All We Need is Daylight

Frank gets his class schedule by Wednesday night, which means that he’s forced to go to bed early so that he can get ready for his first day of classes the next day, Thursday. He’s been stuck in a lot of the leftover classes because of how late he’s starting the term, so it’s not exactly an ideal schedule. He’s got a class nearly every day at 8:00 which is going to be hell on him if he wants to try to practice figure skating every morning or late at night. He’ll be getting approximately five hours of sleep every night if he maintains his usual sleeping habits.

He’s also been stuck in a German class, even though Frank has literally no reason at all to ever want to speak German, but literally every other language class was full to the point that he would have had to sit on the floor. Frank doesn’t speak Spanish very well either though, despite having taken it for the past four years. Pretty much the only thing he has retained from the language is the entire script from the movie Meet the Robinsons, because his teacher was a bit of an alcoholic who would often times come into work with a hangover, thus they played a movie every other week and he only had Meet the Robinsons and The Aristocats. To this day, Frank’s never seen the Aristocats in English. He can’t ask for help or ask where the bathroom is, but he sure as hell can say, “Tengo una cabeza grande, y los brazos pequeños.”

Luckily, Frank’s got nearly all of his classes with either Mikey or Ray. Except fucking German.

He has to spend a fortune in the school bookstore buying his textbooks, because he doesn’t have the time to waste to get them cheaper on eBay. He’s going to need to read about six chapters of about five different textbooks all within the span of about a week. He’s going to fucking die. And that’s without accounting for all the training he’s going to have to do. He’s got a lot of catching up, and it’s going to leave him dead in two weeks flat. He’s honestly not sure how he’s going to make it.

On Thursday morning, Frank wakes up early, almost as early as he had yesterday. He leaves the dorm and finds himself in the ice rink by 4:45, which is surely going to kill him in a few hours when he’s trying not to fall asleep in English, but Frank cares more about skating than he does about not dying from exhaustion.

As it had been yesterday, the place is deserted, with the lights all out which makes it the slightest bit creepy. Frank locks the front door behind him, changes quickly and then starts out his practice as fast as he can get his skates on.

Frank spends about half an hour warming up, doesn’t attempt to make any jumps until he’s sure he’s gotten used to the ice beneath his feet.

Frank’s got a lot of grace when he’s ice skating, he’s very good at style, but his jumps are imperfect and inconsistent at best. He lands almost all doubles, but things get sketchy when he goes for a triple, and he rarely ever successfully lands a quad. He rarely ever unsuccessfully lands one either. Frank has more than trouble getting that many rotations. He’s also consistently better at toe jumps than he is at edge jumps. To be fair though, Frank’s never had a coach, unless you count his neighbor, but she doesn’t really count. He’s gotten as far as he has in this sport by himself, so he tries not to beat himself up over it.

But that doesn’t mean Frank doesn’t push himself too the limits every time he’s on the ice. Frank pushes himself to the ends of the earth to do the best that he can at everything he does. He doesn’t necessarily care if he is the best. That’s not what matters to him. Being the best doesn’t interest him. Doing the best that he can possibly do is what really matters. He may not be the best at everything he does, but he always makes sure he does the best he can on everything he does.

Once he’s got the confidence, Frank goes for a jump, a simple toe loop, only getting one rotation in, because he’s trying to build up to a better one. A minute later he does the same jump, with two rotations, landing it cleanly, which leaves him smiling when he comes out of it. These are two jumps he nearly always lands, but that doesn’t mean he’s not allowed to be proud of himself.

Frank proceeds like this to a triple, which he trips up on, forcing him to repeat the same jump. It takes him three more tries to land the triple perfectly, but once he does it, he sighs in relief. It’s been way too long since he’s gotten the chance to actually practice. He’s out of shape, not overly so, but he feels like he’s dragging too much of himself around.

