Not!fic: Twinkle Toes and Sparkle Hearts
Title: Twinkle Toes and Sparkle Hearts
Pairing: Mike/Kevin
Rating: PG
Length: 5,000 words
Notes: This started out as a chatfic story I was telling verbosewrdsmith in which Mike Carden was going to marry into the Jonas family ice dancers and end up wearing matching sparkle costumes in their skate routines. This isn't exactly that story, but hopefully it's still entertaining.
Thanks to verbosewrdsmith for looking this over before I posted and reassuring me it wasn't completely unintelligible.
Summary: Figure skating can happen to the best of people.
Mike Carden is just a normal guy, OK?
So maybe some of his friends are a bit weird, like Bill who he's still not convinced he should be calling a friend, but what else do you call it when your primary school rival moves in next door and suddenly your parents are making you do everything together until it just doesn't occur to you that you wouldn't ask him along to do whatever?
(Mike thinks it might be something that also happens in kidnapping cases but his mom won't let him watch those late night cop shows anymore since she got a call from his 7th grade teacher about how he was "creeping out the other kids". So whatever, some kid went home crying when he whispered "It's coming to get you" over the PA system, it was Hallowe'en for chrissake, kids are supposed to want to be scared.)
So they're friends or whatever, which means that Mike drags Bill along to all kinds of awesome things like when his friend's friend's band took over this skateboard park one night for a jam session, and then one day Bill shows up at Mike's door and smiles innocently - hah! - and guilelessly - double ha! - at Mike's mother while talking earnestly about how important he feels it is to support girls' athleticism and be a mentor to the younger students at their school.
Which, if it were anyone other than Bill saying it, would sound like a creepy 9th grader talking about going to ogle tweenagers at the ice rink, but somehow sounds genuinely noble and unselfish coming from Bill (and damn him but Bill probably is just interested in making the day of that bright-eyed girl, Denise or something, who'd said she just loved William's poetry and was his biggest fan and somehow this really does translate to Bill wanting to support her goal to be the first poetry fan to win the Olympics or whatever).
Mike isn't sure whether he's hoping or dreading that there'll be some kids their own age there. Hoping, because spending his weekend hanging out with 12 year old girls is so not on the agenda for, oh, ever, but dreading it as well because if there is anyone from his school there he's going to have to face up to the distinct possibility of some major mocking on Monday morning.
These sorts of social nuances don't seem to occur to Bill, who wears girl jeans to school and thinks it's "totally cool" that their friend Jason's younger brother wants to tag along and hang out all the time.
So when they first get to the rink Mike gets busy fast with looking at the bulletin board to see if there's fliers for anything cool, like hockey, and hunkering down into his coat when they get to the benches around the edge of the rink and trying to look hard like he's here for reasons totally unconnected to the girls in bright pink sparkly leotard things who are milling around outside the change rooms.
Which is hard when Bill, like, leaps up and waves at Denise - Bill rolls his eyes, "It's Demi, it's not like you haven't met her a dozen times at school you know" - until oh god kill him now, the whole gaggle of tweenagers are heading their way.
Mike figures if worst comes to worst he'll be hidden from view by the sheer volume of pink surrounding him.
After he's endured about ten minutes of girls gushing over Bill and how great he is for coming out to support Den-oh fine, Demi-in her rehearsal... thing and giving Mike weird sideways looks while he tries to sink deeper and deeper into his coat and only succeeds in nearly falling off the bench, suddenly there's a giant rush of cool air as the girls move off for their - skating thing - and leave Bill and Mike on their own.
Bill's still gushing something or other about how great something is - Mike's worked hard at the ability to tune him out over the years for the sake of his own survival, so it could be how fantastic girls' skate clubs are, or pink sparkly things, or maybe just whatever William ate for lunch, seriously - and then the previous group from the ice is heading their way and Mike has to stifle a snort into his arm when he realizes its a trio of teenaged boys who are wearing - no shit - sparklier costumes than the girls.
Maybe he doesn't stifle his snort well enough (well, multiple snorts if he's being honest, and it's not like he tried very hard), because he spots the smallest one giving him a bit of a death glare - then again, who knows? the kid could just be pissed off because he's wearing turquoise pants and some kind of flouncy shirt that looks like it held up a Swarovski crystal store on its way to the ice rink.
(Mike makes a mental note to kill William over the fact that Mike even knows what a Swarovski crystal is.)
Still, Mike makes a more serious effort to look like he's watching the skaters and being earnest and supportive like Bill. Which has the side-effect of making him actually watch the girls doing their loop-de-whatever-the-hells and introduces a new train of thought of how the one girl on the end is actually managing to fall down while skating in a straight line.
Not that Mike's done all that much skating, but his parents used to take him to the free skate at the rink; it was more or less one foot in front of the other once you got used to it. A bit like being drunk, even, where the rules of normal walking didn't quite apply - not that he'd thought of the comparison when he was 6, but whatever, it worked - but not, like, trying to walk on the moon or something.
He laughed again as the girl apparently tripped over her own foot and Bill shot him a glare that looked a lot like Mike's mom used with her lectures.
Mike hoped sincerely that the glare meant he wouldn't be asked back for the next practice.
He really should've known better.
Apparently in William-logic Mike had practically disrespected Women Everywhere by laughing when some girl looked stupid and in William-logic this is the kind of thing you tell a guy's mother.
Mike panics under the weight of two stern glares and starts babbling about no, how awesome it was to see the girls working hard and of course he wanted to go back next week and be a nice boy like Bill and support Bill's friend and like maybe he could make brownies for the skate team or something?
He gets out of the brownie thing by nearly setting the whole oven on fire, but his mom still makes him pick up a bag of those mini ones on their way to the rink the next weekend. They buy a second bag so they can have some on the way and Mike swears death to all things William Beckett with the sweet sweet taste of chocolate in his mouth. He wonders if revenge will taste this sweet... or even sweeter.
