Tag: viktor nikiforov

who is yuuri katsuki

feet on the ice, wind in his hair, hot spring steam coiling in his veins from birth on, warm fingertips hiding on thin fingers stuck in black gloves. bubbling water on burning muscles, green tea in the morning and at night. a mother’s kiss. a father’s kiss. a sister’s, friend’s, tutor’s hugs, over and over. love. love. love. being utterly average in school, wanting to go home. blades of a skate on pale skin. the stone steps in front of the rink. standing on a mirror-smooth surface.

the first touch of metal to ice. flying, screams stuck in throat, knowing.

long shirts. long pants. frost biting at open skin, steam melting the pain away. soft-cooked noodles. spring onions, broth that breathes hope back into cells. the golden inside of an egg melting in a mouth. sitting on a bed at night and looking at the moon. praying to nobody. nails so bitten that they bleed. feet cramping. shivering. fear. wishing it to be over. hoping for everything. being so loved that failing feels like betrayal.

failing anyways. leaving home. failing more. foreign countries, travelling. too much coffee. books. the polish that smoothes the metal that carries him over the mirror to heaven.

miracles. sunlight. bone-deep thrumming panic. disbelief. crying to sleep, crying in front of everyone. feeling stupid, untalented. new glasses. dark hair. eyes so warm nobody believes they would ever run out of love to give. watching others conquer the ice, trying the same, losing.

meeting people. standing up. a new scarf. curly dog fur. a mother’s hug. ballet shoes. pink ribbons. cracked lips. foreign languages. cold wind and new scents. disbelief until reality settles in. deep, deep breaths until lungs feel like bursting. body changes. running. stretching until muscles yawn awake.

the ice’s screech turning into a whisper turning into the whistle of a flute, the hum of a violin. an orchestra. a symphony. mastery blooming in the empty grave of insecurity. 

dancing. ears red from cold and open for criticism. learning. remembering. falling and bruises that hurt until tears come.

a kiss. losing adoration. finding something deeper.

another pair of hands. glitter. diamonds. slicked-back hair. eyes wide open, warm still, calm too. 

flying, again. being the centre of a crowd’s attention. kindness. smiling more. lipbalm. dark lashes fluttering shut. confessions. blushing against pale skin.

fighting. winning. peppermint. moonlight. understanding words in a language he just began to learn. soft sheets. not sleeping alone. tearing down an altar to paint the tarot card of lovers into the dirt. 

waking at night. not alone. fingers tangling with even paler ones. ink stains from a pen. diaries. hope. lullabies. 

tomorrow.

the end of history.

He dances himself into history on a cold Friday of December. 

His costume is blue as the sky, marine-dark patches spreading over his spine and shoulders like dark wings, and he wins with a score that goes down as a record in numbers and graceful, stunning beauty perfectly equally.

They kiss the same night.

A month later, it happens.

The newspapers tumble over each other in attempts of being creative. A fallen star, they say, the end of an era, they say, the unbelievable truth and all of them demand an interview with Viktor. He has no manager, he doesn’t know what to tell them, he doesn’t pick up the phone.

The internet is buzzing with anger and sadness and – he throws up after his mother reads him a few of the forum posts – conspiracy theories. Just a media stunt, they say, what is the truth, they say, it can’t be real and how he’ll be back on day anyways, too young to quit, impossible. A trick, surely. Former fans become critics, enemies soften into defenders of one of the greatest artists that figure skating has ever seen and don’t you dare talk about him like that, have a little respect.

The world demands to know. Their filthy little mouths screams for information like birds for a worm, and when Viktor holds a press conference, they only shut up after he sits there in silence for half an hour and lets them yell.

“It’s true.”

He gets up, then, turns and walks off the stage. His steps echo into the quiet, still room. Nobody holds him back.

“Can you tell us what happened?” The reporter that speaks up, finally, when Viktor is almost out the door, is young. His eyes are brown. Viktor looks at him for two, three beats of his own heart. Someone calls his name from outside; Yuri. His voice is soaked from tears.

Viktor closes his eyes. He thinks about waking with icy cold in his arms where a body had glowed with warmth just the night before. ‘Love you,’ Yuuri had whispered when another wave of the disease had shaken his body, forcing his weak limbs to shudder against the white hospital sheets. ‘Love you till I die.’

Viktor opens his eyes. The audience roars into motion when he slams the door shut behind himself.

The room is cold when he gets there. Nothing has been touched. It’s only been a week. He sits down carefully, lies down on his back, breathes in until Yuuri’s scent drowns out his thoughts.

Viktor thinks about the doctor’s diagnosis, his gently spoken “a month, at most”, and then he opens his mouth that couldn’t kiss the mutating cells out of Yuuri’s skin to the ceiling.

“Please.”

Crying isn’t a decision. The tears come with his breath, sob by sob, words curling out of his lungs with every little one until they swell to a wail.

“Give him back. Please. Please. I need, I need him. Oh God.” 

The ceiling is black. A dog howls in the garden.

All is empty. “Give me back my history.”

“One day I’ll make him speechless,” Yuri grumbles into his dinner. “One day, he’s going to be floored by my performance. He won’t be able to say anything. Because I’ll take his breath away. Just you wait.”

“I’m sure you will.” Yuuri folds himself into tailor style sitting and slides him another bowl of katsudon. “There you go. It’ll help. And of course you will.”

“Definitely.” 

The moment that passes is barely a minute long, then Yuri stuffs a piece of egg into his mouth. “And you?” he mumbles, pushing the food into one cheek. “Don’t you want to do the same thing?”

“Happened already.” Fuck. 

