[ the lean towards her, the small back-shuffle to put space between them. being quiet means nill has had ample time to practice watching others, mostly for the lack of anything better to do. but just because she notices it doesn't mean she knows what it means. she looks down at his skates for a moment, before looking up again with a little smile and a shake of her head. with a shy flip of her hand, she gestures for heine to follow her, at least to the edge of the rink.
with her paper pad still in hand, she tidily turns on the ice and skates towards the edge of the rink, where a bench to the side marks the mid-point line. toeing carefully on the spongy floor around the rhink (it's bad form, it's not good for your skates, but she's too lazy to go her skate guards on the other side of the rink, and anyway, she's only going on dry land for a few seconds so it can't be that bad), she picks her way to where a compact pink music player sits on the bench.
a few click of the buttons, and the first strains of music fills the rink. she makes sure it's the right song, adjusts the volume, and then presses the rewind button. looking back at heine, she flashes him a thumbs-up.
[ heine nods jerkily when nill motions, and follows with quick strokes of his skates. at the edge of the rink, he pauses just before crossing from the ice to the floor.
he'd looked up the song after being told about it, so it's at least familiar. he returns the thumbs-up with another brief nod and a semi-attempted thumbs-up before going to find his starting position relative to the rest of the rink. ]
Ready. [ said just loud enough to be heard over the ambient noise. he puts one foot behind the other and sets his toepick into the ice, forcing his tension out through his body and into the ground. he can breathe easier in the rink, where the air is cold and sharp, and he can make himself move. ]
[ that half-attempted thumbs-up brings a small smile to nill's face, who just nods when heine indicates that he's ready. to be honest, just watching heine get into position on the ice gets her nerves jumping. it's not her performing, but it soon will be, and there's always something about watching someone poised in the centre of the ice that causes her to tense up as well. stage fright, they tell her, is something she needs to get over. looking at heine now, who looks so natural standing in the centre of the vast rink, she feels a little bit of envy.
still, she counts three beats, before pressing the play button. the song begins to play the intro, strains of music filling the cold, anticipatory silence of the rink. the introduction is where she and heine are supposed to push off together, she knows, skating in tandem like mirrors completing a circle, and then into a synchronized dance-step as they pick up speed. toeing her way to the edge of the rink and onto the ice, her eyes are fixed on heine as she mentally counts the beats and nervously goes through the steps in her head. a dance-step there, a glide there-- she pushes off onto the ice with her toepick, and then with the edges of her blades in a few quick strokes so that she can catch up with him.
by the time she's there, ten beats of music have already passed, and she's already out of sync. nervously, she skips into a half-circle a beat too late, carefully watching heine's movements in an attempt to catch up. is the spin next? or maybe it was the shoot the duck-- ]
[ heine's focusing on the music rather than nill at that moment, running over the words of the routine in his head. he hasn't gone over the entire routine yet, just looked over the written routine and done a couple of parts during his own practices. now, he has to link them together properly and connect them to the music.
he finds this part to be one of the most difficult. linking things together requires a better understanding of the big picture than he can usually manage.
but it's easy to begin, at least, with a pushing off, dance-step, crossover—he pushes the moves together and doesn't look across the rink until they're seconds off from when they should meet.
almost as soon as he looks at her, he feels his pulse start to pound. fuck. fuck, fuck, fuck. he thought he was over this. heine swallows hard, shaking himself out of old thoughts, and forces himself to keep moving. counter turn, and then there's a pair sit spin. he can feel the pressure in his chest, but he goes forward into the spin anyway, trying to ignore how fast he's breathing. ]
[ this is perhaps the time where nill wishes that she could speak. she's seen pairs practice on the ice, working their way through their programs in tandem. she's seen and heard the way they communicate to each other-- left foot there, make the spin tighter, catch me if i lean back on this edge, lean back on your ina bauer like this. now, with the music playing in the background, she's struggling to keep up, and she doesn't know how to tell heine this as he barrels ahead, something rushed about his movements that she can't decipher and which alarms her. still, she can only grit her teeth and press on, and that's exactly what she does. she's a little late getting into the pair spin, but at least she catches up to it, and it's with a relieved sigh that she breaks out of it in time to the music.
okay, next they'll need to pick up speed, and fall into a parallel spread-eagle. she's watched people on ice glide it out. she's watched videos on how to get into it. but what she isn't prepared for is the thought of having to hold heine-- or letting heine hold her for it to happen. they don't have to actually do it-- this is just practice, they're just cementing their steps, but a normal partner would say this aloud, and nill can't.
