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Yuuri’s been in love all of his life, and that love belongs to the ice and the feeling of knife-sharp blades on his feet.
When he was younger people would ask after his friends and wouldn’t you much rather be out playing than shut up in that cold rink? As he got older they started asking after girls and don’t you think it’ll be hard to date when you won’t spare anybody else a moment of your time?
What the others never understood, even his family who always meant well, was that in Yuuri’s life there was no room for anybody else. It was him and the ice, the sharp whistle of wind in his ears and the burn in his muscles as he jumped.
He didn’t need anybody else. He didn’t want anybody else. He closed his eyes and skated, and by the time he opened his eyes ten years was gone and the whole world had passed him by.
Yuuri had never wanted it, no, but it was so very disconcerting to come back to earth and find that the world had continued to spin while you weren’t paying attention. After he lost the Grand Prix Final, after he crashed back to earth, his awakening was quick and brutal.
Time stopped for no man, and these days Yuuri was barely that.
And for the first time in all of his life, he wondered if he was falling out of love with the rink after all.
It hurt putting on his skates. It hurt watching the other skaters spin. It just hurt. A bone deep ache he couldn’t shake and Yuuri has had avoidance down to a fine art all his life and he does just that. He puts away his skates and goes back home and eats too much and sleeps too long and avoids.
The ache does not go away. Rather, over time it sharpens.
“You’re not happy like this,” Minako says when Yuuri brings her a drink in the quiet evening at the inn. She’s red in the cheeks already but her brow is furrowed and her mouth looks sad. “I’ve never seen you this lost before.”
Yuuri sets down her drink and smiles and even that too hurts. “I’m just taking a break, I’m not doing anything yet,” he says, even though it feels like a lie, and escapes out back to hide.
To avoid.
At night in his bed Viktor’s face stares down at him from the walls, the ceiling. Serene and beautiful and perfect in all the ways Yuuri has tried very hard to be. He bets Viktor’s never had a slump like this, that Viktor never looks in the mirror and wonders where the lines around his eyes came from.
All his life Viktor has been his only friend, the one face Yuuri saw every day, nothing more than ink on paper but so real despite it all. Yuuri’s life revolved around the rink, and Viktor was an incidental side effect of that.
By the time Yuuri was old enough to compete Viktor’s face filled his room, filled his head, filled his future. He would skate in the same rink as him one day. Sometime, far in the future, so far in the future Yuuri didn’t ever have to try and think about the particulars of it too much, Viktor would look at him and see.
He rolls over and stares out the window, the only space without Viktor’s eyes following him, and wonders if that dream is lost too. The only dream he has ever had and the only love he has ever known, skating and Viktor, one and the same, and it’s gone before he even gets Viktor’s gaze on him.
.
“Come to the studio,” Minako says as Yuuri settles her drink down on the table.
“I’ll think about it,” he says, which is not a lie because he has been doing nothing but thinking about it.
“You’re still plenty young,” she says, fingers tight around his wrist. “You’ve got more options than you think, more support than you think.”
Yuuri smiles and pulls his wrist free and escapes.
.
Stepping onto the Ice Castle rink he is strangely calm for the first time since his whole world had shattered. His boots go on easy, and his shirt is a little too big at the shoulders because he’s been buying a size too large lately.
It’s just him and the ice and Yuuko who is the closest he has ever gotten to a friend.
In the back of his head is Viktor, the beauty of his turns, the sheer precision of his jumps. Yuuri can remember every single inch of him and the moves he makes, right down to his fingertips, and he’s been off the ice for too long.
“Just watch,” he tells Yuuko, and he takes a deep breath, pushes away and begins.
He follows Viktor’s ghost as he moves; arms here, feet there. A quadruple Lutz, a quadruple flip. All of it with an innate rhythm that comes to him as easy as breathing.
Ah, Yuuri thinks as his skates touch down on the ice, and even as Yuuko watches him it’s the weight of Viktor’s eyes he feels on his shoulder blades, I’m not ready to let this go.
.
Seeing Viktor face to face for the first time is nowhere near as elating as Yuuri had always imagined. Instead he feels nothing but absolute terror.
Viktor is standing in the middle of his hot spring, naked as the day he was born, and dripping warm water down all the lines of his body that have been perfectly shaped and chiseled for him to become the ultimate skating machine. The steam that twirls around him reminds Yuuri of ice chips, and even though he’s smiling there’s a coldness in his eyes that makes Yuuri think of the rink.
He’s naked too. He’s mentioned that already. It shouldn’t be this much of a shock, it is a hot spring, but Yuuri is helpless to do anything but stare at him.
“You can’t be my coach,” he blurts.
Viktor’s eyebrows climb and his hand drops. “And why is that?”
“Because you’re Viktor Nikiforov,” Yuuri says.
“Indeed, well sighted. I certainly am.” He grins, playful and sharp in turn. He pushes his wet hair from his eyes, and Yuuri watches, a little enchanted. “I’ve come a long way to find you, Yuuri, and it’d be terribly rude to send me away so soon. I’ve seen your video.”
Of course he’d seen the video. Yuuri’s cheeks go warm. The whole world had seen the video. He doesn’t know why he ever deluded himself into thinking that Viktor had not.
“You weren’t meant to,” he says awkwardly, eyes fixed no lower than Viktor’s belly button even as Viktor climbs out of the water and shakes his hair dry. “Nobody was meant to.”
Viktor laughs as he reaches for a robe. He slants his eyes sideways at Yuuri. “Don’t be shy. You were beautiful.” He slides the robe on and then lifts a hand, the sleeve falling all the way to his elbow. He makes a complicated gesture that Yuuri remembers from the routine. Viktor’s fingers are as lean and gorgeous as the rest of him. “Stunning.”
Yuuri is hot all over and Viktor is still staring at him. He’d imagined Viktor’s eyes on him a thousand and one times but never had he thought it would be this heavy. The weight of it presses at his ribcage, makes his breath catch on the sharp places inside of himself.
He swallows. “I can’t -.”
“You can,” Viktor says, without waiting to see what Yuuri will say. “I can make you. I can make it for you. Do you not miss the rink? Do you not want something more than a small town in the mountains?” His fingertips graze Yuuri’s chin and he’s not sure when Viktor crossed the bath to be so close to him. “Tell me yes, Yuuri,” he says, and it feels more like I command.
Yuuri does not say yes.
