Who: Solaire and Alexei What: Alexei tries to teach Solaire how to skate. There's kissing. Where: The ice rink When: Feb 17 [backdated] Rating/Warnings: References to homophobia
Going in, Alexei hadn’t been sure if he was going on a date. Solaire might have asked him to teach him to skate just because he wanted to learn to skate, or because he wanted to spend more time with a friend. It could be purely platonic skating that didn’t mean anything at all.
Telling himself all that did not stop Alexei’s heart from beating just a little faster when Solaire arrived at the rink, though, nor did it stop him from grinning like a fool while he helped Solaire lace up a pair of rental skates he’d borrowed from the public rink. That was just as well, it turned out, because based on the gratuitous hand-holding (much more than was absolutely necessary for helping Solaire keep his balance on the ice), this actually was a date.
For the first time in his life, he was actually on a date with a man and it was easily in the top five best things that had ever happened to him. And here on this island away far from home, that didn’t have to be fraught with anxiety. If it went badly and he was outed, so what? There were no real consequences to that here. He was free to enjoy himself and enjoy Solaire’s company and enjoy the laughter echoing across the rink with each fumbled glide. The ice had always felt like freedom to Alexei - it seemed fitting that he would find this freedom there, too.
Solaire was starting to actually skate now rather than just shuffling, so Alexei took an easy glide backward, maybe four meters away. “Okay, okay, now you skate to me! Don’t worry about stop, I will catch you.”
Alexei grinned as Solaire pushed off toward him - he’d always wanted to do this. He had a long-standing very specific fantasy of getting to do this, because he was a big gooey romantic who watched too many movies and who’d spent his whole life on the ice. He let Solaire glide toward him, set his feet and knees to be gently thumped into by a grown man, and caught Solaire in his arms, pulled in against him close enough to lead him in a tango.
He looked down - only a little, Solaire wasn’t far short of Alexei’s height.
Their eyes met.
They were having a moment. A giddy rush flew through Alexei, and he suddenly found he was too high to remember the English words for “can I kiss you”.
Solaire was a fast learner, at least when it came to physical skills (book learning, good fucking luck). He’d been a fierce warrior before he’d been turned human, and as a human he’d spent his undead years learning a variety of fighting styles to ensure success across many worlds. Sure, that didn’t mean that he wasn’t still a tank at heart (a tank that had learned how to ice skate fast; stopping was still… sketchy…) but it did mean that while he had taken a few tumbles today, he’d gotten back up with twice as much determination as before.
Solaire flirted with nearly everyone. It was just his nature. That didn’t mean he wasn’t interested - as a bisexual knight who had through luck managed to hang on to his handsome face despite being undead, Solaire was quite comfortable with expressing affection through the kinds of physical demonstrations that might have labeled him “easy” (what a word) in more judgemental societies. He didn’t worry about it. Lordran had been fading for years, friends and loved ones were losing their minds left and right; Solaire had learned that you needed to appreciate what you had when you had it, and he had learned this well. Pain was part and parcel of love, and instead of avoiding it he had gone the other way and had jumped straight into friendships and relationships that had given him faith and support throughout the years. He simply didn’t worry about it. Tater had previously been giving him mixed signals, so Solaire had assumed he wasn’t interested, or there might be someone else - whatever. Solaire knew he’d be okay with however Tater wanted him.
So it was a surprise and an adjustment when Tater’s hands lingered, when smiles stayed just a little too knowing as Tater patiently taught Solaire not to fall on his ass. It took a few moments for Solaire to reassess the situation. He didn’t get the impression that Tater was trying to play games - that’d be epically dumb; Solaire wasn’t good with games - so much as he was-- trying to psyche himself up to something.
All right. Solaire could ride this one out.
And so he was only half-way surprised when Tater caught him and forced him into a messy but successful stop (Solaire was really going to have to learn how to stop without using a person or a wall one of these days), and their eyes met, and it was a thing. One of those things where everything ground to a stop around them and the world became a whisper, and Solaire tilted his head to ensure that yeah, this was actually happening and wasn’t his imagination or misinterpretation.