Frank forgot how much work it takes to keep in figure skating shape, because it’s a far more harrowing routine than hockey. A hockey physique does not require as much maintenance, because it’s not as strenuous as repeated jumps, not nearly so. Frank makes a note to head to the gym later in the week for a workout, because he can tell he’s going to need it if he’s going to be practicing this much. He feels confident in the fact that he’s going to have access to this rink on a more regular schedule than he’d anticipated, so he’s going to need to give himself the ability to make the best of that opportunity.

Frank does much the same practice for a little less than two hours. He gradually increases the rotation of the same jump until he gets a triple, and then tries, only to fail, for ten minutes trying to turn the jump into a quad. Throughout practice, he only does a quad once, but he goes cascading to the floor anyway. The only one with enough rotations still sends him sprawling, which achieves only making him upset.

Frank is a little hard on himself. He’s been trying to become proficient at a quad for nearly three years now, and it hasn’t come any easier to him in all that time. He’s sure he’d be able to do it if he had a coach, but that’s not an option for him. There’s nothing he can do if he can’t do it himself.

One of these days he’ll get there. He’ll make a quad, it’ll be clean. Maybe.

Frank gets off the ice, grumbling, and changes into the lazy outfit he’d stuffed in his bag before leaving the dorm. Frank’s got about an hour and half until his first class. It’s his first class of both the day and at this school altogether. He finds a seat on one of the benches in the lobby of the rink, and pulls out his chemistry textbook, which is his first class. He’d read three chapters last night, but still has a few more to go to be properly caught up on the reading.

It’s a slow read, of course it is, it’s a chemistry textbook. It doesn’t help that it’s riddled with typos because fucking hell if textbook authors care. Frank’s never come across any textbook, other than English ones, that doesn’t have typos in them, unless they’re over thirty years old.

The doors open, presenting a very disheveled looking Gerard, at about seven. He pays Frank no mind until he unlocks all the doors, and then walks over to Frank, who’s in the middle of highlighting the shit out of his textbook when Gerard says hi.

“Hey Frank,” Gerard says, looking tired. He stops and stands right next to Frank, looking at him, textbook in hand with the rest of his stuff covering the bench. He looks quite at home, though, so Gerard smiles when he sees Frank.

Frank reminds Gerard of himself when he’s in the rink. Gerard knows all too well how it feels to see the ice rink as a second home, and unless Frank is just a weirdo, he must feel the same way. Frank seems a lot more relaxed and comfortable in the rink than he does anywhere else.

“Hey,” Frank replies, barely looking up.

“You already finished practicing?” Gerard asks him.

“Yeah,” Frank nods, “I got an early start.”

“Jeez, how early did you fucking wake up?” Gerard asks him.

“About four,” he says.

“Fucking hell,” Gerard says, sounding winded at the mere thought. “How are you not dead?”

Frank shrugs, and then looks up. He sees Gerard is dressed for the weather with a pea coat and scarf, and a Styrofoam cup of coffee in his hands. Frank makes an envious face when he sees Gerard’s coffee, only just now realizing how much he wants one. His bones are tired and he’s already feeling fatigued, which he knows does not bode well for the rest of the day that he’s going to have to endure.

“Sheer luck,” Frank replies.

“Oh, sorry, I’m disrupting,” Gerard says, looking down at Frank’s textbook. He almost forgot that Frank’s a student. He’s got actual classes to attend and shit to get done.

“You’re fine,” Frank says, shrugging. He looks at Gerard, really looks at him, for probably the first time since he walked into the rink, and he looks the way Frank feels. He’s got some heavy bags under his eyes and if his slouch is anything to go by, he didn’t get a lot of sleep. He looks an awful lot like Mikey like this, very tired and the slightest bit bored. Frank frowns, at the idea that he’s boring Gerard.

“Yeah, but I’ll go to my office, and let you work,” Gerard says.

