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June 2011, Saint Petersburg
“I’m going to cut my hair,” Viktor said.
It was the first time he’d called Chris in half a year. Chris didn't comment on that — something Viktor had always liked about him. “Really,” he said instead. “A pity. I quite enjoyed it.”
“I know,” Viktor said. The wrong thing to say. He could feel it the moment he said it, with no way to take it back. There was silence on the other end of the line. Viktor’s fingers tightened around the phone, before he deliberately loosened them again.
A soft cough. “What did Yakov say?”
That, at least, was familiar. Chris fought Josef, and the SEV, and the ISU, when he cared enough; Viktor fought Yakov and the FFKK. They’d been something like comrades in this — a private, meaningless war — for a long time.
“I haven't told him,” Viktor said. “I won't.”
There was a burst of laughter over the speakers. If Viktor tried, he could almost pretend that nothing had ever happened. The new season was coming up, and he’d be back on the ice, and Chris was laughing quietly at him. This was a world he knew inside and out.
“Bonne chance,” Chris said when his breath had come back. “This season will be spectacular.”
“A spectacle, certainly.” The words came out sharper than Viktor had planned. He wondered if Chris could tell even now, through the crackling electronic distance between Valais and Saint Petersburg, that he was afraid.
The ice was waiting for him. He'd never thought before that it might not be enough.
———
2006 Winter Olympics, Torino
The year of his senior debut, Viktor went to Torino.
He wasn’t supposed to. It was, if anything, a testament to the injuries that had ravaged the upper ranks of Russian figure skating. Yagudin had pushed his hip until it gave up on him. Plushenko had fallen disastrously at the 2005 Worlds, which had cost Russia a second Olympic entry, and the surgery that should have been routine failed to fix him; the comeback everyone had been expecting never came.
The lesson was this: in a sport calibrated to perfection, there were no such things as guarantees.
And Viktor found himself, perhaps for the first time, in the curious position of being an underdog.
Yakov scowled the second time he caught Viktor reading an article about the upcoming Olympics. “If you have time for distractions, you’re not working hard enough.”
Viktor had narrowly made podium at his first senior Grand Prix Final, which had as much to do with luck on his part as skill. He’d won the Russian Nationals, but Griazev was out with an injury and so was Klimkin. Winning over Lezin, whom Viktor had already beaten when they’d both been juniors, didn’t feel much of a triumph.
“Yakov,” Viktor had said, genuinely wondering; he liked to be realistic in his expectations. “Could I win?”
Yakov’s frown became, if possible, even more thunderous. “You are a child,” he said, which only meant that Viktor was under the age of thirty and irritating him in some way. “If you’d been of age to debut last year — well, the Europeans know what the Palavela is like, and you do not. Your step sequences and spins are still getting marked as twos too often for my comfort, and as for your PCS — soon, Vitya, you will not be able to charm the judges with only a smile.”
“I know that,” Viktor said. The articles had said all the same things, and none of this was anything he hadn’t considered already. “But my triple axel is better than Lambiel’s, and I can almost land the 4S-3T now.”
“Almost means nothing,” Yakov said reflexively, but considered him for a moment. “A chance,” he said eventually. “Not at the Euros, but you have nearly six weeks to the Olympics. If — if you can land the combination consistently by then, and perhaps move another combination into the second half for the free skate, and learn the new choreography in that time — if you can do all these things, and skate perfectly at the moment it matters, then — yes. You might.”
Viktor had been under Yakov’s tutelage for several years now; he knew how the man talked. When Yakov Feltsman told you that you had a chance, that was real.
“Will you change your choreography?”
“Yes,” Viktor said promptly. The answer meant falls and bruises; it meant weeks of pushing himself until he bled, and then past that, too. It meant giving everything he had to the ice, and for what? Only a chance, after all. There was no certainty in skating.
He wanted it anyway.
“Vitya,” Yakov said. “You will have other Olympics.”
That was almost soft, coming from Yakov. “But Yakov.” He flashed his best smile. “This is the one they think I can’t win.”
“A child,” Yakov growled, his face settling back into familiar lines. “If I say you are overtraining — if I say to give up on this flight of fancy, then you will listen, or you will not have a coach. I have no interest in letting you break yourself into pieces.”
“I’ll be careful,” Viktor promised. “I know what I can do.”
Yakov’s mouth was a thin line. “Yes,” he said. “Everyone thinks that.”
———
2013 World Championships, London, Ontario
Two and a half years after the surgery, Viktor broke the world record for the men’s short program with a score of 104.72. His own world record, in fact — the one he’d set in Vancouver. He’d only just missed the hundred mark then, and the widespread expectation had been that he would surely break it the season after.
