Work Text:
"Broer, broer, the pond's all frozen, I checked! Come on...!"
Schyler de Vries shakes himself out of a light doze, his memories and daydream shattering as the front door opens. It's lunch time, and there's exactly three people in the entire pub, so he'd been letting himself drift. He straightens up behind the bar, hoping it isn't too obvious that he's been half-napping as he takes his pipe out of his mouth and coughs to get some moisture back into his throat. "Welcome-"
He looks up, and sighs. He doesn't know who he'd been expecting (that's a lie, he does), but the young couple staring at him like he's got two heads aren't it (her). He shakes his head, forcing his mind to get back on work and not on the snow falling outside.
"I think I'm getting fat."
Skye looked over at his partner, his perfect beautiful baby sister, in something like horror. "What? Who said that, I'll break their ankles."
She stared at him for a moment, green eyes wide and blond curls bouncing as they walked home, and then she started laughing. She put a hand on his arm, and Skye felt himself go red all the way to the tips of his ears. "That's so sweet," she teased, grinning in a way that just made him blush harder. But after a moment her smile faded. "It was coach."
Skye frowned sharply down at her and stopped walking. After a couple steps she did too, turning back to look at him quizzically.
"He doesn't know shit," Skye said bluntly, already planning to inform their mother they needed a new coach. "I can still lift you fine, so you're no where near fat."
The startled, sincere smile she gave him warmed him all the way to his toes.
Skye groans and bites back another sigh as the bell over the door jingles again. He resists the urge to throw a reproachful look at the clock. An hour until early closing on New Years Eve, and the place is packed. There's no way he's going to have everyone cleared out anytime soon.
"Yo!"
"Alfred, shhh, he's busy-"
Skye refrains from banging his head on the bar and turns to face his friends (well, his almost-boyfriend and said boyfriend's incredibly annoying step-brother). "What can I get you?"
"Just water," Matthew chirps with a smile, not even bothering to hide that he's pinching Alfred's arm to keep him from speaking up. Skye nods and turns to grab them bottles out of the fridge rather than subjecting them to the iron-tangy tap water. "Do you have any plans for tonight?" Matthew asks when he comes back. He immediately turns red before Skye can answer. "Not that it matters if you do! We've got plans too, I was just wondering-"
"I do have plans," Skye affirms, trying not to look too amused at Matthew's furious blush. He bites down on his (woefully unlit) pipe and forces himself not to look at the clock. "If she ever gets here."
Matthew's eyes widen a little. "She...?"
"We're partying at Gil's," Alfred says, cheerfully oblivious as usual. "It's gonna be awesome. Hey, can I get some fries?"
The worst night of his life happened when Skye was sixteen. What he remembers the most, besides the excruciating pain and the crushing disappointment of losing a major competition, was the fact that Belle would not stop crying.
"It's all my fault," she said, over and over.
Skye managed to catch her hand and squeeze it tight as they hauled him off the ice on a stretcher, forcing her to half-run along with them. "It's not your fault," Skye told her as fiercely as he could manage around the pain.
"It is!" she wailed. "I was out of step, you rushed the jump to try and get back in sync-"
He squeezed her hand as hard as he could. "Belle. It's not your fault."
She had bruises across the back of her hand later. He had a torn Achilles tendon.
The bar closed down three hours ago.
It's now close to nine at night. Skye finally managed to get the last of the patrons gone half an hour ago. Alfred had dragged Matthew off to their New Years Eve party ages ago. Now all that's left is for Skye to finish wiping down the bar and stacking the chairs up on the tables, then he can go.
He'd lit his pipe the moment the last of the customers was gone, smoking regulations be damned. This was his own pub, and if any officials were dropping in to do surprise inspections on New Years Eve in a snowstorm then he deserved to get caught. Now the smoke curls contentedly around his head, calming him and keeping him from glancing at the clock every two minutes. He's almost resigned himself to the fact that she's not coming anyway. He'll have to call her in the morning and lecture her for not at least texting that her plans were changing or her plane was delayed.
He very nearly jumps out of his skin when someone bangs on the locked front door. Swearing under his breath, he debates grabbing the cricket bat from behind the bar just in case. But the banging knock comes again, and it's probably just someone looking for someplace still open to come in out of the snow. Stifling another sigh, he weaves between the tables and unlocks the door.
"I'm sorry, we're clo-"
"Nuh uh," his sister smiles sheepishly from the front step, dressed in heavy down and lycra tights and Uggs, and her skating bag slung over her shoulder. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be this late, broer."
Skye's earliest memories are of skating, and Belle. First on the tiny duck pond behind their house in Friesland, which froze over every winter and was good for skating if you watched out for rocks. Then, once their father's job had moved the whole family to Rotterdam, professional lessons and then a coach willing to take a chance. Skye can still remember the sheer joy he felt the first time he managed to gather the strength to lift Belle properly over his head, the way it felt to spin out across the ice with her hands in his.
