Work Text:
I hear a voice crying in the distance
Have you been abandoned too?
After the World Championships, Victor’s return to St. Petersburg is wholly unremarkable in the way that routines usually are. According to Yakov, this is the way of things: his medals shall remain gold, the early spring mornings shall remain cold, and the untold miseries of yet another undefeated season shall remain unknown to the world because he had given his heart, soul, and youth to become the unfailing god of this sport, so who is he to whine about everything else that came after?
Think about what you want to do next, Vitya, his coach advised just last month, before turning away to begin a training session for the junior group which includes Yuri Plisetsky, his now fifteen-year-old future replacement.
Heavy is the head that wears the crown, Victor muses a little dramatically. He’s in the kitchen, scooping some blackberry jam to mix into his tea like his mother had taught him when he was young. Younger, when he had his whole life and career ahead of him, when he was excited to build a legacy worth keeping. Now, he's both dreading and looking forward to the end — in two seasons, most likely. After a third Olympic gold in South Korea. The spoon clinks onto the rim of his mug with sharp finality. He takes a sip. The tea is strong, sweet, and tart for a moment; after, the faint bitterness lingers.
It is now the off-season, so Victor has some time off before he needs to scrounge up the inspiration to conceptualize his next programs and the determination to carry them through. He takes his mug, settles it down onto the coffee table in front of his couch. Then he sits and arranges his limbs to a more comfortable position. His best friend Makkachin settles warmly atop his stomach.
Alright. It's time to doom scroll.
Twitter is his poison of choice this lazy afternoon, so he taps on the unassuming blue bird before nearly dropping his phone at the sheer amount of notifications that he's received. Yes, winning the World Championships five consecutive times has merited him an unprecedented number of fans for this sport, but the rabid mentions defending him, calling for his attention, and screeching in keyboard smash are not the usual for a casual day in the figure skating off-season.
Hmm. Oh.
It's Yuuri Katsuki, Victor pauses.
It's Yuuri Katsuki in a video covering his free skate of the last season, Stammi Vicino. He presses cold fingers to his temple in sardonic thought. A skater of their caliber making a cover of a leading competitor’s world record-breaking program? Hah. At this point, that’s not even asking for criticism — that’s inviting a screaming bevy of banshees to ravage your home (or social media account of choice).
Ah, but Yuuri doesn’t have an online presence, Victor remembers. He’s checked. He even tried — he digresses.
He presses play.
If Yuuri were to tell their story, he would say that everything started after his disastrous free skate at the Grand Prix Final in Sochi. He would resurface from his pity cry in the bathroom, contemplate his retirement as he fields questions from Morooka-san, and leave without a commemorative photo with Victor because he was too humiliated by everything that had transpired that evening.
Victor prefers his version of their story. It began with a grainy television screen and a shared love for the ice: the stories whispered by the shifting of their blades, the cold air kissing their cheeks, the glides and the jumps and the falls, the learning and the yearning of it all.
It began with a bright-eyed Japanese boy watching his best friend’s idol win the Junior World Championship.
Much later in St. Petersburg, when they are both lazing in bed, arguing about this very same point, Victor will shush Yuuri with a playful finger against the latter’s lips. Yuuri will splutter, and Victor will laugh but nonetheless continue his argument.
“It is a disservice,” Victor will say. And Yuuri will raise a pointed brow, silent in judgment as Victor’s finger refuses to budge from his lips.
“It is a disservice to twelve-year-old Yuuri, who practiced sixteen-year-old Victor’s programs every day at the rink after school. It is a disservice to the twenty-three-year-old Yuuri, who skated twenty-seven-year-old Victor’s program after crashing Japanese Nationals,” Victor will answer.
A frown. “Yes, I’ve spent my whole skating career chasing after you. You already knew that.”
And Victor will laugh, knowingly. “No, what I know is that we’ve both spent our whole careers aiming for the very top. And while I am deeply flattered, I know more than anything what practicing those programs meant to you. Even I had someone to look up to, you know. It is my greatest honor to have provided little Yuuri with the dare to dream, so humor me when I say that our story started this way. Beyond my victories, this will be my most prized achievement.”
When Victor opens YouTube, he sees his life’s greatest work ruined.
