, he had began as a hockey player, only making the jump to figure skating after a tragic accident on the ice, and for over two years he and his partner had stunned everyone – they had been outsiders, the ones no one believed in, because even though Effie Trinket had already been famous at the time, although rumored finished, he had meant nothing to the figure skating community. He had been a joke: the drunk hockey player.
They had made everyone shut up. They had won medal after medal. Nationals. World Championships. A few competitions in between and then everyone's dream and certainly Katniss' : the Olympics. They had scored silver and that was when everything had changed even though nobody knew why. Haymitch had left the competition life as well as the public sphere and had hardly ever been heard of since.
Katniss had been flabbergasted, when Plutarch had given her his address, to find out they lived in the same town. She had been less than impressed with him when he had finally opened his door after almost fifteen minutes of her hammering on it though. He had been drunk and disheveled and had slammed the door in her face before she had even finished introducing herself. It had taken three visits and the threat of knocking him out with a hockey stick for him to relent long enough to listen.
Honestly, she didn't know what had made him agree to watching her skate. Maybe it was the shared hockey past, maybe it was the desperation in her voice she hadn't exactly hidden when she had told him about her sister and the expenses that it mostly fell on her to cover… Nevertheless, he had agreed and she had performed.
When she had finished, he had shrugged and had declared she had as much charm as a dead slug and that if she wanted to do anything in the figure skating field she needed a partner, someone who could make her look a little more desirable. He had poked around the grapevine and found a boy who was looking for a partner for the upcoming Regionals and that was how Peeta had gotten on board – Peeta who had been figure skating since he was young, who was so much more talented than she was and who was by far too nice. She had told Haymitch she hated the idea and he had told her to suck it up.
Regionals had seemed to prove him right. They had won easily, the Girl On Fire performance getting them enough attention that sponsors had started approaching them. Nationals would decide everything though. They needed to rank high enough to be one of the two couples sent to the World Championships or everything would have been for nothing – and with Mason and Odair competing, it left only one free spot, really.
"Do you ever miss it?" she asked, nodding at what was happening on the ice. "Hockey?"
A dark cloud passed on his face and he took another sip of whatever he kept in that flask. "No."
"Because of what happened during your last game?" she pressed.
It wasn't difficult to find out details about anyone's life nowadays, not when they had their own Wikipedia page. Haymitch had stopped hockey after a particularly brutal match in which he had accidentally propelled another player against the safety glass. The guy's helmet hadn't been properly fixed and the hit had been hard enough that the man had finished in a coma and eventually declared brain dead. The fact that it was an accident was undeniable but when it had come out that Haymitch had been drunk during the game, his career had been over.
"Look, sweetheart, we're not here to talk about me." he scowled. "I told you I didn't want to coach anyone and you harassed me into saying yes – and I say harassed but I should say threatened…" He gave her a meaningful look and she rolled her eyes. "You want this to work, you need to learn how to trust the boy."
"And you need to coach us." she sighed. "We need an Olympic champion not a drunk mentor."
"Then you got the wrong man for the job." he scoffed. "I've never been a champion, that was all her."
"Your partner?" she asked, cocking her head to the side, curious. "You never talk about her."
"'Cause there's nothing to say." he grumbled. "If you show up tomorrow, show up ready to work. I don't like wasting my time."
He stood up and left, leaving her to watch the hockey practice, anxious for it to finish so she could go play with Gale. It was a shame he would never agree to quit hockey for figure skating because she would have trusted him to catch her and toss her in the air.
°o°
"So?" Peeta asked nervously.
The boy was leaning against the truck, his sport bag waiting at his feet. Haymitch shrugged.
"She'll come around." he said.
Peeta didn't look convinced. "She doesn't want a partner, Haymitch."
"She doesn't know what to do with a partner." he argued, walking around his truck, rummaging in his pockets for the keys. "That's different."
"She was a hockey player for how long? That requires team work." the boy frowned. "Look… Don't get me wrong, I like her… But she doesn't like me. I don't know what I did to her but…"
"Having a team isn't the same thing as having a partner." he muttered, his fingers finally closing on his keys. "You can be on your own and still be part of a team but it takes two to tango." He snorted at his own bad joke, somehow relieved that the kid looked clueless. "She'll come around."
He was confident she would eventually realize what was the best for that sister of hers and that was trusting him when he said solo competitions weren't for her. She was good but with a partner she would be better. She needed the support even if she didn't realize it yet.
"I hope so." Peeta sighed. "Can you drop me home?"
"No." he refused immediately. He had drunk too much to drive anyone anywhere. He shouldn't be driving as it was but then again there was a lot of things he shouldn't be doing – like going anywhere near an ice rink. "See you tomorrow, kid."
He slammed the door shut and turned the engine on, not looking back in the rearview mirror at the boy he was leaving behind.
He didn't even know what he was doing there. He had left that life behind after the disaster of the 98 Olympic Winter Games, fifteen years earlier, and had remained in self imposed isolation ever since, mostly living on the savings he had made during his glory days. Aside for the occasional visit from Chaff and the once in a blue moon call from Plutarch – at least before he had permanently unhook the phone – he lived like a hermit and that suited him. As long as he had liquor, good books and peace, he was somehow content.