He's so focussed on pondering the relative merits of strangulation versus decapitation (and okay so maybe he is a little creepy inside his head sometimes, but it's his mother's fault for letting him watch all that TV in the first place) that he doesn't even notice the guy coming towards them until his butt hits the floor and he hears himself saying saying "oof... ow?"
There's an answering grunt from above him but at least the other guy didn't just fall on his ass and oh... oh god, Bill's pet figure skater is headed their way so there's absolutely no time to... Mike is still trying to figure out where his arms go to push himself up when there's a firm grip yanking him to his feet and he's suddenly standing face to face with... a tall, hot guy in a parka who he would not mind impressing. Meanwhile the twelve-year-old girl who just proved she has more upper body strength than Mike asks him if he's okay.
Mike wants to die.
He's pretty sure nameless guy is asking if he's all right and apologizing for knocking him over - even though instant replay in Mike's head informs him that he had just walked into the guy like the distracted idiot that he is - but Mike isn't planning on sticking around to have that conversation, even if it means barrelling straight on through the gaggle of girls heading into the rink like he's just that desperate to watch toe loops. (He did not set out to learn those terms, okay? William is just very persistent when he feels that people aren't respecting the integrity of blah-blah-respectable-sport.)
By the time the chilled air at the rink has helped him cool down, Bill's catching up with him to talk about the "really nice, family has been skating here for years, friend of Demi's" guy who Mike just bumped into and he figures, hey, okay, maybe the guy had been dragged along under protest just like Mike, so he wouldn't think Mike was a total loser the next time they met - not that they were going to meet again or anything just because they both come to watch people skate at the same rink.
If Mike checks the skate schedule a little more closely on their way out than he did when he was just pretending to look at fliers for hockey tryouts, or if he protests a bit less the next time Bill suggests going to the rink, it's not because he's hoping to run into the same guy again and be totally cool and nonchalant this time. That would be totally pathetic. It's just that, knowing Bill, it's easier to pretend to go along with this thing for a while until Bill (and now Mike's mother) is satisfied to let the whole thing drop and when Mike conveniently finds something else he absolutely has to do on his Saturdays so he can't come along, sorry, no one is gonna be suspicious. It's just that after all this time he's learned how to handle Bill.
So he really has no explanation for why, when he bumps into Demi at the convenience store that week he finds himself brightening up and trying his best to smile inoffensively as he says 'hey'. He even admits to remembering her name.
He spends a whole five minutes making small talk with her and asking how, you know, stuff... is going before he's definitely sure that a) she's at the store on her own and b) he has no idea how to subtly guide a conversation around to something that actually interests him and c) his life was a happier one before he knew what qualified as "emotional crisis food" for 8th grade girls.
He spends the next five minutes with his forehead pressed against the door of the freezer, staring at the frozen pizza boxes and cursing his existence.
That weekend, with his best I-don't-give-a-crap ripped jeans on and his head held high, Mike walks straight into the ice rink alongside Bill and straight into one of the matching turquoise-pants kids.
It's like déjà vu twice over, except that this time Mike isn't the one falling on his ass and the universe is clearly smiling on him, because if there's one surefire cure for a stupid crush, it's seeing your stupid crush dressed up in an ice skating pirate costume and falling on his ass.
The universe is a beneficent one, and Mike is a nice guy, really, so he helps the guy up and doesn't smirk too much about it.
He can't help smirking altogether, though, because this time the other guy is looking kind of flustered and Mike has his hip cocked, leaning against the wall and keeps his cool enough to get out, "Bump into people often around here?"
It makes the guy turn a shade of pink that Mike is now immune to finding adorable, seeing as it comes with ivory ruffles on his collar, and mutters something about needing to find his family. Mike watches him bounce off a wall, look back at Mike, and then walk away quickly and Mike takes a moment to glory in the fact that he is wearing tights and Mike is clearly, clearly the cool one around here.
So if the next weekend Mike is ready to leave kind of early for the skating rink, and gets antsy just sitting around waiting for Bill to come over, and finally gives up and goes over to Bill's house to drag him out before Bill's finished putting, whatever, the perfect wave in his hair or something, and has all kinds of pent up energy from waiting around so he walks quickly enough that Bill's actually getting his money's worth out of that ridiculously long stride of his and they end up at the rink half an hour early for Demi's class...
Well let's just say that the matching turquoise pirates are as entertaining as Mike had hoped.
Mike's careful not to snort really loudly this time (no really) and he keeps all his commentary internal about things like, "how much someone might hate a family who makes him do around-the-world jazz hands to ABBA" or "whether doing the Charleston on ice with your brothers should be grounds for child abuse proceedings".
He manages to keep a straight face all through watching the kids perform, complete with their baby brother (he guesses) yelling things like, "don't you know how to SPARKLE?" at them from the sidelines, but he's close to losing it by the time the parents skate out to join them and start demonstrating how Kevin (the guy's name is Kevin, Mike figured this out some time ago) should be twirling, no, not spinning, twirling little Nicky the other way in their short pas-de-deux halfway through the routine. He bites down hard on his lower lip and manages to grunt out something about looking for the bathroom before he escapes Bill (whose attention is so riveted to the performance Mike would put good money on the fact that he's currently internally composing Lines on a Dancer of Ice) and loses it, completely, in front of the mens' room mirrors.
The thing that finally sobers him up, after his laughter has died down to chuckles, is that he realizes he's been watching the guys skating for so long that he's got some kind of retina after-burn or whatever on his eyeballs. He just keeps seeing the same spinning jump, over and over again - the one Kevin kept over-rotating while Nick and Joe did their weird waltz-thing in the background.
It plays in his head, over and over again, the image of Kevin taking off, the way his leg bends into the jump, the way he stumbles a little coming out of it... and it occurs to Mike that there is the slightest, really the tiniest possibility that he is just totally fucked here.