But.
He does not say no.
.
Viktor is not a kind coach. He is harsh, always, and sometimes he is unintentionally cruel.
But he’s good. He pushes Yuuri to his limits, and then that little bit extra, but never more than he can take. He has no qualms in calling Yuuri’s performance dismal and disappointing but whenever Yuuri manages to do something right he is the loudest cheer of them all.
To Yuuri he had always been distant and untouchable.
The real Viktor is … difficult. Yuuri had heard rumours of his selfishness, the whole world had, but it had seemed a fun celebrity quirk. Up front Yuuri comes to learn Viktor as a person and not the idealized plastic figure in the media.
He’s surprised it doesn’t make him like him any less at all.
And time passes, chilly afternoons slipping to evenings in the rink and hard runs in the sunset, and Yuuri becomes more and more enchanted. With skating, with Viktor. With the only aspects of his life that have ever been constants.
“I’d thought I’d lost this,” he admits to Viktor one morning when it’s just the two of them and the whole of the rink.
Viktor raises a brow and offers him a towel as Yuuri skates over to the guard rail. “What?”
Yuuri thinks as he dries the sweat from his face. “Just this,” he says, and gestures around them. His skates, the rink, and Viktor, however careful he is not to give away the fact that Viktor and skating have always been one and the same for him. “I didn’t think I deserved to stand here anymore. Skating gave me everything and I didn’t give it a single thing back.”
Viktor looks surprised. He stares at Yuuri consideringly and Yuuri suddenly wonders if he’d maybe run his mouth off again. The back of his neck flushes brightly. “That’s a romantic way to look at it,” Viktor observes after a moment.
“Sorry,” Yuuri mumbles, face buried back in the towel and now going red all over. “That was stupid. Please forget about it.”
Viktor laughs and reaches out to pry Yuuri’s hands from his face. The towel falls. “I did not say it was a bad thing, my Yuuri. You love skating, it’s plain to anybody to see just how much passion you have for it.”
Yuuri feels the my before his name far too keenly but endeavours to ignore it before he humiliates himself. “Skating has always been everything to me,” he says.
Viktor’s mouth curves and his eyes spark with interest. Yuuri is familiar enough with him now to recognize that glint and he goes to abort, pull away, but Viktor does not let him go.
“Everything? Surely there’s been something else in your life. Someone else, maybe.”
Yuuri is mortified. “I - there’s Yuuko,” he hedges. “And my mother. Minako.”
Viktor lets go of one of his hands and reaches for Yuuri’s face, and even though it’s nowhere near the first time he’s done this Yuuri is still so surprised he forgets to flinch back. Viktor’s fingers are very warm underneath his chin and Yuuri is forced to realize once again how real Viktor is to him now.
He’s always been at the back of Yuuri’s mind, beside him as he skates, but that had been childish fixation. Then adolescent obsession. And then a guilty pleasure. And now - now it is this.
Warmth on his cold skin and eyes as blue as ice chips.
“You have an excellent family,” Viktor purrs in a voice like butter. “They support you unconditionally.”
Yuuri cannot possibly be expected to think when Viktor is this close. “I - they -.”
“But I was wondering something more specific,” Viktor continues, one hand still on Yuuri’s wrist and the other stroking a soothing thumb along the edge of his jawbone. “A girlfriend, perhaps. You’re not traditionally handsome, I will grant you, but you’re quite attractive in your own way. Talented by a mile. I find it hard to believe you’ve gone your whole life unattached.”
Yuuri has always appreciated the way Viktor doesn’t lie. He knows some people consider it callous, but if they just listen they’d understand than Viktor is rarely intentionally cruel. For every uncomfortable truth there’s a compliment at its heels.
Now though, now it flushes Yuuri all over. He can’t focus. There’s no way to say the only person I have ever been close to in my life has been you even before you became a reality that doesn’t sound… exactly as it is.
“No girlfriend?” Viktor asks. His smile widens and his head tilts. His hair falls in front of his eyes. “Perhaps… a boyfriend?”
The openness of the question is just not done. His mother has suspected, he thinks, but she’s never asked. She’d love him regardless he knows, but in all honesty Yuuri has never thought of it much. There was never space in his head.
He meets Viktor’s eyes as straightforwardly as he can even as he knows his cheeks have gained more colour than they lost out on the ice. “I was never very interested,” he admits truthfully.
“In?”
In the world, the answer is. In a life outside of skating. In persons other than Viktor.
Yuuri does not answer, just stares at him. Viktor stares back. They have been at this too long, Viktor’s hands have been on him way past the length of propriety, even by loose western standards. Even by Viktor standards.
“You are a curiosity, Yuuri,” Viktor observes. “I can never quite manage to figure you out.”
“I think you may be over-complicating me,” Yuuri says.
Viktor’s smile turns less soft and more sharp-toothed. He switches like that sometimes; innocent and harmless in one moment and intelligent and blade-sharp in another. “Maybe,” he says. “But I am a very good judge of character.”
Yuuri can’t help it. He has Viktor’s entire life memorized. His history is public knowledge and Viktor has never been a particularly private individual. “You once dated a Russian supermodel who tried to run you over with her car when you broke up with her,” Yuuri says on reflex alone. “Many would disagree with you on that.”
Viktor stares at him, fingers still on Yuuri’s heated skin, and he looks smacked; surprised into complete stillness.
And then he laughs.
This is not a quiet little tinkle, a huff of amusement. This is a delighted rumble, surprised and thrilled.
Oh no, Yuuri thinks, because he feels that laugh deep inside of himself where he’d only ever let his skating get before.
Viktor pats his cheek fondly and pulls back and just like that all the intensity and charisma of the moment falls away. “I want another run through of that routine before you’re allowed off the ice,” Viktor says, suddenly his coach again, and he wanders away leaving Yuuri standing by the rail, red-faced and confused and thinking on repeat:
Oh no. Oh no.
.
It’s not that Yuuri hadn’t been aware of what his obsession with Viktor meant. He was single-minded, not dumb. Just - it had been easy not to think about it too deeply. Half the world lusted after Viktor. Yuuri could hardly be blamed for his - his attraction.
One day, Viktor would be a professional colleague and Yuuri would be able to reinstate some boundaries in his mind. Only that had not happened. Viktor had become his coach and any and all boundaries were swiftly blown to bits.
He could work through this, he knows he could, if only Viktor would stop encouraging him.