“Thanks,” Frank says, smiling at the gesture. Gerard stops, and just sort of stares at Frank for a couple of seconds, before he remembers that he was going to leave Frank alone. He reluctantly walks past him, though if it were up to him, he’d stop and stare at the guy for a few more hours. He’s just that fucking pretty.

Gerard makes his way to the office, unlocking the door and then closing it again behind him to give Frank the semblance of privacy. Frank’s seated next to one of the ceiling to floor windows, though, so anyone who walks by will be able to see him.

Once in the office, Gerard leans against the door and takes the time to get the breathing in that he’d forgotten about when he saw Frank. Frank is fucking killing him, he swears it. Every time he sees the guy it’s like he forgets everything he knows. He forgets how to breathe, how to blink. He swears, if his body didn’t pump blood on its own, he’d probably forget how to do that too.

He doesn’t get why, that’s the problem. Frank isn’t even all that special compared to any of the other guys he’s met. Like, there’s no good reason for why he should be more attracted to Frank than to Pete, or any of the other guys on the team for that matter. It doesn’t make sense. Sure, Frank is a little bit more his type than Pete, but still, he’s known Pete for three years now, he shouldn’t like Frank at all, considering he’s know Frank for only three days.

And yet, something about that stupid fucking guy makes his heart race. It’s like seeing him gives him chills and also makes him burn up at the same time. He just doesn’t know why. It makes no sense.

Nothing about him makes sense. Frank’s kind of weird.

Frank almost doesn’t make sense as a hockey player. If he hadn’t seen him out on the ice, and seen his sheer skill, Gerard might not even believe that Frank was a hockey player at all. Frank’s weird on the ice. He’s very special, he’s not like anyone else. Frank really does skate like a girl, he’s got so much grace and balance, it seems almost improper for the game, but it works. He’s got a special way of moving, and somehow, it’s superior to anything Gerard’s ever learned.

It’s like Frank learned a different sport than Gerard did. He plays it the same way, he knows the same rules, but the way in which he plays it is completely foreign.

Frank is very feminine, Gerard thinks, and that might be why he seems so different out on the ice. It’s not noticeable femininity either, it’s not the way he looks, or even really the way he acts. It’s how he carries himself. It’s in his gestures, almost. That might even be why Gerard likes him, because he’s just so unapologetically different, and just peculiar, but in a nice way.

What’s worse is that Mikey can tell. Mikey can always tell. He sees right through Gerard, like Gerard’s a pane of glass.

Mikey’s the only one on the planet who knows about Gerard, he knows everything other than why Gerard quit hockey. Mikey’s been throwing it in his face the past two days though, every second he gets. Mikey will wink at him whenever he catches Gerard staring at Frank, or he’ll make a face whenever Gerard says something overly flirtatious to Frank. He can tell, and Gerard is honestly trying his best to hide it, but honestly, Frank just sets him on fire, in a good way.

Mikey keeps offering to get intel on Frank for him. Find out what his interests are and relay them back to Gerard. Gerard said no, but he said it with a wink so as to indicate that he does still want that information, but he doesn’t want to go right out and say it. Mikey had just rolled his eyes in response.

Mikey’s probably the only person on the entire team who is okay with Gerard’s sexuality. It’s because he’s Gerard’s brother. Were Gerard just some random guy, even Mikey would probably have a problem or two. And how could anyone blame him? A guy who routinely stands in a locker room full of sixteen half naked guys and then proceeds to stare at those same guys for hours on end? Why would any guy be okay with that?

Of course, Gerard has never taken advantage of his position in that way, not even when Frank was changing, because Gerard is not a fucking pervert, but still. No hockey player would ever be okay with that. Why should they be?

Frank’s no exception. If Frank knew how Gerard felt, he’d probably have Gerard fired so fast that he wouldn’t have time to say sorry. Frank would hate him if he knew. He’d absolutely detest Gerard.