It's the absolute worst moment for someone to walk in on him, so of course that's when someone does, and better yet it has to be Mr. Turquoise Twinkle-Toes himself.
Mike gets about one moment of horror in before Kevin spots him, then blushes, and then it's back to full-on horror because, yeah, it turns out that Mike does find that blush adorable even when it's surrounded by ruffles and he's just watched the guy listen seriously to a lecture about "sparkle hands." Mike is so, so fucked.
Fortunately Mike's automatic reaction to discomfort is what William is fond of describing as his "eating your cat has given me a stomach ulcer" glare, so he's pretty sure Kevin won't be catching on to the fact that Mike has just gone utterly tongue-tied.
Sure enough, Kevin takes a step or two back at the sight of Mike's face (it's not like it's that bad, jesus, people overreact sometimes) and just kind of makes apologetic shuffling noises in the direction of a bathroom stall. Mike makes sure to bang the door extra loudly on his way out.
His good mood is pretty much evaporated by then. Thankfully the Swiss Family Robinson has taken off by the time he gets back, but he glares at Demi's class for good measure, getting twitchy just sitting there and watching everyone else move around.
It seems to take forever to leave the rink - does Bill have to talk more than the teenage girls? and how the hell do they want to listen to him, when it should be clear to them that only a total loser would be willingly spending his free time here on a Saturday watching figure skating class - and by the time they're out into the fresh air Mike can't help bursting out with: "you'd think with all the time you spend here you could at least put on a pair of skates or something."
William looks startled, and then slips into a pensive mood, so Mike hopes he's considering the sheer stupidity of pandering to some twirly skater girl's poetry hero complex or whatever.
Mike should really, really know better by now.
Mike doesn't think anything of it when William shows up at his house on a Wednesday afternoon - sure he'd seen the guy half an hour ago coming back from school, but there's what you might call a tragic inevitably to the frequency with which Mike and Bill seem to end up hanging out (the fact that Mike sometimes finds phrases like "tragic inevitability" wandering through his brain is proof enough of that) - but he is surprised when Bill holds out what looks like a shoe box, beaming at Mike.
Mike takes the box like it might turn out to be a live bomb and does his best to avoid opening the lid. Bill's expectant look is just too painful to hold out against for long, though, and he finds himself slowly lifting the lid until he finds himself looking at...
"These are girl skates, Bill."
Bill just beams at him some more.
"Why am I holding a pair of girl skates?"
"Oh Mike. Mike, Mike, Mike. Michael. Those are figure skates. We. Are going to take a class."
Mike's eyes drift suspiciously to the bag on William's shoulder and he thinks somewhat dolefully that he should've known there was something wrong with seeing Bill and a sports bag.
Bill doesn't do sports. Bill cheers other people on when they do sports. Bill has an exemption in gym class from everything for doing pep squad and also because from the way he flailed when they were doing volleyball first semester the gym teacher was afraid that someone (possibly Bill) was going to lose a limb.
Therefore it comes as no surprise whatsoever when Mike finds himself, ten minutes into their beginners figure skating lesson, the only one on a rink filled with eight-year-old girls while Bill sits down "just for a minute to catch his breath".
Mike needs to find some new friends, because he's going to need someone to help him bury the body, and Bill has already charmed everyone else that Mike knows right now.
***
William Beckett is a traitor. An evil, soulless, heartless traitor who clearly never considered his friendship with Mike to be anything other than a temporary ceasefire that he could use to undermine Mike's position from within his defences. The mistake Mike made was to forget that beneath his earnest, smiling exterior, Bill's one true purpose in life is to destroy Mike Carden and everything he cares for.
Or something. That's the only explanation Mike can come up with for why he is spending his Wednesday afternoons surrounded by eight-year-old girls in pink and purple frills all of whom - all of whom - can not only skate circles around Bill and Mike but feel no compunction about laughing at them for it.
There's really only one thing to conclude from this: William Beckett must die.
Mike isn't terribly particular about whether his death comes before or after the hoard of giggling girls is sucked back to their origins in the nether regions of hell.
Mike picks himself off his ass again - and it's probably gonna be looking pretty in purple tomorrow - while some kid named Vanessa giggles and helpfully demonstrates the "really easy" twirl that Mike can't seem to get the hang of.
Next up is some girl named Tiffany who adds an extra little hop onto the end. Mike is pretty sure she does it just to mock him.
William Beckett, because he is the spawn of Satan - or possibly Satan himself, or possibly someone worse than Satan who Satan came along and ripped off all his best ideas from - is sitting on the benches off to the side, beaming at Mike's tiny torturers, saying things like, "That was really great, Tiffany, Mike, wasn't that a really nice twirl?"
Bill did two laps with the kids at the start of the skate class, chatted pleasantly to the teacher, smiled sickeningly at everyone, and then claimed he was experiencing some kind of inner ear imbalance the minute they started spinning around. He was off the ice while Mike was still trying to work out if eating that burrito before the class had been a horrible, horrible mistake.
That's when he looks up and spots Kevin, and his stomach lurches, and he decides that yes, yes it was. Everything about this day has been the biggest mistake ever and if he had a time machine he would go back to this morning and smother himself with his own pillow just to stop himself getting out of bed this morning.
Alternately, he could go back to kindergarten and kill William Beckett before he had a chance to turn Mike's life into a living hell.
Kevin - who is on his own instead of with the Sparkle family this time - gives Mike a cheerful little wave from the benches. Mike tries to make himself smile, and wave, and go on skating all at the same time, which in retrospect is just too many things to do at once, which is probably why he ends up flat on his face on the ice with a sore lip and tiny girls laughing at him.
