Chuuya Nakahara couldn’t stand Dazai Osamu.

The figure skater glided into his life like he owned the damn rink—graceful, smug, and always dripping with that irritating calm like nothing could touch him. Chuuya didn’t even know people could be that smug on ice. But somehow, Dazai managed it.

Their training schedules were cursed from the start. Dazai’s sessions ended right when Chuuya’s began, which meant they always ran into each other in the locker room—Chuuya lacing up his skates while Dazai unzipped his sleek little jacket and draped it over the bench like he was performing for an audience.

At first, they didn’t talk. Then they started tossing comments. Then it escalated into full-on bickering.

“You call that a sport?” Chuuya had snapped once, yanking his pads on. “You’re just spinning in circles in a sparkly outfit.”

Dazai didn’t miss a beat. “And you’re just chasing a puck like a brainless dog with anger issues.”

Chuuya might’ve threatened to slam Dazai into the boards, even though figure skaters technically don’t have boards. Semantics.

It wasn’t like they didn’t respect each other’s talent—they just refused to admit it out loud. Chuuya was one of the youngest on his team to be drafted into national-level competitions. He had raw strength, speed, and focus that made people stare when he flew across the ice. He bled effort. Earned everything.

Dazai, though? Dazai made it all look too easy. He moved like water, spun like gravity didn’t apply, and always finished with that damn smile that made Chuuya want to punch a wall. Or him. Preferably him.

But the real problem? The real issue?

They were always there.

Long after the lights dimmed, when most skaters had gone home to warm showers and dinner, both of them lingered. Chuuya trained late, pushing himself until his legs screamed, sweat dripping beneath his pads, muscles aching in the best way. And when he glanced across the rink, past the glass, there he was—Dazai, alone on the other side, twirling, falling, getting up again. Repeating moves like he hadn’t landed them perfectly already. Over and over.

They never acknowledged each other during those late hours. Just trained. Pretended the other wasn’t there. Pretended they weren’t watching.

But Chuuya noticed the way Dazai’s breathing got heavier when he was struggling. How his hands trembled sometimes before a jump. How he wiped the frost off the mirror before taking another spin. And he wondered if Dazai noticed things about him, too—how he always started practice with the same warm-up lap, how he muttered to himself when he missed a shot, how he didn’t go home until he got it just right.

They hated each other. Swore they did.

But the rink became something else at night. A shared silence. A truce made of exhaustion and stubbornness.

Chuuya would never admit it out loud, but maybe—maybe—there was something magnetic in how Dazai moved. Something beautiful. Just for a second. Before he remembered that he was supposed to hate him.

And when Dazai passed him in the locker room with a smug smirk and a, “Still here? Thought you’d have given up by now,” Chuuya rolled his eyes, gritted his teeth, and muttered back, “Takes more than twirls and glitter to break me, ballerina.”

The rivalry was sharp. Petty. Constant.

But under the surface, something else simmered—fierce, quiet, unspoken.

They wouldn’t talk about it.

Not yet.