Late was better than never, he supposed.
He didn’t score past two hundred in the free skate, didn’t break three hundred combined, but his total was still perilously close, nearly twenty points above Chris. It was only a matter of time, they all said. Next year, maybe. Sochi. It would certainly thrill the commentariat if he did it at the Olympics.
He was tired. Chris let him in when he knocked on his door instead of going back to his own room, and sucked a mark onto his shoulder while Viktor stroked them both off.
Afterwards, Chris was loose-limbed and drowsy under the covers. Viktor set his head back against the headboard, tried not to think about next season, and failed.
“Do you ever wonder,” he said, “if this is all there is?”
“What,” Chris said indistinctly, not bothering to lift his head clear of the pillow. “Probably. Medals only go to gold, far as I know.”
“No, not that,” Viktor said. “Well. Maybe that.”
Chris stirred; the sheets slid over each other, and then the bedside lamp came undimmed. “Should I be wearing pants for this?” he demanded. “This sounds like a serious conversation.”
“It’s not a conversation at all,” Viktor said. “Never mind. Go to sleep.”
Chris didn’t turn the light back off. “How’s the knee?”
It ached, but that was only to be expected after a competition. “Fine.”
“Really.” Chris looked unconvinced. “Show me.”
Viktor glanced sidelong at him; Chris stared steadily back. After a moment, he shrugged and slid off the bed.
“Fucker,” Chris said, but without any real heat. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Wasn’t it?” Viktor groped at the sheet around Chris’s hips until it came loose, then looked up with a grin. “So you don’t want me to —”
Viktor made to get up, and Chris brought him back with a hand cradled against his head. “Shut up,” he said, laughing a little. “You’re already down there, might as well finish the job.”
It was better, this time. Chris’s fingers tightened in his hair when he came, and Viktor stopped thinking for a while.
———
2010 Winter Olympics, Vancouver
When Viktor landed the quad Lutz, the whole world went quiet. There was the music, his blades slicing into the ice, his breathing; then as he went into the triple axel the roar rose up, more sensation than sound, and for a moment there was no difference between skating and flying.
It didn't feel real, when the program came to an end. Viktor's breaths were coming in sharp, short bursts and his vision had gone blurry, but he could still hear the crowd screaming his name.
They loved him, and he didn’t need the score, didn’t need anything else.
Yakov met him at the edge of the rink. “What’s the matter,” he said as Viktor fumbled the skate guards on and started, mechanically, for the kiss and cry. “Are you hurt? You’re crying.”
Viktor slid the back of his hand across his cheek and found it wet. “Oh,” he said, looking blankly at the damp skin over his knuckles. “Yakov, do you think it will ever be that perfect again?”
Yakov made a disgruntled noise as he thrust Viktor onto the center of the bench, then took a seat himself. “Give me strength,” he muttered. “I forgot how high-strung you lot can be. Take this.”
It was a handkerchief. Viktor pressed his face into it and breathed: once, twice. “What did you think,” he said, muffled.
Yakov cleared his throat. “Watch the entry to your flying sit spin.”
Viktor waited, but there was nothing else. “Why, Yakov,” he said, raising his head in delight, “that almost sounds like —”
The score flashed onto the screen. Yakov put a hand onto his shoulder, grasped it tight, and Viktor thought, for a heartbeat, that he might live on this moment for the rest of his life.
———
September 2010, Saint Petersburg
“You will skate again,” the surgeon said.
“Competitively,” said Yakov.
“Yes.” The surgeon looked at Viktor. What was his name? Viktor couldn’t remember. “An ACL reconstruction for athletes is very common, and techniques have improved enormously over the years. The surgery itself can be done as an outpatient procedure, then it’s only a matter of rebuilding strength and flexibility through various exercises. You’re a good candidate for surgery — I don’t expect any complications.”
“When,” said Viktor. He didn’t sound like himself. His entire body felt like a stranger’s.
“The surgery? We’ll discuss some options, then schedule —”
“No,” Viktor said. He wanted to hold something; he ended up curling his fingers around his thumb, tight, watching the skin go white over the joint. “How long until I can get back on the ice?”
“At least six months,” said the surgeon. “But the course of recovery varies tremendously from patient to patient. It can take up to a year in some individuals, although that’s rare —”
Six months. That was the season. He’d planned to debut the quad flip. His costumes, the music, choreography — all wasted.
“Mr. Nikiforov?”
The surgeon was gesturing at a diagram. Viktor tried to focus.
“We can harvest tissue from behind your knee, here and here, for a hamstring graft,” he said, “or extract the middle third of the patellar tendon, from the front. There are pros and cons to each approach. The patellar tendon graft has historically proved more stable, and studies suggest it may allow a quicker return to athletic activity than —”
“Yes,” Viktor said.
