Archive of Our Own

All her life, Victoria Javadi has been destined for one thing, and one thing alone: Greatness. 

There’s been a running joke her mother has been making in interviews, for as long as Victoria’s been old enough to sit politely in front of cameras with a microphone shoved in her face, that she’d learned to skate before she’d learned to walk. The older that she gets, the less it feels like a joke. Gliding across the ice has always felt easier than stumbling through the rest of her life. 

The thing is, she comes from a legacy of greatness, so she’s really never had a choice in it. Her parents were three-time Olympic gold medalists in pairs skating and had tried to shepherd her toward the same discipline, but she’s always been a particularly headstrong individual. After a couple of years distinguished by a revolving door of partners, they relented and allowed her to rebrand as a singles skater. The transition had been seamless. She took to skating solo like a duck to water. 

It took two years for her to win her first gold medal—US Nationals, at the junior level, but still. Gold is gold.

Now, eleven years later, just a few months shy of her twenty-first birthday, she’s going to do it again. She has a whole trophy room at home, in Pittsburgh, that has nearly every available inch of surface area covered in her accolades, but a single shelf still stands empty. It’s been reserved for her Olympic medals for the better part of five years. She’d been ready to go in 2022, practically chomping at the bit for the chance to go to Beijing, but she’d only been sixteen at the time and hadn’t yet refined her skills enough to make the cut. 

2026 was supposed to be her year. 2026 was going to be her year. 

Until Trinity Santos came out of retirement and ruined it for her. 

The funny part is, at one point Trinity Santos was someone that she looked up to. She and her partner, Frank Langdon, were the best pairs skaters the United States had since the eighties, medaling at back-to-back Olympics—bronze in Pyeongchang when Victoria was only thirteen, then silver in Beijing four years later—largely in part to the esteemed coaching of the infamous Michael Robinavitch. They were at the peak of their game and then, abruptly, Trinity had retired. She and Langdon didn’t even finish out their season at Worlds that year. Langdon found a new partner, and continued under Robby’s coaching (until he was busted in a doping scandal two years later and banned from skating for the next four years) but after Beijing it was like Trinity disappeared off the face of the earth. She was twenty-three.

And then, when Victoria had finally been granted her moment from the universe, the season that would take her straight to the top of Team USA, Trinity came out of retirement with an entirely new coaching team, a new discipline, and her sights set on Milano Cortina. 

It’s bad enough to be circling each other the way they are, battling for the same medals at each competition they appear in. It’s bad enough that she narrowly misses out on the podium at the Grand Prix finals while Trinity takes home gold. It’s bad enough that, somehow, in every exhibition Trinity skates like she loves every second of it even when she makes mistakes, while Victoria can hardly make herself feel like each error she commits on the ice is anything but a death sentence. It’s bad enough to watch as headlines turn from ‘How Victoria Javadi Skated Her Way to the Top’ to ‘Battle for Olympic Gold: Will Santos or Javadi Emerge Victorious?’ 

The icing on the cake is the Olympic team event. 

It’s not a surprise to anyone that two out of the three individual women’s spots go to Victoria and Trinity. Victoria basically accepted the reality of sharing the Olympic stage with her the minute she came out of retirement. The problem is that both programs in the team event were supposed to be hers. She’s the only woman consistently landing a triple axel as one of her components in the free skate, she should have been the one on the ice for it. Instead, she’s chosen for the short program and Trinity is the one who will perform on the final day of the team event with her free skate.

“This is a good thing,” her coach (her mom, but really mostly her coach for the next two weeks) says in an attempt to be comforting. It falls flat, like every other effort at maternal affection she’s ever coughed up. “You’ll have a better chance at an individual medal if you only skate once in the team event. And the short program goes first, you’ll have more time to rest.”

It’s true, but it doesn’t make it any easier for her to sit beside Trinity in all of their pre-skate interviews, smiling and chatting it up like they’re the best of friends when she’s only narrowly holding herself back from a crashout that would make Tonya Harding look like a saint. It doesn’t make it any easier for her to bite her tongue when an interviewer has the gall to ask her “Victoria, do you think that Team USA made the right choice allocating the short program to you and the free skate to Trinity?” 

She can feel the moment that her perfect publicity trained smile she plastered on her face falters, and even if she couldn’t she would have known it from the way that a warning flashes in Trinity’s jade green eyes the moment that Victoria shoots a look her way. “I think that Trinity has a beautiful free skate. I’m excited for her to showcase it on an Olympic stage.” 

It’s the closest she can get to the Victoria Javadi Good Sportsmanship™ answer that she knows they’re fishing for and the words taste like vinegar on her tongue. Trinity, for her part, looks thrilled. She reaches over and throws an unwelcome arm around Victoria’s shoulders, tugging her into her side. “And you’ll see it twice, as long as Crash carries us through the short program.” 

Victoria watches as the interviewer and her mother’s expressions shift in sync—the kind of unison she wishes that their pairs skaters could muster up in their side-by-sides. The interviewer’s look is one of pure confusion while Eileen Shamsi’s is pinched annoyance. “Crash?”

“An inside joke,” Victoria says, too quickly to play off as casual, as she rights herself and attempts to discretely dislodge Trinity’s arm from her shoulder. “Between friends.” 

“Best friends,” Trinity agrees, and Victoria can tell from the glare that her mother shoots her over the shoulder of the interviewer that it’s time for them to wrap this up. 

Once the cameras are done rolling and their microphones are detached from their warm-up jackets, Victoria is on her in a second. She stalks in Trinity’s direction like a jungle cat on the prowl for dinner, not stopping until Trinity looks sufficiently hunted, green eyes blown wide in surprise. “What did I tell you about calling me Crash?” 

The way Trinity stops to pretend to think about it makes Victoria want to throttle her. “That nobody thinks I’m as funny as I think that I am?” 

“Not. Here.” Victoria’s voice comes out a snarl. She’s not proud of how easily Trinity is able to get under her skin but she can’t seem to control herself in the face of Trinity’s haughtily amused grin. 

“Aw,” she practically coos, as condescending as ever. “Am I getting into your head, Javadi? Are you afraid of a little mental block?” 

Victoria tilts her chin to the sky, flicking her ponytail over her shoulder as she turns away. “Not a chance, Santos.” 

⋆˚.⋆❅⋆.˚⋆

The worst performance of Victoria’s career was, without a doubt, her free skate at the 2025 Grand Prix Final. It was also the performance that earned her the nickname Crash from Trinity. 

In the months that followed, she watched and rewatched the program no less than a hundred times. She spent a solid two weeks afterward falling asleep to it on repeat, embedding the memory of every error she made into her mind so that she would never make them again. 

The most haunting part of it all was that it wasn’t even her hardest jump that she fell out of. She’d landed her triple axel at the top of the program with ease and she’s landed every other triple lutz triple toe combo she’s thrown in a competition this year. The second most haunting part was that she could have saved it. 

She’d known the second that she’d taken off in the triple lutz that she was off her axis and she’d only barely hung onto her first landing. If she was smart, she would have pulled back and thrown a double toe instead, but the stubborn and prideful part of her had overridden all of her good sense and she went for the triple toe, anyway. 

The result had been disastrous; she wiped out so hard on the landing that her entire body crumpled against the padded boards like a rag doll. At that moment, she hadn’t heard a thing. Even her program music, a song that she sometimes heard in her sleep, had faded away to nothing but white noise. The only thing she could think about was getting herself back on her feet to finish her routine, two components away from the end of it. When she watched it back, the sound of the packed stadium gasping in unison as she fell was deafening. 