His hands were up from his messy stop, and he let them fall where they wanted to - the other man’s shoulder, his side. Solaire went for silly, his voice low, an eyebrow raised playfully, “I hope your toe pick is well-secured, because I think you’ll need a solid stance for what comes next.”
Tater’s naturally loud volume went low as well, like it might in a library or a cathedral, but he was grinning like his team won the Cup. “Hockey skates don’t have toe picks,” he said, because obviously his skates were not the same as the rental pair of figure skates he’d borrowed for Solaire, he didn’t need a toe pick to stay stable on the ice if Solaire was going to kiss him, and--
Fuck, Solaire was going to kiss him. Tater wasn’t even breathing anymore; he felt like he hadn’t taken a breath in years, just waiting for a moment like this. And in this beautiful, stunning, awe-inducing moment, he’d said ‘hockey skates don’t have toe picks.’
“Still solid!” he said quickly, going slightly frantic in his need to make sure that Solaire understood that toe picks were in no way necessary for anything to come next. “Just put one edge at angle, and--” No, no, no, stop, why was he doing this again? He was about to babble out an explanation of edges and centers of balance and that wasn’t even slightly where he meant this to go. He shut that line of thought down quickly, and his last attempt came out as little more than a whisper.
“What I mean is kiss me, please.”
Luckily for Tater, Solaire didn’t wait for more babble to happen; he simple leaned up a little - carefully, so he wouldn’t lose his balance, and pressed his lips to Tater’s. It wasn’t a chaste kiss, for it was too playful, his grip on Tater’s coat too tight, but it was light enough that Tater might have stopped him had he wanted to. Solaire was glad he didn’t appear to want to.
A few lingering moments later, and Solaire grinned at him. “Meant to ask you this sooner,” he said, “but timing’s never been my best skill - do you want me to call you Tater? I know you’ve gone by other names, too.”
Despite his excellent on-ice balance, Alexei felt unmoored, as though his hold on Solaire's hips was all that kept him anchored to conscious thought and reality. That kiss was the stuff dreams were made of, or at least the stuff that Alexei Mashkov's dreams were made of. It wasn't just exciting and romantic; it was fun.
Only a second passed between the question and the answer, though it felt like longer. "Call me Alyosha," he said, and gave an undoubtedly dopey sideways grin as he explained. "Tater is what hockey bros call me. Alexei is for when Mama is about to give me lecture. Alyosha, that is friendly name. Alyoshenka if you are wanting to be cute about it."
“Alyosha,” Solaire repeated perfectly, committing it to memory. It wasn’t that different from the name Yorshka, which was popular among certain sects of nobles in Lordran. Alyoshenka wasn’t that difficult either. “I’m always wanting to be cute about it,” he added with a grin, his hands loosening their grip just a little as it became apparent he wasn’t going to fall.
It seemed like the natural time to mention--- something, but Solaire hesitated. He’d not exactly hidden his past, but it was so largely in the past that it seemed mostly irrelevant. So he said cautiously: “Solaire was a name I gave myself, ages ago. My original one was an offshoot of my father’s, and we didn’t get on.” To say the least. “So after I left the family, I changed it - I’m afraid I don’t have a good nickname, though!”
Tater grinned, just because it was so nice to hear someone call him Alyosha again. Most of the Vallo local Russian speakers weren’t natives of Russia, where anyone who was on a first-name basis would call each other by nicknames. They tended to call him Alexei. He hadn’t heard Alyosha since his last Skype call with his mother before he was plucked out of Providence and dropped on the magical island, and it felt good hitting his ears again.
“Is okay, Russian language is very good for nicknames. I already call you solnyshko in my head anyway. It means, um...little sun?” That was literally correct, but it didn’t quite get the sense of the word across. “Maybe like sunshine in English. Solnyshko is cute thing to call someone you like anyway, and it fits you very much.”