And then had come stubborn Katniss Everdeen who wouldn't take no for an answer.
He didn't know why he had caved. Or maybe he did… Former hockey player, desperate to make a living for herself to help her family, raw talent… It hit too close to home. He saw too much of himself in her. He related too much. So he had said yes. He had said yes when he had said no so many times before.
But being back in that world, being back in that particular rink stadium… The smell of the ice, its cold bite on his face, the noise of the blades as they speeded and jumped and turned… It made him want to reach inside his pocket and take out his flask.
Everything was a reminder.
Everything brought him back to the past and he could have frankly done without.
°o°
"So…" Caesar started, letting his sentence trail into an inviting silence.
Haymitch blinked, blinded by the spotlights overhead. The armchairs were too soft and he slumped in his in a way that would irritate both Effie and their coach. He could glimpse Mags, backstage, pursing her lips in annoyance and tossing him the same disappointed looks she had been shooting him since he had announced his decision. Next to him, his partner was making a visible effort to keep her back straight and her chin high but then again he didn't have twenty years of ballet lessons under his belt.
He waited for Effie to speak because that was how interviews usually went – she led and he followed – but this time was different, everyone knew it and she remained silent.
"Let's cut down to the chase, shall we?" Caesar said when it became clear neither of them would catch the ball he had thrown. How many times had they been there over the last two years and a half? How many times had they sat in front of Caesar and answered his questions? How many victories had they celebrated on this very same set? How many losses had they tried to explain? "First of all, let me congratulate you on your amazing performance at the Olympics… It was truly a sight to behold."
That was usually the moment when Effie would have flashed her dazzling smile and offered a modest reply. Caesar was met with a silent brick wall. Her face was blank, the polite smile on her lips only there for appearance's sakes.
Haymitch's eyes kept dropping to her wrist but no matter how many times he looked the charm bracelet was gone. It hurt more than he had thought it would.
"Not good enough for gold." he snorted.
"Well…" Caesar smiled with indulgence. "Everyone knew the Russians would be a tough competition. And you did beat the other American couple, Enobaria and Brutus, who were given favorite despite your two times World Champions title…"
"Yeah, there's that." he shrugged. Enobaria and Brutus hadn't even ranked on the podium.
Caesar waited for a moment, obviously expecting Effie's input and when it was clear nothing would be forthcoming on that front, he cleared his throat and leaned in a little as if to invite confidences. Haymitch hated the whole shebang: the theatrics and the stereotypical public personas. That wasn't something he would miss.
"We heard a lot of rumors in the last few weeks…" the host said in a soft voice. "Of course, the Olympics put an enormous amount of stress on the both of you but…"
"The rumors are true." Haymitch cut him off, impatient to be freed from that hell. "I'm retiring."
Caesar looked slightly taken aback and Haymitch wondered if he had truly thought the rumors were only that. Sports specialists had been debating the pros and cons ever since it had first came out that he and Effie weren't training together anymore – they were public figures, it came with the territory. Hell, they had been debating since he had left Japan before the closing ceremony even took place…
"You are only twenty-five…" Caesar chuckled. "That's a bit young for retirement."
"That's how it is." he retorted firmly.
The host's amusement vanished quickly. "You have a promising career ahead of you, Haymitch. Everybody thought you were finished when you quitted hockey and yet you proved us wrong. Not to mention you might still compete in the next World Championships and perhaps it's pushing it a little but the next Olympic Games aren't that far away, surely you…"
"My decision's definitive." he interrupted him again.
"Manners." Effie hissed, finally breaking out of her muteness.
Fortunately for him, it gave Caesar another subject to explore. Unfortunately for her, it meant she was now the host's target. "And how do you feel about this, Effie?"
Haymitch scoffed. Where were they? At a shrink session?
"Haymitch's decision is his own." Effie answered quietly. "It is not my place to approve or disapprove."
Caesar leaned back in his own chair, watching her with over the top compassion. "You say this but you can't deny that there have always been rumors about the nature of your relationship…"
"Our relationship has always been strictly professional." she declared coldly. "As we have stated times and times again. We are colleagues and friends nothing more."
Her smile never faltered but the way she looked at him was threatening enough that Caesar wisely switched to another subject. "Does it mean you will be looking for a new partner, Effie? Or are you retiring too? At only twenty-three, it would be a shame…"
Haymitch waited for her to rebuke Caesar, to remind him mentioning a lady's age was the upmost of bad manners but she was clearly off her game that day. Her voice remained clipped, her face set in a neutral, almost distant, expression.
"I am looking for a new partner." she confirmed.
With a few more sentences Caesar wrapped up the interview and launched an advertisement break. They all shook hands and an assistant ushered them backstage. Effie stormed away as soon as they had been freed from their mics.
He watched her walk away from him and Mags in her ridiculous pink skirt, knowing it was the last he would ever see of her.
She hadn't looked at him once.
I hope you enjoyed this first chapter! Please do let me know I'm nervous as hell about this story! :p