Yuuri knows westerners have an easier time with affection, but Viktor is… is… well, loose with his everything. He wants to touch Yuuri all the time, not just when they’re training. He wants to bathe with him, sleep with him, is always in his space, a hand to Yuuri’s skin and completely oblivious to the stutter and stop he gives him every time they touch.
Yuuri is going to develop cardiac arrhythmia by the time he’s thirty and it will be entirely Viktor’s fault.
“I don’t know why I’m the only one not allowed in your room,” Viktor sighs over a dinner at Yuuri’s inn, really hamming up the melancholy. He swirls his drink and sticks out his bottom lip. “Is there something in there you don’t want me seeing, Yuuri?”
Yes, Yuuri thinks guiltily. He might have long since taken down Viktor’s posters that lined every spare inch of space, but he’d had to put them somewhere and he’d stuffed them under his bed for the time being. Well, gently folded and placed beneath his mattress with reverence, maybe, but semantics and all that.
Viktor was - well. He was Viktor. He’d doubtlessly have no qualms about going through all of Yuuri’s things the moment he was out of the room. And sure, the whole world knew he was a Viktor fan at this point, the video had hardly been subtle - Yuuri had mimicked him right down to the careful movements of his fingertips, for fuck’s sake - but knowing and seeing were two different things.
He was too scared that Viktor would, once faced with the sheer measurable reality of Yuuri’s lifelong infatuation with him, come to a conclusion. A - a correct conclusion.
So, no. Viktor wasn’t getting in his room through any method other than a crowbar and an addition to his criminal record.
“I need some space to myself,” he lies as his mother tops up Viktor’s drink. “I just prefer that nobody goes in there.”
Viktor points a finger at him. “Lies. You let Yuuko in. And she’s a woman.”
Yuuri’s mouth drops. “Yuuko is married with three kids.”
Viktor’s mouth quirks but he stays serious. “That’s what makes it all the more scandalous, Yuuri.”
Yuuri hasn’t thought about Yuuko like that since he was a teen and confused out of his mind about the things he wanted and the people he wanted them from. To hear Viktor say it like that, like Yuuko could ever be a real option to him, is baffling.
“You’ve never minded people in your room before,” his mother says cheerfully, cluelessly throwing Yuuri under the bus. “Besides, it’s not like you haven’t seen Viktor in your room before, when you think about it.”
Mom, Yuuri thinks desperately, I am too young to die like this. Have some pity on your only son.
“Oh?” Viktor smiles his I’m-a-lovely-person smile at his mother that Yuuri has come to learn is a little bit of a lie, but its power over Yuuri hasn’t diminished at all for that knowledge. “How so?”
His mother laughs. “Well, you see, Yuuri’s always had posters and -.”
Yuuri slams his hands down on the tabletop and makes everyone and everything jump. Other than Viktor, that is, who just turns his smile to him. “It’s getting late,” he says loudly, “and Viktor wants us to be at the rink bright and early.”
“That’s true,” Viktor agrees pleasantly, and heaves himself to his feet. “Thank you for your hospitality, and your truly wonderful cooking.”
Yuuri’s mother waves the compliment off politely but looks girlishly pleased. “This is an inn, if my cooking were anything else I’d have gone out of business years ago now.”
Viktor chooses this moment to yawn, one hand over his mouth and the other stretched up high. It seems natural enough, but Yuuri is instantly suspicious. “Forgive me, it’s been a long day,” he says brightly to Yuuri’s mother. “And I believe that alcohol might have come on a bit strong.”
Yuuri’s mother clucks. “Why don’t you sleep in Yuuri’s room tonight?” She offers. “It’s closer than your own and less crowded. The sunlight doesn’t come in as early either; you might get a good night’s rest.”
Yuuri’s mouth drops. “Mom -.”
“That would be perfect,” Viktor says cheerfully, already winding a hand through the gap in Yuuri’s arm and directing him to the stairs. “We’ll be quiet, I promise.”
And then Yuuri is whisked away before he can get a word in edgewise, protest or other. He’s in such a state of shock that Viktor has to guide him up the stairs even though Yuuri hasn’t had a drop to drink.
“Your mother is lovely,” Viktor says by way of conversation as he opens the door to Yuuri’s room. “You get much from her.”
Yuuri’s barely listening, spares a quick frantic glance along the walls to make sure there is no more memorabilia emblazoned with Viktor’s name on display. Everything seems clear, but his breath still does not come easy.
He is alone with Viktor in his room. Five years ago this was the highest fantasy he had. He really does not know where to even begin coming to terms with this.
“You can take the bed,” Yuuri says on autopilot, moving to his cupboard to lay out the spare futon.
“Nonsense,” Viktor says. “We’ll share it.”
“We will not,” Yuuri says sharply, sharper than he’d even known he was capable of. His nerves are a wreck and he’s paranoid at any moment that the truth of it all will show plainly on his face. Immediately he says, “I’m sorry, that was rude, I -.”
Viktor laughs, another one of those from-the-heart ones that sets Yuuri’s blood rushing. “If it makes you uncomfortable, I can take the futon,” he says, backing off the topic easily.
Yuuri’s shoulders relax. He lets his guard down. “You’re the guest, you should take the bed.”
“Well, if you insist,” Viktor says, and immediately throws himself back on it. He closes his eyes and makes an indecent moaning sound that flusters Yuuri all over again. “Comfortable.” He opens his eyes to find Yuuri staring at him but Yuuri cannot stop.
“Are you sure you can’t be persuaded to join me?” Viktor asks.
Maybe if Yuuri was in the market for a complete and total breakdown. “I’ll be on the floor,” he says, and throws down the futon, busying himself fluffing it just right. He hears Viktor roll over on the bed to keep his eyes on him.
“Yuuri.”
The tips of his ears are red. He makes a noncommittal sound.
“Yuuri.”
He braces himself and looks up. Viktor has his head propped up on his hand. Once again his robe is loose, because Viktor doesn’t seem to know another way to wear it. He looks like something out of a dream Yuuri may have had when he was fourteen. “Yes?”
“You seem uncomfortable with me,” Viktor says bluntly. “Not just now, but always. There’s a gap you simply won’t let me bridge. I’d like to know why. I’d like to fix it.”
“I’m… I’m not…” he trails off. It’s too bad of a lie and he’s too bad of a liar. “It’s nothing to do with you,” he says instead, because that’s close enough to the truth.