The surgeon frowned. “The hamstring graft has its benefits,” he said. “The recovery is generally less painful, there’s less scar tissue formation — in particular, the patellar tendon graft can lead to increased pain in any kind of kneeling position, I really think you should consider —”
Pain was something Viktor could handle. “But it will heal faster.”
“Vitya,” said Yakov.
“I’m not sure that’s the right — the rehabilitation process may be shorter, yes.”
“Good,” Viktor said. “Then that’s what I want.”
Six months. It was only six months. It’d be April then — plenty of time to plan a comeback.
“Now, scheduling,” said the surgeon. “Do you have any preferences? Events to work around?”
The NHK Trophy. The Cup of Russia.
“No,” Viktor said. “Any time is fine.”
———
2010 Winter Olympics, Vancouver
Two days after the men’s free skate had ended, Viktor was still in Vancouver. There was a week to go until the exhibition gala; he had nothing to do but polish his programs for Worlds, more than a month away.
He was spending a fair amount of time in the Swiss part of the Village.
“Didn’t Yakov give you a curfew?” Chris said lazily as he skimmed through the channels on television. CTV was broadcasting the speedskating heats. They could have gotten tickets to see the events at the arena, but neither of them had bothered.
Viktor shrugged. “You can’t take him seriously all the time. Anyway, the women’s short programs are in a few days, he has other things on his mind.”
“Ah.” Chris subsided back into silence. They were both sprawled on the sofa; Chris’s shoulder slid into Viktor’s elbow every time he moved. “I saw that segment about you, by the way. Very impressive. Back-to-back Olympic champion.”
Viktor winced.
“There it is,” said Chris, who must have been waiting for it. “You don’t like people talking about Torino.”
“Did I do that in the segment, too?”
Yakov hadn’t said anything.
“It’s not obvious,” Chris said. “I was looking.”
Chris was looking at him now, his head tipped up to meet Viktor’s eyes. His hip was pressed flush to the side of Viktor’s leg.
Viktor looked away. “It wasn’t a good performance, at Torino,” he said. “It was all TES. There was no art in it.”
“You know you’re trashing a program that won gold.” But Chris’s expression was wry when Viktor glanced at him. He knew the contradictions of scoring as well as anyone.
Viktor laughed. “Yakov says it’s vanity. But he doesn’t like it much, either.”
“Well, you made up for it this year.” One of Chris’s hands had crept onto Viktor’s thigh. “It was a beautiful program. What did it feel like? To skate it.”
It was easy, to tilt his head down to kiss Chris’s mouth. His mouth was soft and open; it was a long moment before Viktor pulled away.
“Huh,” Chris said, a little hoarsely. “That an answer, or a distraction?”
Viktor slid a hand across the nape of Chris’s neck, grinning at him. “Why not both?”
———
October 2010, Saint Petersburg
It was the week before the surgery, and someone was at the door.
“Stay,” Viktor told Makkachin as he unfolded out of a heel slide. The swelling had mostly gone, but he’d learned the hard way that the knee still had a tendency to buckle when she came unexpectedly underfoot.
It was Yakov. “I’m doing the pre-op exercises,” Viktor said, more irritably than he’d meant. “You don’t need to check up on me.”
Yakov snorted. “Have you packed?”
“Packed?” Viktor hadn't. “What for?”
“Vitya,” Yakov said impatiently, like they'd had this conversation before. Possibly they had. “You can't stay here by yourself while you recover.”
Viktor said the first thing that came to mind. “I won’t be by myself.”
“Your dog,” Yakov said, “does not count.”
Makkachin was still sitting quietly where he’d left her when Viktor turned to look. She was a good dog. He didn’t spend enough time with her. He left her in the hands of strangers while he went to competition after competition, and she still loved him the same every time he came back.
“I don’t need a minder.”
“Don’t be stubborn,” Yakov said, which was laughable. “What were you planning to do if something went wrong? A clot, or if you fell and injured the knee further —”
He hadn’t thought about it. “I would’ve taken care of it.”
“Ha!” Yakov’s expression was eloquent. “Your problem, Vitya, is that you never really believe that things can go wrong. I don’t know how many times I told you — when you popped the toe loop at Worlds last year — when you insisted on the triple axel while it was still shaky —”
Yakov’s problem, it seemed, was that he had an encyclopedic memory for all of Viktor’s failures.
“And now,” he concluded, with a meaningful look at Viktor’s knee, “something has gone wrong. Do you want to skate again?”
He had to skate again.