She couldn’t blame them for being shocked. Mistakes like those weren’t like her. Technically speaking, she’s one of the strongest skaters on the ice right now. The cushion from her grade of execution on all the other components was almost enough to keep her on the podium regardless, but it was Trinity’s artistry that pushed her routine to the top and earned her a gold medal that night. 

Trinity Santos was the very last person that Victoria would have wanted to see when it was all said and done, which of course meant that she was the first person that she ran into—literally collided into—on her way out of the locker room. For a moment, Victoria had thought that the look in Trinity’s eyes was one of genuine concern (which was far preferable to the pity that she’d received from everyone else she’d encountered since she exited the kiss and cry) but then she opened her mouth and said “That was quite the tumble you took out there, Crash.” 

Victoria had flinched back like she’d been physically struck across the face. “Don’t call me Crash.” 

“I mean, you totally recovered,” she continued, ignoring Victoria’s protests completely. “It was kind of impressive. Most people would have completely fallen apart but you really stuck it out. Just bad luck that Mohan and Kwon had clean skates, too.” Too, in addition to Trinity herself. Why not just spit in her face while she was at it?

She had blacked out the rest of whatever Trinity said to her in a rage and made a hasty escape from the conversation as quickly as she was able, but she never forgave or forgot. 

The stain on her otherwise formidable season continues to haunt her, even into the Olympics. Nobody has ever told her in as many words, but she’s certain that her fall was the reason that she was passed over for the free skate portion of the team event. She knows that it’s stupid of her to be hung up on it in the first place, because it’s not the medal that matters, really—they’re all but guaranteed a team medal regardless thanks to their hotshot skater competing for the men’s portion of the singles events. It’s her own individual medal that she has to worry about, which she can now start to focus on after day one of the team event. 

The best part of the day is that she doesn’t have to see Trinity at all. The second best part is that she absolutely crushes her routine and earns ten points for their team. She celebrates the way that any Olympian who doesn’t have an event the next day would: by getting fucking plastered. 

Unfortunately for her, Trinity is also an Olympian who doesn’t have an event the next day, so her good mood is significantly dampened by the presence of Trinity Santos attached to her hip. She does her best to ignore her, which is easy enough when there’s a revolving door of fellow athletes making their way up to their table to congratulate Victoria on her routine. It’s only a little awkward that she has to pretend like she knows anything about any of their sports—do these people really follow figure skating or were they all just part of some Polite Olympian Training Program that she never received an invitation to? Eventually, though, the crowd thins and it’s just the two of them again.

“It’s kind of cool, right?” Trinity says abruptly, like they’d been previously maintaining some form of conversation. Maybe Trinity thinks they have. If she’s been talking, Victoria hasn’t been listening. 

She hiccups once over the rim of her glass. “What?”

“That the United States is going to have two women on the podium this year,” Trinity says, unbothered by Victoria’s lack of participation. One thing she’s already learning about Trinity is that within her she has both the range to plow through any length of awkward silence with her incessant chatter and the ability to stretch a stony silence out with an unimpressed gaze. “You know that hasn’t happened since Tara Lipinski and Michelle Kwan in ‘98? Johnny Weir’s only said it a million times this week.”

And, well, Victoria hadn’t thought about that. She’d been so focused on the fight for gold that was unfolding between the two of them that she’d forgotten entirely about the success story that would be if they managed to clinch the top two spots. Because her brain-to-mouth filter has been dramatically reduced by the amount of alcohol she’s consumed, what she says next falls along those lines: “I only care about gold.”

To her great surprise, Trinity laughs, but it isn’t unkind. It’s like they’re both on the inside of the same joke, a joke that Victoria didn’t realize she was telling. “Of course you would say that. Don’t worry, you’ll get it.”

“You don’t know that,” Victoria says, petulant, because she wishes she could have as much confidence in her own success as Trinity apparently does right now. Maybe that’s the liquor talking, too.

“All you have to do is skate clean.” And there it is, the dig that Victoria knew was coming. It stings as much as she thought it would.

Abruptly, she shoves her still mostly full glass away from her and watches as beer splashes over the rim and pools on the table in a shallow amber puddle. “Funny.”

“It wasn’t a joke?” Trinity’s confusion sounds earnest enough that it catches Victoria’s attention. “I know you didn’t drink enough to forget the kickass short program you skated today, Crash.”

Victoria’s eyes narrow. “And yet, you call me Crash.”

“That’s what makes the joke funny,” Trinity says, like this all makes perfect sense. Maybe she’s the one who’s too drunk to remember anything clearly. “It was such a fluke.”

“If it was such a fluke, why didn’t they let me do the free skate for the team event?”

Something in Trinity’s expression brightens, like she’s just been offered some magic words that helped her see the situation for what it was. “I would literally give you the free skate right now if you really wanted.”

Victoria folds her arms over her chest. “No you wouldn’t.”

Trinity thinks on it for a moment. “You’re right, I wouldn’t. But only because I need the team event to make sure I get gold. Unlike some of us.”

That draws Victoria up short and she’s quiet for long enough that Trinity turns away from her entirely to wave down their server, signaling for their check and then blowing her a kiss for good measure. It isn’t until they’re out the door and on their way back to their respective lodging that Victoria says “You don’t think you’re going to medal?” 

Trinity answers her question with another question. “Did you know that I’m the oldest women’s singles skater the United States has sent to the Olympics in almost a hundred years?” 

Victoria absolutely cannot bring herself to admit the amount of internet deep diving she did when Trinity was named to the team alongside her. She cannot admit that she did know this, that she’s been fixating on this for months, so instead she says “Aren’t you the walking encyclopedia tonight?”

Trinity just grins. “Surprised I’m taking your job?”

“I don’t spend my day sprouting figure skating trivia!” Trinity raises her eyebrows in disbelief and Victoria’s cheeks burn. “That much.”

Trinity slows to a stop so Victoria does, too, pausing to take it all in. She learned very quickly that the Olympic Village was never really quiet but this late it’s as close to peaceful as it’ll get. There’s a lot for her to process. Trinity thinks she’s an objectively good skater. More than that, Trinity thinks she’s going to win gold. Trinity thinks Victoria is a better skater than she is, maybe, though she didn’t say it in as many words. She probably owes Trinity something kind, as well. She huffs out a breath and watches as it condenses into a cloud of water vapor in front of her, slowly dissipating as she summons up the courage to speak from the heart—a language she’s wholly unfamiliar with. Finally, she says “I think you could win an individual medal. Who cares how old you are with a program component score like yours?” 

For a moment, she doesn’t think it’s enough. The words hang in the frigid night air between them in wait. Victoria’s stomach churns. Then, finally, mercifully, Trinity cracks a smile. “Do you think it could be gold?” 

Victoria barks out a laugh that seems to surprise them both and she shoves at Trinity’s arm. “Don’t push it.”

⋆˚.⋆❅⋆.˚⋆

The two of them enter a tentative truce after that night. It comes just in time for day two of the team event, where neither Trinity nor Victoria are scheduled to skate, so they spend most of their day in the Team USA box, smiling and waving flags for the camera while they aren’t watching their teammates with bated breath. 

Victoria has always found the spectating part of figure skating the hardest. She can’t watch any of her own competitors without getting into her head about it—her mother used to threaten her with the kind of blinders that they put on show horses just to walk into a competition—and in recent years, she’s found that even watching other disciplines fills her with anxiety. She’s wondered more than once if she even loves figure skating or if she’s just been told that she does. 

Having Trinity nearby makes for a good distraction. 