A culmination of more than a decade of competition experience. A world-breaking free skate with a score of 220.03. An Italian aria that he had commissioned for a vision that he had wanted to perform. That’s what Stammi Vicino is. (This program is mine, he does not say.)
What Yuuri Katsuki skates is unrefined in the best and worst ways. The spins sluggishly speak of a lack of practice. The jumps are unsurprisingly downgraded. Still, Yuuri somehow adds a little more flair, a little more nuance to the emotion of the piece — but it is as if he were lost in its depths as opposed to being the master of it. It is a grippingly poignant depiction, but it is not what Victor would have done, for the character he had chosen to play.
And yet. And yet.
For all the flaws that he sees, Victor cannot deny that Yuuri Katsuki here is a marvel to watch. It is all heart-wrenchingly beautiful, in the deepness of his edges when performing that spread eagle, the arch of his back in that glorious Ina Bauer, the tripping complexity of that step sequence that Victor knows is of a higher difficulty than the original program had called for. It makes his lips curl. There is an audacity in this Yuuri — an audacity to perhaps love figure skating more than even Victor Nikiforov does. Why else would he skate such a thing?
Yuuri Katsuki, silver in Skate Canada and bronze in the NHK Trophy this last season. Two-time 4CC silver medalist. A four-time Japanese national champion.
It’s a potential that hasn’t fully broken through, but Yuuri is so close that it aches. It reminds Victor of his own childhood. It makes him want to do it all over again.
Honestly, how dare he? Victor thinks. How fucking dare he?
After months of radio silence. After weeks of pining. After days of stalking Japanese fan accounts that he had to Google Translate because, of course, Yuuri has no social media presence. Not a single call, text, or even emoji to the phone number that Victor made sure to scribble on Yuuri’s hand. Not a single medal to prove that he was worth his weight in the gold Victor would be losing if he accepted the devil’s deal Yuuri was proposing.
Victor, will you be my coach?
(It’s funny, isn’t it? You’re three steps behind, not even able to bask in the victory of your fifth GPF title, and you are still in the middle of the season, but the bloodthirsty journalists in the press con are already interrogating you about your plans for the next year: What will you be for the pre-Olympic season? What surprises can we expect this time? Do you think your rinkmate Yuri Plisetsky will have a chance at defeating you at the Pyeongchang Olympics in two years?
You don’t know, and you say as much. You still have to prepare for this season’s European Championships, World Championships, and the fun old World Team Trophy, you remind them.
So at the ISO Banquet in Sochi, you nurse a bubbly flute of champagne in your hands and wish it was a shot of vodka instead. You send up a prayer to a higher being in hopes that a solution to your life’s woes will magically drop onto your lap, but when it happens quite literally, all puppy eyes and half-drunk smiles, you just exclaim to yourself: what the fuck.
A Japanese man, who lost to you by more than a hundred points just the night before, waltzes into your life and invites you to a dance even though there weren’t any dances being asked for to begin with; and he looks at you so tenderly, with such an open fondness, that there is no question in your acquiescence. You simply stand from your seat as the rest of the Russian team gapes at you because firstly, Vitya, why; secondly, the music playing in the background is some generic EDM-inspired Eurovision song that is definitely not for ballroom dancing; and thirdly, you have never actually been properly introduced to Yuuri Katsuki before this very moment, so he has zero reason to ask for your hand like this were some debutante ball.
The introduction, in summary, goes in the form of Yuuri’s many endearing questions:
Victor, will you dance with me?
I love dogs! Can I meet Makkachin?
Victor! Do you want to have another dance with me?
I’m going to beat Yuri Plisetsky in this challenge! Hah. If I win, what’s my prize?
You know what? if I win, let’s take a vacation to Japan, yes? You can come to the hot springs in Hasetsu. That’s my hometown. Okay?
Dance with me again?
Victorr, do you like my Biellmann? Oh ho, you do? Let me show you what else I can do!
Before anything else about him, you learn that Yuuri is a chaotically sincere mess of a human being, and you are hopelessly charmed. You say yes to everything. Unconditionally. Until the fatal question.)
(“Hey,” Yuuri whispers, beckoning Victor even closer. “I’m going to win gold in the Grand Prix Final next year, and I’m going to tell you my secret plan.”
“Oh?” Victor looks back at him, snickering. Yura is glaring at them both from a distance. “What is it?”
