12. Nico
Adrian was giving me a wide berth.
Not that I'd expected him to thank me. But he wouldn't even acknowledge me in the hallway. Not even the brief nod strangers gave each other in passing. I had taken care of him when he was wasted and he was repaying my kindness by pretending I didn't exist.
I should have been relieved. His presence was exhausting. The lazy smirks. The way he called me Nicky. His general main character energy.
I was not relieved. I was furious.
When our ice time overlapped, he stayed on his side of the rink. So I stayed on mine. Except staying on mine apparently meant tracking him across the ice like I had nothing better to do. And the infuriating thing was that watching Adrian skate was genuinely difficult to look away from.
We were opposites out there. I'd built my entire career on grace—clean lines, precise edges, the kind of fluid artistry that made people forget how much raw effort went into looking effortless. Everything I did was controlled, refined, measured to the millimetre.
Adrian was power. Explosive, aggressive, almost reckless.
He attacked the ice instead of gliding across it.
His crossovers ate up the rink in long, hungry strokes, and when he launched into a jump there was this fraction of a second where he just hung there, suspended, like he'd decided the laws of physics didn't apply to him.
He landed with a force that sent ice spraying, and instead of looking sloppy it looked like a statement.
It was arrogant. It was magnetic. It was the kind of skating that made my jaw clench because it had no business being as compelling as it was.
He didn't approach me at the boards when I stopped for water. Didn't make eye contact when Coach Renaud was giving us both notes. The usual Adrian Zhao experience had been switched off, and instead of enjoying the peace, I found myself cataloguing the way he moved like an idiot.
This dragged on all week. I hadn't thought Adrian had this level of restraint in him. And then I saw him in the lounge with Sabrina.
She was perched on the arm of the couch, coffee in hand, laughing at something he'd said. He was sprawled beside her the way he always was—loose, easy, taking up space. Talking with his hands. Making her laugh.
He hadn't looked at me in five days. Hadn't spoken a single word to me. But he could sit there with Sabrina like everything was normal. Warm and open and completely at ease—as long as it wasn't me.
Something hot and ugly twisted in my chest.
I didn't stop walking. Didn't let my expression change.
But I felt it—the anger, the confusion, the irrational hurt I had absolutely no right to feel.
He owed me nothing. We were nothing. He'd been drunk and I'd helped him and that was the end of it.
Whatever he'd said on my couch—those slurred, soft words I'd been replaying on a loop for a week like a pathetic fool—didn't mean anything. Drunk people said things they didn’t mean.
It wasn't personal.
So why did it feel personal that he was ignoring me?
And why couldn't I stop noticing him—the way he moved, the way he laughed, the way he'd woken something up in me with some slurred words that I couldn't seem to put back to sleep?
I went to work with the juniors because that's what I did.
Four hours a week helping younger skaters with their Axel entries because my uncle had asked me for help two years ago.
I had an Olympic qualifying season to navigate.
A quad Salchow I was struggling with. Therapy once a week. A meal plan. A sleep schedule.
And I was spending four hours a week helping junior skaters because I didn't know how to stop being the person who said yes.
At least today it was a distraction from the storm brewing inside of me.
◆◆◆
I noticed him the second I walked into the weight room because he was impossible not to notice—his pale pink hair was pulled back from his face, the kind of careless half knot that should have looked ridiculous and instead looked like something a stylist had spent twenty minutes arranging.
Five days of avoidance and my body still clocked him automatically, like a reflex I couldn’t control.
I set up my resistance bands on the far side of the gym and tried not to look at him again.
This lasted approximately two minutes.
The problem—one of many problems, an expanding catalogue of problems that I was keeping in a mental file labelled things I will discuss with Dr. Priya never—was that Adrian did not train like a figure skater.
Figure skaters preferred lean muscle. The physics of rotation favoured a compact frame—narrow shoulders, long limbs, wiry muscle. I was built that way. Théo was built that way. Most elite male figure skaters were built that way.
Adrian was built differently.
He was shirtless—because of course he was—doing pull-ups with methodical intensity. Shoulders broader than a skater's had any right to be. Muscles moving under his skin. Tattoos rippling with each rep. A line of sweat tracked down his chest and disappeared into his waistband.
