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niemernuet · 2 years

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Week number 20 of the off-season winder sports fandom challenge. 20!!!?!? Anyway. The subject is:

sitting on the porch at night 🌙✨

It's a little something about the baby vikings, inspired by that one post of @wunderlichkind from this time last week. Hope it's coherent (time jumps are hard).

Being Lucas

rating: T pairing: Atle Lie McGrath/Lucas Braathen (unrequited...one-sided...idk, it's complicated) characters: Atle Lie McGrath, Lucas Braathen, Timon Haugan, Fabian Wilkens-Solheim, Kjetil Jansrud, Sebastian Foss Solevåg, Adrian Smiseth Sejersted, Rasmus Windingstad length: 3'300 words

In hindsight, it was a terrible idea. In hindsight, Atle should have trusted his foresight because, admittedly, he had a very bad feeling about it from the beginning all the way until it had been too late. The problem is that Atle often has a bad feeling about many things; it is simply part of his nature. It is the reason why he always, ever since he has been little, needed just a tad longer than his peers; not because he is slower but because he worries too much. In addition, the whole thing is about Lucas, which makes everything twice as complicated feeling-wise.

Their cabin for the training camp stands by the shore, and even though, thanks to the convoluted geography of Western Norway, said shore is removed by several bays and headlands and capes from the Atlantic, a stiff wind is blowing away the little warmth from the evening sun. Atle makes do with a pair of thick jeans, a hoodie, and a blanket wrapped around his shoulders and over his legs. It makes his entire body pleasantly warm save for his fingers with which he scrolls mindlessly through his phone. The planks of the wooden deck chair are hard and some of the colour worn off but the backrest is tilted at a perfect angle for maximum comfort.

Furthermore, they had the worst luck imaginable only a few months beforehand, so, all things considered, it is entirely understandable why Atle overrode his feelings with brute force in the end.

Not that it makes the whole thing any better.

A cold shiver runs down Atle's spine as his thoughts wander back to that unlucky holiday that started everything. He had often thought back to the past winter, wrecking his brain whether they indeed never had mentioned the name of that blasted place with Lucas around but he never came to any conclusion. He was disappointed when Lucas had flat out refused to go with them. Back then, Atle had chalked it up to the devastating loss of the slalom globe in the very last race. Everyone would need some space after a blow like that, Atle understood, even though it stung a little bit. The real surprise came when they turned their phones back on after the plane landed in Mexico. Seven bloody continents, hundreds of countries with literally tens of thousands of places that a Norwegian might choose to spend their holidays, and they had all landed in that one little backwater town near Cancun. He laughed with Timon and Fabian as they watched the first few stories of Lucas' trip, and they filled the group chat, demanding to get a tour of the luxurious villa Lucas rented with his friends. At first, the excuses were understandable. Atle, Fabian and Timon had also planned stuff to see and visit, and it was reasonable that Lucas' friends, which no one had ever heard of before, would not want to change the whole itinerary for Lucas' colleagues from work. After a while, Atle started to get a bit angry at Lucas' delayed answers and curt messages, the sting of his cold shoulder almost as painful as the sunburn he caught on the first day.

"We're just not cool enough," Timon said after another short video of a tastefully under-furnished room with snow-white walls.

Then, the first portraits appeared between the videos and shots, and without actually talking about it, they decided to drop the subject.

"Training camp is going to be fun," was all Fabian muttered between two bites of Taco after the first look at Lucas' painted nails but the fun started not one hour later when Adrian sent the first of a whole slew of wisecracks into the group chat. Atle counted the hours of time difference between Mexico and Norway, and was tempted to write back why he stalked his teammate in the middle of the night but in the end he ignored it like most of the rest of the guys, like Lucas did, and the jokes died down not one day later.

In a way it was funny, how Atle, Fabian and Timon had taken one look at the selfies, and came to the same conclusion, that is to say that the pictures were not just Lucas being Lucas but Lucas being Lucas, unashamedly and probably for the first time in his life. Atle was glad to leave Mexico after this revelation, his heart too heavy with the new awareness that he belonged to that part of Lucas' life that Lucas had to hide his true self from.