"Girls, girls, this is not a matter for amusement!" the skating instructor says sternly while she supports Mike off the ice. She's about four feet tall, which makes Mike feel like a clumsy giant leaning on her. "The loss of concentration on the ice can be very dangerous, as I am telling you."
They're only partway to the edge of the rink when Kevin skates out, graceful and at ease on the ice and takes Mike's weight over from the instructor to guide him to less slippery ground. Mike leans against him heavily and thinks what a pity it is that the only times he seems to end up touching the guy are when one of them has fallen down - usually him.
"Did you, uh, are you following me or something?" Mike asks when they get back to the benches, and, shit, he didn't mean to make it sound like he was accusing the guy of stalking him. If anything, Mike is probably the one guilty of mild stalking here; Kevin clearly spends a lot of time at the rink anyway, while Mike should have wriggled his way out of the whole skating thing long ago if he had any sense of dignity left.
"What? No!" Kevin exclaims. "I mean, I did know that your friend told Demi that you were taking this class, and Demi told me, but I didn't, like, come here to watch you or anything. I just needed the solo practice on my spins." He's blushing bright red as he says it, though, so at least Mike doesn't feel like the only dork in this conversation.
"No, yeah, right," Mike mutters, scratching at the back of his neck as he tries to figure out what to say. "But like, maybe we could, uh, hang out somewhere that isn't the rink - if you want - you know, sometime. Maybe then nobody would have to get hurt."
Mike can practically hear Bill's voice in his head saying, "the reason no one will go out with you is you make everything sound like a threat," but luckily for him Kevin doesn't seem to have noticed the awkward wording, and is nodding kind of pathetically eagerly. Mike would totally mock him for the wide eyes and the stupid grin, but his heart's pounding really fast right now and his palms are kind of gross and sweaty, so he doesn't think he's in much of a position to judge. Damn.
"You, uh, wanna... food?" Mike asks and his voice absolutely does not crack at all.
There's a burger joint just down the street from the rink and Mike discovers that, apparently, he is on a date with a guy who is allowed exactly one fast food meal a month because "greasy food makes for grumbly guts". Mike lets Kevin steal some of his fries, since it's the poor guy's one chance for a month and he's using it to go out with Mike. Kevin smiles at him dopily the whole time and Mike tells himself this is sickening, but can't really bring himself to care.
***
Mike is more or less prepared for some weirdness the next time he goes to Demi's skate practice with Bill. He doesn't know if Kevin is out to his family, and even if he is, there's gotta be something fucked up about parents who make their kids wear sequins and do ice dancing, so he's not gonna be shocked if they don't approve of Mike or whatever. The thing he isn't expecting is for the littlest sparkle dancer to storm up to him the minute Mike and Bill arrive at the rink.
"Mike Carden?" the kid says. It's probably meant to be menacing, but the kid is, what, twelve? Sure, he's probably stronger than he looks, what with the skating and all but, seriously, is Mike supposed to be frightened? "You're the guy Kevin told us about, right?"
Mike just sort of shrugs. It seems kind of early to start meeting the family, but whatever, so the ice dancing family has weird cultural customs. "Yeah, so?" he says.
The kid narrows his eyes into a fierce glare. "If you do anything to hurt him, and I mean anything, I will hunt you down and strangle you with your own laces."
Mike does his best to restrain the snicker, honestly, he does. It slips out anyway. The glare ratchets up another notch.
"I have a toe pick," the kid says, "and I know how to use it."
Through a monumental exercise of will-power, Mike manages to keep his face blank while he nods, and then says, "excuse me," in a strangled voice. He just makes out to the lobby before he starts laughing helplessly.
"Hey, Mike!" a voice chirps at him, and his laughter dies instantly because he's too busy staring at Kevin, who is now wearing a red and white clown costume and oversized yellow skates.
"Oh my god," he says in horror. They didn't even have to put a clown wig on him, just hairspray his natural curls to stick straight out from his head. Mike is officially dating a figure-skating clown of doom.
"Are you okay?" Kevin asks in deep and sincere concern. "Did Nick scare you? I told him he didn't need to be overprotective, I can totally look after myself."
"Yeah, no, I'm not scared of your kid brother." Mike thinks he does a good job of keeping down his level of sarcasm at that.
Kevin beams at him. "I knew you were brave! Not everyone can deal with... the incident." He says in a significant whisper, like this is supposed to mean something to Mike.
"Uh, incident?" Mike asks. He's not nervous or anything, that was not an impressive whisper and he refuses to be scared of anyone's baby brother.
"You know, the little boy in Nick's skate class who was better than him and disappeared mysteriously the day before their pre-preliminary level show. His body was neeeeeever found," Kevin says with exaggeratedly wide eyes.
"You're fucking with me, right?" asks Mike, who refuses to believe that the twinkle family is actually harbouring a preteen psychopath in their midst.
"...maybe," says Kevin, "but can you be sure? Can anyone ever truly know what happened to... Timmy Twinkle?"
Mike bursts out laughing all over again. "Dude. Dude. You are such a freak. You actually had me going there for a second, good one."
Kevin smiles shyly at that and Mike's stomach flutters and what the fuck is his life that he finds crappy figure skating ghost stories charming now?
"Don't you need to go, like, do some pirouettes with your family now?" Mike asks, because he has not for a second forgotten that he is talking to a guy in a clown skating costume. "You know, before your brother decides I've done something horrible to you and comes seeking vengeance?"
Kevin nods solemnly and Mike speculates about whether he does something to make his eyes look that wide and innocent all the time, like, some kind of drugs maybe.
"That would be for the best, Michael," says Kevin, which is the first time in years anyone's called Mike by his full name without giving him an urge to be violent towards them.
"I'll come early next week and watch you," Mike says and thinks, "yep, I'm gonna spend my Saturday mornings watching my boyfriend figure skating with his family and, what's more, I'm looking forward to it." Mike's life is just filled with all kinds of weird fucking surprises, isn't it?