Viktor reaches out and trails his fingers across Yuuri’s mouth. It’s so casually intimate that Yuuri jerks away. Viktor hums and retracts his hand. “If you’re ever unhappy with me -.”
“I’m not,” Yuuri cuts in.
Sure, Viktor hasn’t been the paragon of virtue he’d faintly imagined. He’s thoughtless, tramples on sensibilities and feelings alike, speaks without care for injury, drags Yuuri this way and that because it’s fun for him. But no person is perfect and Yuuri had never expected him to be. To say Viktor, truly and honestly, was a nice person would be a lie. To say that Viktor was a good person though - Yuuri was starting to think he’d never known one better.
“I’m not,” he says again, quieter, and Viktor watches him with shadows across his face that add ten more years to the lines at his eyes.
“Alright,” he says, and just like that he turns his back to Yuuri and sets about going to sleep.
It takes Yuuri longer however. Shaken and worried and fixated on the feel of Viktor’s fingertips at his lips.
.
By the end of May Yuuri is back in shape. He’s still a little rounder than most figure skaters are, but that’s just the way his body’s been built. He’s given up being conscious about it at this point.
“Ah,” Viktor says as he walks into the changing room as Yuuri struggles his shirt on. He reaches out and pokes at Yuuri’s sides. “There you are,” he says, satisfied. Then he adds thoughtfully, “not that you weren’t adorable before, but it’s nice to see you fit to skate again.”
Yuuri pulls his shirt back on in a hurry. “Please stop doing that, Viktor.”
“Doing what?”
Calling me adorable, he thinks, because he doesn’t know if Viktor means it or not and he doesn’t know which scenario would be worse.
Instead of voicing it he lets the subject drop. “Am I allowed on the ice today?”
Viktor hums and considers him, tapping at his chin a little. “I don’t see why not. But go gentle. Minako has called dibs on you tomorrow, and she would be terribly angry with me if I sent you to her injured.”
“I’m always careful,” Yuuri says. He’s never had an injury in the whole of his career. Nothing serious enough to keep him out of a competition anyway.
Viktor smiles fondly at him and pats Yuuri heavily on the shoulders as he ushers him out of the room. “I know,” he says, “but as your coach I’m permitted to worry.”
As Yuuri sits down to lace up his shoes Viktor looks around even though he’s seen the Ice Castle a hundred times at this point. “This is a nice place, but… Ahh! I can’t wait to take you to a Russian rink. It’s something else.”
Yuuri nearly trips over himself standing up and has to have Viktor catch and steady him. “You want to take me to Russia?” He says dumbly.
Viktor, who should have let go of Yuuri’s hands now that he’s settled but of course doesn’t, smiles. “I’m sure you’d wind up back there again one day, but I’d very much like to be the one to show it to you properly. There is so much there, Yuuri. You would love it.”
Yuuri thinks that’s a fair assessment because he’d doubtlessly like any place Viktor took him to.
Viktor withdraws from his grip and pats Yuuri’s face. “For now though, Russia is a ways off. Maybe we can talk about it once you’ve achieved the Trophy.”
He walks off then and Yuuri watches him go, mouth faintly dropped and mind in a nameless place in the future.
.
“Don’t you have anybody in Russia, Viktor?” Minako asks one day as the pair of them watch Yuuri warm up at her studio, and Yuuri is close enough to hear them but he doesn’t think they’ve realized that yet. “Twenty-seven-year-old international star and, if the tabloids are anything to go by, quite the playboy. Seems like a waste to be over here whittling away the prime of your fame.”
Yuuri winces even though he knows Minako means no harm by it. It’s a question Yuuri has asked himself a thousand and one times anyway.
Out of the corner of his eye he sees Viktor turn his head towards him and he drops quickly into a stretch that has his face hidden out of view.
“Thankfully my dog was available to accompany me, otherwise I might really have cried and gone home by now,” he says, teasing and deliberately misinterpreting. “I get terrible separation anxiety, see.”
Minako huffs. She’s known him long enough now to see through his smooth deflections although his pretty face continues to work wonders on her if she’s had anything more than two drinks. “There’s nobody you miss over there?”
Yuuri sinks down to bend out the kinks in his knees, not sure why he’s still pretending like he can’t hear them both.
“Perhaps,” Viktor says after a moment. “But I think right now there might be more for me to miss in Japan than back home.”
Minako laughs. “I didn’t know you liked being Yuuri’s coach so much.”
“Oh yes,” Viktor says lightly, and then, “I do like Yuuri very much.”
Yuuri’s heart skids and he stumbles a bit getting to his feet. He turns to try and peer secretively over his shoulder and his eyes lock with Viktor’s.
He’s smiling; bright and unsurprised and Yuuri knows that he’s been aware that he can hear them the whole time.
He just wishes he knew what that meant.
.
The thing is it’s very hard to tell where the line lays for Viktor. Between performative affection and genuine. Between what he does to get a rise out of Yuuri and what he does because - well, because he wants to, Yuuri supposes.
It’s goddamn maddening is what it is. A little bit cruel too, in that thoughtless way Viktor has about him.
It does not take a genius to see that Yuuri has been gone on Viktor his whole life, and while the obsessive awe has faded with proximity the deep-rooted affection has only grown. And Yuuri is not enough of an optimist to assume that Viktor has missed it.
“Viktor seems very fond of you,” Yuuko tells him when Yuuri goes to the rink one day without Viktor by his side. She’s restacking some skates onto the shelf, and the way she’s not looking at him feels a little too intentional.
“I think he’s amused by me,” Yuuri admits.
Yuuko, who has not spent extensive time with Viktor, frowns. “Why would you think that?”
Yuuri shrugs self-consciously and leans up against the counter. Instead of telling her the truth, that he was starting to think that amusement may be affection for Viktor, he says, “It’s difficult to think that Viktor could find anything interesting in me.”
Yuuko turns around so fast that Yuuri almost loses his balance backing up. He forgets sometimes that the years off the ice have not dulled the quickness of her steps. She’s in his face before he can blink. “You are the kindest, adorablest, most hard working, talented skater in all of the world,” she says, but it sounds more like a threat. “I have never known a better man than you.”
Yuuri, who has never responded particularly well to any kind of praise, blushes to the roots of his hair. “Maybe don’t let your husband hear that,” he jokes, but Yuuko only looks at him sternly.
