Dancing on the blades, you set my heart on fire. (Backdated to the 14th)

[oldmantiger]

Kotetsu Kaburagi has a very bad sense of time. Not just in terms of minutes and seconds, but also in terms of days, weeks, months. It doesn't help that, as far as he's been able to gather, the castle is running around two months ahead of when he was back home. And that's before various strange happenings skew his sense of time even further.

But since shortly after getting together with Barnaby, there's one day he's been keeping an eye out for. After counting forward from the end of the first event he experienced where everyone was transformed, and the day he realized a couple of days too late was Barnaby's birthday, Kotetsu is reasonably sure he's pinpointed today as Valentine's Day. Now it's just a matter of what to do. Even here, he wants it to be special.

Eventually, he gets an idea that leads to him hunting up Jack Frost. Jack agrees that he still owes Barnaby for past events and agrees to Kotetsu's plan. From there, it's just a matter of digging up skates. The castle seems to feel it owes Kotetsu for literally not giving him and Barnaby a peaceful time together since before they got together, though. He turns up a closet full of skates of various sizes without too much trouble. These, Kotetsu gathers up and carries over to a newly frozen pond in one of the more wooded areas. He dumps them by the side of the lake - no reason he and Barnaby should have all the fun, after all - and sets to work digging up a pair for himself.

Once that's done, it's just a matter of getting in some hasty practicing so he minimizes how stupid he looks in front of his boyfriend. That shouldn't be too hard, right? He did used to take Kaede to her skating practice...years and years ago.

It turns out to be pretty hard. There's a lot of stumbling, flailing, and falling as he tries to figure out just how people make this look so easy. But he's fallen from and onto worse than this. So Kotetsu always gets back up and keeps trying to keep skating, even if he's obviously too lead footed to make much headway at this on his own. Jack, meanwhile, hangs around in a bare tree to watch the show.

"You sure you don't want any help?" he calls out every so often.

"I can do this," Kotetsu always replies stubbornly, as he gets back to his feet from his latest stumble.

Neither of them is being terribly quiet, though, and the skates are there for the taking if you can find one in your size.

Comments

[realkidswearstripes]

"I'm okay!" No screaming, no crying, no upset, just a smile. "Don't worry about me, I've done this before!" Though they've stopped scooting around for now. Poor Kotetsu's going to hurt himself trying to follow and actually use the dumb skates. "Don't even worry about it, you're way better than me! I tried once and it was a disaster."

[oldmantiger]

No crying, just a smile. This is a weird armless monster kid after his own heart. Kotetsu knows he would probably do better following their example and just stay on his stomach. But he is trying to make this a special occasion for Barnaby, and occasions to laugh at Kotetsu are otherwise plentiful.

"Yeah, I, ah...don't think I saw any skates that'd fit you anyway," Kotetsu adds, somewhat embarrassed, as his gaze slides down to Monster Kid's very lizardy feet. He's embarrassed because...well, he's still not entirely sure what is or is not polite to say or ask a monster. Especially not a child monster. "Sorry."

Because he's been getting heckled by Jack for the last half hour, Kotetsu does brighten up at Monster Kid's reassurance. "That's nice of you to say, though. My daughter's really great at this, and my friend used to skate a lot when he was a kid. But I've never really done it."

[realkidswearstripes]

"Whatever, dude! I wouldn't put them on anyway." They finally pick themselves off the ice to have a conversation standing up instead of sliding around like some kind of freaky scaled flipperless seal. "Me neither. I only tried once, so I guess I don't have any advice. Maybe someone else does?"

Like the floating human over there, who Kid keeps glancing at, clearly curious. It's pretty rare among monsters to fly without wings, that's neat.

[oldmantiger]

"That's what I'm hoping. I mean, I know my friend could probably give me some help. But I'm also hoping to not make a complete dummy of myself in front of him. Y'know?"

At least the kid does seem reasonably steady on his feet, skate or not skates. So Kotetsu sets that matter aside, in favor of a somewhat more pressing one he realizes he's forgotten about.

"My name's Kotetsu, by the way. What's yours'?"

[realkidswearstripes]

"MK! Or you could just call me Kid. Tons of people do." Someday, they will look back and regret the lamest of nicknames. Someday. Scoot scoot shuffle shuffle. Their dinosaur-like toes with claws leave scratches on the ice. "What's the other dude's name?"

[havesomefun]

"The name's Jack. Jack Frost," Jack says, offering a jaunty sort of salute with his staff. "Nice to meet you, MK."

He doesn't mind the scratches in the slightest. Scratched up ice means that it's been used. People have had fun on it. And that's more than fine by him.

"...man, I never noticed before I got here, but there's just something about kids and stripes, isn't there?"

[realkidswearstripes]

"Hi, Jack! Haha, yeah, dude. It's like monster tradition! There's probably some other reason why, but I can't remember what it is. Hey, how are you flying? I thought humans couldn't use magic!"

All said very, very quickly. Sorry, Kotetsu. Someone's easily distracted and thinks the flying is cool.