It could be worse, though. He could be the one wearing the clown costume.
Pairing: Mike/Kevin
Rating: PG
Length: 5,000 words
Notes: This started out as a chatfic story I was telling verbosewrdsmith in which Mike Carden was going to marry into the Jonas family ice dancers and end up wearing matching sparkle costumes in their skate routines. This isn't exactly that story, but hopefully it's still entertaining.
Thanks to verbosewrdsmith for looking this over before I posted and reassuring me it wasn't completely unintelligible.
Summary: Figure skating can happen to the best of people.
Mike Carden is just a normal guy, OK?
So maybe some of his friends are a bit weird, like Bill who he's still not convinced he should be calling a friend, but what else do you call it when your primary school rival moves in next door and suddenly your parents are making you do everything together until it just doesn't occur to you that you wouldn't ask him along to do whatever?
(Mike thinks it might be something that also happens in kidnapping cases but his mom won't let him watch those late night cop shows anymore since she got a call from his 7th grade teacher about how he was "creeping out the other kids". So whatever, some kid went home crying when he whispered "It's coming to get you" over the PA system, it was Hallowe'en for chrissake, kids are supposed to want to be scared.)
So they're friends or whatever, which means that Mike drags Bill along to all kinds of awesome things like when his friend's friend's band took over this skateboard park one night for a jam session, and then one day Bill shows up at Mike's door and smiles innocently - hah! - and guilelessly - double ha! - at Mike's mother while talking earnestly about how important he feels it is to support girls' athleticism and be a mentor to the younger students at their school.
Which, if it were anyone other than Bill saying it, would sound like a creepy 9th grader talking about going to ogle tweenagers at the ice rink, but somehow sounds genuinely noble and unselfish coming from Bill (and damn him but Bill probably is just interested in making the day of that bright-eyed girl, Denise or something, who'd said she just loved William's poetry and was his biggest fan and somehow this really does translate to Bill wanting to support her goal to be the first poetry fan to win the Olympics or whatever).
Mike isn't sure whether he's hoping or dreading that there'll be some kids their own age there. Hoping, because spending his weekend hanging out with 12 year old girls is so not on the agenda for, oh, ever, but dreading it as well because if there is anyone from his school there he's going to have to face up to the distinct possibility of some major mocking on Monday morning.
These sorts of social nuances don't seem to occur to Bill, who wears girl jeans to school and thinks it's "totally cool" that their friend Jason's younger brother wants to tag along and hang out all the time.
So when they first get to the rink Mike gets busy fast with looking at the bulletin board to see if there's fliers for anything cool, like hockey, and hunkering down into his coat when they get to the benches around the edge of the rink and trying to look hard like he's here for reasons totally unconnected to the girls in bright pink sparkly leotard things who are milling around outside the change rooms.
Which is hard when Bill, like, leaps up and waves at Denise - Bill rolls his eyes, "It's Demi, it's not like you haven't met her a dozen times at school you know" - until oh god kill him now, the whole gaggle of tweenagers are heading their way.
Mike figures if worst comes to worst he'll be hidden from view by the sheer volume of pink surrounding him.
After he's endured about ten minutes of girls gushing over Bill and how great he is for coming out to support Den-oh fine, Demi-in her rehearsal... thing and giving Mike weird sideways looks while he tries to sink deeper and deeper into his coat and only succeeds in nearly falling off the bench, suddenly there's a giant rush of cool air as the girls move off for their - skating thing - and leave Bill and Mike on their own.
Bill's still gushing something or other about how great something is - Mike's worked hard at the ability to tune him out over the years for the sake of his own survival, so it could be how fantastic girls' skate clubs are, or pink sparkly things, or maybe just whatever William ate for lunch, seriously - and then the previous group from the ice is heading their way and Mike has to stifle a snort into his arm when he realizes its a trio of teenaged boys who are wearing - no shit - sparklier costumes than the girls.
Maybe he doesn't stifle his snort well enough (well, multiple snorts if he's being honest, and it's not like he tried very hard), because he spots the smallest one giving him a bit of a death glare - then again, who knows? the kid could just be pissed off because he's wearing turquoise pants and some kind of flouncy shirt that looks like it held up a Swarovski crystal store on its way to the ice rink.
(Mike makes a mental note to kill William over the fact that Mike even knows what a Swarovski crystal is.)
Still, Mike makes a more serious effort to look like he's watching the skaters and being earnest and supportive like Bill. Which has the side-effect of making him actually watch the girls doing their loop-de-whatever-the-hells and introduces a new train of thought of how the one girl on the end is actually managing to fall down while skating in a straight line.
Not that Mike's done all that much skating, but his parents used to take him to the free skate at the rink; it was more or less one foot in front of the other once you got used to it. A bit like being drunk, even, where the rules of normal walking didn't quite apply - not that he'd thought of the comparison when he was 6, but whatever, it worked - but not, like, trying to walk on the moon or something.
He laughed again as the girl apparently tripped over her own foot and Bill shot him a glare that looked a lot like Mike's mom used with her lectures.
Mike hoped sincerely that the glare meant he wouldn't be asked back for the next practice.
He really should've known better.
Apparently in William-logic Mike had practically disrespected Women Everywhere by laughing when some girl looked stupid and in William-logic this is the kind of thing you tell a guy's mother.
Mike panics under the weight of two stern glares and starts babbling about no, how awesome it was to see the girls working hard and of course he wanted to go back next week and be a nice boy like Bill and support Bill's friend and like maybe he could make brownies for the skate team or something?
He gets out of the brownie thing by nearly setting the whole oven on fire, but his mom still makes him pick up a bag of those mini ones on their way to the rink the next weekend. They buy a second bag so they can have some on the way and Mike swears death to all things William Beckett with the sweet sweet taste of chocolate in his mouth. He wonders if revenge will taste this sweet... or even sweeter.
