Learning to Love the Cold
Chapter Seven: Loops
You guys get to see what it's like to work during a basic skills competition! This is pretty accurate, at least with my club.
Marco stops himself with his toe picks as he stares with wide eyes at nothing in particular. After a moment, he looks as his coach, whose lips are stretched into the widest smile he's ever seen. "You landed it! You landed your double loop! Oh, Marco, I'm so proud!"
Marco smiles himself, feeling pretty proud. He's been falling on his butt for months with this jump or not getting two full revolutions.
"Do it again."
And he lands it a second time. And a third. And a fourth.
He eventually loses count of how many times he lands it. (Also, his legs are starting to hurt from all of the jumping.)
"Alright, so it seems you've got it!" Hanji's beaming. "Keep on working on it, though, or else you might lose it." She glances at the clock. "Before you go, I have a question. Do you want to help out with the upcoming basic skills competition? We need runners, and you're definitely too high level to compete."
Marco nods, "Yeah, I'd love to! It was a lot of fun last year."
"And one more thing. Would you be willing to bring Mina hot chocolate since she's going to be ice monitor?"
"Thank you, my fingers are freezing," Mina says, bringing the steaming cup of hot chocolate to her lips.
"Of course," Marco replies, "I'll come back and check on you in a half an hour, 'kay?" He winks at her and smiles when he catches the slight blush on her cheeks out of the corner of his eye as he turns. (Well, he thinks so, anyway. Her cheeks were already pretty red from being in the cold for so long. Either way, she smiled at him.)
Marco heads back to the judges room, making his way to the printer. Sasha walks past him and nearly sings, "Stop wasting time flirting with Mina! The basic four kids are getting upset waiting for results!"
"You can take the results down, you know," he says, collecting the sheets, "Also, the basic five kids are waiting too."
"I'm going to take a break and eat."
"But that's food for the judges."
"Since when have I cared?" she asks grabbing a bowl and filling it with mac and cheese, "Besides, there aren't any judges in here."
Marco rolls his eyes despite the smile on his face and leaves the room.
"—pretty sure that was Petra," Eren says as he follows Mikasa into the room, moments after Marco's departure.
"I didn't see her."
Eren shrugs. "If I see her again I'll say something, I guess."
"Have you guys seen Connie?" Sasha asks.
They both shake their heads. Eren frowns as he looks at the food. "Did you seriously eat the last of the mac and cheese?"
"I'm still working on it, but yes," Sasha smiles.
Eren grabs a fork from the table and heads over to her, taking a bite from her bowl. "Maybe I'll call my mom and tell her we need more."
Sasha pouts, but continues eating. "Was that necessary?"
"Completely," he says, grinning. Mikasa punches his arm.
"Are you going down there to get results from the judges or am I?" She asks.
"I'll get one side of the rink, you get the other," Eren replies.
As they leave the room, Connie comes stumbling in, looking somewhat flustered. "They mobbed me, Sasha. Mobbed me."
She studies him for a long moment with an amused look before laughing, "Oh God, I can't believe you let a bunch of little kids mob you."
"They're scary when they're waiting for results, okay?" Connie glances at the bowl of mac and cheese sitting in front of the brunette. "That's the last of it, isn't it?"
"Why is everyone acting like I ate all of it?" She exclaims, "This is the first bowl I've had! This is the first thing I've even eaten today!"
Connie puts his hands up. "I don't think anyone cares that much, calm down." He leans over, reaching for her fork, but she slaps his hand away.
"I don't think so," she says, stabbing the last few noodles rather violently with the plastic fork (which almost breaks in half from the force she puts into it).
Marco manages to part the sea of small children waiting in front of the wall where results are posted to put up basic four and fives' results. One thing he's come to hate about being a runner in the past years is that, while he hears kids yelling happily over their first place victories, he's seen too many tears and heard too many sobs from the kids who don't place on the podium. It's only a basic skills competition, but it still hurts to not place well.
"Do you start from the top or the bottom when you're looking at results?" Sasha asks as she watches the Zamboni move across the ice.
"Top," Mikasa says.
"That's because you're used to getting first," Sasha grins. "I start from the top too, usually."
"I start from the bottom," Eren says. "That's way it's not so disappointing if I'm not in first."
Mina nods, "That's what I do too," she says, her fingers wrapped around the cup of hot chocolate Marco had brought her right before the ice make began.
"For me, it depends on how well I skated," Marco says.
Connie shrugs as he leans back in his chair, "I start from the bottom."
Hanji is suddenly at the head of their table, a somewhat terrifying smile on her face. She claps her hands together, "I'm recommend leaving the room for a bit, since it's the judges' room and if Levi sees you in here when all of the judges are here, he will kill you. And possibly me, not that I'd let him."
Everyone groans collectively, but they all get up anyway and head out of the room. Mina sighs as they walk down the hallway. "It was warm in there."
"I'm sure the club room's heated today," Marco says, "We can all hang out there for a while."
Behind him, Sasha mutters, "You two should get a room already," and he blushes. (He notices she does too, which makes him smile as they continue down the hallway.
"It's going to be covered in glitter though. I want to avoid that," Eren says.
The club room is surprisingly quiet and also lacking small children. (There's still glitter everywhere.) What they do find is Armin reading in the corner, his feet crossed on his zuca. He glances up when the door opens, "Hey."
There's a chorus of greetings as everyone heads to their spots. Which really, they aren't spots, but everyone has an area they generally sit in when they're in the club room and plenty of fights have come about from spot stealing.
"How much longer until this is over?" Sasha leans against the wall, yawning.
"Another hour," Armin says.
"That's not bad, I guess," Eren pushes at his zuca with his foot. "You guys are all staying for public skate tonight, right?"
"Might as well, we all have to help clean up and by the time that's over public skate will be starting," Mina's digging around in the pockets of her zuca for a pair of gloves that don't have holes. She's going to need all of the warmth she can get if she wants to survive the last hour.
"Can I sleep instead of do things?" Sasha says after a moment of silence.
"You know what we could do during public skate? Or afterwards," Marco's grinning as he speaks.
"What?"
"Glow in the dark hide and seek."
"Yes!" Sasha pops up. "We haven't played that in a while! And I have my old guards that glow in the dark so we can use those!"
"You know what's weird?" Connie says as he watches Sasha. "That things that glow in the dark glow green. Why not the color they are? Like your guard aren't green. It's so weird."
"That doesn't even matter because glow in the dark hide and seek," Sasha grins at him. "Marco, you should be it first, since you suggested it."
Marco nods, "Fine with me."
When the parents have meetings and we're stuck at the rink for a while, we play glow in the dark hide and seek. At least, that's the old name. We all used to have skate guards that glowed in the dark but everyone has gotten new ones since, so now we use phones and set them up in the corner of the room. Basically, everyone hides as well as they can in the club room and the person whose it has to find everyone with that small amount of light from the corner of the room.
Ice monitors are pretty much what the name implies. Coaches check in their students before they compete with the ice monitor. Runners are the one who get results and post them.
And I'm (somewhat) sorry for the marcomina. I promise the jeanmarco will be back soon enough.