“The best man I have ever known,” she says firmly, and then adds, “and ever will. Viktor is the lucky one here. He should feel privileged to have you in his life, and given the way he treats you I’d say he does.”
Yuuri is fresh out of words. He’s always been weak to Yuuko’s hurricane enthusiasm. “Yuuko,” he says meekly. “I think you may be looking for more in this than there is.”
Yuuko blows out her cheeks but she stops leaning over the counter and into Yuuri’s face. He is grateful as anything for the breathing room. “You’re always like this,” she complains.
“Like what?” Yuuri repeats, indignant.
“Blind.” Yuuko sniffs. “You think good things can’t happen to you. I don’t know why, but it’s upsetting to watch.”
The truth is Yuuri can’t let himself want good things because when he does he fucks them up. He’d wanted so badly to at least place at the Grand Prix Final, wanted so badly to blow the world away whenever he stepped out onto the ice, and it was always that wanting that was his undoing.
He couldn’t expect too much. He just couldn’t. Because he’d mess it up, he always did, and then it took everything he had to drag himself to recovery.
Losing out of the Grand Prix Final had obliterated him. He could only imagine how losing Viktor would feel. To say something or do something to push him away. He’d only just graduated from overly obsessed fanboy to star pupil and it wasn’t a connection he was going to risk for anything.
“Thanks Yuuko,” Yuuri says, and it’s a big dodge if ever there was one. “I’m glad to have you.”
Her eyes narrow and she groans, sinking down onto the counter. “I’m not getting through to you, am I?”
“You’ve been a big help,” Yuuri says noncommittally, and she looks so fondly exasperated with him that he has to hold back a smile.
She rolls her head over to smile up at him. “You’re amazing,” she repeats, “and I don’t know what’s going on with you and Viktor, but it looks a little more than… Strictly student and coach.”
“Yuuko!”
“What?” She asks, eyes wide and blue. “I’ve seen you together, and there is way more touching involved than Minako ever did with us -.”
“I’m going to skate now,” Yuuri blurts and escapes out to the ice.
.
Things come to a head about a week before the NHK Trophy.
They’ve been at the rink constantly; if Yuuri isn’t on the ice he’s stretching, if he’s not stretching he’s sleeping. Rinse and repeat. The lead up to the competitive season has always been intense, but it’s something else experiencing it under Viktor. He has no mercy. None at all. Yuuri has almost forgotten how to walk at this point, he keeps trying to skate everywhere, even off the ice, and winds up falling flat on his face.
It’s both brilliant and absolutely awful.
His nerves, which have always come and gone as they please but like to make themselves comfortable in the tightness of his skin during the season, have returned full force. There’s no more worry about Yuuri gaining weight before the competition because he’s too nervous to actually eat anything.
“What’s this?” Viktor says at dinner when he sees that Yuuri’s picked at his meal. He looks surprisingly upset considering the callous way he treated Yuuri when he was chubby. “You’ve barely eaten!”
Yuuri’s mother sighs and gets to her feet, collecting up their plates. She smoothes Yuuri’s hair away from his forehead as she passes him. “You must be nervous if it’s even surpassed your stress eating,” she says, and vanishes off into the kitchen.
“Nervous?” Viktor asks, peering up at Yuuri’s face like he’ll see it stamped across his forehead.
“Just a little,” Yuuri lies. They’re heading off to Tokyo for NHK Trophy in a few days and the thought of showing up with the greatest men’s figure skater in recent memory at his side has been keeping him awake nights.
He expects Viktor to make him talk about it; to reassure Yuuri with his bright smile and long fingers on the back of his hand.The usual way of things when Yuuri can’t help but let his emotions get the best of him.
It wouldn’t be so bad but Yuuri can’t even practice his anxieties away. His schedule has all the training in it he can manage and any more would be stupidly putting himself at risk for an injury. Viktor would never forgive him if he did that. Yuuri would never forgive himself.
Viktor doesn’t say anything, just studies him quietly. Outside it’s raining, a damp but constant drizzle, and it’s like a staticy hum pouring in through the windows. It’s making him itchy; the rain, Viktor’s stare, all of it.
“Are you tired?” Viktor asks apropos of nothing.
Yuuri blinks. It’s barely seven. It’s not even dark out yet. Even they don’t usually go to bed so early. “No?” he says, although it feels like a guess more than anything.
Viktor smiles at him then and gets to his feet, holding a hand out for Yuuri. “Let’s go for a walk then.”
Yuuri stares at him, at his face, his hand, and then out the window at the drizzle. “Now?”
“Ideally,” Viktor says.
“It’s raining.”
“Barely. We’ll wear coats.”
“But -.”
“Do you not want to go, Yuuri?” Viktor asks, and the corners of his mouth sink and his eyelashes flutter. Yuuri knows he shouldn’t let himself be won over so easily, but he’s reaching for Viktor’s hand before he can remind himself that Viktor excels in minute manipulation.
Viktor beams at him. His smile is bright enough that it almost chases the gloom out of the room, the building, the whole country.
“Wonderful,” he says, even though Yuuri is just staring at him dazedly, and his fingers close around the back of Yuuri’s. He says something else, but it’s in Russian and it completely passes him by.
“What was that?”
The edges of Viktor’s smile deepen. “Nothing, nothing. Let’s go before your mother finds us.”
They sneak through the crowded restaurant and out the back door. Viktor holds his hand the whole time and it feels silly, like they’re kids instead of men well into their twenties. Viktor’s palm is smooth and his fingers long and Yuuri should be used to the feel of it by now but he’s not.
Before Viktor the last hand he could remember holding was Yuuko’s when they were children. Holding Viktor’s is nothing like that. It tosses his stomach about in all directions and makes him want to hold tighter even as he usually pulls away.
Yuuri doesn’t think he can explain what it does to him. He knows he’s shy; an antisocial introvert. Without skating he worries he’d just have become a shut-in at his parents’ place. Holding anybody's hand would shake him up. Holding a boy’s hand would have him red-faced and stuttering.
And, holding Viktor’s hand - well.
“You can let go now, Viktor,” he whispers as Viktor pulls him out through the backstreet which is small and empty.
Viktor hums under his breath and does, but only for all of half a second because then he slips his fingers through Yuuri’s and holds it properly.
“Viktor.”
