Stick To The Stuff You Know || Thayne Jasperson x Reader

3

Three...two...one...

"Yes!", Coach cheers from the sidelines and grins brightly.

I grin back at her as I skate over and come to a stop right beside her.

"That was great! You had the perfect speed, perfect height, I'm so proud of you!", Coach grins and hugged me tight.

We've been practicing something special for months now, probably since the beginning of this season. A quad.

In figure skating you have six jumps, three of which you enter by digging your toe pick into the ice and taking off – Flip, Toe Loop and Lutz – and three where you jump by pushing yourself off with your edges – Salchow, Loop and Axel. The Axel is the hardest, because you go in from the front and have a half rotation more.

The next difficulty to the jumps are the rotations. You have single jumps, doubles, triples and quadruples. The final ones, quads, are more common in the men's skating division, but I plan to change that. While other women want to jump triple axels, I want to jump a quad Salchow.

Each jump combined with a rotation has a different base value and, accompanied by the grade of execution ranging from +3 to -3, you get a certain amount of points for it. The quad salchow has a base value of 10.5 points, while a normal triple salchow only has 4.4 points. I hope you understand why I aim higher.

"That was great, really. If you land it more often in the next few weeks, maybe we can put it into your long program for the Grand Prix," Coach says and I nod with a big grin.

"Good, now that we've got that settled, I want to see your short program. This time, remember to smoothen your flow," she continues and turns half away from me, her arms stretched out as she shows me what she means.

"Your arms still look way too stiff for the step sequence. I know, I know, it's just the step sequence, but you gotta relax your arms," she stretches out her right arm across to her left and smoothly pulls it back to stretch out to the right, her hand gliding across the back of her cheek – just like I do it in my short program – and pulling her left arm to her body as she turns with the movement.

"Understood?"

"Yes ma'am," I jokingly salute and she laughs, hitting my arm to send me off.

It's around 8:30pm and we reserve the rink until around 8:45pm. The public has access to the rink until 5pm and after that, I come in. Sometimes I practice in the morning and then have other things like ballet in the afternoon / evening.

I skate to the middle of the rink and get into my starting position. A couple of seconds pass before the music finally starts.

I chose this music simply because I loved it the moment I heard it for the first time. The moment I heard it, I could instantly picture me skating a program to it. Coach always said, the song is right if I can envision myself skating to it already. If I take too long to think of something to skate to a song, it's not the right song. So far she's always been right.

I start off with a couple of steps around the ice, before I take off for the double axel and land it, without even a wobble, which is quite a success for me. I've been having my problems with the Axel, it doesn't seem to like me so it always fails me somehow.

A couple of seconds later into the song I jump again – triple loop, triple toe. The landing was tight, but I got it.

The first spins come soon after. I'm always surprised how I don't get as dizzy as I always thought I would.

Soon another jump – triple flip.

Step sequence.

Another spin combination.

And the routine ends with me coming to a stop after my final spin, digging my right toe pick into the ice and crossing my arms overhead.

I hear Coach clapping, but not only her. Glancing towards where she stood, I expected Megan, my choreographer, to stand there, but that person doesn't look anything close to Megan.

I blushed in embarrassment when I realized it was Thayne. When did he get here?

It's been about a week since we met, and this is our first encounter after my forgetting-my-bag debacle.

I skate to the sidelines and Coach only grins at me "That's it for today, you did great. Remember, tomorrow at 5."

She doesn't even let me respond before she's already gone.

I stare after her like a gaping fish. I feel betrayed.

"I'm sorry that I just so suddenly showed up," Thayne spoke up after what felt like an eternity of silence.

I stepped off the ice and looked at him. We were almost the same height, but only because of my skates.

I sat down on a bench to untie them and said "Oh, no, don't worry."

"It's just, uhh, I found this last week, at the table where you sat, just after I got back in and I was wondering if this could be yours," Thayne said and I looked up to see him holding a piece of paper in his hand, holding it in my direction, for me to take.

I frown as I take it from him, but when I see the combination of numbers I can't help but grin a little and ask "Is this your number?"

Thayne glanced away awkwardly and replied "Well, uh, yeah? I just think you're really nice and I wanted to get to know you a little better."

I grin brightly up at him "Thank you! You're seriously one of the smoothest people I've met so far."

Thayne managed a small laugh "Thank you. By the way, that skating just now was amazing."

"You think so?"

"Definitely."