The day had felt like it had been dragging on forever until the next soccer practice that the team had. The only thing that had been on his mind all day had been the events from the previous night. Or very early morning, he should say. Or was it the entire evening? His memory felt too fuzzy to remember correctly.

Time seemed to be trapping him in a limbo, where the day felt as though it were taking an eternity to get through, but by the time that the practice had rolled around, it felt as though the day had barely begun. It had to the fatigue that he felt, Willem tried to reason with himself. Even with having stayed up so late into the night, he had still needed to get up fairly early in order to get to his first class of that day.

It left him feeling empty and dead inside as he struggled to stay awake through his classes. Though at the same time, staying awake had only been half of the problem. The other half was that he couldn’t stop remembering the way he found Mathias walking down the sidewalk looking for him and wearing his hoodie. It honestly still baffled Willem. Mathias had more important things and people in his life to focus on, and yet he wasted an entire night of sleep to instead look for Willem. Yes, they had been close friends for over a decade, but Willem didn’t think that Mathias would do something so extreme for him and to make sure that he was okay.

As much as the sentiment gave a warm feeling in Willem’s chest, he wasn’t going to let himself get his hopes up about anything. No matter that when he had woken up the first things that he noticed were the fact that Mathias had put a blanket on him so he wouldn’t get cold while he slept, and the fact that Mathias had fallen asleep while still wearing Willem’s hoodie that he had borrowed. The soft lines of sleep had made Mathias look so much at peace and much younger, as if his everyday life normally weighed down on him tremendously. Or maybe it had just been the stress of that night. Willem couldn’t be sure.

All through the day, he kept remembering the way that Mathias had leaned on him while they were heading back to their dorm. The warmth of his presence and weight against his arm counteracted the slight chill that the night held. For those few brief moments, Willem could almost pretend and forget the fact that Mathias belonged to someone else. In those moments, Willem could almost pretend that he was the one that Mathias wanted to be with instead of the stupid loser that had no proper idea of how to treat someone he was in a relationship with.

Honestly, if Willem ever found himself in a situation where he was in a room alone with Lukas and there were no witnesses around… No, he wouldn’t let his mind venture down that path. Not yet. He had to hold it together for just a little while longer until the practice was over, so that he could retreat to the art studio and continue with the personal projects that he had started the night before. It wasn’t necessarily good that he was locking himself away from other people, but it was the only thing that was keeping him sane. If he was around too many people, then he didn’t know if he would be able to keep himself together emotionally. There was too much that Willem had at stake for him to end up breaking down in front of anybody.

At the very least, Willem was able to avoid any questions and any sort of awkward conversations throughout the duration of the soccer practice. That didn’t mean that he wasn’t distracted though, his focus remaining mostly on Mathias during most of that time. Willem was watching him, studying him, seeing how he was acting. After last night, Mathias seemed to be holding up pretty well. He looked happy. He still looked tired, but it seemed as though there was a weight that had been lifted from his shoulders.

It probably has to do with whatever happened with Lukas, Willem thought bitterly. Even with as much as he tried not to, he couldn’t help thinking that whatever the reason that Mathias was happy was because things were getting fixed and going smoothly between him and Lukas. Who wouldn’t be happy that their relationship was growing and getting better? After all, it had been a source of stress for Mathias for quite some time with how unhappy some of Lukas’s actions had made him and being turned into a metaphorical punching bag.

If Mathias had truly ended up following Willem’s advice from the previous day… If the two of them had truly started to work things out between them… If Lukas was actually listening to reason and wasn’t as much of a complete asshole as Willem thought of him as… Then Willem had nobody to blame except himself for being a guiding hand that brought the two of them closer together and simultaneously shooting himself in the heart in the process.

At the very least, the soccer practice ended up being uneventful and served as a slight distraction to the stormy thoughts that clouded Willem's mind. He felt like a fool for holding onto his feelings for so long, but he couldn't help it. Part of him wished that he could get over his feelings for Mathias, that he could just walk away and disappear, but he knew that he had been too deeply in love with him for there to be any chance of that happening. So the only other alternative was to suffer in silence.

He listened in dull silence as the coach started in on one of his pep talks about how their big game was coming up next week, the game that was going to determine who went to the semi-finals. They had been doing well so far, but they couldn't afford for any slip-ups and everyone on the team needed to be at the top of their game. It was the usual speech as always, just with more emphasis on working as a team and winning. Plus making sure they were well rested and were eating correctly. Nothing new.

As Willem gathered up his belongings from inside the locker room, he paused whenever he heard Mathias's voice cut through the other chatter. “Hey, Gillian! I heard from Coach Falkner yesterday that you're going to be joining the hockey team. It's going to be great having another familiar face on the team.” Willem glanced over to see Mathias smiling and patting Gillian on the shoulder with Antonio and Christopher standing nearby and talking between themselves.

“Ja, I can't wait for the practices to begin. I had been thinking about joining for some time, and the coach had been nagging at me for quite a while. So I thought, hey, why not go ahead and join if the coach thinks I'm really that good. Plus I've been getting ahead in my classes so I don't have as much of a workload to stress about. Might as well put something in that place, hm?” Gillian smiled, crossing his arms behind his head.

It made Willem roll his eyes as he continued gathering up his belongings and swinging his duffel bag over his shoulder.

“Yeah, the coach had actually talked quite highly about your hockey skills before. It kind of made me wonder why you had never joined before. But I'm glad to have you there,” Mathias said with a laugh.

Willem shook his head as he began to head towards the door of the locker room.

“Anyways, I'll catch up with you three in a little bit.”

A hand on his arm stopped Willem in his tracks as he was about to push open the door to head outside. Blinking in surprise, he glanced over his shoulder to see Mathias standing there, hair in a spiky disarray. “Hey.”