“Yuuri?” Viktor asks pleasantly, obviously without expecting an answer. He pulls Yuuri in closer and then stuff their linked hands in the pocket of his own coat, smiling out at the street all the while like this is a completely normal thing to do.
For Viktor it might be. Yuuri’s having a damn heart attack.
The rain is so light and so thin it’s basically a very wet fog. Yuuri’s glasses are misting over quick and his breath keeps puffing in the air. It’s getting dark out now, and these streets are never busy, but Yuuri worries all the same.
Not that he should. The whole town is used to Viktor’s antics by now. Just another overly-affectionate westerner. Just another one of his quirks.
His quirks are going to kill Yuuri. He’s too stressed for this.
He feels like Viktor can feel his pulse from where it flutters in his wrist.
“I know this isn’t practice,” Viktor says quietly as they walk, “but it’s the best I can offer you at the moment.” He glances at Yuuri and gives him a small smile. “A walk isn’t much of a replacement for skating, but it’s something.”
It occurs to Yuuri then that the reason Viktor wanted to go out in the first place was for him. Because somebody had told him that Yuuri tended to need to work off his anxious energy and Viktor had thought of this.
It’s ridiculous. He can’t believe Viktor even remembered. He can’t believe Viktor is walking the street with Yuuri’s hand in his and both of their hands in his pocket, and he’s doing it for Yuuri, and he looks quiet and happy and content.
“Viktor,” Yuuri says, and his voice sounds off even to his own ears. It echoes strangely in his head. He doesn’t feel part of this moment. “Viktor, stop.”
It’s his tone more than his words that do it, because Viktor jerks abruptly to a halt like somebody had shot him. “Yuuri -.”
Yuuri pulls his hand free, free from Viktor and the warmth of his coat, and Viktor lets him. He pulls it close to his chest and swallows. Viktor’s eyes are on him, surprised and wary. He doesn’t say anything.
“You need to stop being so… this,” Yuuri says. His voice cracks. He lets out a breath that shakes a little and pinches at the bridge of his nose. His glasses go askew a bit he doesn’t even notice. “It’s too much, Viktor.”
“Yuuri,” Viktor says in a more careful voice than Yuuri’s used to hearing. “I’m sorry if I’ve done something to make you uncomfortable.”
Uncomfortable. Uncomfortable.
It’s a word for it, Yuuri supposes.
“I like it,” Yuuri says.
Viktor’s eyebrows rise. “Then -.”
“No, Viktor. I - I like it.” It stutters off his tongue a little. Nerves, again. They never do leave him alone.
Viktor frowns, and Yuuri supposes he might have trouble parsing that specific inflection through a non-native language, but then his eyes widen and Yuuri knows he’s figured it out. He goes to speak but where before Yuuri couldn’t find his words for anything, they can’t seem to stop pouring out of him now.
“I didn’t mean to. I - it wasn’t - I didn’t think you’d see the video originally. I wasn’t going to - but then you just…” He gestures at Viktor helplessly. “And I just…”
“Yuuri, Yuuri -.”
“And it’s unfair to you, I know, and I’m sorry, I promise you I didn’t - I didn’t intend for anything, and I’d understand if you wanted to return to Russia now -.”
“Yuuri,” Viktor snaps, and the harshness of it brings Yuuri rocketing back to earth. He’s not crying but it’s a pretty near thing and his glasses have fogged from the rain and his breath. He can’t see anything; Viktor’s just a vague, attractive outline.
It might be for the best. Yuuri has never been so mortified in all his life, not even flunking out of the Grand Prix Final, not even when his video went viral.
Viktor sighs, and Yuuri can’t see his face but he sounds exasperated and tired. There’s the cold brush of fingers on his cheek and Yuuri blinks in surprise as Viktor lifts his glasses away. He rubs them against his own sleeve, head bent down. “What am I going to do with you?”
Yuuri still feels numb and he wonders absently if the rain hitting his hot cheeks is turning to steam. “I’m sorry.”
“You should be,” the Viktor-blur says. “After all the effort I’ve been putting in.”
“Sorry.”
“Honestly, I don’t know how I could be making this any more obvious. I asked you to come to Russia with me. I’ve called you every variant of adorable in all the languages I know. I asked you to go on a moonlit stroll with me. I’m really losing confidence here, Yuuri. You’ll wound a man’s ego with this obliviousness.”
Yuuri can’t breathe. He can’t see. He can’t think. “What?”
“This, Yuuri. This.”
Viktor’s fingers touch his chin and then he kisses him.
Yuuri has imagined this in his life. A lot when he was a teenager, for sure. Then less as he became a certified skater because it felt unprofessional. And then a lot more after they met for real and Yuuri had started the unfortunate and terrifying process of falling for him.
But he’d never let himself consider it a possibility. That was dangerous territory and Yuuri has only made it this far in life by clinging to self-preservation with both hands and refusing to let go.
Viktor’s mouth on his though, his breath warming Yuuri’s lips, it feels an awful lot like drowning.
“That,” Viktor says, and he pulls back but only enough to speak, “has been haunting me for months now. Since I saw you skate my routine at the very least.”
“Okay,” Yuuri says dumbly, when he really means what.
One of Viktor’s hands skates up the back of his neck and Yuuri feels the arms of his glasses bump against his skin. At least Viktor hadn’t dropped them.
Yuuri’s hands have twisted themselves in the front of Viktor’s coat. He’s not entirely sure when that happened. Time seems a very abstract concept right now.
Viktor smiles. He can feel it. They’re so close he can feel it.
“You’re absolutely adorable,” he says, “did you know that?”
“Okay,” Yuuri agrees again when what he really means is please call the paramedics I think my heart stopped a while ago now.
Viktor kisses him again. Slower this time, telegraphing his every intention. Yuuri watches him lean in nervously, and he knows Viktor is giving him the chance to push him away but really, does Viktor not know him at all?
He’s lucky Yuuri’s hasn’t accidentally choked him with his own shirt in the rush to do that again.
This time the kiss goes for just that little bit longer and Yuuri is an active participant. He’s never kissed anybody before and he would be overthinking it half to death except for the fact that his mind goes completely and utterly blank.
Kissing is very warm. Very close. Quietly noisy in a way that he hadn’t thought it would be and makes him flush. Viktor’s hand is beneath his chin, a hand to the back of his neck.
Yuuri would doubt the reality of this except that he’s getting a pain in his neck from tilting it, and he has rain dripping annoyingly into his eyes. It’s what makes it real, takes the moment from daydreams and yearning towards permanency.