“Sometimes I think it would be more fun to be here without being in medal contention at all,” Victoria says, her gaze unmoving from the new group of ice dancers warming up in front of them. She can practically see the stress rolling off of them in waves. Victoria knows, all too well, the pressure they’re under, to have everything on the line with the whole world watching. The only thing that keeps her stomach from rolling is the knowledge that she won’t be back in their position for another ten days. “Nobody here is enjoying themselves.” 

“Is skating fun for you?” Trinity asks, and Victoria is surprised by the tone of genuine curiosity that bleeds through her words. She’s still making sense of this new world where Trinity can be her friend along with being her greatest competition, because the latter can’t change no matter how much either of them wishes it could. They might be a team today, but the individual event looms around the corner for them both. She cannot fall victim to girlish naivety when she’s looking in the face of the one person who could take her gold medal away from her. 

“Winning is fun,” Victoria says, ignoring the twist of an amused smile that tugs at the corners of Trinity’s mouth. She can’t help but think of the night before, when Trinity had laughed and clocked her competitive spirit. She knows exactly how many hours in the past year that she has devoted to watching and rewatching Trinity’s programs, dissecting her interviews, and preparing for the day that they went head-to-head on an Olympic stage. She’s never once stopped to wonder if Trinity has been doing the same. Is it possible that Trinity has made the same attempt to know Victoria that Victoria has made to know her? She decides to make an attempt at honesty and hopes she doesn’t come to regret it. “The rest of it is just noise. When I’m out on the ice in front of everyone it feels like I’m just… going through the motions. Treading water until someone pulls me up and puts me on the podium.” 

Trinity’s mouth twists again, but this time it isn’t in amusement. “That kind of makes me sad.” 

“Sad?” Victoria bristles. The last thing that she was looking for was Trinity’s pity. The thought that she’s now receiving it against her will makes her feel nauseous. 

Trinity must be able to see the shift on her face because she launches into an explanation. “I just mean that I was you, once.” Victoria’s eyebrows raise and Trinity huffs a quiet, breathy almost-laugh. “Okay, I was kind of you once. You’re a better skater now than I ever was in my prime, I can admit that now, but I felt the way that you felt. All I cared about was being the best. All I cared about was how many gold medals I had hanging around my neck. That’s all anyone else cared about, too. They don’t care if I was unhappy as long as I was winning, but then I stopped winning, too.”

“I was surprised when you retired,” Victoria says, voice quiet. She’s not sure what else to say when all of Trinity’s words are landing too close to home, pressing too hard on too tender skin. “I didn’t know how to make any sense of it.”

“It was a hard thing to make sense of.” Trinity’s gaze darts around, like she’s trying to make sure nobody else is listening. The rest of their team is either very focused on the team event that’s unfolding around them or very good at pretending that they are. Either way, it must be enough for Trinity. “At the end, Langdon and I… we had our disagreements. When I left, I really thought that I was done skating for good.” 

Not for the first time, Victoria wonders what happened between the two of them. There were plenty of rumors, lots of talk—there was bound to be after both of their careers seemingly imploded back to back—and though everything that happened with Langdon was common knowledge, the way that Trinity fit into that puzzle remained obscured from public knowledge. “If you ever wanted to talk about it…” 

She trails off, unsure how best to finish the sentence. She doesn’t know what to offer, or how to offer it. She doesn’t know what she is to Trinity. Probably nothing. Trinity’s expression shutters itself off, which is as clear an indication as any of where they stand, and turns her gaze back to the ice. “I can’t. Not here, not right now.”

Victoria nods her acquiescence but finds herself unable to let the thought go for the rest of the day. She’s thankful for every hour that stands between her and her own individual competition right now, not only because she desperately needs the time to clear her mind but because the days off act as a buffer between her and her mother. The very last thing that she needs is Eileen Shamsi sniffing her out and ragging on her for getting buddy-buddy with the competition. She’s never understood the camaraderie aspect of figure skating, and she raised Victoria to be as in the dark about it as she was. She’s only just starting to come around, only now realizing that she doesn’t have to be an island. 

She can’t help but wonder if that’s how Trinity has felt the last four years, too. If they’ve both been alone in more ways than one. She doesn’t quite know how to explain it any more than she knows how to bridge the chasm that’s expanded between them. 

⋆˚.⋆❅⋆.˚⋆

The final day of the team event is depressingly Trinity-less. Victoria didn’t realize how much she would miss her presence until she’s forced to face a Team USA box without it. The first glimpse she gets of Trinity all day is when she heads out onto the ice for her warmup, and her spirits are buoyed by a wink that Trinity tosses her way one of the times she skates past the team. The crowd roars to life behind her as Victoria tries to smother her smile. 

If she’s being totally and completely honest with herself, she’s lost count of how many times she’s watched Trinity’s free skate over the course of the season. Trinity is the kind of skater that’s hard to look away from, especially when she’s in a sparkling black number with a plunging neckline and an underskirt in burning scarlet that dances like flames around her each time she starts to spin. 

She skates to an orchestral cover of The Winner Takes It All, and a few months ago, Victoria was certain that it was a commentary on the two of them. She’d been in knots over it all season long, from the moment that she watched Trinity debut it at the start of the season. She used to do her cardio to the soundtrack of Trinity’s program and think about how rewarding it would be to crush Trinity into the ground at the Olympics, for the whole world to see, after Trinity spent months asserting that she would take it all and Victoria would have to fall. 

She’s starting to realize that this story has always been Trinity’s, and Trinity’s alone. This time as she watches, she makes the effort to view it through a different lens. She makes the effort to hear a story besides her own. 

Her program isn’t perfect, but her performance is captivating enough that Victoria doesn’t notice any of the mistakes that the judges do. The defeated look on Trinity’s face as she curtsies for the audience tells her that she noticed enough for the both of them. Victoria’s stomach sinks at the sight of it.

It’s torture to stay glued to her seat as Trinity’s coach, Dana Evans, beckons Trinity off the ice with a rough hug. All she can do is watch as Trinity nods in response to whatever Dana is telling her, likely reassurances that don’t quite land if the pained look that lingers in Trinity’s mossy eyes is anything to go off of. 

Once Trinity has received her score and the camera cuts away from them to return to the final skater of the event, Victoria abandons her position to slide into the seat next to Trinity instead. When she speaks, she makes sure that she’s only loud enough for Trinity to hear. “You were-” 

“Tight on all my landings,” Trinity finishes for her, the words narrowly making it through her clenched jaw and gritted teeth. Victoria thinks she’s seeing a flash of the girl that Trinity used to be, the one who cared more about winning than anything else. It makes knots form in her stomach to think that this is muscle memory, the way she’s used to debriefing her performances. “I know.”

“I was going to say breathtaking,” Victoria replies, and she knows that the words catch Trinity off guard from the way that her mouth curls into a surprised smile as her gaze flicks toward her. 

“Careful, Crash,” Trinity murmurs, daring to reach forward and brush a stray lock of Victoria’s hair away from her forehead. She’s only a little mortified when her breath catches in her throat as a result. Hopefully it’s loud enough in here that Trinity doesn’t notice. “I’m going to think you’re flirting with me.” 

Victoria does choke at that, and though she tries to disguise the noise as a casual cough, Trinity’s infuriatingly knowing smile is already glued on her face. She can just imagine the edits of the two of them that will be circulating amongst figure skating fans for months to come after this Olympic cycle is over. She should be taking more care to put space between the two of them, but space from Trinity is quickly becoming the last thing that she wants. She hardly recognizes herself. 

