Learning to Love the Cold

Chapter Three: Laybacks

This might seem like a filler chapter, but I promise all of the things mentioned will come into play somewhere throughout the story.

"Armin, I am so confused."

The blonde looks up from his book. "About?" he asks, his eyes scanning the ice.

"The girl with the pigtails. Like, I've seen her before, but I never paid attention to her skating. She like. I don't even know."

Armin glances at Jean, head tilted. "Mina? What do you mean 'she like'? What are you confused about?"

"No, okay, like. She's about to go into a spin. Watch."

There's a pause and then Armin says, "Yeah? She's doing a layback. What about it?"

"She spins the other way!" Jean exclaims, looking far more distressed about it than he should.

Armin sighs, closing his book and straightening in his seat. "Calm down. It's not like she's the only lefty skater in the world."

"Lefty?" Jean watches the girl as she does something. (This is frustrating—why can't he just know all of the terminology and what everything looks like already? There's too much to learn and he knows he won't remember.)

"Yes, lefty. I'm assuming you know this, but for the sake of explaining this I'll tell you anyway. People either write with their right hand or their left, yes? That's generally their more dominate hand, and usually that comes into play with skating. Most skaters skate 'righty', which is what you're mostly used to seeing. There are two reasons for this. One, there are more righties in this world than lefties. Two, a lot of lefties are trained to be righties, despite it being uncomfortable to help them in the long run, since they have a harder time with competing because it throws judges off. That's why Eren's a righty skater, despite being left handed. Mina, on the other hand, went ahead and learned how to skate lefty anyway. And Levi," he points to the short, angry looking black haired man currently yelling at Eren, "is also a lefty. Some people who are right handed skate lefty, though, and vice versa."

"What the hell." It's not even a question. Simply a flat out statement from the poor, confused seventeen year old as his eyes dart between Marco and Mina. Armin's worried—he looks like he's about to cry from this new information. "This means that jumps and spins have more entries then, doesn't it?"

"They're the same, Jean. Just exactly the opposite."

"That's a contradiction."

"They're like mirrored, I guess. Not really, but sort of."

Jean drops his face into his hands. "That's it. I'm done. I cannot learn all of this. This is the end for me. Tell my parents I hate them. Tell Marco his freckles are cute. Tell Eren he's the biggest bag of dicks I've ever met. I'm leaving."

"So, what about my freckles being cute?"

"I—what?" Jean feels somewhat horrified. He looks it too. (Did Marco hear his over dramatic speech?)

"I happened to be skating past when you were having an emotional breakdown."

"It was not an emotional breakdown! I just… there's too much to learn. And I don't even have to do any of it." Jean frowns. "How do you even do any of that stuff?"

"Fifteen years of practice, Jean. It's not like it happened overnight. I'm glad that doesn't happen overnight, actually. Working for it sucks, but it feels nice, too." The boy smiles at him. Even without his skates, he's still a few inches taller than Jean.

"Well, I get that. I mean, the dedication. I could hardly stay in one sport for more than a few months, let alone fifteen years."

Marco purses his lips, glancing upwards. "I don't think of myself as dedicated, really. It's not like I haven't wanted to quit before. It's simply that I've spent my whole life doing this. I wouldn't know what to do if I didn't. And the times I came close to quitting, I knew it wouldn't be worth it because I've already put so much in, so why not work harder to reach my full potential?"

Jean's silent for a while after Marco says this. In the past few weeks, Jean's learned that Marco is, without a doubt, the nicest person he has ever met and probably ever will meet. He didn't know it was actually possible for someone to be so caring and sweet, especially to him. He's practically a stranger (or, was a stranger) who came in from nowhere and decided hey why don't I watch these people skate every single day and question them on all of the things they do. He knows he'd be annoyed if he were in a similar situation.

Not that he ever would be. He's never had the words talent or dedication applied to him in his life.

"I think that's being determined. Most people would quit if they wanted to."

Marco shrugs, "I guess, if you want to think of it that way. For me, skating is my life, and there's really no way around it."

"Do you like it?" Jean's glancing through the windows separating him from the cold into rink two. There's an intense hockey game going on, and Jean wonders what it would be like to like the cold. To love getting up in the early hours of the morning and lacing your skates with sore hands. Loving how the ice crunches beneath your blades and how snow flies into the air when you stop. He thinks, had he been raised doing something like this, something so amazing and beautiful, he wouldn't mind the cold.

"Most of the time." Marco stops and stares at the game going on below them. "There are times where I don't, but I know that if I keep going I'll like it again. So I do."

There's a week to go until Christmas break.

And four weeks until Marco competes at Nationals.

Meaning contact between him and Jean is near impossible, since he's almost always on the ice.

Jean can't make it to the rink after school for the week, either, since his family decided it would be such a great idea to visit.

The few times he does get to talk to Marco throughout the week, it's about skating. They were finally starting to talk about other things outside of skating and outside of the cold, and Jean feels like he's back at square one. Square one of what, he's not sure. But he's definitely not going to get to know his stupid freckled crush better if all he can talk about is skating.

But, at the same time, it seems like his stupid freckled crush's entire life is skating.

I'm a lefty skater, so I had to add it in there somewhere.