gliding on an edge, she makes a small flustered gesture with her arms, so preoccupied with her nerves that she nearly barrels into heine with a silent shriek. ]
[ usually, it's easier for him to move with purpose when he's skating. but now that he's thinking about her (and by extension, fucking einsturzen), he can't seem to think straight.
so he keeps skating, trying to latch onto something tangible, like his skates and the ice, and thus only barely manages to avoid a head-on collision.
ice shavings spray to the sides of his skates as he executes an unplanned stop. doing so costs him all of his momentum. he stands awkwardly on the ice, catching his breath, as the gentle music carries on senselessly in the background. he looks at nill, not sure what he's hoping to see. ]
[ what heine ends up seeing, probably, is a small bundle of wretched guilt. nill's shoulders slump as she also skids to a stop, her guilty expression completely incongruous with the melody in the background.
she messed up, again.
there's almost a part of her that just wants the ice to open and swallow her up already. even after she'd been the one to ask heine to mime through it once, she hadn't been mentally prepared for any of it at all. maybe she's not ready to skate with a partner. maybe skating with heine would just end with her holding him back after all. crushing guilt is the name of the emotion she feels right now, and suddenly, it's so hard to look up and meet heine in the eyes.
so she doesn't. she stares at her skates for a long, long time. ]
[ for a second, he sees a flicker of her again, but it passes. it's someone else standing there on the rink with him. nill, he presses into his own mind. that's her name.
after a long pause, heine finally skates toward her, cutting the distance between them in half but still leaving a good gap. buffer. ]
Sorry about that. [ heine winces at the sound of his own voice. ] I... I'll go and—restart the song.
[ these aren't the right words to make her feel better, something she obviously needs. heine has no idea what the right thing to say is, and he doesn't want to risk anymore. ]
[ that just makes her feel more wretched, honestly-- the fact that heine is apologizing for some reason, when it's her fault to begin with. but heine's words snap her out of her guilt-induced silence. shaking her head vehemently for a moment, she quiets down in an attempt to finally lift her eyes and look at heine in the face.
after a moment of silence, she digs out her notepad again, letting the usual motions calm her down a little. her pen hovers over the page for a moment. the words come out slowly, but at least they're coming, slow and shame-faced. ]
I'm sorry. I wasn't ready.
Can we try without the music?
[ it's the only thing she can think of to try and make this a little better, to try and show that she's really sorry and that she'll try harder. her pen pauses for a moment, and she scribbles, again: ]
[ heine stops halfway through his turn, seeing nill reach for her notepad. ]
No, it's okay. [ he looks like he wants to bolt, but he stays standing where he is. barely. a good part of his mind is still devoted to swimming through the morass of childhood memories. ]
Yeah.
[ heine clenches his hands in the hem of his shirt for a second, just briefly enough that it could be passed off as just drying clammy hands before he repeats, ] It's okay. I'll go and turn it off.
[ before nill can say anything else, he makes a sharp turn and goes to exit the rink. ]
[ -- leaving nill to stand on the ice, her heart sinking. did she really mess up so badly that he needs to get away from her? though something about his gestures had seemed jumpy, far more than just from anger, and it's something that she can't quite place. no matter what the reason, however, it leaves her forlorn.
by the time heine turns the music off, nill has pushed off to skate despondently to the place in the rink where they should start their routine. delicately, she pushes off , her arms in place and her footwork precise. she's slow and methodical, but she wants to refresh the beginning for herself, so that when heine comes back, she can.. not mess up as badly.
in the renewed silence of the rink, however, the air almost feels oppressive. she skates a few more of the choreographed moves before stopping short, letting herself glide on the ice with a heavy breath.
[ it takes longer than it should for him to figure out how to stop the strains of that song, partially due to his unfamiliarity with nill's mp3 player and partially due to the fact that there's a fine tremble to his hands. he grits his teeth and finishes what he's doing a little too violently, and has to take a deep breath before setting the music player back down.
he looks over the rink. nill's skating again, but she looks different. (of course she looks different, he reminds himself. they're different people.)
heine steps back onto the ice just as nill stops going through the choreography and skates over, not following her as she glides but waiting for her to be in hearing distance. ]
Let's go again.
[ what is he supposed to say when he can't even make himself skate properly? he knows they should probably talk through it, but that just seems kind of... insensitive, if she can't speak. he settles for mumbling, ] We can go over it after.