“Then pack a bag,” Yakov said. “I’ll be here.”
“Makkachin is coming with me,” Viktor said, and waited. He didn’t know what he was looking for.
“If you’d like.” Yakov didn’t even blink. “She’s better trained than you are.”
———
2010 Winter Olympics, Vancouver
They were halfway to getting off on the sofa before Chris’s suitemate stumbled in and groused, “God’s sake, Giacometti, take it to yours.”
“You fuck a lot of people out there?” Viktor broke into peals of laughter as he stumbled into Chris’s room and pushed the door closed. “He sounded so resigned.”
“Don’t mind Mathieu,” Chris said; there was a brief silence as he wrestled Viktor onto the bed and resumed licking down his throat. “His events aren’t over yet.”
“A shame,” Viktor agreed, then lost that thread of thought when one of Chris’s hands slid under the bottom of his shirt. “Why are we still dressed?”
“Ah.” Chris broke away to peel off his own shirt. “You’re right. Fuck decency.”
“Just decency?”
Viktor had abandoned his pants and briefs somewhere on the floor by the time Chris came back up from his luggage. “That’s on you, isn’t it? Catch.”
He caught the small square without thinking, then frowned. “Wait, you want me to —”
“Wrap it then tap it, were you not there for the lectures?” Chris was stepping out of his own pants. “IOC-approved, no less. You’re not allergic, are you?”
There’d been a vague thought at the back of Viktor’s mind, that it would be Chris who’d hold him down, perhaps, and —
It didn’t matter. “Never mind,” he said, tearing open the packet while Chris opened himself up with his fingers. “You came prepared.”
“A hundred thousand condoms, but no one thinks about the lube.” Chris had the tip of his tongue caught between his teeth, a faint flush across his nose. “All right, all right, c’mon.”
He passed over the bottle. Viktor spilled entirely too much across the back of his hand, trying to slick himself up, then Chris’s ankles were on his shoulders and he was pressing into him, slow.
“You taking some time to admire the scenery? Move, man.” Chris was grinning, which dissolved with an exhale when Viktor rocked his hips forward. “Ah, that’s better.”
“I should’ve realized you wouldn’t shut up in bed.”
“What, I’m vocal, I’m appreciative — all right, tell me how you’re doing.”
Viktor considered, briefly, the heat around his cock, Chris laid out under him with his mouth open and one hand on his dick, the way Chris’s breaths hissed out when he moved. “Not bad.”
“Not bad?” Chris was laughing again. “Fuck you, my ass is great.”
“Yeah, okay, it’s pretty great.” Viktor tried to suppress a smile, couldn’t quite manage it. “A national treasure.”
“Gonna be my theme next season. Christophe Giacometti’s Fantastic Ass.”
“Too obvious for the union. You gotta be more subtle.”
“Works — ah, works of art?”
“Could work.”
The orgasm washed over Viktor almost without warning. “Fuck,” he said, biting his lip, and then Chris reached up to tangle a hand in his hair and that was it, he was coming, his eyes sliding shut. “Sorry,” he muttered, opening them again, and felt his way down between their bodies where Chris had been stroking himself. It didn’t take long before Chris was spilling over both of their fingers.
They untangled themselves after that, with half-hearted efforts at cleaning up while they caught their breaths.
“Not bad, Nikiforov,” Chris pronounced when the room had recovered some semblance of order. “I think I’ll keep you.”
Viktor stretched out on the bed, grabbing for one of the pillows. “You mind if I stay for a while?”
“Yakov’s going to yell at you.”
“Yakov always yells.”
Chris shrugged, and went to turn off the light. There was a pause before he got back into bed. “Hey. Congrats on the Lutz.”
“Thanks.”
“You working on anything else?”
Viktor gave up trying to keep his eyes open. “The flip.”
Chris’s body was warm when he slid under the sheets next to Viktor. “Quad flip, huh.” His voice was almost too soft to hear. “Well. Keep at it.”
———
October 2010, Saint Petersburg
At Skate Canada, Christophe Giacometti landed the first quad Lutz in combination at an ISU event. The NHK Trophy had been one week earlier. Viktor had planned for a 4Lz-3T combination in the short program. The quad flip he’d saved for the free.
Instead of to Nagoya, Viktor had gone under the knife. He looked at the solitary désolé Chris had texted him when the news about his knee came out, and tried for a long time to send congratulations.
Some hours later, Yakov found Viktor on the floor of the guest room, the wind knocked from his lungs and Makkachin frantically licking at his face.
“The swelling hasn’t come back,” Yakov said, dropping down to peer at Viktor’s knee. It was true, he supposed. The scars were still livid around the knee and it was tender to the touch, but the swelling had, for the moment, gone. “Does it hurt? What happened?”