Why did Gerard have to fall for a guy on the team? Why couldn’t he have had a clandestine relationship with a guy he met at a Starbucks? Things would have been so much easier.

Gerard busies himself for what he doesn’t realize is nearly two hours, drawing up different plans for practice games, and also plans that involve putting Frank into more important positions on the ice. He doesn’t realize what time it is until Coach enters the office at around nine.

“Morning, Gerard,” she says, throwing her bag onto the floor next to her desk. Gerard is here a lot longer than Coach is, and he sometimes feels like he does more work, but then he remembers that he knows literally nothing about finances, or booking hotel rooms, or making travel arrangements, or how to give the team a pep talk between periods of a hockey game, or literally anything else that she does. Gerard’s one job is basically just to draw up strategies. He also locks and unlocks the doors. Gerard kind of just polishes everything that Coach does.

This is Gerard’s third year as an assistant coach, and still they haven’t won anything. Last year he thought that they might brush the very bottom and make it into the NCAA tournament only to lose in the first round, which would still be an achievement for this team considering that they haven’t even gotten that far in eight years, but it hasn’t happened yet. They’re easily the worst team in the region.

Making it into the NCAA tournament isn’t as difficult as it is for other sports. A total of sixteen schools compete in the tournament, four each from the four different regions, out of sixty total Division I hockey teams. Armstrong is a part of the northeast region, but unfortunately, so are some of the best teams in the DI, including Frank’s old school, Boston. To make it into the NCAA tournament, a team can either win an automatic bid by winning one of the six conference championships, or with the remaining ten bids calculated according to their RPI from the season. In other words, either you win a conference, or you’re on average one of the four best teams in the region.

Once you make it into the regionals, you’re seeded according to your RPI within your region, with four teams in each of those four regions. The number one seed in each region is the best team in that region, number two is the second best, and so on. The number one seed plays the number four seed, while the number two seed plays the number three seed, and the winners of each go on to play each other in the quarterfinals. The winners of the quarterfinals progress into the semifinals, otherwise known as the frozen four, as only four teams remain at that point. In the semifinals, the winning team from one region plays the winning team of another region. Ultimately, the two winning teams of the semifinals face off in the NCAA championship.

To put in perspective how poorly Armstrong has done, they haven’t been one of the sixteen teams in the tournament in eight years. And they haven’t been one of the four teams in the semifinals in twenty years. And they haven’t won the championship in forty-one years. Basically, their team is pretty shit.

“Morning,” Gerard responds, and watches Coach put a stack of mail on top of the desk as she throws off her coat.

“You ready for practice tonight?” Coach asks, with a raise of her eyebrow. It’s going to be a long, intensive, tiring practice, because they’ve got their second game of the season tomorrow. Gerard wishes that Frank could play, but he’s not ready yet. Hopefully by next week he’ll be ready to go, but until then, Gerard’s just going to have to ogle him off the ice. He’s definitely less gross when he’s off the ice, not nearly as sweaty, but there’s something super fucking sexy about a boy who owns the ice at every step. Gerard really admires a guy who can beat the shit out of other people at hockey. Watching Frank in action is quite a sight to behold, and it has been known to give Gerard impure thoughts.

“Sort of,” Gerard shrugs. He’s not excited about practice tonight, that’s for sure. He’s nothing but a pessimist when it comes to the state of the team. He wants to believe that they’re capable of greatness, but that doesn’t mean he sees it.

“Guess what came in the mail?” Coach asks, looking excited as she grabs a parcel and rips it open while Gerard just sits, looking back at her with a shrug.

When Gerard doesn’t have a guess, she pulls out the jersey inside to show Gerard Frank’s newly printed team jersey.

