Post Olympic

sleep.

oh yeah babey

MUSIC: ribcage - plested
okay comment: I love these lyrics like holy:             'well, that's why they call it a ribcage, to lock all of my feelings up, to make sure my heart never escapes, I'll never be the same if it does.' 

like hell yeah???????? that's the good shit right there. 

also??? NEXT CHAPTER???????? THIS THURSDAY?? MARK YOUR CALENDARS FELLOW WOLVES FANS. 

-rabid

******************

-NICO-

I can't sleep, so I skate. I get frustrated so I go back to my room. When I'm pacing so much that my knees hurt, I go to my room. I'm laying in bed when I see something at the top of my closet.

So I stand up again.

My hands run along the blue-grey fabric, trying to remember who's this is. There's an eighteen stitched into the sleeve.

Then I remember.

That night while camping, Fenrir gave me his hoodie. I never gave it back. It's been here since then. Since I got pissed at him. Since the whole time.

I yank off the sweatshirt I'm wearing now and I pull his over my head as fast as I physically can.

It's like I just took it off. It still seems warm. It smells like cinnamon and Fenrir. I hold out my arms and look at my little hoodie paws, his sleeves are too long. The hoodie is way too big for me.

But shit, it's comfortable.

I can't fall back asleep. Even when everything around me smells like him, I can't sleep.

I worry.

I can see him in the hospital. The vitals monitor. I can see his stomach, ripped apart. It starts to take over my whole brain, him in the hospital seeps through all of me. I hug the sweater closer, breathing him in.

I get up off the bed and do something I didn't expect myself to do. I walk to the other apartment in the rink. I brush my fingers across his name still on the door. Von Albrecht. They haven't done anything to it. It's like he left yesterday. I push open the door. The apartment is bare, but it reminds me of him.

There's a window that looks out over the back field that they run on. I walk over to it and stare out across the grass. We ran together on that grass. He's dead.

I make my way to the bathroom. The bobby pin he used in his shower is still sticking out of the handle. That's how we met. I sniff, trying not to cry, trying and failing.

I walk out of the bathroom and into his bedroom, which is creepy, but I need him now, and this is as close as I can get. There are three pillows on the bed. I walk out of the room before the common sense part of me knows what's happening. I grab my blanket and walk back into his apartment.

I fall asleep in his bed, trying desperately to imagine that he's right there, just next to me, I recall the feeling of his chest pressed to my back and his legs tangled up with mine from that night, and I use it, and I fall asleep.

It's three am, long overdue for me to be unconscious.

I wake up screaming. It's three-thirty. I'm screaming and sweating, my nails are dusted in my blood.

Then I'm just staring at his wall. An hour, two hours, three.

I wake up again, slouched forward as if I fell asleep in the same stiff sitting position I was in. Everything hurts.

So I get up. 

I force myself out of bed and through my morning routine, then down to the rinks. 

I coach the boys through a tense and short practice. I don't take off Fenrir's hoodie. Ireland is nice to us all. I run them mostly dead then send them home.

Then I go to my therapy appointment, still in his hoodie, and explain the last two months.

She told me that I experienced some pretty insane level of emotional numbing. When so much has happened that nothing really makes sense.

Then I explained yesterday, and she just told me I need to be careful, any wrong move can repeat the last two months, maybe ending up in a longer numbness period.

Then I went back to the rink. And I stood in my room for an hour, then another.

"Nico?" I hear a tap at my door, so I turn around and go answer it. It's Jorgen.

"Yeah?"

"You feeling okay?"

"Yeah." I look behind him. "Where's Fenrir?" dead, say dead. I know he's dead. Stop lying to me.

"He's back home. Figured you would need a ride."

"Yeah." I take a deep breath. "Give me a minute." I shut the door on Jorgen and walk to the bathroom. Fen. I'm going to see Fen.

I'm nervous as hell. I'm the most nervous I've ever been for anything.

I look at my reflection in the mirror. Jeans and his hoodie. I slept in these jeans didn't I. Shit. I don't have anything better to change into. Anything I'd rather be wearing. I run a comb through my hair but it makes it look weird so I shake my head.