Viktor pressed himself up to sitting and curled a hand in Makkachin’s coat. “I stood up.” He sounded brittle, even to his own ears.
“You stood —” Yakov’s eyebrows were drawing together. “Where’s your brace?”
Viktor waved a hand at the chair that held it, then closed his eyes. There was a lecture coming. Makkachin had draped herself across his thighs, a pool of warmth.
“Are you trying to do permanent damage to yourself?” Yakov didn’t disappoint. “Your trainer hasn’t cleared walking without it for a reason. She must have told you that the graft takes more than a month to fully attach to the bone. Is your pride worth so much to you? What were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t thinking,” Viktor said between his teeth. “I wanted to do something.”
“Well, you’ve certainly done that. I don’t know whether to hope that it won’t set back your recovery, or that it will. Maybe then at least you might learn.”
Viktor started to laugh, a thin, thready noise. He couldn’t stop. Makkachin whined high in her throat, tried to burrow into his chest.
A learning experience. Was that what this was? It didn’t feel like it. It didn’t feel like anything.
“Vitya,” Yakov said, and then thumped onto the floor, next to Viktor. “Something happened.”
Not a question. Yakov knew him, after all. It came out of his throat reluctantly. “Skate Canada.”
“Ah.” Yakov would have heard already. “I told you not to watch the competitions. You stupid boy. It’s only a distraction now.”
Viktor’s laugh this time was shorter and wet. “When do I ever do what you tell me?” He shook his head. “It wouldn’t have mattered. There’s — news. Twitter.” This was his world. He could no more withdraw from it than choose to stop his heart from beating.
“Giacometti doesn’t have any discipline,” Yakov said abruptly, incongruously. “Neither do you, for that matter, but on the ice —”
Viktor opened his eyes when he realized what Yakov was trying to do, his fingers tight in Makkachin’s fur. “I don’t —” he said urgently; he needed Yakov to understand. “I don’t mind that he did it. I’m glad. I just wanted —”
“To be there,” Yakov said, and he did, he knew. Viktor let Makkachin wiggle free and pulled Yakov close before he’d thought about it.
“I wanted to skate,” he said into Yakov’s shoulder. “I needed —”
Yakov had gone still when Viktor first put his arms around him, but then he raised a hand, pressed it stiffly to Viktor’s back. “You will skate again,” he said.
Viktor believed it this time, more than he ever had when the surgeon had told him the same thing.
“That is, if you listen to simple instructions and put your brace back on.”
He put the brace back on. Then he fished out his phone from under the bed and texted Chris.
———
2014 Winter Olympics, Sochi
At Sochi, Viktor skated for the Russian team, skated his individual programs, and broke the 200- and 300-ceilings on his free and combined scores. It should have thrilled him, but it only left him hollow.
It had been a long time since Viktor had felt alive. Every year, it seemed the color kept bleeding out of competitions.
“I think,” he said, grasping for the belated realization, “we shouldn’t do this anymore.”
It was the wrong time. Chris was still — he’d been reaching up, lazily, for his glasses on the nightstand, but he sat up at that, and the sheet slid from his torso to catch along the top of one thigh. Viktor could see the traces of sweat along his sides, the place above his hip where Viktor had gripped too hard when he —
“What the fuck,” Chris said.
The revelation that had seemed so large was already slipping away from him. “I don’t want —” Viktor started, and stopped. What did he want? He didn’t know, only that it wasn’t this: the competitions set like certainties in his future, the way he and Chris had slid into this, predictable and routine. It wasn’t — he couldn’t feel anything anymore. He’d felt something, before. It was only blank now.
“Oh, you don’t want,” Chris said, with a laugh that wasn’t, really, “you don’t want —”
“I’m sorry,” Viktor said, and Chris pulled him forward by a shoulder, his fingers digging into the muscle, and said, “Don’t. Don’t you dare. If you’re going to apologize, at least make it a real one.”
They were close, close enough that Viktor could smell sweat, the last of Chris’s cologne, the champagne, and layered thickly above it the familiar smell of sex. They’d been doing this for — god, years. It was a lifetime in skating.
Viktor closed the gap between them, pressing his mouth to the side of Chris’s jaw in a clumsy kiss, and Chris laughed again in a sound like gravel.
“Fuck you,” he said. “Fuck you, Nikiforov.”
When he kissed Viktor full on the mouth, there was teeth, and heat, like he thought he could chip away whatever was wrong with Viktor, if he wanted it enough. He couldn’t, Viktor knew; but it was only fair to let him try.
———
May 2011, Saint Petersburg
“Vitya!”