At the end of the day, the points that Trinity lost don’t matter. Her second place finish in the team event is enough to not only put them on the podium, but to help win them gold. As she skates out onto the ice with the rest of her team, it hits her suddenly that she’s about to be awarded her first ever Olympic medal. No matter what happens the rest of this week, she’s won Olympic gold. She fought for it, she earned it. Nobody can take it away from her. And, if she has it her way, she’ll make it two by the time she leaves Milano Cortina. 

She tries her best to steel her nerves, but she must not try hard enough because as they slow to a stop at the foot of the podium, Trinity leans close to her ear and murmurs “You ready to feel the weight of a gold medal hanging around that pretty little neck of yours?” 

It takes everything in Victoria not to keel over at the words. If she hadn’t spent so much of the last seventy-two hours next to Trinity, she might think that she was trying to play mind games with her. Now she’s forced to reckon with the idea that Trinity Santos might just actually be into her. Worse, she’s forced to reckon with the idea that she might be into Trinity. She’s not sure which reality is harder to swallow. She can’t think about it right now. She maybe can’t think about it until she’s stateside again. “I was born ready.” 

Trinity’s gaze drops pointedly to Victoria’s mouth and her face burns. Trinity is into her. Trinity is definitely into her. Holy fucking shit. “Yeah you were.” 

When she jumps her way onto the Olympic podium, it’s with Trinity’s hand clutched tightly in her own. She’s not sure which one of them forgets to let go. 

⋆˚.⋆❅⋆.˚⋆

Once the team event wraps up, it’s game time. If Victoria had it her way, she would spend her every waking second on the practice ice. If her mother had it her way, she would forgo sleep entirely and spend the entirety of the next nine days—all two hundred sixteen hours of them—there. 

Unfortunately, neither of them get their way in the nine days that pass between the end of the team event and the start of their individual event. Her time on the ice is sparing, and it’s public. Her every move—her every try and stumble and fall—is on display for the world, being broadcasted into living rooms when she’s used to preparation behind closed doors. It’s a mind game in and of itself, a sort of pressure that’s entirely unfamiliar to her. A month ago, nobody really cared that she was the best in the game, aside from the people who were on the playing field beside her. Overnight, she’s become a household name. The dreams of a nation sit on her shoulders. 

But not just hers.

To her great surprise, she finds that she likes being a part of a team more than she thought that she would. It’s kind of her saving grace in the long days that stretch between her events. The time she spends talking and laughing with them, sharing meals and swapping stories, keep her afloat. It also helps that it’s the least she’s seen her mom maybe ever in her life. She feels like she can breathe a little easier when she’s not trapped directly under her thumb. 

And then there’s Trinity. 

It’s a wonder to her how far they’ve managed to come in so short a time. In some moments, Victoria finds herself doubting that any of it is real. Is it possible that this tentative illusion of peace is something that they’ve only forged under these extenuating circumstances? Who will they be when they leave Milano Cortina behind and return to their real lives? Who will they be when they take the ice again as competitors instead of teammates, here or there? 

But, other times, Trinity smiles at her just so, or shows up at the door of her pitifully tiny shoebox of a single room with a plan of something to occupy their evenings that will keep Victoria’s mind off their impending events, or just lends Victoria a listening ear that she hardly deserves after how standoffish she’s been with Trinity over the course of the last year… and she thinks that maybe things are just different than she thought they were. Maybe they never had to be that way at all. 

As the days trudge by and her own impending events draw closer, she finds it growing harder and harder to be a person. She’s always been better as an athlete, as a star. 

She attends the men’s short program out of solidarity with the rest of Team USA, but the day of the free skate brings with it a tidal wave of anxiety that she can’t bring herself to push through. It’s easier to watch the first day, where there’s always time to come back from mistakes and nothing is set in stone. Watching day two—knowing that every error that’s made on the ice has the capacity to be catastrophic, and knowing that she will be the one in their position in a few days time—is too much for her to take. She sends a cheery ‘kick some ass out there boys!!!!’ text in their groupchat and then sets her phone to do not disturb for the rest of the night. 

It, admittedly, might not be her best idea. With no distractions, she’s left entirely alone with her thoughts and it only takes a matter of minutes to feel like she’s drowning. 

The truth is, she’s always been her own worst enemy. She can’t count the number of programs that she’s allowed to fall apart after finding herself unable to pull it together after a miniscule mistake. Once she gets in her own head about something, she finds it nearly impossible to find her way out of the labyrinth of her own thoughts. All she can do is kick her feet as she tries desperately to tread water, to make her way back to shore. 

Tonight, a life preserver is thrown to her in the form of a knock on her door. 

She’s not expecting any company, which means she probably should have realized right away that the person waiting for her on the other side of her door is Trinity. She has to blink three times before her brain processes that this is real, that Trinity is really standing in front of her. “Why aren’t you at the rink?” She hears herself ask in lieu of a greeting.

If Trinity is put off by Victoria’s poor manners, she doesn’t let it show. “Same reason that you aren’t, I assume.” 

Victoria snorts. The mere idea of bold, brash, fearless Trinity being bogged down by anxiety the way that she is feels laughable. “I doubt that.” 

“Don’t judge a book by its cover, Crash,” Trinity says, feigning offense. “I get the pre-competition jitters like anyone else.” 

“I wouldn’t call it jitters,” Victoria mutters, trying to remind herself that there’s no reason to feel patronized when Trinity is only trying to support her in her own Trinity way. “It’s hard to explain.” 

“I’m not going to make you talk about it.” Trinity raises her hands in front of her in a silent show of surrender. Despite her best efforts to rein herself in, Victoria knows that the way she’s feeling is bleeding through, painting her in an incredibly unattractive light. This might be her least favorite thing about herself, how wildly out of control she feels sometimes. “The opposite, actually. I’m taking you out.” 

“As in…” Victoria draws a slash across her throat with her finger. 

The corner of Trinity’s mouth lifts into a secret smile and, despite herself, Victoria feels her heart take flight along with it. “As in on a date. We’re seeing the town tonight, Javadi.” 

Now Victoria’s heart is really hammering in her chest. She’s certain that Trinity can probably hear it from where she’s standing a few feet away, which is mortifying. Even worse is the fact that when she opens her mouth, the first words out of it are “Is that even allowed?”

Trinity laughs, and even though Victoria logically knows she’s not trying to be unkind, her cheeks flood with warmth, hot and embarrassed. “You think the ISU has rules against fraternization with the competition.” 

Somehow, Trinity manages to make the word fraternization sound dirty. Victoria’s face grows hotter as she goes “No. I mean, do you think it’s a good idea for us to go out there? And tonight of all nights? It would be like the president celebrating their inauguration at the club.” 

“Au contraire, anyone who knows who we are will be glued to a television screen tonight. It’s basically the only night of freedom we have.” Victoria starts to protest but Trinity steamrolls right over her. “Come on, you’re only young and at the Olympics once. Maybe twice. Three times, if you’re me. Let’s go!” 

Victoria sighs, doing her best to sound very put-upon. “Let me get my shoes.” 

The truth is, even if she does know that it’s probably not a good idea, try as Trinity might to convince her of the contrary, she wants it enough that she doesn’t care. She’s spent twenty-one years doing everything right, for once in her life she wants to be wrong. 

“You really wouldn’t rather be watching the guys skate tonight?” She asks as she tugs the sleeves of her deep plum sweater over her chilly hands, trying to shield them from the frigid bite of February air. 

“Nah, too boring,” Trinity shrugs. “We already know how it’s going to end.” 

With a gold medal for the United States if all the last year’s headlines were to be believed, for their young favorite who designed a program full of quad jumps. Victoria knows that pressure well. “Now you’ve jinxed it.” 