Viktor draws back again. Yuuri’s mouth feels numb.
“Well?” Viktor asks.
Yuuri thinks. Slowly his heart begins to beat again. “Can I have my glasses back please?” He asks.
Viktor huffs out a laugh and a moment later Yuuri’s vision goes crooked but resolved as Viktor settles them back on his nose. He blinks up at him.
Viktor’s not red like he is - of course, kissing is old news to Viktor by now - but the smile he’s wearing looks soft and warm. He hasn't moved back any and his hands remain where they are.
“You’re not just trying to… tease me are you?”
Viktor blinks and he looks like the idea hadn’t even occurred to him. “Is that something I would do?”
“Yes,” Yuuri says, unhesitatingly.
Viktor’s face drops first into considering frown and then into a mildly hurt wince. “I hadn’t realized you thought so little of me.”
“I…” Yuuri doesn’t know how to answer, because he thinks the world of Viktor and so little of himself. “I didn’t mean -.”
“No,” Viktor says and he drops the hand at Yuuri’s chin and steps back. Yuuri feels a sweep of panic for a moment but the hand at his neck sinks to his back and doesn’t leave. “You’re not wrong. I can be… thoughtless, I know.” He smiles wryly and shakes the hair from his face. “I’m aware of the things they call me in the media.”
Yuuri doesn’t really care if the media calls him the Antichrist at this point, but he’s a bit of an anxious wreck of a human being and Viktor was right, he could be careless at times. Yuuri wishes desperately that he’d learnt something about socialization at some point because his words are gone all over again.
Viktor takes his hand and presses a kiss to his knuckles. From anybody else it would be unbearably cheesy. To Yuuri though, it’s mortifyingly attractive. He doesn’t know if that’s down to Viktor being Viktor or him being a smitten wreck.
“I mean it though,” he says, squeezing Yuuri’s fingers. “You’ve been driving me mad. I was one more night off just asking your mother for her blessing.”
Yuuri’s mouth drops. “Viktor.”
Viktor grins unrepentantly. “It wouldn’t have surprised her, I don’t think. At this point, Yuuri, the only person in your life who has been unaware of my intentions towards you seems to be you.”
“Intentions?” Yuuri repeats. Viktor gives him a raised brow. “Oh. Oh.”
He can’t help it, he blushes all over.
Viktor laughs and pulls Yuuri in by the hand he’s holding. “Is that a yes?” He teases. “Are my intentions welcomed then?”
“I’ve had your face on every wall in my room since I was eleven,” Yuuri admits into his chest because like this Viktor can’t see him and it’s easier.
Viktor starts and goes to pull back but Yuuri clings to him because he refuses to see his face right now, he refuses. “Did you?” Viktor asks, and he sounds positively giddy. “Since you were eleven?”
“It was because of Yuuko,” Yuuri lies, but even if it were the truth Viktor doesn’t seem to care.
“Will you show me? Why did you take them down?”
“I took them down because they’re embarrassing.”
“They shouldn’t be,” Viktor says, and Yuuri is going to die of humiliation at any second, but then Viktor throws his whole world for a loop and says, “I have a picture of you as my phone background.”
"What?”
“My laptop too,” he adds unashamedly. “Did you know as of last week there are more photos of you on my Instagram than me?”
Yuuri does pull back then and stares up at Viktor. Viktor grins blindingly at him, completely unbothered. “You don’t believe me?” He asks, reaching for his phone. “I can show you if you -.”
“No,” Yuuri blurts and grabs him about the wrist. He doesn’t think he could function right now if what Viktor was saying was true. “I - I believe you.”
Viktor has the biggest grin Yuuri has ever seen, that malicious edge to it that says he’s enjoying this more than he knows he ought to. He strokes a hand through Yuuri’s hair though and it loses the knife-edge. “I wasn’t sure if you’d ever let me make a move on you,” he says. “I was seriously starting to wonder if I’d get to say anything before we left for Tokyo.”
Yuuri thinks about it. The idea of Viktor impatiently waiting and waiting for a chance to - to make a move on him. “Why didn’t you try sooner if you were worried?”
“I wanted you to start it,” Viktor admits, and then runs a hand through the back of his own hair and stares a little over Yuuri’s shoulder. It’s the closest to embarrassment he’s seen Viktor get. “I didn’t think you’d take it well if I just sprang it on you. I wanted to make sure this was something you actually wanted before I ruined this.”
Surprisingly Yuuri feels like he has a thousand and one things he wants to say to that. How could you not know I wanted this? What did you think would happen if I didn’t? If I didn’t bring this up tonight would you have just kept waiting? Would you have ever said anything?
Instead he says, “I’m really cold right now.” He pauses and adds, “and really wet.”
Viktor blinks. He reaches down to push Yuuri’s damp hair out of his eyes and Yuuri scrunches up his face a little as it sends water running in rivers down his glasses. Viktor laughs.
“You look like you fell through some ice,” he says. “Come on, let’s head back.”
He takes Yuuri’s hand again and it’s the drowned leading the drowned, walking close together on the road with slippery fingers together and careful not to trip on the soaked pavement.
They don’t talk the whole way back, and Yuuri knows there’s sort of a lot they need to say, but he thinks they’ll be okay for now. They’ve got the ball rolling, he figures.
Anything else is just details.
.
Yuuri aces the NHK Trophy event. He’s as surprised as the rest of them when he ends his first skate without a single fault to his name. In the stands Viktor cheers way too loud for somebody who is often known by the nickname ‘living legend’.
By the end he has only had a single error in all of his performance. He’s going to the Grand Prix Final, beating out some of the more experienced competitors and some of the new blood.
He skates back to the stands after they announce the results, and Viktor’s face is wide and grinning at him and Yuuri is so distracted he misses the moment Viktor swoops forward and lifts him off his feet.
“Viktor!” He shouts, but he’s trembling with pride and dazed awe, and he clings to Viktor’s shoulders as he swings him around in a large circle that wouldn’t look out of place back on the ice. Viktor’s laughing positively manically all the while and it starts Yuuri off too, and they cling at each other, Yuuri still hoisted in the air, his skates dangling down by Viktor’s ankles, laughing and laughing and laughing.
He feels brilliant. It’s not the Grand Prix Final, not yet, but it’s the NHK Trophy and Viktor’s arms are around his waist, Yuuri’s face is buried in his shoulder, and he feels like he could walk on air right now.