I was staring. I needed to stop staring.
I turned back to my resistance bands and attacked my jump drills with more force than necessary. Box jump, land, reset. Box jump, land, reset. The logic had been simple: total concentration was easier when the alternative was watching Adrian do pull-ups shirtless.
In practice, I could hear every exhale. Every time he moved to a new station. Every clank of the bar. Music leaked from his headphones—something with heavy bass. He hadn't looked at me once since I walked in. He was really committed.
On the twelfth rep of a banded single leg squat jump, my calf muscle seized.
The pain hit like a blade driven deep into the meat of my leg—white hot, every fibre of the muscle clamping down at once.
I collapsed down on the mat with a strangled curse, both hands flying to my calf.
I couldn't straighten my leg. Couldn't breathe past it.
The cramp radiated up toward my knee and down into my heel in pulsing waves, each one wringing a fresh gasp out of me as I curled around it on the mat.
Five days of avoidance and he was at my side in five seconds.
“Don't move.”
Adrian dropped to his knees beside me before I could say I was fine. His hands were on my calf before I could say I didn't need help. Close enough to smell—chalk and sweat and something warm underneath, sweet and herbal. His fingers pressed into the seized muscle with confidence.
My heart rate spiked. Not from the pain.
“Breathe, Nicky. You're holding your breath.”
“I'm fine.”
“You're on the floor.”
“I'm aware.”
“Then stop arguing and let me fix it.”
His thumbs dug into the knot and I whimpered pathetically, it felt good and painful at the same time. His other hand wrapped around my ankle—warm, firm, rings cool against my skin—and pushed my toes toward my shin.
“Slowly. Don't fight it.”
I was fighting it. Not the stretch—him. The whiplash of going from nothing to his hands on my body. Heat crawled up the back of my neck, spreading across my skin in a way that had nothing to do with exertion.
“Relax for me, Nicky.” His voice was lower. Soothing. His thumb moved in slow circles and the muscle began to release. “There you go.”
The cramp was unwinding but his hands didn't move. Adrian Zhao was kneeling on the floor with my leg in his lap, fingers wrapped around my calf, face close enough that I could see the individual lashes framing those dark eyes. Pink hair stuck to his temples. Lip rings catching the light.
Goosebumps broke out along my arms despite the warmth of the gym.
“Better?” he asked.
His thumb was still moving. Small circles. Slow. The cramp had released but he hadn’t stopped touching me. Neither of us acknowledged it.
“Better,” I said. My voice cracked embarrassingly. “Thank you.”
He looked at me. Not a casual glance—a lingering look.
Starting at my eyes and holding there while his hand stayed on my calf and his thumb kept drawing circles against muscle that no longer needed attention.
The gym was empty. The lights hummed. I could hear his breathing—steady but not quite even.
A bead of sweat slid down my temple. I was suddenly, acutely aware of how flushed I must look. Something shifted in his expression. The careful avoidance cracking. That gleam returning.
“You push too hard,” he chastized softly.
“Rich, coming from you.”
“I train smart. You push like you're punishing yourself.” His hand slid down—slowly, deliberately—along my calf to my ankle. Stayed there. “There's a difference.”
“I don't need a lecture on training methodology.”
“No?” His thumb traced the bone of my ankle. “What do you need from me, Nicky?”
My breath hitched. The question landed like a match in a room full of fumes. I watched the smirk creep back into the corner of his mouth. Five days of restraint, abandoned the second he had his hands on me.
I should have pulled away. Should have said thank you and stood up like a normal, well adjusted person. Instead I sat there with my leg across his lap and his fingers on my ankle and my pulse threatening to escape.
Adrian's eyes dropped to my mouth and he leaned forward for a second.
And then he pulled back, his expression shuttering.
He let go of my ankle, gently placed my leg back on the mat, and stood up.
“Stretch before plyos next time, Prince Nicky.”
He walked back to the weights like nothing happened. I sat on the mat for another ten seconds. My calf was fine.
The rest of me was in serious trouble.