Tragedies on ice

Over the last couple of months after Slash had joined GNR, it had become obvious that what Slash and Duff had going on probably wasn't purely platonic anymore. Still, Duff only now brought up the courage to ask him out because Slash certainly wasn't going to do it; he had too much pride.

Since it was winter, going to an ice rink seemed perfect. It wasn't boring and sounded cute because he couldn't skate and he doubted Slash could, so they could hold hands a lot- and without it being cheesy or too forward or anything because they would need to hold each other's hand in order to keep balance.

"Do you wanna go ice skating later? As a uh... date?" He had no idea how to approach this and the risk that his friend wouldn't understand it if he was more subtle was too high so, he simply got straight to the point.

Slash raised an eyebrow for a second but smiled when he clarified it was a date. "Sure, can you skate?"

He nervously bit his lip. He would have liked to appear cool and say he could, but lying to him and turning out to be an absolute disaster on ice would have been even more embarrassing. "No... but it will be fun, I promise."

"Fun when we fall on our asses," Slash joked before getting up to grab his jacket.

"Cmon! It won't be that bad!" Duff insisted.

"So much for 'it won't be that bad!'" Slash yelled the moment his back made contact with the ice not even a minute after stepping on the skating rink.

Duff tried to hold back laughter before asking, "Are you okay, man?"

"Yeah," he groaned, grabbing the taller boy's hand to help himself up.

"Do you need one of those skating aid penguins for kids?" he teased.

Slash rolled his eyes and held Duff's hand tighter as he slowly tried to move forwards. "Nope, but I'll pull you down with me every time so you'll stop laughing."

Soon enough, Duff was the next one to fall and, grasping Slash's hand even tighter when he felt himself tripping, they both hit the ice. "Hey, I said I'll pull you down, not you'll pull me down!"

"Well, now we're even." Duff said, smiling goofily at the brunette beside him.

The sight of other people among them, children perfectly skating past them only frustrated the two more. They looked at each other with a blank expression before Slash pointed out, "This is sad. We can't keep ourselves standing up for two minutes, but kids ten years younger than us can do it!?"

"I mean, this is our first time. They've probably done it more often," Duff tried to explain. "but yeah, we're never gonna master it."

"Next try?" Slash asked, reaching out his hand.

He nodded and they helped each other up again. This time, they could make it to the other side of the oval ice rink, albeit with struggle and many almost-falls, but what counted was that they somehow managed to move this far without any broken bones.

"Hey, we're almost halfway around the rink!" Duff said, trying to encourage Slash, although he was probably even worse at ice skating than his curly haired date.

"Fucking hell, how long did it take us?"

Quickly glancing at his watch and realizing it had been too long to actually say how much time they had already spent here, he said, "Doesn't matter, we didn't have any other plans for today anyway."

It was just their luck that immediately after celebrating their minimal success, Slash lost his balance and- still clinging to Duff's hand- pulled him down with him once more.

"How many times was that now?"

"Far too many."

They both started laughing and made no attempt to get up, just lying there and laughing hysterically. After they had calmed down, they slowly stood up again and decided to just make their way, hand in hand, along the railing towards the exit.

"Y'know, this was the most fun I had in a while. Even if we shouldn't consider a career as professional skaters," Slash smirked after they gave back their rented ice skates.

Duff chuckled for a moment before he noticed that Slash was holding his hand again, as if they still depended on it like they had ten minutes ago. He held it a little tighter, he didn't want his silence to be interpreted as a sign that he didn't like it, because he very much did.

Seems like the bruises and hurting asses and knees paid off, after all.

762 words :)) I haven't written in awhile and this is kinda messy, but it works out I guess hehe