“It’s perfect!” And Solaire truly thought it was. He was the sort to answer to everything from ‘Sunlight’ to ‘hey, asshole’, but he thought Tater’s nickname for him was apt. It was only after a beat or two of pondering that Solaire realized what the other man had said:
“You’ve been calling me that in your head for a while, then?” he teased, his grin not showing the faintest displeasure. “Well, it’s a good thing I like it. Would have been a real shame, otherwise.”
It really was a perfect name, Tater thought. Solaire smiled, and it felt like warm afternoon sun on a late spring day. That was what this smile felt like, anyway. Just before they kissed, it had been more like the mid-summer sun, with heat that was almost a little too much and nonetheless made him feel like lying back and basking in it. Solaire probably had all kinds of sunshine smiles to bestow, and Tater was hoping to see all of them.
“Bah, I knew you would like solnyshko,” he said with considerably more confidence that he had actually felt. It was easy to act like he’d always been sure of everything working out now that it actually had. “You have look that says ‘Call me sweet names, take me on silly teenager dates, kiss me on ice like big romantic dummy.’ I could see this first day, while you were fighting bat things.”
Solaire tossed his head back and laughed, not the least bit insulted. “I’m glad one of us was confident! I wasn’t at all sure what your look was, beyond tall, strong, confident, and… potentially flirtatious? Potentially not? You might have thought me adorable or you may have had a sweetheart back home you were pining for. You were a difficult tome to read, my friend.”
He was glad to have that question answered. Solaire had no expectations here (being used to romantic attachments in a place where everyone was either dying or going mad and then dying), so he tended to just make a point to enjoy the moment and not spend too much time defining things.
“Hah, well--” Tater chuckled sheepishly and glanced down at their feet a moment before looking back up. “I am not having so much experience with men except trying to pretend I am not interested. It is…” He paused, trying to figure out a way to explain that wasn’t going to really bring down the otherwise lovely mood of the evening. It would have been easier to do in Russian; sometimes it was terribly frustrating having to work so hard for the words he needed. “People in Russia mostly are not kind to men who love men. So I am not doing dating and sex and love very much. Makes me not good at giving signals.”
Solaire nodded, and even if he was a little confused as to the why, he’d learned from Vallo and from his own interdimensional travels that sometimes things were so different that they might be unrecognizable. Gods knew he’d met enough religious freaks who had answers for why the world was ending that condemned half the population one way or another.
“Well,” he said, his voice gentle but pitched to cheer, “we’ve lots of time to get you better at giving signals.” Solaire clasped the side of Tater’s shoulder, and it might have just been a friendly gesture, expect Solaire’s voice was flirtatious as hell a few moments later: “Not too much better, though. I’d rather not be the training halberd, and keep you to myself.”
This, Tater thought, must be what being swept off your feet meant. Solaire spoke like that, and somehow a simple touch on his shoulder made him feel like he was floating. He would do so many incredibly stupid things to keep hold of that feeling, and that was probably dangerous, but whatever, if he was worried about doing dangerous things he wouldn't play a sport where he got repeated concussions.
"Maybe I just learn sending signal at you, yes?" Tater suggested with a grin. In fact, this seemed like a good moment for practice at signals - leaning in, tightening his grip just a fraction, lowering his head toward Solaire's - that all said 'kiss,' he was pretty sure.
Tater’s instincts had been right - Solaire was delighted that the first kiss hadn’t been just a fluke of rom-com falling and flailing. The notion of skating suddenly seemed very uninteresting, particularly when there was a perfectly decent bench right there that didn’t require him to be on the knife’s edge of collapsing on his ass with every slight wiggle, and so mid-kiss he silently tugged the other man toward the bench with what he hoped were very appealing eyebrows.
Learning how to skate without looking like an idiot could be a quest for another day, as far as he was concerned.