He's so focussed on pondering the relative merits of strangulation versus decapitation (and okay so maybe he is a little creepy inside his head sometimes, but it's his mother's fault for letting him watch all that TV in the first place) that he doesn't even notice the guy coming towards them until his butt hits the floor and he hears himself saying saying "oof... ow?"
There's an answering grunt from above him but at least the other guy didn't just fall on his ass and oh... oh god, Bill's pet figure skater is headed their way so there's absolutely no time to... Mike is still trying to figure out where his arms go to push himself up when there's a firm grip yanking him to his feet and he's suddenly standing face to face with... a tall, hot guy in a parka who he would not mind impressing. Meanwhile the twelve-year-old girl who just proved she has more upper body strength than Mike asks him if he's okay.
Mike wants to die.
He's pretty sure nameless guy is asking if he's all right and apologizing for knocking him over - even though instant replay in Mike's head informs him that he had just walked into the guy like the distracted idiot that he is - but Mike isn't planning on sticking around to have that conversation, even if it means barrelling straight on through the gaggle of girls heading into the rink like he's just that desperate to watch toe loops. (He did not set out to learn those terms, okay? William is just very persistent when he feels that people aren't respecting the integrity of blah-blah-respectable-sport.)
By the time the chilled air at the rink has helped him cool down, Bill's catching up with him to talk about the "really nice, family has been skating here for years, friend of Demi's" guy who Mike just bumped into and he figures, hey, okay, maybe the guy had been dragged along under protest just like Mike, so he wouldn't think Mike was a total loser the next time they met - not that they were going to meet again or anything just because they both come to watch people skate at the same rink.
If Mike checks the skate schedule a little more closely on their way out than he did when he was just pretending to look at fliers for hockey tryouts, or if he protests a bit less the next time Bill suggests going to the rink, it's not because he's hoping to run into the same guy again and be totally cool and nonchalant this time. That would be totally pathetic. It's just that, knowing Bill, it's easier to pretend to go along with this thing for a while until Bill (and now Mike's mother) is satisfied to let the whole thing drop and when Mike conveniently finds something else he absolutely has to do on his Saturdays so he can't come along, sorry, no one is gonna be suspicious. It's just that after all this time he's learned how to handle Bill.
So he really has no explanation for why, when he bumps into Demi at the convenience store that week he finds himself brightening up and trying his best to smile inoffensively as he says 'hey'. He even admits to remembering her name.
He spends a whole five minutes making small talk with her and asking how, you know, stuff... is going before he's definitely sure that a) she's at the store on her own and b) he has no idea how to subtly guide a conversation around to something that actually interests him and c) his life was a happier one before he knew what qualified as "emotional crisis food" for 8th grade girls.
He spends the next five minutes with his forehead pressed against the door of the freezer, staring at the frozen pizza boxes and cursing his existence.
That weekend, with his best I-don't-give-a-crap ripped jeans on and his head held high, Mike walks straight into the ice rink alongside Bill and straight into one of the matching turquoise-pants kids.
It's like déjà vu twice over, except that this time Mike isn't the one falling on his ass and the universe is clearly smiling on him, because if there's one surefire cure for a stupid crush, it's seeing your stupid crush dressed up in an ice skating pirate costume and falling on his ass.
The universe is a beneficent one, and Mike is a nice guy, really, so he helps the guy up and doesn't smirk too much about it.
He can't help smirking altogether, though, because this time the other guy is looking kind of flustered and Mike has his hip cocked, leaning against the wall and keeps his cool enough to get out, "Bump into people often around here?"
It makes the guy turn a shade of pink that Mike is now immune to finding adorable, seeing as it comes with ivory ruffles on his collar, and mutters something about needing to find his family. Mike watches him bounce off a wall, look back at Mike, and then walk away quickly and Mike takes a moment to glory in the fact that he is wearing tights and Mike is clearly, clearly the cool one around here.
So if the next weekend Mike is ready to leave kind of early for the skating rink, and gets antsy just sitting around waiting for Bill to come over, and finally gives up and goes over to Bill's house to drag him out before Bill's finished putting, whatever, the perfect wave in his hair or something, and has all kinds of pent up energy from waiting around so he walks quickly enough that Bill's actually getting his money's worth out of that ridiculously long stride of his and they end up at the rink half an hour early for Demi's class...
Well let's just say that the matching turquoise pirates are as entertaining as Mike had hoped.
Mike's careful not to snort really loudly this time (no really) and he keeps all his commentary internal about things like, "how much someone might hate a family who makes him do around-the-world jazz hands to ABBA" or "whether doing the Charleston on ice with your brothers should be grounds for child abuse proceedings".
He manages to keep a straight face all through watching the kids perform, complete with their baby brother (he guesses) yelling things like, "don't you know how to SPARKLE?" at them from the sidelines, but he's close to losing it by the time the parents skate out to join them and start demonstrating how Kevin (the guy's name is Kevin, Mike figured this out some time ago) should be twirling, no, not spinning, twirling little Nicky the other way in their short pas-de-deux halfway through the routine. He bites down hard on his lower lip and manages to grunt out something about looking for the bathroom before he escapes Bill (whose attention is so riveted to the performance Mike would put good money on the fact that he's currently internally composing Lines on a Dancer of Ice) and loses it, completely, in front of the mens' room mirrors.
The thing that finally sobers him up, after his laughter has died down to chuckles, is that he realizes he's been watching the guys skating for so long that he's got some kind of retina after-burn or whatever on his eyeballs. He just keeps seeing the same spinning jump, over and over again - the one Kevin kept over-rotating while Nick and Joe did their weird waltz-thing in the background.
It plays in his head, over and over again, the image of Kevin taking off, the way his leg bends into the jump, the way he stumbles a little coming out of it... and it occurs to Mike that there is the slightest, really the tiniest possibility that he is just totally fucked here.