The knee had — the knee had gone out under him but the pain was clean and familiar, there’d been no sound, it wasn’t —
“Vitya,” Yakov shouted again, and Viktor unfolded the leg, pushed himself up gingerly.
“It’s nothing,” he said aloud, trying to swallow his heart back down his throat. “Just a fall.”
He got to his feet, flexed the knee — which was fine, of course it was fine — skated a precise, tight loop in one direction, then the other, an echo of the endless pivoting drills. There was nothing wrong with the knee anymore; he knew it because they’d tested him for days before even letting him lace up his skates. He’d landed more jumps on the ground the first week back than on the ice itself.
He shook the impact off and skated back to the boards. “It’s nothing,” he said again while Yakov frowned at him. “I’m out of practice, that’s all.”
“It’s been a while since I’ve seen you miss a triple toe loop,” said Yakov.
Viktor tried for a cheerful grin, and wasn’t entirely successful. “I thought that’s what you wanted. Might knock some more sense into my head, isn’t that what you always say?”
“Hmm.” Yakov’s expression didn’t change. “Try it again.”
Viktor fell into the backward crossovers easily, gathering speed, and then launched himself up. The landing was clean, easy. He waved at Yakov as he came back.
Yakov was still scowling. “Whelp. Did I say quad?”
“I’m only trying to keep you on your toes.” Viktor grinned, a real one this time. “Wouldn’t want to be predictable.”
Yakov waved him off. “Try the combination,” he said. Viktor went, and felt Yakov’s eyes carefully considering him the whole time.
By the end of May, Viktor had been back on the ice for nearly a month. During that time, he’d accrued a string of inexplicable falls — some on jumps he’d been landing for more than a decade — and been pronounced perfectly healthy by his surgeon, his physical therapist, and the rink’s athletic trainer.
His knee continued giving out at inconvenient moments, but it was, apparently, perfectly fine.
“Hmm,” Yakov said after Viktor had picked himself up from the ruins of a double axel. “Perhaps you should go see Irina.”
Irina was the sports psychologist. Georgi swore by her visualizations.
“There’s nothing wrong with my head,” Viktor said, which sounded unconvincing even to himself. The fact was, there was something wrong with him, unquestionably, and it wasn’t his body.
Yakov opened his mouth, presumably to list everything that was wrong with Viktor’s head, and then closed it with what seemed like heroic effort. “It won’t hurt,” he said instead, with a glower that warned against argument. “Go talk to her, Vitya.”
Well, it wasn’t as if he had a better idea. “I won’t like it,” he muttered as he skated out to practice his spins, but they both knew that didn’t matter.
———
2014 Winter Olympics, Sochi
The second time, Chris fucked him with his thumbs slotted into the grooves of Viktor’s hips, and when it was over, the stiffness in his jaw had melted into a sort of tiredness.
Viktor could just make out half a curved mark on his shoulder from Chris’s teeth if he turned his head. He had to work to swallow down the apology that came up. “We weren’t,” he said at last. “Chris, we weren’t ever —”
They’d never talked about it. Skating and winning and sex: it had seemed like enough when they started, nineteen and twenty-one and so sure of themselves.
Chris pressed his forearm over his eyes and blew out a breath. “No,” he agreed, low in his throat. “I guess not.”
“I can leave,” Viktor said. His pants were a heap on the floor, his jacket draped over a chair. “Have you seen my shirt?”
“Don’t be stupid.” Chris wasn’t looking at him still. “The Russians are all the way across the Village. Crash in the suite. The sofa’s nice.”
Are you sure, Viktor nearly said, and bit it back at the last minute. “What about your —” He made a vague gesture at the door. Was it an ice dancer rooming with Chris this year?
Chris sat up and shrugged. “I can deal with him.” Then he grinned, sudden, and more than halfway genuine. “Who knows, he might appreciate seeing a pretty face.”
“He’s got you, hasn’t he?” Viktor got on a knee to peer under the bed, saw nothing but dust.
Chris snorted, then there was a pause. “Hey. Looking for this?”
The wad of fabric nearly hit Viktor in the face as he looked up. “Ah,” he said indistinctly, then shrugged into it. “Thanks.”
“Any time.”
“Hey.” Viktor paused before he pushed the door open; it seemed important to say. “I mean it, you know. Merci.”
Chris looked at him for a long time, his expression unreadable. “Yeah,” he said at last, his mouth twisting up wryly. “I know.”
———
May 2011, Saint Petersburg
On his next rest day, Viktor went in to see Irina.