The wind is still blowing unperturbed, and Atle has to put down his phone, and hide his fingers under the blanket for a while. One of the windows is a crack open, and the voices from the people inside blend with the murmur of the wind and the sea. The women brought a few bottles of wine along which they share in the evening around the big table; Atle suspects it is something they picked up from the pretentious know-it-alls from France and Switzerland during the winter. It means that the other guys have been sitting with them the whole week and would not want to play football or any other game in the garden, much to Atle's resentment.

He does not care for wine at all.

It took some time for Atle to realise that the jokes in the group chat had not just petered out on their own. His private chat with Lucas had been quiet for weeks, with Atle unable to express what he wanted to say, and he did not know that Lucas would not come to the Olympic Dinner hosted by the King. He was not surprised, though, when he did not show up at the palace like the rest of them, leaving Atle as the only skier not in a bunad.

"I can't believe they let you in like that," Seb chided Atle, and gave his bow tie a flick. Even though it was only May, and the reception hall airy and cool, the heavy wool coats and vests had turned the heads of Atle's teammates as red as their waistcoats.

"You're just jealous," Atle shot back, and pretended to wipe Seb's forehead with his pocket square. The dinner was top-tier, as expected, and the alcohol freely flowing. The Princess dined with them, thankfully as far away from Atle as was possible at a round table, but excused herself after the main course.

"You should have asked her who's going to win the championship next season," Adrian said to Seb while he topped off his glass with wine.

"Why didn't you?" Kjetil asked with a wink, and held out his own glass.

Adrian pursed his lips. "Maybe I will when she gets back."

A pack of waiters attacked them at that moment, and when they left, their table was cleared for dessert, and a full bottle of wine stood in the middle again.

"I wouldn't want to know it," Rasmus picked up the thread. "The future isn't fun when you know it."

"Forget about fun," Kjetil mused, "I'm sure if someone could really tell what comes next season, nobody would believe them. In my experience, life is just stranger than you can imagine."

In return, Adrian put his glass down, closed his eyes, and hovered his hands above the table. "Let me try! I see…I see…snow! I see long slopes and cable cars."

"Boo!" Seb interjected, and threw his napkin over the table.

"I see a comeback!" Adrian continued. "I see a man…he's old…so old and wrinkly." Here Kjetil smacked Adrian with his own napkin.

"He's fast…I see…I see a podium! I see a medal! He's world champion!"

They all laughed as Kjetil kicked Adrian under the table. "Not that crazy," he grinned.

"Well, in that case I see a title fight between Aleks and Odermatt," Rasmus threw in.

"And I see podiums for our child prodigies," Fabian added, and skipped out of Atle's reach with his chair.

"That I see too," Kjetil smiled.

Atle tried to say something but Rasmus was faster.

"And what pretty podiums they'll be."

"No thanks to you, Atle," Adrian grinned, and grabbed his hand to inspect it. "You'll have to step up your game if you want to keep up with Lucas."

He pulled the hand back, and glared at Adrian to no avail.

"Well, speaking of crazy, maybe skiing will be the next year's swimming," Rasmus added, and suddenly the royal dinner sat like a stone in Atle's stomach.

Adrian snorted, and picked up the bottle of wine. "That would give Goggia really something to cry about."

Mute and quiet, Atle watched as Kjetil took the bottle out of Adrian's hand.

"We've talked about this," he muttered, and for a while, they all inspected their napkins.

The old wood of the porch creaks as someone turns around the corner, and Atle hastily picks up his phone again so he would look moderately busy, and not like an old man wearily staring out into nothingness, contemplating his own mortality.

"Where did you find that blanket?" Lucas asks, and stops next to Atle.

Atle feels his cheeks flush, and keeps his eyes locked on the screen. "Cupboard in the hallway to the bathrooms."

"Oh." Lucas frowns, and chews on his lip as he looks through the window into the house. Eventually, he comes to the conclusion that it is not worth it to walk past the combined women's and men's team.