[ it's with a shy nod of her head that she agrees to heine's proposal. she, too, thinks that most people would talk it out, but-- she can't. and therein lies another thing that causes a barrier between her and her new partner, another thing for which the onus belongs to her.
still, and once again, she purses her lips, she's never been in the habit of giving up, if only because if she gave up, nobody else would care. she's always had to motivate herself. that's just the way it is. breathing in, she casts heine an uncertain look, before moving into their starting positions again.
maybe... it'd be help if they were slower, just miming it through. her paper pad still out, she writes: ]
[ heine is just about to skate away when nill writes something else on her notepad. ]
If you think slower would help... [ he's willing to try it. heine pauses for a moment before relaxing his posture slightly. heine knows that he's being too tense, if only by the ache in his jaw; he's clenching his teeth too hard.
this is his fault. he needs to get his shit together, fuck. heine nods briefly before going to his starting point. just before he turns, though, he remembers to ask, ] Would it help if I—talked through it?
[ if he looks like he's uncomfortable, he is. heine's abilities to accommodate other people's needs are very, very low. ]
[ that is okay, because nill's only ability is to accommodate people. heine's offer surprises her -- she hadn't expected, nor wanted, for anyone to have to talk more in order to compensate for her own silence. while she's also certain that that hadn't been heine's intention at all, she's still very grateful by the offer, nodding her head quickly to show that yes, she would like that very much.
it would definitely help. there's hope clasped in her chest-- she's sure it will.
getting into her starting position now, she looks over at heine expectantly. and then, she pushes off slowly, trying to get the slower rhythm just right. ]
[ heine nods back, if a little awkwardly, and finds his own starting position a few feet away from nill. now, with the rhythm cut in half, it's much easier to recall the still unfamiliar pattern of movements.
as they skate, heine calls out the choreographed movements loud enough for them both to hear. it's awkward, but if it has to be done, then so be it. fortunately, most of the choreography goes smoothly until they get to the lift again.
heine slows down even more as they draw closer to one another. they both know what's coming next—probably—and he can't get the words out anyway. ]
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no subject
with her paper pad still in hand, she tidily turns on the ice and skates towards the edge of the rink, where a bench to the side marks the mid-point line. toeing carefully on the spongy floor around the rhink (it's bad form, it's not good for your skates, but she's too lazy to go her skate guards on the other side of the rink, and anyway, she's only going on dry land for a few seconds so it can't be that bad), she picks her way to where a compact pink music player sits on the bench.
a few click of the buttons, and the first strains of music fills the rink. she makes sure it's the right song, adjusts the volume, and then presses the rewind button. looking back at heine, she flashes him a thumbs-up.
music is good to go, whenever ready! ]
no subject
he'd looked up the song after being told about it, so it's at least familiar. he returns the thumbs-up with another brief nod and a semi-attempted thumbs-up before going to find his starting position relative to the rest of the rink. ]
Ready. [ said just loud enough to be heard over the ambient noise. he puts one foot behind the other and sets his toepick into the ice, forcing his tension out through his body and into the ground. he can breathe easier in the rink, where the air is cold and sharp, and he can make himself move. ]
no subject
still, she counts three beats, before pressing the play button. the song begins to play the intro, strains of music filling the cold, anticipatory silence of the rink. the introduction is where she and heine are supposed to push off together, she knows, skating in tandem like mirrors completing a circle, and then into a synchronized dance-step as they pick up speed. toeing her way to the edge of the rink and onto the ice, her eyes are fixed on heine as she mentally counts the beats and nervously goes through the steps in her head. a dance-step there, a glide there-- she pushes off onto the ice with her toepick, and then with the edges of her blades in a few quick strokes so that she can catch up with him.
by the time she's there, ten beats of music have already passed, and she's already out of sync. nervously, she skips into a half-circle a beat too late, carefully watching heine's movements in an attempt to catch up. is the spin next? or maybe it was the shoot the duck-- ]
no subject
he finds this part to be one of the most difficult. linking things together requires a better understanding of the big picture than he can usually manage.
but it's easy to begin, at least, with a pushing off, dance-step, crossover—he pushes the moves together and doesn't look across the rink until they're seconds off from when they should meet.
almost as soon as he looks at her, he feels his pulse start to pound. fuck. fuck, fuck, fuck. he thought he was over this. heine swallows hard, shaking himself out of old thoughts, and forces himself to keep moving. counter turn, and then there's a pair sit spin. he can feel the pressure in his chest, but he goes forward into the spin anyway, trying to ignore how fast he's breathing. ]
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okay, next they'll need to pick up speed, and fall into a parallel spread-eagle. she's watched people on ice glide it out. she's watched videos on how to get into it. but what she isn't prepared for is the thought of having to hold heine-- or letting heine hold her for it to happen. they don't have to actually do it-- this is just practice, they're just cementing their steps, but a normal partner would say this aloud, and nill can't.
