HÅKON

I didn't really expect too much out of the post-diner speeches thing. I mean, Leo's best friend got up and told a goody story about the two of them, Leo's mom told a long winded story about the first time she met Isa, my parents and entire family declined to add any comments. My parents gave Leo their blessing and nothing more. I presume they'll die mad about him, though, they might give him more slack when they come to realize that the hot guy in a forest colored suit sitting a little too close to me has his hand on my upper thigh under the table and his foot hooked with mine. We're communicating back and forth with my finger taps on the table and his hand tapping on my thigh. We're fluent in it. I glance at him, then at the last thing he left on his plate, we go through a sequence of quick taps and I finish off his asparagus. He looks at my water, then his empty one, tap tap tap tap tap and he finishes my water. But, again, I feel like my parents will suddenly adore Leo once they find out I'm gay as a maypole and not about to give it up to make them happy. I've been doing that a little too long. 

When Vera tells a story, the first one in english, Milo's eyes light up and his hand clamps down on my leg, then he spends the whole time trying to call the shots on what she's saying.

"Alright, Håkon, you're next," Vera looks to me.

"Huh?" I manage.

"You're the one that caused all this, I think it's fitting you'd close out the talking." She gestures at me with the mic and I swallow hard, glancing at Rocket.

"C'mon, you gotta," he elbows me, giving me a short knowing look. He knows I didn't prepare for this and hate public speaking without anything prewritten

"Agh, fine," I stand up, gesturing for the mic. Vera gives it a hefty toss and it hits my palms, dropping right through. Milo's hand flies out, snatching it right out of the air like he didn't even think about it.

"Whoops," I mumble. "Good thing I've got a goalie around."

"Clumsy ass," he hands it up to me.

"Yeah, yeah," I smack his shoulder, then climb up onto my chair like Vera was.

"This is where he gives us the post-game speech." Leo calls, "we played well tonight, we just need to work on getting pucks in deep and sealing up our edges."

I laugh, shaking my head. "I'll spare you the agony." Then I clear my throat because fuck I was not prepared for this and shit I'm not as good in front of people as Milo is and damn I'm bad at coming up with stuff on the fly.

"If you didn't know," I start. "I was called up early to the Swedish national team, the under 18 IIHF team. I was just a little too young but they weren't going to tourney until the next year, then I'd be of-age, but I was practicing with the squad early, a sixteen year old in a group of 18 year olds." I pull in a breath, thinking about my next sentence. "I wasn't old enough, well, my parents didn't trust me enough, to head out to practice on my own, it was a half hour away from home to the rink at the time."

I look to Milo for a second for moral support and he gives me a tiny thumbs up so I keep talking. "Being the baby of the team, all the older guys took a liking to me, probably just making sure I didn't get mauled, or whatever, keep in mind I wasn't this big at sixteen. One of those guys was Leo." I gesture at him. "Captain, at the time. And, because I wasn't to be trusted alone getting back and forth to practice by myself, Isa drove me, just to do her homework in the stands while I sweat for five hours every weeknight." I tip my head at Isa. "Still have no idea how she put up with sitting in an ice rink for five hours every night of the week, spare the few days here and there when she actually had something social to do."

"Ow!" Isa laughs from across the way.

"You know I'm right," I gesture at her. "So my bookworm of a sister sat in the upper part of the stands for the greater half of a whole year just to needle me incessantly the second we got back in the car about the captain." I grin. "Now, again, I was sixteen. I had just worked out for five straight hours. I was hungry and exhausted and about ready to pass out for the next twelve hours. I didn't have the energy to answer specific questions about the guy she pretended not to know the name of. You didn't fool me for a single second, Is," I raise my eyebrows at her. "I know you kept his Elite Prospects page open and loaded on your phone for that whole time, you could probably still rattle off all the information on it."

She's red in the cheeks.

"C'mon," I urge. "I know you still know it."

Isa lets out a little laugh, then gives us the full list, Leo Beckstrand, position: center, height: 190 cm, handedness: right. She goes through until about there and then is too embarrassed by knowing this to continue.

"See," I laugh. "She had that so memorized I bet I could've gotten her to say it in her sleep. Point is, I didn't care. Not at all. I cared about going home and sleeping. She could talk my ear off about whatever she wanted on the way home and I'd be chill with it, so long as I made it home. But, then I noticed something funky." I pull in a breath. "See, because Leo was my favorite guy on the team at that point, he was a little scary, yeah, but he's Leo and you all know him, he wouldn't let a fly land on me. It was all well and good for about a month, and then he got annoying." I cast him a joking little glare. "No offense, Leo, but you were almost worse than Isa. 'hey Håkon what's your sister reading?' 'hey Håkon, what's your sister's favorite food' all of that. And I was just stuck there, exhausted, constantly, playing my heart out, and being absolutely drilled on both sides from two people who thought the other didn't know they existed."

I clear my throat, trying to ignore the burning in my cheeks from speaking this much. "So I let it steep, like tea, if you will. Because no way was I giving them the satisfaction that early. I thought it was funny."

"Håkon!" Leo barks out a laugh. "Rude!"

"Oh I know," I smile. "But, c'mon, Leo, you used to go home and binge read all the stuff Isa was reading. You'd come in to practice half-exhausted and way out of it because you'd been nose deep in some book all night with the hopes of trying to impress my sister. You hadn't even talked to her."

He's bright red, so I keep talking. "So I let it sit for a few months, you know, like the demon I am, and I gave them answers occasionally, about random stuff, too, I told Isa that Leo eats most soups with a fork because it's easier to eat soup with a fork and then slurp the broth, and then turned right around and told Leo that Isa likes her toast cooked all the way to black. You know, as a comedic effort."