"Can you spare some of that?" he asks, and waves at the blanket. Atle has just time enough to pull it out from under his shoulders and scoot aside on the heavy, wooden deck chair before Lucas plops down by his side. The chair creaks warningly as a second fully-grown athlete splays out on top of it.

"It's so cold," Lucas sighs as he climbs under the blanket.

"You're barefoot," Atle reminds him. He stays unmoving and stiff as a board, unable to cope with Lucas suddenly so close to him again.

"Yeah, because my toes fucking hurt," Lucas groans. "The first time in the shoes after the holidays is the worst. I don't know how you do it."

In response, Atle throws the blanket back and reveals the thick woollen socks on his feet.

"I can't wear more than that yet," he confesses.

"Oh, toasty!" Lucas says, and places his feet on top of Atle's before throwing the blanket over their legs again. Atle bites down hard on his lips as their bodies intertwine even more.

For a moment they both look out over the sea. Lucas also has his phone clutched to his chest, and Atle realises that he has wiped the nail polish off his fingers again, just as he had done for the short camp in Italy, a few weeks before Atle’s mistake. In Atle’s memory it was nothing more than a haze, and not just because he spent most of the time gasping for air on a bike, or hanging like a sack of potatoes in a sheer rock wall. They did not broach the subject even from a distance then, whether because Kjetil’s authority reverberated from beyond retirement or some other reason Atle could not tell. There was much awkward silence but Aleks managed to fill it easily the way he always did, and after four days their ways had parted again.

"What are you doing?" Lucas pipes up.

Atle shrugs with the shoulder that is not currently pressed against Lucas. "Just…on my phone," he mutters, and holds it up.

Lucas nods, and pickes up his own phone too. "Same," he says, and begins scrolling through an app. Atle has no choice but to do the same. He tries to tilt his a little bit though because ever since his return from Italy, the algorithm of most of his apps was a bit out of kilter. It is another testament to Atle's halting temperament that he needed three months to finally do something. Even if it was not much. Even if it was just opening tiktok, and, after his eyes and ears had been properly assaulted, moving over to Wikipedia via Google. He read up on every article he could find, clicking blue links until he landed on the page about a suburb of Paris or the history of California, and back again. He found labels, categories and words but neither a manual nor guidance on how to go on from there. It was quite unfortunate because Atle usually managed to do the wrong thing when forced to act on his own.

The gallery was in one of the old hangars at the old airport out in Fornebu. Once upon a time, the area had been appropriately derelict for the kind of atmosphere the artists strove for but that had been before the Telenor-Arena had been built right next to it, turning the place from a romantic lament about post-industrialism into the parking lot of a multi-purpose hall.

At least it made parking easy.

Atle found the ad from one of Lucas' friends from his other life, one he was sure had been in Mexico too. It definitely was not his world, to put it that way but he had made a decision, and he had forced himself to go despite the knot in his stomach. He had fretted about his outfit for a long time, and realised the second he had turned around the corner and into the alley where the gallery was located that it had all been in vain. There was nothing Atle could have done to fit into the crowd because it was not the clothes that made him different. He walked past a guy wearing what Atle was sure was the exact same outfit his grandfather had worn on Christmas. Had he worn a pair of beige, misshapen slacks and a sweater vest in the same colour, he would have just looked like his grandfather except a joke, while the guy who disappeared in the gallery…