It's the absolute worst moment for someone to walk in on him, so of course that's when someone does, and better yet it has to be Mr. Turquoise Twinkle-Toes himself.
Mike gets about one moment of horror in before Kevin spots him, then blushes, and then it's back to full-on horror because, yeah, it turns out that Mike does find that blush adorable even when it's surrounded by ruffles and he's just watched the guy listen seriously to a lecture about "sparkle hands." Mike is so, so fucked.
Fortunately Mike's automatic reaction to discomfort is what William is fond of describing as his "eating your cat has given me a stomach ulcer" glare, so he's pretty sure Kevin won't be catching on to the fact that Mike has just gone utterly tongue-tied.
Sure enough, Kevin takes a step or two back at the sight of Mike's face (it's not like it's that bad, jesus, people overreact sometimes) and just kind of makes apologetic shuffling noises in the direction of a bathroom stall. Mike makes sure to bang the door extra loudly on his way out.
His good mood is pretty much evaporated by then. Thankfully the Swiss Family Robinson has taken off by the time he gets back, but he glares at Demi's class for good measure, getting twitchy just sitting there and watching everyone else move around.
It seems to take forever to leave the rink - does Bill have to talk more than the teenage girls? and how the hell do they want to listen to him, when it should be clear to them that only a total loser would be willingly spending his free time here on a Saturday watching figure skating class - and by the time they're out into the fresh air Mike can't help bursting out with: "you'd think with all the time you spend here you could at least put on a pair of skates or something."
William looks startled, and then slips into a pensive mood, so Mike hopes he's considering the sheer stupidity of pandering to some twirly skater girl's poetry hero complex or whatever.
Mike should really, really know better by now.
Mike doesn't think anything of it when William shows up at his house on a Wednesday afternoon - sure he'd seen the guy half an hour ago coming back from school, but there's what you might call a tragic inevitably to the frequency with which Mike and Bill seem to end up hanging out (the fact that Mike sometimes finds phrases like "tragic inevitability" wandering through his brain is proof enough of that) - but he is surprised when Bill holds out what looks like a shoe box, beaming at Mike.
Mike takes the box like it might turn out to be a live bomb and does his best to avoid opening the lid. Bill's expectant look is just too painful to hold out against for long, though, and he finds himself slowly lifting the lid until he finds himself looking at...
"These are girl skates, Bill."
Bill just beams at him some more.
"Why am I holding a pair of girl skates?"
"Oh Mike. Mike, Mike, Mike. Michael. Those are figure skates. We. Are going to take a class."
Mike's eyes drift suspiciously to the bag on William's shoulder and he thinks somewhat dolefully that he should've known there was something wrong with seeing Bill and a sports bag.
Bill doesn't do sports. Bill cheers other people on when they do sports. Bill has an exemption in gym class from everything for doing pep squad and also because from the way he flailed when they were doing volleyball first semester the gym teacher was afraid that someone (possibly Bill) was going to lose a limb.
Therefore it comes as no surprise whatsoever when Mike finds himself, ten minutes into their beginners figure skating lesson, the only one on a rink filled with eight-year-old girls while Bill sits down "just for a minute to catch his breath".
Mike needs to find some new friends, because he's going to need someone to help him bury the body, and Bill has already charmed everyone else that Mike knows right now.
***
William Beckett is a traitor. An evil, soulless, heartless traitor who clearly never considered his friendship with Mike to be anything other than a temporary ceasefire that he could use to undermine Mike's position from within his defences. The mistake Mike made was to forget that beneath his earnest, smiling exterior, Bill's one true purpose in life is to destroy Mike Carden and everything he cares for.
Or something. That's the only explanation Mike can come up with for why he is spending his Wednesday afternoons surrounded by eight-year-old girls in pink and purple frills all of whom - all of whom - can not only skate circles around Bill and Mike but feel no compunction about laughing at them for it.
There's really only one thing to conclude from this: William Beckett must die.
Mike isn't terribly particular about whether his death comes before or after the hoard of giggling girls is sucked back to their origins in the nether regions of hell.
Mike picks himself off his ass again - and it's probably gonna be looking pretty in purple tomorrow - while some kid named Vanessa giggles and helpfully demonstrates the "really easy" twirl that Mike can't seem to get the hang of.
Next up is some girl named Tiffany who adds an extra little hop onto the end. Mike is pretty sure she does it just to mock him.
William Beckett, because he is the spawn of Satan - or possibly Satan himself, or possibly someone worse than Satan who Satan came along and ripped off all his best ideas from - is sitting on the benches off to the side, beaming at Mike's tiny torturers, saying things like, "That was really great, Tiffany, Mike, wasn't that a really nice twirl?"
Bill did two laps with the kids at the start of the skate class, chatted pleasantly to the teacher, smiled sickeningly at everyone, and then claimed he was experiencing some kind of inner ear imbalance the minute they started spinning around. He was off the ice while Mike was still trying to work out if eating that burrito before the class had been a horrible, horrible mistake.
That's when he looks up and spots Kevin, and his stomach lurches, and he decides that yes, yes it was. Everything about this day has been the biggest mistake ever and if he had a time machine he would go back to this morning and smother himself with his own pillow just to stop himself getting out of bed this morning.
Alternately, he could go back to kindergarten and kill William Beckett before he had a chance to turn Mike's life into a living hell.
Kevin - who is on his own instead of with the Sparkle family this time - gives Mike a cheerful little wave from the benches. Mike tries to make himself smile, and wave, and go on skating all at the same time, which in retrospect is just too many things to do at once, which is probably why he ends up flat on his face on the ice with a sore lip and tiny girls laughing at him.
"Girls, girls, this is not a matter for amusement!" the skating instructor says sternly while she supports Mike off the ice. She's about four feet tall, which makes Mike feel like a clumsy giant leaning on her. "The loss of concentration on the ice can be very dangerous, as I am telling you."