From Georgi’s rapturous descriptions, Viktor had expected someone with more presence. But Irina was a short, wiry woman, and young — she couldn’t be over forty. She smiled at him as he came in, waving a hand at the armchair, and watched him settle stiffly onto the edge of the seat.
“Make yourself comfortable,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve seen you in here before.”
Viktor shrugged. “I didn’t have a problem before.”
“Well, what I do isn’t always about problems. Really, what I try to do is help you use your mind to work with your body, instead of against it.”
Viktor had always tried not to think at all when he skated. Thought killed a routine; it was emotion that was crucial.
“So are you going to — tell me to imagine my knee getting better?” he said suspiciously. “That’s what Georgi always talks about.”
Irina laughed. “Do you think it’ll help?”
“No.” Viktor’s answer came out frustrated. “There’s nothing wrong with the knee. It’s healed, it doesn’t hurt. It’s fine.”
“It doesn’t sound fine.”
“It — gives out,” he admitted. “Sometimes, when I’m skating. I don’t even know it’s going to happen, just that I end up on the ice for jumps I should be landing. They’re easy.” He was gripping hard at the arm of the chair at the end of it. He uncurled his fingers and pressed them beneath his thigh instead.
“Why do you skate?”
Viktor stared at her; that wasn’t the question he’d expected. “What else is there?” he said blankly. “I thought you wanted to talk about the knee.”
“I want to talk about you,” she said. “Skating’s clearly very important to you.”
“Yes,” Viktor said slowly. He shifted his gaze away, then changed his mind and looked back; Irina’s eyes stayed on him, level. “Did you ever skate?” he said without thinking.
She had the right build for it. Suddenly, Viktor desperately needed her to. People didn’t always understand him, but skaters — skaters could.
“Not skating, no. It was gymnastics for me. I was good,” she said, frank and straightforward, “but not the best. So here I am.”
“So you know,” Viktor said. “All those people, watching, waiting to see if you’ll be good enough. What it’s like when you get it right. They love you. For a minute, you’re all they care about.”
In Vancouver he’d set a world record; but records were only numbers, they weren’t the heart of it. What they remembered was, always, the way he’d been better. He’d beaten all their expectations, and that had been worth something, right then.
“They love you,” Irina repeated. “Yes.” There was a pause, then she said, “Have you ever thought about doing something other than skating?”
“I can skate.” The words came out too sharp. He had to stop for a breath. “This isn’t — it’s going to get better, it’s not permanent.”
“Oh, of course.” Irina looked faintly apologetic. “But skaters retire young. I was wondering if you’d considered what you might do after.”
After. After skating. What did skaters do when they couldn’t skate? Coach, he supposed. Choreograph. Tour with ice shows. His life had centered around the rink for as long as he could remember. The frost in the air; the sound of blades on ice.
If he couldn’t skate. What would he do if he couldn’t skate?
“I.” He couldn’t think. “I don’t know.”
“Do you believe,” Irina said very gently, “there are people who will love you even if you couldn’t skate?”
There was something in Viktor’s throat. He said, blindly, “I’d like to leave.”
He went home. He sat on the floor and put his arms around Makkachin. “You love me,” he said to her, like a question, and she thumped her tail against his thigh and licked his face with a warm, wet tongue.
His knee stopped giving out during practice, slowly. “I suppose whatever Irina did worked,” Yakov said one day. They were waiting for the new season’s assignments. Viktor was still straightening out his choreography — there was something wrong with it, but he couldn’t figure out what.
“Yes,” he said. “It must have.”
———
2011–12 Grand Prix Final, Quebec City
In Quebec City, Viktor saw Chris for the first time since — well, it had been a while. “Hi, Chris,” he said, thinking distantly of Vancouver.
Chris looked good. He’d just come off the ice, comfortably third, and there was still a trace of glitter across his cheekbones.
“Viktor!” Chris grinned as he looked him over. “The hero returns. Interesting short program. Love the hair.”
He’d cut his hair before the men’s short programs at the Finlandia Trophy. His Twitter mentions had been flooded for weeks after; reporters were still asking him why he did it, whether he’d wanted a certain look for his performance, for his comeback season.
Chris didn’t ask him why. Instead, he winked and leaned in to say, “A shame there’s not enough to get a good grip on, now.”
Viktor ran a hand over the top, letting the short strands brush through his fingers. “Isn’t there?” he said. “Maybe you’d like to find out.”
Chris’s grin got even wider. “Can’t turn down an invitation like that.” He jerked his head towards his coach, who was calling for him. “Gotta run. But after the gala? Mine or yours?”
“Yours.”
“Perfect.” Chris blew a kiss at him as he left. “I’ll see you on the podium.”