There were garden chairs and rickety tables in the alley, an old, rusty gangway on wheels with a faded SAS-logo, and a few pots of plants. The gallery was packed, and the people spilling out of the door. Though the night was as bright as any summer night in Oslo, the amount of people and the thick walls swallowed most of the light, and additional lamps had to illuminate the pictures. Atle assumed that the figures were supposed to unsettle the viewer, and they did, though he would have not needed any additional help. He walked past the images of distorted Simpson-figures in screaming colours, meandering through the masses while searching for the source of the thumping music that filled the stuffy air. Some people threw him glances, measuring him up against this world that he did not belong to but he ignored them. The DJ's booth was at the end of the tour through the hall, after old, corrugated metal, porous, brick-lined walls and the grotesques of the Simpsons had beaten down the visitor. A bulb of people was standing around the desk, some talking among themselves, some listening, some waving their phones, and some trying to get the attention of the DJ who was in the centre of the crowd. Atle watched Lucas from a distance. He had no idea about the art of DJ-ing but he recognised the same focus in his eyes that he had before a race, and the same, well-known smile after a good run. When he looked up from his set-up, his eyes found Atle automatically, as if a spotlight was hanging above Atle's head. He waved, just as automatically, because his brain needed a few moments longer to realise that Lucas had stopped smiling. When he lowered his hand, Lucas had caught himself, and waved back before turning to his turntables that apparently needed adjusting. Atle hesitated, even though his feet wanted to run on their own, hoping against better knowledge that something, anything, might save this situation.

He left when he saw Lucas' balled fists resting on his machinery.

A new message arriving with a short vibration jolts Atle back to reality. Even though it is just a little after ten, the sun already starts to sink behind the mountains. The wind is still blowing but Atle thinks that it now carries the smell of rain. He frowns when he sees the name but without turning his head, he clicks on the little symbol, and reads the few words. He does not turn his head afterwards, either. He remains still, just like Lucas, though a few strands of his hair are dancing on their own, and tickling Atle's neck.

"I liked it," he begins. "You should take your stuff with you next winter when we're on the road. It'd be cool."

Lucas snorts. "I'm already hauling too much material around; I can’t take it with me too.”

“I mean, isn’t most of it done with the laptop? Then you could leave the other gadgets at ho…” Atle breaks off because Lucas’ head whips around, and a look full of indignation hits him.

“What?” Lucas asks. “Gadgets?”

“Very important instruments?” Atle tries.

Lucas rams his elbow in Atle’s side, and turns back in the chair. “Well saved.”

They laugh, and slowly fall silent again. There is still a knot in Atle’s stomach but he is starting to think that it might be here to stay for a while; so…

“I liked your nails before. You should have left the colours on.”

Lucas’ hands instinctively ball to fists before he catches himself, and he slowly, deliberately stretches them out on top of the blanket again.

"Eh, they were chipped anyway," he shrugs. "To be honest the time it takes to get everything right compared to the time it looks okay is…a bit of a mismatch." He bends his fingers towards his palm and inspects the nails. Atle sees a bit of light blue polish still sticking to the cuticle of the ring finger.

"It barely stayed even when all I had to lift were towels and cocktail glasses," Lucas says. "I doubt it would hold one day in winter."

"You'd just have to wear your gloves more often," Atle retorts. "And only take them off on the podium."

Lucas laughs. "Or I let you guys carry everything for me."

Atle nods earnestly. "See? There is more than one solution."

His breath hitches when Lucas, still laughing, slides a bit further down the chair, and rests his head on Atle's shoulder.

Atle remembers all the labels he read about, neat lists and rows on Wikipedia, that were exactly zero help for his ongoing troubles. He does not ask Lucas whether he has heard about them, or more, because it is not the point. Because it would not help. There is nothing about Lucas that needs explaining, not for Atle or anyone else. But he knows people will demand an explanation, come winter at the latest, or maybe a lot earlier depending on how much wine the women still had in their stash. For a moment, anger washes over him as he thinks about the gags and japes that would beat down on Lucas should he ever truly dare to be himself, and the helplessness makes him almost choke. He knows with utmost certainty that he would and will love Lucas, no matter who or where he is. Atle turns his head slightly, and looks at Lucas from the corner of his eyes. He also knows himself enough to understand that he is not going to confess that anytime soon. Lucas feels his gaze, and grins up at him.

"It's good to be back," he says.

"Yeah?"

Lucas snorts softly, as if he understands all the things Atle wants to ask but cannot. He balls his fist again but this time raises it towards Atle.

"Yeah," he says, and waits for Atle to do the same.

#osws fandom challenge #rpf #sports rpf #text #mine #lucas braathen #atle lie mcgrath

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