I pull in a breath. "It was beyond funny to watch Isa try to eat soup with a fork and then see Leo complaining immediately that he had burnt toast flavor in his mouth. It was funny. Maybe I'm mean for it, but it was funny." I take a second for comedic effect but mostly because I'm so very very nervous. "Eventually I got sick of it because they both started getting weirder and weirder about the questions and pretending not to be completely obsessed despite the three hour tiraide Isa went on after Leo added her on snapchat and the extra hour she spent trying to send the perfect first snapchat. So I decided, you know what, I better get around to doing something about this. So I texted Isa I wanted her to come down to the locker room area to help me with something and I dragged a very very sweaty Leo, still in half of his gear, mind you, out to the hallway when she texted me that she was there. And then I pushed them closer together and waited. It was, as you might expect, a natural disaster level trainwreck."

The group lets out a collective laugh and I get the time to figure out what I'm going to say next. Normally with interviews at work I've got like ample time to come up with a good thing to say and something we need to work on so I can keep it chill with the media and not say anything too fuckey.

This is too much ad libbing for me.

"So, of course, nothing happened between them except probably a horribly awkward memory that's going to last them the rest of their lives." I smile. "So that's where Svea and I come in." I nod to her. "Hey, Sevs, sorry I dragged you into that situation. So I set it up just perfect. I asked Sevs on a date and then I told Isa I wanted her to come along to get a discount I completely made up, dunno why she fell for that, and then I told Leo to meet me and Sevs at the restaurant for the same fake discount. And then I told Svea the whole plan and everything I had going for me and that's why we're here right now." I shrug. "Leo, I've never seen someone blush as much in one night as you did then."

"Håkon do not go any further with th-" he starts.

"Or say so many embarrassing things," I grin at him. "Come stop me, buddy, I know you won't."

He frowns at me.

"I mean, this guy asked Isa, three minutes in, about her theories on a book she read three months prior. He was still catching up on her reading from the beginning of the season and I swear the look on her face was insane." I wiggle my eyebrows at Leo, challenging him. "First off, the book was Paradiso which, if you don't know-"

"Håkon I promised myself I'd never relive that-"

I smile at him. "If you don't know, it's the third part to the epic poem that begins with Dante's Inferno. This man-" Leo points at me, challenging me to continue. I feel my smile mimic Milo's shit eating grin, all quirked on one side and lopsided. "This man read through the entire first two books in under a few days, I'll give it to the bus rides, though, he had the time, and then he asked her, who, mind you, she didn't know him, well, she knew every available detail about him, but she hadn't told him she'd read Paradiso, and the last thing she expected to come out of this kid's mouth, ten minutes into their first ever conversation, is theories about a book like that."

"Epic poem, Håkon," Leo corrects.

I roll my eyes. "Bold of you to assume that's not within my definition of a book. I didn't go to college. Anyway." I realize I'm mimicking Milo with that anyway which he uses to collect his tangent after going off on a wild side track. "Anyway, the last thing Isa was expecting to spurt out of the captain of the Swedish national junior's team's mouth was theories about one of her more recent reads. After that, it happened like they tell it. He showed up as much as possible and finally worked up the guts to ask her out and then off they went." I take a dumb little bow. "So you're welcome, everyone. Uh, who wants this now?" I hold up the mic. "Because I'm done unless you guys want my season recap."

"Over here!" Leo's dad hollers.

"You gonna catch?" I say into it.

"Uh-"

"Yeah, I think you'll be able to catch it. Hands up!" I click it off and then give it a good lob. The crowd erupts in clapping when Mr Beckstrand holds it up, having caught it.

"You're shaking." Milo mumbles.

"Yeah," I whisper in response, holding out my hand to show him how badly I'm trembling.

"That nerve wracking?" He looks up at me with a look of sheer apologetic kindness. "You did really good for a guy that really really hates public speaking."

"Thanks," I flex my hands to try to get the shaking out. My legs feel weak and weird and jello-ey to add to it. "God that was a lot."

"I dunno any of what you said, but your voice held still and you added a lot of gestures and things. Nico did you well with that training."

"Yeah, yeah," my palms are beyond sweating and I'm gonna have to keep this suit jacket on until my armpits dry. "Wow I hate public speaking. Shit I should not have eaten so much beforehand my stomach is rolling a little."

"Go run up to the house, they're releasing us soon for the after bit, I'll meet you in a minute." He shushes me off.

"Yeah," I nod, then lean over to the table nearest us, catching Isa's attention. "Hey, m'gonna run up to the house, if you guys need me in the next like ten minutes just text."

"Him too?" She tips her head at Milo.

"Yeah, probably." I flush.

"Just don't take too long," she smiles. "And get some air, you looked like you were going to pass out."

"Might still," I let out a laugh, ignoring how weirdly loose my arms feel. I stand up and make it about halfway up the grass to the house before I've got converse jogging through the grass behind me.

"Hey,"

"You seriously did really well," he says, elbowing me. "Are you beating yourself up about this or are you just residual nervous?"

"Still just a little shaky," I shrug. "M'not good with that stuff unless I've got like... a word for word plan. That... I mean, I should've known, but that was kinda a lot," I let out a little laugh as we turn the final corner toward the house up the path. He takes my hand, giving it four quick squeezes and then pulling me in the sliding door.

"Feels like we were just here, huh?" He laughs.

"Yeah, yeah we were."

"Well, good for you, I didn't eat any shellfish at dinner." He bounces up on his toes and presses a little kiss to my lips. "That's about all I trust myself with, though, don't wanna kill you."

"Sweet sentiment." I nod. "I need water and a minute to breathe."

"Me too," he sighs. "My ears are exhausted from hearing nothing but Swedish all day. I mean, I'm learning random phrase but god I need a breather."

***

anyone wanna do my english homework for me that would be much appreciated

-rabid