“I don’t believe in jinxing,” Trinity laughs and the sound bounces, clear and bright, off the cobblestone streets. “But if we’re going to blame anyone, it should probably be whatever genius decided to have the men’s free skate on Friday the 13th.”

“Who’s to say,” Victoria says noncommittally, and it’s as far as she’s willing to budge. The look Trinity shoots her is unmistakably fond underneath the layers of painted on ire. “Where are you taking me anyway?” 

Trinity’s answering smile is downright wicked. “I’m going to teach you how to let loose.”

What she means by that, Victoria learns shortly after, is that she’s taking her to a club. She’s taking her to a club. Victoria Javadi in a sleazy Italian nightclub. The jaw simply drops. 

She finds herself freezing up the moment that she crosses the threshold of the door in a too loud, too crowded, too hot throng of sweaty bodies, the bassline of some techno song thumping almost painfully in her ears. The first word that pops into her mind is overstimulated, the next is suffocated. She closes her eyes and imagines herself alone on the ice to try and soothe herself, but her usual meditation is far less peaceful when the ice she’s imagining herself on is Olympic. 

When her eyes open again, Trinity is pressed in close to her space, something like concern pooling in her jade eyes. She reaches for one of Victoria’s hands and twines their fingers together, squeezing once. Somehow, impossibly, it mollifies her, settles her racing mind. “Hey. It’s okay. I’m right here with you.” 

Victoria nods and takes a step forward that feels braver than it is in all reality. How could it be that she can launch herself twenty feet across the ice, how she can land with a force five times her body weight, how she can create centripetal force higher than what’s experienced by astronauts training to reenter the Earth’s atmosphere, but the simple act of entering a club is what feels the most terrifying? “I need a drink.”

At once, Trinity’s expression brightens and she gives Victoria’s hand an encouraging tug. “That can be arranged.” 

Ordering a drink is a whole other hurdle, on account of the fact that she has no idea what kind of cocktail she would like best. Her experiences with alcohol are limited entirely to expensive champagne and the dry white wine her mother likes to keep on hand at the house, and neither of those options feel like the right choice for their current outing. She tries a sip of the aperol spritz that Trinity orders and the look on her face must convey her exact thoughts and feelings on the bitter cocktail because Trinity just laughs and turns back to order something different for her that she doesn’t quite catch. All that matters is that the glass she ends up with is full of something sweet and fruity and bright pink, much easier to put away than any other drink she’s had put in her hands. 

It certainly helps to settle her nerves, but not enough to keep her from tensing up the moment that Trinity tries to pull her toward the crowded dance floor. “I don’t dance.”

Trinity levels an unconvinced look at her. “You famously do.”

“Skating is different,” Victoria protests, feeling wobbly either at the thought of embarrassing herself in front of all these strangers or at the thought of winding up in any closer proximity to Trinity than she already has tonight. “I don’t move the same when I’m not on the ice.”

“Sure you do, I’ll show you,” Trinity says, pulling her into the fold before she can make any protest. They wind up chest to chest, with Trinity’s arm slipping around her waist like it’s second nature. “Just follow my lead.”

She’s surprised to find out just how much she likes it. The press of her body close to Trinity’s, the feeling of her strong hand on Victoria’s waist guiding her movements to the beat of the music thrumming through the air around them, the way that with each song that passes by she feels her body grow a little looser, a little more relaxed. 

It’s somewhere around the third song that she realizes she’s figuring some things out about herself very quickly.

The truth is, she’s never really stopped to consider the possibility of liking girls. She’s never stopped to consider the possibility of liking anyone. Her vision of the future has always been of one, alone atop her mountain of accolades, but now, in the low light of this Italian night club, with Trinity’s gaze so heady on wholly focused on her, she’s absolutely certain. She wants this. She wants Trinity. Moreover, she needs her. The realization has every nerve ending in her body standing on red alert.

Trinity, mercifully, seems to be able to read her mind. She leans in, unbearably slowly. The expression on her face tells Victoria it’s just as torturous for her. The thought that Trinity needs to use all her willpower to hold herself back sends a thrill through her. “Tell me to stop.” 

Victoria can’t think of a single reason why she would ever do that. “Absolutely not.”

And then they’re kissing. She can’t tell which one of them leans in first but the technicalities hardly matter when Trinity is kissing her, when she’s kissing Trinity. 

She read once that atoms never really touch each other, suspended indefinitely in a state of electromagnetic repellation. She’s sure, now, that isn’t true. She can feel each place that Trinity is touching right now down to her bones. She’s sure that her atoms are leaping towards Trinity’s as she draws her impossibly closer. A quiet, rumbling groan that sounds from somewhere deep inside of Trinity travels all the way to Victoria’s core, and she’s seconds away from saying something humiliating like “Please take me home” when the feeling of her phone vibrating incessantly in her pocket effectively ruins the moment. 

She really tries to ignore it, but then she remembers that she put her phone on do not disturb hours ago, so this means someone is trying really hard to get ahold of her. Her mind immediately flashes to the worst. Is someone dead? Did something happen? It’s probably just her mother realizing she’s not in her room and having a completely appropriate and totally normal reaction about it, but on the off chance that it isn’t…

“Sorry,” she breathes out as she wrenches herself away from Trinity, hand digging into her pocket to retrieve the offending device. It’s all but impossible to ignore the way that Trinity chases after her for a split second when she does, to not immediately relent and kiss her again like she so badly wants to do. Her plan is to quickly check and make sure there’s no life or death scenario unfolding and then probably turn the stupid fucking thing off for the rest of the night to make sure nothing else interrupts them, but that plan quickly falls to pieces when she realizes what’s happening. 

‘Where are you?’ reads one text from her mom. ‘Men’s program completely fell apart’ reads another. ‘No medal for the US, you need to be on your A-game.’ A missed call. ‘Answer your phone Victoria.’ Another. ‘I want you on the ice at 6 tomorrow.’ ‘No more distractions.’ 

It’s like she’s been doused by a bucket of ice water. Gone is every warm and fuzzy good feeling that previously coursed through her, replaced by something cold and dark and all consuming. She knows everything is playing out plainly on her face when Trinity physically turns her gaze away from her phone with a hand on her chin, alarm flashing in her too green eyes. “What is it?” 

Victoria can’t answer right away. She’s rendered momentarily silent by the suffocating swell of anxiety clawing its way up her throat. This entire season, all anyone has talked about is how many gold medals this figure skating team was going to bring home for the United States. They’ve been put up on a pedestal so high that falling off now would be world-shattering. Tonight, they lost a gold medal that was all but promised to them. Two days earlier, the same thing happened to their three-time World Champion ice dancing team. In four days, it would be Victoria’s turn, Victoria’s gold medal to lose—and lose it she most certainly will if she continues to allow herself to be distracted like this. She can’t let everyone down. She can’t let herself down. 

“I have to go,” she says, her words cold and clipped. She hates the way she sounds to her own ears, she hates the way that Trinity’s entire posture changes even more.

“Okay,” she says, sounding truly uncertain for what might be the first time Victoria’s ever heard. “We can go.” 

When Trinity reaches for her hand, Victoria snatches it back before she can stop herself. Trinity recoils like she’s been physically struck across the face, but she can’t stop. “Alone,” she says. “I want to go alone.” 

And then she rushes out into the street before she can stop herself. She doesn’t have to turn around to know that Trinity isn’t following.

⋆˚.⋆❅⋆.˚⋆

The next three days drag on, trudging by her impossibly slowly. 