The day after, Chris got his first GP Final silver, to Viktor’s second gold. They went up to Chris’s room from the banquet, neither of them drunk enough to tilt past tipsy, but Chris put an arm around Viktor’s shoulders and knocked their hips together, and his breath was warm against the side of Viktor’s neck.
“Hey,” Chris said while Viktor was zipping him out of his pants, “weren’t you were working on the flip?”
Viktor had scrapped the quad flip from his free program before the season had even started. Yakov hadn’t argued, and Viktor didn’t know if that meant it was the right decision, or wasn’t.
He tipped his head up to look at Chris, his mouth parted open — not quite touching Chris’s dick, but close. “Do you really want to talk, or get on with better things?”
Chris laughed, and obligingly curled his fingers into Viktor’s hair when he pushed up into his hands. “Better, huh,” he said. “All right, show me what you’ve got.”
———
2015 World Championships, Shanghai
Chris wasn’t at Worlds after Sochi, and the season after that, there was a careful, studied distance in the way he held himself away from Viktor. They didn’t exchange more than perfunctory greetings at shared press conferences until Shanghai.
Viktor had gotten gold, his fourth consecutive Worlds win, and the reporters’ excitement was at a fever pitch. He gave a lot of non-answers, smiled politely, and it didn’t matter, any of it, why couldn’t anyone see —
He ducked into the bathroom after it was over, turned on the cold water and splashed a handful on his face, trying to feel something.
“Ah,” said a voice behind him. “I thought it might be you.”
Chris was standing there, a finger to his lips. Viktor stared at him as Chris gently pushed him over and began washing his hands.
“Chris,” he said; it felt like he’d run out of words. “It’s been a while.”
“A while,” Chris agreed. The soapy water ran down the drain; Viktor looked at that instead of Chris, or the mirror, anywhere.
Eventually, Chris turned the tap off. “Listen,” he said. “I’ve been thinking.”
He seemed to be waiting for something, but Viktor didn’t know what. All he could dredge up was a questioning sort of look.
Chris sighed. “Our problem,” he said, “was that we never tried being friends without the sex.”
“You liked the sex,” said Viktor.
“Sure. But you didn’t.”
That wasn’t true, Viktor opened his mouth to say; he’d liked it in Vancouver, when the pleasure of victory and sex had blurred into each other, and after he’d come back, when it had been a welcome distraction from the worry that his knee would give out again, and then —
And then, it had turned into something he did, like skating, like winning, and he hadn’t thought about what he wanted. If he wanted it anymore.
Chris smiled, a little tight. “Yeah,” he said. “You know, you’re kind of fucked up.”
Viktor laughed, and it felt like the first time in a long time. “I think you’re the first person to point that out. Not even Yakov’s said that.”
“The man beneath the mask.” Chris put out a hand. “So. Friends?”
Viktor took it. “Your skate was beautiful.”
“Not enough.” Chris nodded at Viktor before he broke into a softer smile. “But yeah, it was good, wasn’t it.”
———
2015–16 Grand Prix Final, Sochi
Chris helped Viktor take Yuuri Katsuki back to his hotel room, and then there was just the two of them. Chris’s room was closer; Viktor walked him to the door and watched Chris fumble with the key card.
When Chris got the door open, he stumbled through, and then turned, framed in the doorway. “I don’t suppose you want to come in.”
Viktor looked over his shoulder, at where they’d helped Katsuki take off his shoes and fall into bed. Looked back. “I don’t think so.”
“Yeah.” Chris was smiling crookedly. “I guess you found what you wanted.”
“Chris,” Viktor said, urgent, pressing a hand to where Chris was leaning against the door jamb. “I never said — do you think it would have been better? If we’d never —”
“If we’d never fucked?” Chris looked at the hand, Viktor’s knuckles brushing against his upper arm, then looked back. “No. Not really.”
Chris had said once, don’t apologize unless you mean it. Viktor wanted to mean it now.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “For everything.”
They could have been something. It had just been the wrong place, the wrong time. They'd been the wrong people.
Chris put a hand to Viktor’s face, then leaned forward and kissed him, a soft, chaste press to his lips. “Don’t be,” he said. “It’s what happens.”
The light in his room flickered on. Chris turned, momentarily a silhouette, while Viktor blinked at the sudden brightness.
“And now,” Chris said, “I am going to sleep. Go find your own room, Viktor. Dream about dancing.”
Yuuri Katsuki. Viktor had touched him, danced with him, and felt something in his blood sing. It had been like coming awake, the future opening up before him in brilliant color.
“I liked him,” Viktor said, and what he meant was, I want to feel that again. Always.
Chris laughed, very bright. “Well,” he said, “he’s got a great ass,” and quietly shut the door.