Canada-Mathew Williams
Prussia-Gilbert Beilschmidt
Birdie
Ice flew up in shimmering flakes from the shaved ice as one of the hockey players ground to a halt seconds short of crashing headfirst into the sideboards. The player coming in behind him wasn't quite as lucky. And so, the first player, number fifteen, was able to skate away, with the puck, while the other was left to pick himself up from the ground to try and skate desperately after him. His team mates were also close behind.
But number fifteen wasn't going to let the puck get taken away again. Now that most of the attention was focused on him, he had a clear shot to one of his fellow player's. He took it. The person he'd shot the puck at, lightning fast, took the puck, skated off, and shot, scoring the goal.
The crowd erupted on cheering, Mathew jumping up to scream with the rest of his fellow fans, and in the process knocking the glum-looking fellow to his left in the chin with his elbow.
Big mistake.
Nerves already fried by his personal team's defeat, the man shot straight up to glare and lean in close to Mathew, yelling at him.
Mathew refused to take it. His happy mood quickly turned into a foul one. He too started to shout obscenities. Their yelling match escalated and simultaneously continued. No one daring to interrupt it.
Then the man seemed to have had enough.
"Fine!" He shouted and turned away.
Mathew continued to glare at the man's back as he walked away and took the split second opportunity when the man glanced back at him before exiting the arena to give him the middle finger, then he turned with a huff to his current hockey date mate: Gilbert.
The man to Gilbert's right whistled lowly. A high-pitched sound from between his teeth. "Guess I should have seen that coming. But, then again, I guess giving people the bird is pretty common nowadays." He said conversationally to Gilbert, then turned back to continue watching the game. The team was screaming, shouting, hugging, and tangling themselves into a pile of limbs on the ice. Grand entertainment indeed.
Mathew, however, was no longer in the mood. He grabbed Gilbert by the wrist, grabbed the bag that they had brought their munchies in for the game, and dragged him out of the ice rink and back to Mathew's car.
Struggling to keep up and avoid hitting more than a hundred people as he was pulled along through the crowd, Gilbert hoped that maybe a bit of talking would slow Mathew down by a bit.
"So, uh," Gilbert tried to say, then got whipped in the face with a scarf. He blew out a short puff of air then tried again. "Hey, Mathew. Uh, that guy back there said something interesting. He said that you gave that guy "the bird", um, what did he mean by that."
Mathew looked back at him, briefly, and their speed through the crowd lessened. Goal accomplished.
"Of course I gave him the bird. The guy was being a prick."
"But, what did he mean by the bird?" Gilbert asked.
They passed through the doors and reverted back to walking like penguins through the parking lot. Gilbert personally suspected that the parking lot was even more icy than the actual skating rink. Stupid winter.
"The middle finger of course." Mathe2w replied and burrowed down deeper into his scarf. His next words came out muffled. "Giving someone the middle finger is called giving them the bird."
Gilbert laughed, awkwardly. "Haha, yeah, of course it is. Hey, do you mind if I call you birdie?"
Forever after, Gilbert would call Mathew his birdie, but only whenever he was around his family. In particular, his brother: Alfred. The meanie had never approved of their friendship, and, best of all, he knew what Gilbert meant when he said it.
Giving Mathew a nickname, aka, dedicating those brain cells to thinking up his nickname, were totally made worth it whenever Gilbert got to see Alfred's expression morph into that of anger, then annoyance, then pridefulness as he tried to first ignore Gilbert, then rapidly shifted into his typical behavior of trying to yank Mathew away. Which wasn't going to happen, ever.
"Keseseseses..."