In a moment of unspeakable weakness, she finds herself googling ‘is it true that atoms never really touch?’ After a depressing spiral that does nothing but affirm her belief that she’s well and truly alone in the universe, she finds an article from an associate professor of physics that argues the opposite. He asserts that atoms are always touching, that two atoms even miles apart still have overlapping wavefunctions. 

That, she decides, is how she feels about Trinity. They haven’t spoken since she ran out of the club and they haven’t seen each other outside of their shared time on the practice ice, where they stay neatly out of each other's way. Still, she can feel Trinity’s influence on the atomic level all the time.

She can’t allow herself to think about it right now, not with the first day of their individual event coming up. She has to focus all of her attention on her own programs now.

As pissed as she was about performing her short program in the team event, she has to admit to herself, her short program slays. 

It’s set to Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake suite, which would be boring if she didn’t have the strongest technical score of the short program to back it up. Unlike most of the other skaters here, she doesn’t have to worry about nailing every element to stay in the lead. She has a nearly ten point buffer between her technical score and that of her next closest opponent, who isn’t even Trinity. She starts it off with her triple axel and ends it with a combination spin that hasn’t dropped below a level four all season. 

Her grade of execution has always been where it needs to be; her artistry is where she’s struggled, and in her short program she’s devoted herself to the pursuit of raising it. The star of the show is her costume, which she’s had cleverly designed with a tearaway hem at the neckline so that she can enter a sit spin as a white swan and emerge from it her darker sister, the black swan for the back half of her routine. It is her black swan persona who will complete the triple lutz triple toe combination that lost her a Grand Prix title earlier in the season, which is poetic in and of itself. 

She and Trinity are both slotted to skate in the last group of the day, which means she spends most of her time trying to avoid her backstage. She arrives at the stadium later than she would have liked out of an abundance of caution and she regrets it with every minute she loses to warm herself up. 

She’s unlucky enough to be the last skate of the night. When she enters the ice, Trinity is the one in the hot seat, the current number to beat, the current champion presiding over the rest of the programs. She’s sat there comfortably for the last five routines, no one able to best her score of 78 and some change. Victoria made it a point not to watch her skate tonight, but it was impossible to miss the score as it was announced. The raucous applause that erupted rattled the foundation of the entire stadium. Besides, she’s watched Trinity’s routine to HOT-TO-GO plenty of times. She knows how good it is. It’s unconventional, sure, but that’s always been Trinity’s edge. 

It is, perhaps, Trinity’s unwavering gaze that fuels her the most. 

She makes the mistake of locking gazes with her as she skates out to her starting position and is immediately thrown for a loop when Trinity’s expression softens. Her mouth, the hot mouth that Victoria has now committed to memory, curls around one word: Gold. It’s an instruction. A reminder. A promise. Even now, even after everything, Trinity’s faith in her hasn’t wavered. 

It’s with that knowledge that she goes out there and skates her ass off. She’s electric. She’s on fire. She’s skating with a passion and a drive that she’s never before been able to summon up. She truly leaves everything she has out on the ice. The moment the music ends, she drops to her knees in relief and the crowd roars and booms their thunderous approval. 

Her score breaks eighty. It’s her new season best, and, more importantly, allows her to slide neatly into first place at the end of the short program.  

Then, a waiting game.

There’s a day between their short program and free skate, and Victoria intends to spend all of it either on the ice or shut up in her room without any distractions. It’s the only way she can keep from letting any of it get to her head. And, despite her quiet encouragement, she thinks that running into Trinity and having to behave like a normal person might actually do her in. She can’t afford any lapses in judgement right now. 

So, of course, a text from Trinity comes in a little after ten. The concept of Trinity seeing her on do not disturb and having the gall to click notify anyway, and all to send her a text that reads simply ‘you up?’ makes her equal parts outraged and turned on. It’s ridiculous. 

What’s more ridiculous is that she responds with a simple ‘yes.’

There should be more than that, especially after the way that Victoria absolutely freaked out on her. There should probably be screaming and crying and slammed doors and names called but there’s not. There’s none of that. There’s only her and Trinity, a quiet hallway, a handful of inches diminishing by the second.

“I’m sorry,” Victoria hears herself say, the words falling from her lips easier than they ever have. 

“I know,” Trinity says, hands coming to cradle Victoria’s face so delicately between her palms. “I forget this is your first time. The Olympic pressure…” 

Victoria stills. “This is my first time.” 

“I know,” Trinity begins, but Victoria doesn’t let her finish.

“No. This is my first time,” she says, barely a breath, as she leans in close enough that her lips ghost over Trinity’s. 

Trinity pulls back enough to take a good look at her and Victoria wills herself not to lose her courage now. “With a woman?” 

“With anyone.” 

“Your first kiss ever was in a dark, dirty Italian night club?” 

It’s only when those words hit her ears that she remembers that her door is open to a hallway full of fellow Olympic athletes. At once, she reaches forward and tugs Trinity into her room, closing the door shut behind them. 

Trinity’s expression is rapidly morphing from vague disbelief into something that Victoria cannot name but feels down to her core. Maybe she should feel embarrassed, but it’s hard to make herself feel ashamed when Trinity is looking at her kind of like she wants to devour her whole. “Skating’s been my whole life for as long as I can remember. There was never room for anything else. Anyone else.” 

Trinity takes a few slow, purposeful steps forward. Victoria’s breath catches in her throat. “And now?”

“I think there’s room for one more,” Victoria says, voice barely a whisper as Trinity leans forward to catch the last of her words on her tongue. 

It’s a completely different experience when she kisses Trinity this time. There’s no rush, no pressure, no thrum of music or press of sweaty bodies against hers. It’s just the two of them. It’s just Trinity in her cozy sweats leading Victoria the final four steps to her bed with slow, gentle, sure motions. 

The accommodations of the Olympic Village aren’t exactly spacious but they somehow manage to make it work, tangling up together until they can both settle semi-comfortably on the single bed. It’s only shortly after they get situated that Trinity pulls away, face flushed and breathless, and murmurs “Please don’t take this the wrong way but I don’t want to have sex with you tonight.” 

The words, which normally would have been an offense of the highest caliber to Victoria’s ego, fill her with a wave of relief tonight. “Oh, thank god.” 

“It’s just, with the event tomorrow-” 

“No, I completely agree.” 

Trinity looks relieved, too. “But once the competition is done…” 

A thrill zings from Victoria’s head to her toes. “After, definitely.” 

It’s hardly the end of the night, even if they probably should try and get to sleep. Instead, they make themselves comfortable and talk for so long about anything and everything other than skating for so long that it comes as a surprise when Trinity gazes at her from across the bed and finally asks “How are you feeling about tomorrow? Better now that you’ve beat me in the short program?” 

A laugh bubbles out of Victoria that she tries to muffle in her pillow. “Actually, yes.” 

“You have a lot to be proud of from your time here,” Trinity says, her voice uncharacteristically soft, earnest. “I hope you remember that, no matter what happens tomorrow.” 

“So do you,” Victoria says, and even though she means the words with every fiber of her being, she can tell they don’t resonate with Trinity quite as deeply. She rolls herself to a vantage point with more leverage, sitting up so she can look down at Trinity seriously. “Really. What you’ve done here… coming out of retirement, and in a completely new discipline, part of the way through the quad… and to end up on the podium at the end of it. At twenty-seven. Nobody’s ever done anything like it, you know that right?” 

“Don’t jinx me, Crash,” Trinity says, still trying valiantly to dismiss Victoria’s praise. 

“I thought you didn’t believe in jinxing.” 