It was fun. But for Skye, fun was all it ever was, especially after his ankle injury had taken him out of competition for almost a year. But Belle, Belle was and is and always will be different. She has drive and passion and poise.
And a new partner now, but Skye can't begrudge her that. He's the one who'd left, once he realized how much he was holding her back.
"Have you skated at all since last year?" Belle teases him as he locks up the pub, his own bag retrieved from behind the bar. She pokes it. "These aren't going rusty, are they?"
"Maybe," he can't help but smile at her as they begin to walk through the swirling snow. It's quiet out, everyone with half a liver is inside where it's warm, partying. "I have been skating, though. Matthew's trying to convince me to join the local hockey team."
"Hockey," Belle sticks her tongue out at him. "Traitor."
The rink isn't far, and Ivan's waiting for them outside, face nearly invisible between his fur cap and his long scarf. He gives Skye a genteel nod, and suffers to hug Belle, though lightly as if he's afraid of breaking her. "Hello, Miss Belle. Happy New Year."
"Happy New Year, Ivan," she smiles brightly, always friendly no matter how long it's been. "How are your sisters?"
"Alright," Ivan says in that quiet way of his, fishing around in his pocket with a gloved hand. "I'm going over to Katya's for a late dinner now."
"Give them my regards," Belle says, and Skye shakes his head in wonder. Ivan skated competitive singles, while he and Belle skated doubles, so they'd never been in direct competition. Still, he and Ivan share a sort of odd friendship because of that world they shared.
"Da, I will," Ivan finally withdraws his hand from his pocket and turns to Skye. "Here are the keys."
"I promise to lock up when we're done," Skye says, just like every year. Ivan nods and turns to go, soon vanishing down the darkened street. He's barely out of sight when Belle snatches the keys from her brother and practically drags him inside.
So much has changed, Skye muses as he sits on a bench to lace up his skates. Belle's already in hers, she can lace them almost without a thought now, and Skye watches her fondly as she circles the rink. The familiar swish-scrape of her skates across the ice is the only thing that breaks the silence. Skye glances around, imagining the stands full of people, judges in their box, the roar and the buzz of the crowds.
He doesn't miss it. Skating was never in his bones and blood the way it is in Belle's. Skye's heard rumours that she might go for the Dutch Olympic team next year. She hasn't said anything to him yet, though, and he'll respect that. But the moment she tells him, he'll encourage her. That's always been her dream.
And Skye is happy where he is; running a pub that caters to university students probably a little more than it should, smoking his pipe and making Matthew blush, occasionally reminiscing with Ivan and only pulling his old skates down once a year.
Because even if you move on from the past, some things are important. Some things are sacred tradition.
For as long as Skye can remember, he and Belle have skated on New Years Eve. His earliest memory is his father down on his knees on the ice, holding tiny Belle steady on her feet so Skye could so carefully take her hand. Every year since he was thirteen and she was ten, he's lifted her into the air at the stroke of midnight. Even when he was sixteen, he'd forced himself onto the ice despite Belle's (and the doctor's) protests. He hadn't lifted her that year, but he'd been on the ice and taken her hand, let her tow him along on a slow circuit around the ice.
He's almost thirty, and he can't imagine that tradition ending anytime soon.
"Where's Jack?" he asks after her American partner as he finally stands and glides out onto the ice. It's been awhile, but it's like riding a bicycle. He's skated with Belle for so long that his body won't be forgetting how it feels any time soon. He reaches out, and she takes his hand.
"Back at the hotel," she laughs, using her momentum to pull him into a spin that he follows easily. His ankle twinges a little (he reminds himself not to do any jumps), but it's more than manageable. "He said something about not wanting to be in the way."
Skye snorts, but has to agree. He likes Jack well enough, and he's more than skilled enough to take Belle all the way to the Olympics, but these New Years Eve skates are special. He likes it the best when it's just the two of them.
In the pocket of his jeans his phone goes off, and a moment later Belle's does too. She laughs, eyes sparkling, grinning, and suddenly Skye is ten years old again, listening to his sister babbling about how they're going to be famous skaters someday.
He doesn't even have to ask, he's never needed to ask. Her eyes tell him all he needs to know. When he shifts to lift her into the air, feels her arms lock and her weight shift to aid him, for a moment everything's perfect with the two of them hanging in time.
No matter how widely Belle travels or how little Skye skates, that doesn't change the past, doesn't change who they are, and it doesn't change that they're sister and brother and that the ice is what will always bind them together. An unbreakable connection, a promise renewed every year.
"Happy New Year, Belle," he murmurs, and above him she looks out over the ice and smiles.
"Happy New Year, broer."