“Oh, wow, that was fast,” Gerard says, when he sees the jersey. It looks the same as everyone else’s, green in color, with the big Green Knights logo on the front. On the back, the word ‘Iero’ is printed in big block letters, along with the number 96. Gerard makes a mental note to ask Frank if there’s any special meaning behind the number, as most hockey players have a special reasoning for their number. Gerard’s number had been the year his dad won the tournament, 74. Mikey is number 88, the year The Smashing Pumpkins, which are his favorite band, formed. Pete had to be talked out of wearing the number 69.

“Oh, now he’ll maybe start to see himself as a part of the team!” Gerard says, excitedly. “Was he still out there when you came in?”

“Frank?” Coach asks. “No, I didn’t see him. Why, was he here?”

“He was,” Gerard nods, “yesterday and today both. He was studying though, by the time I got in this morning. He’d really dedicated, you know. He practices not only when he has to, but in his free time too.”

“There’s something special about that one, that’s for certain,” Coach says, with this knowing little glimmer as she takes a seat at her desk.

“There is,” Gerard agrees, and then realizes that he and Coach are probably thinking two very different things. While Gerard’s not in the business of pretending that Frank’s a bad hockey player, because that’s certainly not true, his hockey skills are not necessarily the thing that Gerard would use to exemplify what makes him special. Even if he is a damn good player, there’s a one hundred percent chance Gerard would have been attracted to him if he hadn’t been a hockey player.

“Why is here though?” Gerard asks, “I mean, why him? Out of all the people?”

Gerard had been tasked with sorting through a bunch of potentials once Lance got injured. They’d already had a stack prepared in case of something like this, their low numbers on the team made it important that they had a backup plan, and Lance’s injury proved how important that preparation was. Gerard poured over those files, recognizing a good number of the names since he’d helped Coach pick out their new recruits from last year. Frank, however, wasn’t on the top of the list that Gerard gave Coach. Gerard had given Coach a recommendation based on the people he looked at, a guy from Pennsylvania had been his first pick, and he obviously isn’t Frank. Frank didn’t even make it into his top five. So why is Frank. of all people, Frank here?

“He’s…” Coach drifts off, “he’s a team fixer.”

“A what?” Gerard asks.

“A team fixer,” she replies. “I’ve had my eye on him since the middle of his sophomore year in high school. I was absolutely gutted not to get him, but when we gave out all our scholarships last year, I couldn’t convince the schoolboard to give one to Frank. Obviously after Lance’s injury they couldn’t really say no to me, and I knew, right from the get go, who I wanted. Frank fixes teams. He doesn’t know that he’s doing it, or at least it doesn’t seem that way, but he does.

“I went to Jefferson, you know, where Frank attended high school. They weren’t a great team five years ago, not by a long shot, and then suddenly, they picked up, like a snap of the fingers. It was very sudden. You know how huge it is for a team to go from not winning anything to winning finals in the span of two years? Once Frank got there, things turned around. I had my eyes on him because of that. So, when the time came, of course it was going to be him. How could it have been anyone else?”

“What is it about him, then, that picks teams up?” Gerard asks.

“I haven’t a clue,” Coach says, honestly. “But whatever it is, we need it.”

“How do you know it’s him that changed that team, though?” Gerard asks, sounding skeptical. It seems an awful lot to wager, given how many variables there are when it comes to hockey. In high school, it’s one thing to have a great player dominate a team, because that’s just the best guy at the school. In college, you don’t make it on the team unless you are damn fucking good. It’s not a decision based on who attends the same school, it’s a decision that spans the entire country looking for the best players to compete. Putting all your bets on Frank, it just doesn’t seem logical.

The idea that Frank fixed his high school team is not exactly unlikely, but that doesn’t mean he can do the same thing twice. Placing all your bets on his ability to do so isn’t guaranteed to win you anything.

“You’ve seen him out there on the ice. You’ve seen what he can do, what he’s made of,” Coach says, “You try to tell me it wasn’t him who changed that team. And I dare you to tell me that he can’t do the same for us.”

Notes

I am choosing to ignore what day it is today, so instead, I wish you all a very happy Penguin Awareness day!