Work Text:
‘You make me begin’
When Yuuri first discovers Victor Nikiforov, he’s a child who has always been intrigued by skating but never wanted to do anything about it. But Victor Nikiforov sparks something in him. A burning desire that has him overcoming his timidness to ask Yuko about skating together. It’s harder than he expected. Victor’s performances make skating look so simple, as though anyone could step onto the ice and be beautiful.
Victor stops him from being lost in the floating seas of indecision about his future.
It takes hours of training that turns into months and then into years to be able to copy even the simplest of Victor’s performances. He rises through the ranks of the Japanese skaters, until he is credited as the best and then he moves to Detroit to become even better. He becomes known for being an ice skater even though he’s at the very bottom of the talent pool. Victor’s inspiration helps him come into his own. Yuuri the Japanese ice skater whose innocent beauty bewitches people despite his technical errors.
Victor makes him begin ice skating. Victor brings him to the joy that is moving on the ice until his body aches and his turns are smooth. Yuuri is entirely thankful to Victor for introducing him to it. He smiles as Victor steps onto the ice and for a moment, just a moment, he can swear that the Russian skater smiles back.
‘Smile with me’
‘You make me begin’
Sometimes before competitions like the final of the grand prix, Yuuri loses motivation. The call for katsudon is too great and the ice seems just a little bit too cold. America is a far cry from the slow paced city of his childhood and the homesickness doesn’t help his plummeting levels of determination. Some days it takes the combined efforts of his coach and all the members of the elite training program he is a part of to convince him to get out of his bed.
When he sees Victor on television promising to surprise the crowds with his new program at the qualifiers of the grand prix, he feels a rise in motivation, surging through his body and peaking when he steps onto the ice. He falls time and time and time again, but when he thinks of Victor smiling as he skates so gracefully the pain simply disappears.
He trains hard to get to the world finals, determined to compete in the same bracket as Victor and to show his skill. It takes so long to be able to land his quads, even if they’re basic compared to the other competitors. Luckily there’s marks for interpretation and performance that help him to make up for his slightly lacking skills.
Still, he’s twenty-two, and being a competitive figure skater has a time limit that’s very quickly counting down for him. As he goes through his free program, he can hear the sound of the timer ticking down in the background of his mind as it spews technical information at him. The performance feels forced and even though he isn’t entirely shocked to see his name in last place, it still hurts.
He’s a good sport, congratulating the people who beat him with a smile on his face, especially his idol, Victor. When everything's said and done though, the alarm alerting him that his timer has finished went off sometime in the middle of his final quad and his heart shatters when he realises that he has nothing left to give to the sport. He’s given it all of his youth, his energy, his heart. There is nothing left to give anymore.
So he cries. He hides it, or at least he tries to, but he sobs until there are no more tears left to cry, because if he’s going to give his absolute all to figure skating then he may as well give it all of his tears too.
When he leaves with his coach, Victor asks if he’d like to take a photo. In the brief second he looks back when he walks out the door, he sees the silver haired man’s eyes filling with tears. He wishes, beyond hope that maybe some of those tears are for him.
‘ Cry with me’
‘You make me again’
When he returns to Hasetsu, Yuuri finds that stopping skating completely is easier said than it is done. The ice skating rink seems to loom over the town, leering and begging him to go through its doors to skate. He resists it’s call with every fibre of his being, forcing himself to stay home at the hot springs to help his family maintain their business. He eats his favourite dish, that he promised to only eat when he won, using the excuse that winning against the almighty urge to skate is a win in itself.
Then one night it gets to be all too much and he just needs to step on the ice. He needs to feel the condensation’s gentle embrace. Needs to feel the grace that comes with the smooth movements which only gliding along ice can create. He needs to break free of the stagnancy of day to day life, to feel the rush of not knowing whether he will land a jump.
He succumbs to the urges, grabbing his skates and his training clothing and rushing off to the rink. Yuko is there, still cute as always. He lets his muscles warm up a little, skating a few laps around the rink before moving to the starting position.
He let’s his body flow with the music through sets of familiar positions, that he has watched over and over again. It’s a performance of Victor’s that touched him. The final performance of Victor’s where Yuuri could say that they shared the same competitive bracket. It is the performance that reminded him of just how far he is from his idol. The performance that allowed him to leave ice skating with no fear of being missed.
When the video of him performing goes viral and Victor turns up in the small, sleepy town he calls home it’s as though suddenly the ice has a new voice. One with a slightly Russian accent that draws him in so close that he can no longer disentangle himself from skating. When he beats Yuri with his performance of eros, it is as though the ice grows a pair of hands which wrap around his waist, pulling him infinitely closer.
With Victor’s guidance he gets his personal best in the Beijing Grand Prix, with a performance of Eros dedicated to seducing the man who is the allure of skating personified. He watches as Victor smiles at him from the ledge of the rink, let’s himself feel as the man embraces him while they watch other performers. He let’s himself accept the hatred of the world for stealing Victor and the envy of the other skaters for having stolen the ice’s affections.
They sneak back to the rink that night, hands linked together in the pocket of Victor’s coat. They haven’t spoken about what they are since Yuuri rejected the offer of being Victor’s boyfriend. Yuuri doesn’t want to talk about it either. He knows that he wants Victor to himself. He wants the gentle touches and soft smiles and possessive embraces. He wants the love of the ice to flow on from Victor into him.
He isn’t sure if he wants to give a name to what being in love with Victor is though.
When they finally step onto the ice, Victor whispers to him quietly, asking if it would maybe be okay to try a partnered routine with a basic lift. It should scare Yuuri, because he hasn’t done anything like that on ice before. He’d barely even practiced it when he’d been training in ballet. It doesn’t scare him. Maybe because it’s Victor. Victor who convinced him to skate again.
Victor who made him again. Victor who took the broken pieces of him and remoulded him into a piece of artwork that dazzled the world.
So he nods and they begin to move through the short program which brought them together. It’s so much simpler now, even without the music. He flies beside Victor, soaring through quads and jumps and combination spins that would make most skaters faint hearted. When Victor lifts him, he straightens his arms as though they are wings and let’s Victor glide forwards, allowing him to fly and feels comforted knowing that with Victor supporting him, he will be able to soar.
When Victor kisses him as they leave the rink, and whispers his affections, for the first time Yuuri is able to respond sincerely.
“I love you too.”
‘Fly with me’