♦ Ice - 1974 ♦ Colorpage WiP (part 1)♦

These guys have such needlessly complicated lives that I lowkey forget they have hobbies and jobs beyond the chaos they live through haha, so lemme share some random factoids about them <3

So, Rick didn't really have any friends back in USSR, partially because he was an odd sort of being - too big and rough-looking to be accepted by the kids as gentle as he was, yet too soft and too interested in the things kids his age shouldn't like for any of the rougher boys back in the day - and partially because his many attempts to find help about his father's abuse left him no longer trusting of anyone, let alone other kids who made fun of him because of his poverty and scars.

Thus, one of the things he would do to kill time between school and his work, or during the long, cold nights when he couldn't sleep, was read and write. Language and literature were the two biggest joys left from his mother and his late uncle Viktor, which he eventually managed to turn into a career. Back then, it was an outlet he enjoyed so much he could lose himself in the books and the stories he created to the point where his life, even for a brief few moments, seemed insignificant. He was able to learn through books more than the poor education back in Krasnogorod would have actually allowed him otherwise.

He loved classical music and would often find ways to sneak into the theater attics, back when he was still small enough to fit through the windows and cracks in the roofs, just to listen to the orchestra as he warmed his hands before militsiya inevitably found him. It allowed him to learn even more about history and language he was so passionate about.

Alongside it all - he learned how to ice skate. There was a lake between the abandoned construction sites back in Krasnogorod where he would spend a lot of his winters hiding from his dad. He'd often read and write somewhere up above in the unfinished apartments, but every so often when he'd venture out to Krylovgrad (the capital of his oblast), he'd watch people much better off than he was ice skate in the center. The music and the movement always fascinated him so much, and he wished he could try it for himself, but never had any money he wouldn't have rather spent on food or a cup of tea to get some sliver of warmth, especially during winter.

There was one specific person that really got on little Rick's nerves back in the day, though, which was the meanass ice skating grounds owner that Rick once asked if he would let him skate for free if he stayed up later in the evening and cleaned everything up for him. Seeing as Rick was just a kid dressed in some too-big scraps of clothing, the owner simply kicked him out, thinking he'd steal from him, and kept doing so every time he'd see Rick just enjoying the view of other people having fun. So, one evening, Rick got sick of being called a thief with nothing to back it up with - and stole a pair of ice skates right in front of the owner's nose.

They were too big for him back then, but he'd skate around that lake, all alone after school every single day until the ice melted, reading books as he swirled in circles. It was where he'd spend hours upon hours of his youth.

Was he ever any good at it? Absolutely not HAHA he was very graceful, but very clumsy, and never really did much besides skate in repetitive circles while reading a book and chewing on a cigarette. Like that was genuinely the peak of his ice skating career, but it made him feel free. It made him feel alive.

He stopped doing this when he got involved with Kendle, specifically when he began fearing they'd kill him if he were to be seen so free, but when he immigrated and came to Grimport, he brought that tradition of his back to life <3 It was where Loretta actually first saw him - getting back from university late in the evening, she saw him with a gigantic forensics studies book, strolling around the closed ice skating rink. He already got the Grimport crows pretty used to him being a source of food, so they were also awake and EVERYWHERE around him. Which, for Grimport where everyone hates crows, was quite an interesting sight to her.

They often went ice skating together, and they danced around Grimport when they weren't reading, yet after Loretta passed, he stopped going to the rink entirely. He'd take Maggie quite often and skate with her, but when she found her little friend group and only needed him for watch, he mostly didn't really bother. It never felt the same when Loretta wasn't there with him.

It was when FJ came that Rick really started feeling any sort of life in his lungs again and engaged in his old interests, skating being only one of them since FJ's brain damage that lead him to Grimport in the first place really didn't allow him to keep many of his memories. He never learned to ice skate, so Rick taught him how to, among many other things <3

It really brought his love for it for a while before Rick's back and leg injuries came into play, but that's a story for part two of this little comic strip <3