Yuuri proclaims: “I’m going to ask Victor Nikiforov to be mine!”)
Victor, will you be my coach?
Thunder rumbles; it reverberates throughout the room and sends Makkachin into a frightened leap over Victor’s legs, crashing onto the nearby coffee table. She knocks off the tea mug, and it shatters. Finality is a sharp haphazard mess on the floor.
Victor blinks, pausing the video that he had replayed for the nth time. He had not even noticed the storm. When he cleans up the spill and sweeps up the shards, he takes it upon himself to wonder why. The clock has run a full hour since he discovered Yuuri’s video, but it is only now, when he brings himself to open it again, that he notices a pinned comment by the uploader.
@hasetsuprimadonna commented: I did not notice my kids uploading this video until the next day. My deepest apologies. Yuuri was not involved with the decision to post Stammi Vicino but consented to keeping this video here. Since it has already been done, let me share a brief story of a childhood dream fulfilled: In this tiny home rink, we both swore to ourselves that we would one day conquer a Victor Nikiforov program. I have since retired, but Yuuri has soldiered on. 勝生勇利選手、 頑張って！！そしてありがとうね!
He closes the video. He doesn’t need to see anything more. To put it quite frankly, before this, Yuuri Katsuki’s skating never truly stood out to him before, not even during the Sochi GPF when they were directly competing against each other. With only one quad, he was never technically proficient enough to rise that high in the pack. Neither was he consistent enough for his performances to really shine through.
Maybe that is why Victor was unable to make a decision until today.
Because if you asked him his honest opinion, Stammi Vicino was the best that Victor had ever seen Yuuri perform. Clean, driven, and intrinsically full of yearning. It makes him wonder: How many times? How many times did you skate my program until it became yours?
The truth is that the difference between Victor and his competitors is not a mere matter of skill. Rather, it is a steadfast consistency, an unshakeable confidence that leaves anyone watching Victor with the distinct impression that any jump attempted would be landed without doubt or hesitation. Victor has become the ice prince that they have all hailed him to be, as unyielding as the element he had demonstrated his mastery over. But let this be known: it would be an insult to say that this is the result of talent. Everyone competing at the top of the sport can claim to have talent. At this level, the difference between athletes is found in the process.
For Victor, the process is in the everyday. It is molding yourself the way you want to with all the small building blocks of waking up refreshed, eating well-rounded meals, cuddling with Makkachin, and skating on the ice. Rinse and repeat. What makes skating any different from all the other tasks of his daily routine? It’s not. Victor loves skating in the same way that he loves greeting the new day, and indulging his favorite foods, and giving Makkachin a belly rub. Victor skates in the same way that he breathes, with familiarity and purpose. To that point, many have wondered how Victor had developed his mental fortitude — that which has proven to be so solid that he had never been knocked down the podium for his entire competitive career. But let’s put it this way: If you learned how to cook an egg and decided to prepare that as your breakfast every morning for twenty years, would you still be afraid of cooking eggs? Likewise, why would you be afraid of a jump that you’ve already learned and mastered? You jumped it yesterday in practice, and you jump it again today, with as much proper care and self-aware competence as you always do. Why not jump it in competition tomorrow?
The difference between Victor and the rest of his competitors is in the building blocks of doing anything and everything well, then doing that again and again and again. The difference between Victor and Yuuri? Well. According to a little blue bird, Yuuri isn’t even able to do anything at the moment. Yuuri, who had announced his departure from Coach Celestino and had not even qualified for Worlds this year. Yuuri, who had turned away from him the night of the GPF and asked him to be his coach the next. Yuuri, who had skated Victor’s programs like he had as a child.
Again and again and again.
...Ah, is that it then? Am I a building block to the self you want to build, Yuuri? Is that what you were asking of me?
(Am I a part of the future you want to build for yourself?)
Fine. Alright. So be it.
An hour ago, Victor believed that he was going to retire in two seasons, but here he is booking flights to Japan. If Yuuri wants to learn how to skate his programs, Victor will teach him how to do it well. If Yuuri wants to win with Victor Nikiforov’s programs, then Victor will teach him how to win with them well. And beyond all that, if Yuuri wants to learn Victor in all matters of skating and not, Victor will teach that, too. As well as he can.
@v-nikiforov commented: Beautifully done, Yuuri! Now let’s do it again! ❤️