They're only partway to the edge of the rink when Kevin skates out, graceful and at ease on the ice and takes Mike's weight over from the instructor to guide him to less slippery ground. Mike leans against him heavily and thinks what a pity it is that the only times he seems to end up touching the guy are when one of them has fallen down - usually him.
"Did you, uh, are you following me or something?" Mike asks when they get back to the benches, and, shit, he didn't mean to make it sound like he was accusing the guy of stalking him. If anything, Mike is probably the one guilty of mild stalking here; Kevin clearly spends a lot of time at the rink anyway, while Mike should have wriggled his way out of the whole skating thing long ago if he had any sense of dignity left.
"What? No!" Kevin exclaims. "I mean, I did know that your friend told Demi that you were taking this class, and Demi told me, but I didn't, like, come here to watch you or anything. I just needed the solo practice on my spins." He's blushing bright red as he says it, though, so at least Mike doesn't feel like the only dork in this conversation.
"No, yeah, right," Mike mutters, scratching at the back of his neck as he tries to figure out what to say. "But like, maybe we could, uh, hang out somewhere that isn't the rink - if you want - you know, sometime. Maybe then nobody would have to get hurt."
Mike can practically hear Bill's voice in his head saying, "the reason no one will go out with you is you make everything sound like a threat," but luckily for him Kevin doesn't seem to have noticed the awkward wording, and is nodding kind of pathetically eagerly. Mike would totally mock him for the wide eyes and the stupid grin, but his heart's pounding really fast right now and his palms are kind of gross and sweaty, so he doesn't think he's in much of a position to judge. Damn.
"You, uh, wanna... food?" Mike asks and his voice absolutely does not crack at all.
There's a burger joint just down the street from the rink and Mike discovers that, apparently, he is on a date with a guy who is allowed exactly one fast food meal a month because "greasy food makes for grumbly guts". Mike lets Kevin steal some of his fries, since it's the poor guy's one chance for a month and he's using it to go out with Mike. Kevin smiles at him dopily the whole time and Mike tells himself this is sickening, but can't really bring himself to care.
***
Mike is more or less prepared for some weirdness the next time he goes to Demi's skate practice with Bill. He doesn't know if Kevin is out to his family, and even if he is, there's gotta be something fucked up about parents who make their kids wear sequins and do ice dancing, so he's not gonna be shocked if they don't approve of Mike or whatever. The thing he isn't expecting is for the littlest sparkle dancer to storm up to him the minute Mike and Bill arrive at the rink.
"Mike Carden?" the kid says. It's probably meant to be menacing, but the kid is, what, twelve? Sure, he's probably stronger than he looks, what with the skating and all but, seriously, is Mike supposed to be frightened? "You're the guy Kevin told us about, right?"
Mike just sort of shrugs. It seems kind of early to start meeting the family, but whatever, so the ice dancing family has weird cultural customs. "Yeah, so?" he says.
The kid narrows his eyes into a fierce glare. "If you do anything to hurt him, and I mean anything, I will hunt you down and strangle you with your own laces."
Mike does his best to restrain the snicker, honestly, he does. It slips out anyway. The glare ratchets up another notch.
"I have a toe pick," the kid says, "and I know how to use it."
Through a monumental exercise of will-power, Mike manages to keep his face blank while he nods, and then says, "excuse me," in a strangled voice. He just makes out to the lobby before he starts laughing helplessly.
"Hey, Mike!" a voice chirps at him, and his laughter dies instantly because he's too busy staring at Kevin, who is now wearing a red and white clown costume and oversized yellow skates.
"Oh my god," he says in horror. They didn't even have to put a clown wig on him, just hairspray his natural curls to stick straight out from his head. Mike is officially dating a figure-skating clown of doom.
"Are you okay?" Kevin asks in deep and sincere concern. "Did Nick scare you? I told him he didn't need to be overprotective, I can totally look after myself."
"Yeah, no, I'm not scared of your kid brother." Mike thinks he does a good job of keeping down his level of sarcasm at that.
Kevin beams at him. "I knew you were brave! Not everyone can deal with... the incident." He says in a significant whisper, like this is supposed to mean something to Mike.
"Uh, incident?" Mike asks. He's not nervous or anything, that was not an impressive whisper and he refuses to be scared of anyone's baby brother.
"You know, the little boy in Nick's skate class who was better than him and disappeared mysteriously the day before their pre-preliminary level show. His body was neeeeeever found," Kevin says with exaggeratedly wide eyes.
"You're fucking with me, right?" asks Mike, who refuses to believe that the twinkle family is actually harbouring a preteen psychopath in their midst.
"...maybe," says Kevin, "but can you be sure? Can anyone ever truly know what happened to... Timmy Twinkle?"
Mike bursts out laughing all over again. "Dude. Dude. You are such a freak. You actually had me going there for a second, good one."
Kevin smiles shyly at that and Mike's stomach flutters and what the fuck is his life that he finds crappy figure skating ghost stories charming now?
"Don't you need to go, like, do some pirouettes with your family now?" Mike asks, because he has not for a second forgotten that he is talking to a guy in a clown skating costume. "You know, before your brother decides I've done something horrible to you and comes seeking vengeance?"
Kevin nods solemnly and Mike speculates about whether he does something to make his eyes look that wide and innocent all the time, like, some kind of drugs maybe.
"That would be for the best, Michael," says Kevin, which is the first time in years anyone's called Mike by his full name without giving him an urge to be violent towards them.
"I'll come early next week and watch you," Mike says and thinks, "yep, I'm gonna spend my Saturday mornings watching my boyfriend figure skating with his family and, what's more, I'm looking forward to it." Mike's life is just filled with all kinds of weird fucking surprises, isn't it?
It could be worse, though. He could be the one wearing the clown costume.