Trinity gives a little shrug, rolling herself into a half-seated position so that she can look into Victoria’s eyes. “I’m not doing any of this for a medal, or for the headlines, or for anyone to think I’m the greatest in the world. I’m doing it for me. To prove to myself that after…” 

Her words trail off, lodged and trapped somewhere in her throat. Victoria waits a few long, patient seconds to keep from spooking her before she softly says “Do you want to talk about it?” 

Trinity doesn’t answer right away. She holds Victoria’s gaze for what would be an uncomfortably long amount of time if it were anyone other than Trinity, then she rolls over onto her back to stare straight up at the ceiling instead. Victoria takes the hint and follows suit. The only places that they touch are the rounded curves of their shoulders and their hands, when Trinity reaches to intertwine their fingers where their hands fall in the space between them. “I skated with Langdon since I was fifteen… sixteen. We made it through two quads together, two Olympic cycles. And we were good. Before us, Americans hadn’t been on the podium for pairs since Calgary. But we weren’t good enough.

“We wanted gold. Langdon wanted gold. Robby wanted gold. And I wanted what they wanted. What anyone would have wanted in my place. But he was getting older… and so was I. I mean, we can’t all be Deanna Stellato-Dudek, you know? Twenty-three doesn’t feel old until you realize that by the next Olympics you’ll be twenty-seven, and Langdon was going to be thirty-one… I thought we could do it. I believed in us. But Langdon… I guess he thought that he needed a push.” 

Slowly, all of the pieces start to slide into place in Victoria’s mind. She remembers all the headlines that surfaced when Langdon’s illegal drug use came to light. It had been years since the United States had found themselves at the center of a doping scandal and the media was far from forgiving. It had all come out a couple years after Trinity’s retirement, and Victoria had always thought that he’d resorted to these measures as some kind of way to compensate for the loss of his former partner. She’d never considered the fact that it had been ongoing. “You knew?” 

Trinity’s expression is solemn. “I knew immediately. When you train with someone as much as I trained with Langdon… It’s impossible not to know. For years, we were just extensions of each other on the ice. Two parts of the same machine. I could tell when he didn’t sleep well the night before, when he was a little under the weather, when he tweaked a muscle in his back. Of course I knew.

“I confronted him a couple weeks before Worlds and when I did… he freaked out. I’d never seen him like that before. It was like he was an entirely different person. He told me that if I said anything, if I told anyone, his career would be over, and the end of his career was the end of mine, too. I should have pushed back more. I should have stood up for myself. But in the moment… I really cared about him. I didn’t want to hurt him but I couldn’t just be complicit in it. And by that point, I was so jaded with all of it that taking a permanent step back felt like the easiest way to wash my hands of all of it.” 

What Victoria wants to do is apologize for everything Trinity’s been through, to tell her how strong she was for going through all of that and still finding her way back to the sport, but she knows Trinity well enough now to know she would just find a way to deflect it. So, instead, she just gives Trinity’s hand a little squeeze and says “What brought you back?”

“You did.” 

They’re the very last words that Victoria expected to hear come from Trinity’s mouth. She can’t help but sit up straight once they register, like she has to be looking at Trinity to be able to make any sense of what she’s saying. “What?” 

“I never really stopped skating,” Trinity says, propping herself up on one elbow. “I started relearning everything as a singles skater within a year of my retirement, but I didn’t ever expect to go all the way to the Olympics. I figured I would find my way to some live shows some day, maybe end up coaching… but then I saw you skate at Worlds in 2023. You weren’t even eighteen but you came out and you absolutely crushed the rest of the competition. You were exhilarating to watch. It was incredible. And I thought to myself… wouldn’t that be fun? Competing against her?” 

Victoria, for her part, feels like she still hasn’t processed a single word that Trinity is saying. “I thought you were trying to ruin my life.” 

To anyone else, the words might have been an insult. Trinity hears them for the compliment that they are and brushes them off the way that only she could. “I knew that I had to be at my very best if I wanted to hold my own against you. Just your existence pushed me to a place that I never would have been able to get to on my own. Really, I should thank you.” 

For some reason, those are the words that break through to her, that put a smile on her features as she settles back into the bed beside Trinity. “If you think that I’m going to take it easy on you now that you’re sucking up to me, you have another thing coming.” 

Trinity just laughs, winding an arm around Victoria’s waist to tug her into her chest. “I hope you do bring your A-game tomorrow, Crash. I wouldn’t want it any other way.” 

The fact that she knows Trinity is telling the truth proves, perhaps more than anything else that’s happened over the last two weeks, that they really are perfect for each other. She just hopes that they both feel the same way tomorrow, after all is said and done. 

⋆˚.⋆❅⋆.˚⋆

When she wakes up the next morning, Trinity is gone. In her place lies a delicately folded piece of paper with a simple message scribbled across the front: Good luck tonight. xo T

The note makes its way into the pocket of her warm up sweats when she leaves for the rink.

Even with half a dozen competitors being cut between the short program and the free skate, the night drags on. It doesn’t help that she’s, once again, found herself in the position of the final skate of the night. She spends hours warming up backstage, trying to dodge judgemental stares and her competitors' scores trickling in and the weight of the world’s expectations resting squarely on her shoulders. Trinity, who will skate directly before her, catches her gaze a few times from across the gym—far enough away to not be a distraction, for which Victoria is grateful—and flashes her an encouraging smile to buoy her spirits when she needs it most. 

Tonight, she doesn’t keep herself holed up backstage when Trinity skates. She comes out to watch from the very best seat in the house and she doesn’t care who sees her there, she doesn’t care what they have to say. There’s nothing in the world that would make her miss this.

As always, Trinity’s free skate is nothing short of stunning. Though it’s far from the first time that Victoria’s witnessed it, it feels like this is the first time that she’s been able to appreciate it in all of its glory. Although there was a time where Victoria would have scoffed at the idea of using a song by the most popular Swedish band of all time while representing the United States at the Olympics, she now understands exactly what Trinity is trying to tell the world tonight.

Trinity’s greatest strength on the ice has always been her ability to tell a story, and though this part of her story isn’t one that she’s been able to put words to yet, she can tell it like this. It’s a story of a girl who nearly had everything taken from her, who was made to feel so small and insignificant and alone. It’s a story of a girl who found a way to stand tall in the face of unimaginable adversity and emerged on the other side victorious. It’s the story of Trinity Santos. 

Trinity’s artistry is undeniable. Her choreography enraptures the audience, her dynamic presence on the ice captures their attention and refuses to let it go. She knows just how to time her elements to the rising swells and crests of the orchestra. And there’s nothing quite like the moment that Meryl Streep’s voice—because, as Trinity always said in interviews, what could be more American than Meryl Streep —filters through the speakers for the final chorus, belting with the heart that only Meryl Streep could. Trinity’s skating matches her, bar for bar, especially tonight. She skates like she has everything on the line, because she does, but she also skates like she’s having the time of her life. Despite the Olympic pressure that presses in on all of them from all sides, her movements are light and free. 

Not to mention, it’s technically the strongest program that she’s ever done, complete with a surprise quad toe triple toe combination that has the already raucous crowd going absolutely wild when they realize what they’ve just seen.

It is, easily, the best skate of Trinity’s life. Victoria can say this without doubt because she’s obsessively watched every program Trinity’s ever put out to the point that they’re literally burned into her memory. If that wasn’t enough to be certain, a score that breaks 160 is announced over the speakers, sliding Trinity easily into the first place position with over 238 points.

Victoria wishes that she could be there to congratulate her in person, but instead she’s shepherded onto the ice for her own grand finale by her mother with the simple demand of “Perfection, Victoria. Show them perfection.” 