gliding on an edge, she makes a small flustered gesture with her arms, so preoccupied with her nerves that she nearly barrels into heine with a silent shriek. ]
no subject
so he keeps skating, trying to latch onto something tangible, like his skates and the ice, and thus only barely manages to avoid a head-on collision.
ice shavings spray to the sides of his skates as he executes an unplanned stop. doing so costs him all of his momentum. he stands awkwardly on the ice, catching his breath, as the gentle music carries on senselessly in the background. he looks at nill, not sure what he's hoping to see. ]
no subject
she messed up, again.
there's almost a part of her that just wants the ice to open and swallow her up already. even after she'd been the one to ask heine to mime through it once, she hadn't been mentally prepared for any of it at all. maybe she's not ready to skate with a partner. maybe skating with heine would just end with her holding him back after all. crushing guilt is the name of the emotion she feels right now, and suddenly, it's so hard to look up and meet heine in the eyes.
so she doesn't. she stares at her skates for a long, long time. ]
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after a long pause, heine finally skates toward her, cutting the distance between them in half but still leaving a good gap. buffer. ]
Sorry about that. [ heine winces at the sound of his own voice. ] I... I'll go and—restart the song.
[ these aren't the right words to make her feel better, something she obviously needs. heine has no idea what the right thing to say is, and he doesn't want to risk anymore. ]
no subject
after a moment of silence, she digs out her notepad again, letting the usual motions calm her down a little. her pen hovers over the page for a moment. the words come out slowly, but at least they're coming, slow and shame-faced. ]
I'm sorry. I wasn't ready.
Can we try without the music?
[ it's the only thing she can think of to try and make this a little better, to try and show that she's really sorry and that she'll try harder. her pen pauses for a moment, and she scribbles, again: ]
I'm really sorry.
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No, it's okay. [ he looks like he wants to bolt, but he stays standing where he is. barely. a good part of his mind is still devoted to swimming through the morass of childhood memories. ]
Yeah.
[ heine clenches his hands in the hem of his shirt for a second, just briefly enough that it could be passed off as just drying clammy hands before he repeats, ] It's okay. I'll go and turn it off.
[ before nill can say anything else, he makes a sharp turn and goes to exit the rink. ]
no subject
by the time heine turns the music off, nill has pushed off to skate despondently to the place in the rink where they should start their routine. delicately, she pushes off , her arms in place and her footwork precise. she's slow and methodical, but she wants to refresh the beginning for herself, so that when heine comes back, she can.. not mess up as badly.
in the renewed silence of the rink, however, the air almost feels oppressive. she skates a few more of the choreographed moves before stopping short, letting herself glide on the ice with a heavy breath.
she wasn't doing so well, was she. ]
no subject
he looks over the rink. nill's skating again, but she looks different. (of course she looks different, he reminds himself. they're different people.)
heine steps back onto the ice just as nill stops going through the choreography and skates over, not following her as she glides but waiting for her to be in hearing distance. ]
Let's go again.
[ what is he supposed to say when he can't even make himself skate properly? he knows they should probably talk through it, but that just seems kind of... insensitive, if she can't speak. he settles for mumbling, ] We can go over it after.
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still, and once again, she purses her lips, she's never been in the habit of giving up, if only because if she gave up, nobody else would care. she's always had to motivate herself. that's just the way it is. breathing in, she casts heine an uncertain look, before moving into their starting positions again.
maybe... it'd be help if they were slower, just miming it through. her paper pad still out, she writes: ]
Twice as slow?
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If you think slower would help... [ he's willing to try it. heine pauses for a moment before relaxing his posture slightly. heine knows that he's being too tense, if only by the ache in his jaw; he's clenching his teeth too hard.
this is his fault. he needs to get his shit together, fuck. heine nods briefly before going to his starting point. just before he turns, though, he remembers to ask, ] Would it help if I—talked through it?
[ if he looks like he's uncomfortable, he is. heine's abilities to accommodate other people's needs are very, very low. ]
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it would definitely help. there's hope clasped in her chest-- she's sure it will.
getting into her starting position now, she looks over at heine expectantly. and then, she pushes off slowly, trying to get the slower rhythm just right. ]
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as they skate, heine calls out the choreographed movements loud enough for them both to hear. it's awkward, but if it has to be done, then so be it. fortunately, most of the choreography goes smoothly until they get to the lift again.
heine slows down even more as they draw closer to one another. they both know what's coming next—probably—and he can't get the words out anyway. ]