The Narration

DexI don’t remember leaving the restaurant.I remember the sound of my own voice saying his name. I remember the feeling of him going limp against me, the specific terrible weight of someone who is no longer holding themselves up. I remember shouting for someone to call an ambulance and the way the restaurant staff moved and the violin stopping mid-note and none of it feeling real in any way I could anchor myself to.And then the ambulance was there, and they were taking him from my arms and putting him on a stretcher, and I was following them out into the night air still in my dinner jacket, the small ring box somewhere in my pocket, Nico pale and completely still under the blanket they had laid over him.I held his hand the entire way.In the ambulance, in the corridor of the hospital when we arrived, right up until the moment the doors of the treatment room came between us. I kept my hand around his for as long as physically possible, walking alongside the stretcher, my other hand

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Dates N Love

DexI was still on the floor when the door opened.I hadn’t moved in a long time. At some point the crying had stopped, not because anything had resolved itself but because the body eventually runs out of what it needs to sustain that level of falling apart, and what was left afterward was just a kind of hollow, exhausted stillness. I sat with my back against the wall and my knees up and the ring box in my jacket pocket, and I waited.The nurse who appeared in the doorway was the good one. The one who knew his case.“Mr. Nakamura.” She kept her voice low and even. “He’s awake.”I was on my feet before she finished the sentence.He looked small in the bed.That was always the first thing I noticed when I walked into his room after something had happened: the way the equipment and the sheets and the general enormity of what he was fighting made him look smaller than he was in real life. In real life Nico took up space in a way that had nothing to do with his physical size. In this bed,

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Love confession

173 NicoSeven months.Seven months of chemo, needles, exhaustion, tears, and nights when I wondered if I’d ever feel like myself again. Seven months of Dex’s quiet strength, his knitted beanies, his stubborn refusal to leave my side even when I pushed him away.Today, everything changed.The doctor’s voice still echoed in my head: “Your latest scans and markers are clear. No evidence of disease. You’re in remission, Nico.”I sat on the edge of the hospital bed, hands shaking, with the familiar weight of the beanie on my head. Dex stood right in front of me, eyes already glassy. Maria was by the door, smiling through tears. Riven and Kael had come too; they insisted on being here for this.The oncology wing had a tradition. A brass bell hung near the nurses’ station. Patients who finished treatment got to ring it. I’d heard it a few times over the months and always wondered if I’d ever get my turn.Dex helped me stand. My legs still felt a little weak, but I walked. He stayed close, o

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I’m backkk

NicoThree days later we were sitting on the floor of our apartment surrounded by wedding magazines that Maria had appeared with unannounced that morning and distributed around the living room with the energy of someone who had been waiting for this particular task for a considerable amount of time.“Outdoor,” Nico said, not looking up from the page he was on.“Outdoor,” I agreed.“Small. Only the people who actually showed up.”“Agreed completely.”He turned a page. “I don’t want a cake that looks like architecture.”“Neither do I.”“I want something that actually tastes good.”“You’re a baker,” I said. “Make your own cake.”He looked up at me. “That is actually a good idea.”“I have them occasionally.”He smiled and went back to the magazine. I watched him for a moment, sitting cross legged on our floor in the late morning light, hair grown back enough now to curl slightly at the edges, the engagement ring on his finger catching the sun coming through the window.Our window. Our flo

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Beginning to End

DexRehearsals had run long.That was the thing about coming back to the season properly after everything. There was a recalibration period, a getting back into the rhythm of it, and the coaching staff had opinions about how that recalibration should go that did not always align with my own opinions about how tired my legs were by the end of a session. I drove home with my bag in the back seat and my mind already at the apartment, already thinking about whatever Nico had decided to make for dinner, alreadylooking forward to the particular version of quiet that existed in our space at the end of a long day.I heard the scream before I even got the key fully into the lock.Sharp. Loud. Coming from inside.I had the door open in under a second.The scene that met me when I stepped inside took a moment to fully process.Nico was on the floor.Not hurt. Not down. He was very deliberately and very purposefully on top of someone else, pinning them with a focus and efficiency that told me thi

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บททั้งหมดของ Pucked On Ice : บทที่ 171 - บทที่ 175

The Narration

Dates N Love

Love confession

I’m backkk

Beginning to End