And then it’s go time. 

Her free skate this season is, without a doubt, the hardest program she’s ever had. It’s a piece set to the opening number from the musical Chicago, one of the flashiest and most technically advanced in her repertoire. Once it takes off, it never really slows back down. Not to mention, her costume is a beaded dress that weighs at least ten pounds on top of it all but unfortunately looks fantastic in motion. Her mom advised her against this program all season, but a part of Victoria knows this might be her only chance to show the world what she’s really worth. She would never forgive herself if she didn’t go all out. 

The problem was, she didn’t know then just how tired she would be at the end of these two weeks. And she is, she’s exhausted. Mentally and physically, she feels like she’s left everything that she had here on the ice, now left to scrape the bottom of the barrel to push herself over these final few hurdles. The end is in sight, all she has to do is reach out and grab it. 

Everything starts off fine. She lands her first few jumps, nails her spins, and slides across the ice for her step sequence with ease. It’s in the back half of the routine that things slowly start to fall apart. 

It starts with the same jump combination that she lost at the Grand Prix finals, the fateful triple lutz triple toe. Her triple lutz is fine, but her tired legs can’t propel her quite far enough in the air to make her full three rotations of her triple toe. But, this time, rather than push herself to the point of falling apart, she accepts her fate and lands a successful double toe. The fact that she stayed on her feet feels like a victory, and though she’s expecting for the feeling of failure to come rushing in once she’s landed, she manages to keep it at bay. It doesn’t come in the aftermath of that combination, nor does it set in when she attempts to take her last combination from a double-double to a triple-double to make up the points she lost but lands too low and fails to get a second jump into the combination at all. She can hear the quiet gasp from the crowd that tells her just how badly she’s fucked up, but it doesn’t feel like her world is ending the way that she thought it would when she slows to a stop and hits her final pose. Not even the disappointed look on her mother’s face when she skates off the ice can rattle her now. She did her best, she knows she did her best, and that’s enough for her, even if it isn’t enough for her to win gold this time. It feels a lot like healing. 

Sure enough, when the numbers come through, it’s not her on the top of the podium. She doesn’t win gold. She doesn’t even win silver. She’s a bronze medalist. 

“It’s okay,” she hears her mom saying over the roar of the crowd, alive with the knowledge that there’s a new Olympic champion waving to them from the hot seat. Victoria always thought it would be her. “You’ll come back to win Worlds next month, and we can start planning ahead for your next Olympic cycle. If she can do it at twenty-seven, you can do it at twenty-five.”

For once in her life, Victoria doesn’t care about the crowds, or the cameras, or the world that’s watching. She snatches her hand back from her mother and sets a stony glare on her. “Her name is Trinity, and I’m going to go congratulate her, which is more than what you’ve done for me.”

And, with that, she stands and pushes her way past her mother to where Trinity stands a few feet away, already looking back at her. She plans on going in for a respectful handshake, or maybe even a friendly hug, but when she gets there she surprises the both of them by taking Trinity’s face between her hands. The simple gesture causes the sound of the crowds around them to increase tenfold, so much that Victoria can barely hear herself as she says “Tell me to stop.”

The smile on Trinity’s face is radiant, nearly blinding. It’s the look of a girl who’s about to get everything she wants. Victoria can’t imagine anyone more deserving. “Absolutely not.”

When they kiss, the flashes of cameras around them start firing off but there’s not a bone in Victoria’s body that regrets the very public coming out. How could she, when she gets Trinity at the end of it? And, at the end of the day, that’s what she treasures the most from all of this. Not either of her medals, not the pictures of her standing atop a podium, not the press tour or the talk shows or the promotional stint on Sesame Street. Not even in her wildest dreams could she imagine a better prize than Trinity Santos. 

⋆˚.⋆❅⋆.˚⋆

FOUR YEARS LATER.

In 2030, the Winter Olympics come to the French Alps. Viewers all over the United States tune in to figure skating coverage and watch as the recently retired Samira Mohan interviews the Olympic hopefuls on Team USA on the first day of the team event. The last one to approach the microphone is Victoria Javadi, four years older and a lifetime changed. 

“Victoria Javadi, you’re back at the Olympics!” Samira says with an encouraging smile, voicing a reality that nobody really thought of as a certainty until last year. “Does it feel different this time around?” 

“Definitely,” Victoria nods, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ears. This year, she’ll be performing her free skate, so she’s entered the arena tonight in only her warm up gear. “I think I’ve done a lot of work to make sure of that in the last four years. Starting with therapy and ending with really digging into what figure skating means to me.” 

“We’ve been seeing a completely different side of you over the last couple years,” Samira agrees. “But this season your programs really are on a different level. Can you walk us through what the process of getting there was like?” 

Victoria smiles, something looser and easier than it used to be. “I used to think that there was one way to really be great. I was traditional, in a sense. I stuck to the things that worked for me, and that worked for the skaters that came before me. But there’s a power in realizing that greatness comes from individuality, so I’ve tried to really lean into that this year.” 

“Can we expect to see that individuality on display at the Olympics?” Samira asks. “Specifically in your free skate program to Chappell Roan’s California?” 

Victoria’s smile only widens. “Oh, yeah. I’ve definitely gotten some pushback on that routine, specifically on the drag makeup that I wear, but to me it matters more to use my platform and my voice to represent my community than it does to be accepted by the masses. I would only have regrets if I watered myself down again to please other people. I won’t regret standing up for what I believe in, no matter the outcome of scores and medals.” 

“On that note,” Samira segues, “your last Olympic run ended in a pretty big statement, publicly coming out with the reigning Olympic champ, Trinity Santos, who has since transitioned into the role of your coach. What have the last few years been like for you guys in that regard?” 

“Perfect,” Victoria admits, eyes sparkling. “She’s brought a love back to skating for me that I don’t think I would have been able to find on my own. I owe her everything. I’m so glad she’s here with me again.” 

“That’s so beautiful.” Samira smiles wide, eyes a little misty, though perhaps it’s only a trick of the light. “The two of you are pretty famously private about your personal lives, so forgive me if I’m overstepping, but I have heard some rumors about possible next steps in your relationship outside of skating… Are there any new developments on that front?” 

Victoria laughs and holds up her left hand, displaying a sparkling diamond ring winking on her finger. Samira squeals. “We are engaged. Trinity proposed the night of the opening ceremony, actually. It was perfect. She’s perfect.” 

“I think that the both of you are perfect, and perfect together,” Samira affirms, all but forgetting the cameras around them as she pulls Victoria in for a congratulatory hug. “This is the best news ever. Let’s keep this positive momentum coming for Team USA the next couple of weeks, shall we?” 

“Absolutely,” Victoria nods. “But I’ve learned that as long as I’m happy, as long as I’m proud of the program that I put on and the way that I leave everything here, that’s all that really matters.” 

“And you’re retiring at the end of this season, so when you say the way you leave everything, you really mean that in a more final way than some skaters do,” Samira says, and Victoria nods. “I know I might be getting ahead of myself, but do you have any plans for after your final season comes to a close?” 

“Trinity and I are actually in the beginning stages of starting up a mental health foundation for young skaters,” Victoria says, a piece of information she’s only just gotten permission from her fiancée to share for the very first time. “We’re hoping to create a better world for the next generation of figure skaters.” 

“And you’ve already done so much to do that,” Samira says, reaching out to squeeze Victoria’s shoulder. “No matter what happens here, you have a lot to be proud of.” 

Victoria smiles, her gaze flitting to where someone must be standing over the shoulder of the camera man. “You know, you’re not the first person to say that to me. I guess it must be true.”