Yuuri sees flashes out of the corner of his eye, but he doesn’t bother turning to look. He’s pretty used to pictures of himself on the internet now, and once you’ve gone viral once it’s remarkable what you become immune to.
Viktor makes excuses for them to get out of the after parties. Suddenly his grasp of both English and Japanese seems vastly diminished, it happens when he’s tired, he’s terribly sorry, but he thinks the two of them would do best with just some rest for now.
Yuuri is unspeakably relieved, and Viktor keeps a hand to the small of his back the whole time he makes their apologies, and there are some unkind eyes that linger and Yuuri knows that it’ll really only be a matter of time before people start suspecting the truth.
Right now though, it doesn’t seem to matter.
“You were amazing,” Viktor whispers in his ear as they get a taxi from the stadium to the hotel. His cheeks are feverish hot to look at, just as high on adrenaline as Yuuri is. He hasn’t let go of Yuuri’s hand and his thumb strokes along the back of it endlessly. “Watching you out on the ice I thought I was going to fall for you all over again.”
Yuuri closes his eyes and shivers.
.
They spend way too long in the bathroom.
It’s not as scandalous as it sounds, really.
Viktor presses him to sit and washes his hair, his back, pulls him close to curl up on his chest in the bath and runs a hand along his stomach all the while.
It’s not nearly as embarrassing as Yuuri thought it would be. He lets his head hit Viktor’s chest and he honestly blacks out for a bit.
Competitions usually take a lot out of him and although this time the nerves hadn’t stolen everything from him, the effort of holding them back has been exhausting. And this was just the NHK Trophy. There’s a long way to go yet.
Viktor shakes him awake eventually and gets them out of the bath and the both of them in robes and then to the bed.
Outside the traffic is shockingly loud. Yuuri has been in the country too long, has forgotten the constancy of city sounds. His head is on Viktor’s arm and Viktor’s mouth is at his cheek. He turns his head and is tired enough to be unselfconscious about it when they kiss.
Viktor’s hand sneaks into his robe and to his chest, but it doesn’t sink any lower, just settles over his heart. Yuuri would never have thought this of Viktor before; that he’d be content just to lie together like this and kiss and breathe the same air. He seems in no hurry for anything, is content to go at whatever pace Yuuri would like.
It’s achingly endearing.
Yuuri cards his hand through Viktor’s hair and then drops all his weight forward, quite ready to just fall asleep like this. Viktor laughs and wrestles the two of them around a bit until they’re under the blankets rather than on top of them.
“You’re surprisingly difficult when you’re tired,” he observes.
“Sorry,” Yuuri mumbles into his collarbone, eyes already closing.
“Don’t be,” Viktor admonishes. “I like taking care of you.”
“I like taking care of you too,” Yuuri says dumbly. He thinks for a moment and adds, “or I would if you needed it.”
He can feel Viktor’s smile against his forehead but he doesn’t argue.
After a moment Viktor says, “I was in a slump.”
He skims a hand down Yuuri’s bare arm. It’s so quiet and he’s so sleepy that he nearly misses it, but it catches at his ears and he holds to it and listens.
“I’d won - well, I’d won all there was to win. I could win it all again and again and again, but nobody would be surprised, nobody would - nobody would be watching and thinking can he do it?”
Viktor pauses and after a second lets out a breath that ruffles Yuuri’s hair. “Being the best was never the point, and loving figure skating just doesn’t hold the same weight for me anymore the way it does for you. Or so I thought.”
Yuuri lifts his head and finds Viktor smiling down at him. It’s a little too much, even after all they’ve done, so he presses his face back into his chest where he won’t have to see the open, honest affection in Viktor’s eyes. “But you found it again. That passion.”
“No,” Viktor says, and he strokes a hand through Yuuri’s hair. “I found a young man who stole my routine and made it a thousand times more beautiful than I ever had. And he helped me find it.”
Yuuri doesn’t - there’s nothing he can think of to say to the weight of that. Of all the things they’ve talked about so far, this feels the heaviest.
Figure skating is their life. They’ve dedicated every breath from their lungs to it, and to hear Viktor say that he’d lost that and it’d been Yuuri that had brought it back to him… It was larger than the tiny hotel had room for.
Outside a car honks and Yuuri says, honestly, “I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you.”
He doesn’t mean the NHK Trophy, although he does, and he doesn’t mean on his way to the Grand Prix Final, although he does. He means the same as Viktor and more - he’d lost skating and then he’d lost himself and he’d thought -
“Thank you,” Yuuri says. He twists his head again to look up at Viktor. “Thank you.”
Viktor smiles, runs a hand through Yuuri’s hair. “Go to sleep,” he says, not unkindly. “You’re exhausted.”
Yuuri is. He’s honestly barely awake for this conversation and when he settles back down his eyes close almost without his say so.
He feels Viktor shift beside him, pull the covers up higher, brush Yuuri’s hair off the pillow a little.
“Goodnight, Yuuri,” he says, so quiet Yuuri almost misses it, “and thank you.”
.
KATSUKI YUURI TO REPRESENT JAPAN AT MEN’S FIGURE SKATING GRAND PRIX FINAL
After a dismal fallout last season, Katsuki has once again qualified to bear Japan’s flag to the Grand Prix Final in a month’s time. While there had originally been doubt expressed from all quarters whether Katsuki - who famously suffers from competition jitters - would be emotionally ready to compete after so many international failures, his secret weapon has seemingly had him blasting away his competitors without hesitation.
This is speaking, of course, of five-time world champion Viktor Nikiforov. Nikiforov not only shocked the world by announcing his intentions to take a break on the heels of his recent win, but by taking up as Katsuki’s coach at the season start. It’d been a controversial pair-up at the time but Katsuki is quite clearly reaping the benefits.
The pair were seen openly celebratory as Katsuki left the ice, resulting in the famous “International Bonds” snapshot that went viral online only minutes after its posting. This isn’t the first time the pair have gone viral, and for all appearances it seems their relationship is going to continue to be one that shocks and amazes fans at every turn.
We here at Men’s Skating Online strongly believe that this relationship is only going to strengthen as the season progresses, and we wish our luck to the both of them and we can’t wait to see where this partnership goes.
Good luck Katsuki, and we look forward to watching your domination of the Grand Prix Final!