Yuri chokes. “Grh? Y’wha?”

“Forget that I said that.”

“No way in hell. Tell me.”

If Yuri is good at one thing besides skating, it’s bugging people, Yuuri finds. He spills it all (is practically forced to, alright) and Yuri stares at him like he grew a second head. “That’s – ew. Oh my god. That’s like hearing about your parents having sex. Fucking disgusting.”

“Yuri!” Yuuri gasps. “It was just a kiss!”

“A really good one,” Viktor says, walking in with two more bowls of katsudon. “Are you telling him how we got together? That’s so cute. Let me hear how you tell the story.”

“I’m going to bed. Let it be known that I never want to hear about this ever – ever! – again.”

Once Yuri has slammed the door to his room, Viktor sinks to the floor as well, lips brushing Yuuri’s temple. “Why’d you tell him about it?”

“He asked about it, that’s all.”

“How we got together?”

Yuuri smiles. He leans over, catches a kiss from Viktor’s mouth, thumb resting on his wrist. “How you made both of us speechless.”

The interviewer is a bit of an idiot, but Viktor had told him repeatedly to not say everything that crossed his mind when the public was talking to him, so Yuri does his best.

This time it’s some old guy trying to squeeze a scandal out of him. He looks like he hasn’t had a big story in years, greed shining in his tiny eyes that remind Yuri of bugs. When his assistant signals him that it’s just one more question, Yuri sits up straight.

“I think we’re almost done, so could you hurry,” he starts, but the interviewer interrupts him with a sleek grin.

“Mr Plisetsky, I’ve heard countless rumours about your love life. You’re sixteen now, and we’ve all been there, haven’t we, the exciting years are coming up. So tell me, from one man to another: Is there love in your life?”

Before Yuri can sock him right in the jaw (because he’s a Russian punk, damn right, but being punk doesn’t mean fulfilling stupid ideals of masculinity, and hes getting enough of that already just with doing figure skating), the guy raises his voice again.

“Or are you maybe a bit too young? Would be understandable, I assure you. Young men your age, especially athletes, have other priorities. And isn’t the physical part enough after a hard training? Doesn’t love distract one from their greater goal?”

Yuri knows that he had an angry tirade laid out and ready to hit just a moment ago. All of it seems to have died after that last sentence though. And while the interviewer stares, pen soaking an inky hole in his notepad, Yuri takes a deep breath.

He remembers a first meeting and an intimidated young man crying in a toilet, a video of a performance that made Yuri choke on his speechless tears, a tiny bathhouse and training so hard that everyone though ‘he can’t’ at some point and slowly, finally, a raised chin with calm, dark eyes.

He remembers admiration and a yearning to be like that, elegant and effortless and so stunning that the world would change its season for you, shattering under loneliness and façades and autograph-ink-stained fingers that become thinner, a new spark after losing all inspiration, gleaming eyes finding their old spirit in a country far away and finally, an embrace to seal that he’d keep his promise.

Yuri thinks of the way that Viktor speaks that name that’s so like his own and different in all the meanings. He thinks of hesitant fingers on cold-reddened cheeks when he’d been too early for training once and almost ruined the moment when Yuuri choked on “I love you, too” against Viktor’s lips.

He thinks of Yuuri pushing a bowl of food in front of him, of late nights after training and being treated not like a child or a man but someone who belongs.

“Mr Plisetsky,” the interviewer says.

“No comment.” His assistant has a coat ready. Yuri stands and slips inside in a motion that flows as if the room was made of ice. “I don’t discuss questions about my romantic life or my family.”

“Because he is a brilliant skater. He’s overflowing with raw potential and you want to be the one to carve it out of him, but you were stupid enough to get admiration mixed up with love. You want to shape him, not have him,” his mother says.

“No,” Viktor replies. “That’s not the reason.”

“’Cause you haven’t had a proper girl in a while. I’ll find you one. Pay for her, even. My son ain’t sick. I didn’t raise a sinner. You like blondes or brunettes better? Fuckin’ answer me,” his father roars.

“No,” Viktor whispers. “That’s not what I want.”

“Because he’s just like a woman? Lets you hold him like one? I don’t get it, I suppose. But, uh. If you’re really gonna keep that up… don’t tell anyone that we’re related. Like, I don’t want my name in the paper,” his brother begs.

“No,” Viktor swallows. “That’s the last thing I’d do.”

“Because you’re an idiot when you’re not on the ice,” Yuri decides.

“Maybe,” Viktor laughs. “That’s probably part of it.”

“Because it’s convenient for you. He adores you as a skater and now as a man, too, and as long as whatever you have makes him happy, I’ll leave you be. But if the day comes that you hurt him, go ask that single god of yours for mercy, because there won’t be any from me,” Yuuri’s mother smiles.

“No,” Viktor breathes. “That’s not true, but I believe you.”

At night, Yuuri turns to him. Their futons touch where there fingertips are inches apart, Yuuri’s exhale burning an aria of electricity through his nerves.

Viktor searches for permission in his eyes. He finds liquid starlight poured into darkness, and he kisses Yuuri’s knuckles, one by one until they’re warm like his cheeks.

“Are you alright?”

“Yes,” Viktor nods. He watches Yuuri drift off to sleep, their fingers tangling over the futon’s borders. “I’ll be.”

His mother, of all people, notices first. She brings it up during the weekly phone call – a warm day, if you look at temperatures from a Russian perspective, so Yuuri is bundled up in just enough layers while taking a walk by the rink. You’re not wearing the gloves I sent you, she accuses him gently. There’s no worry to be found in her voice, and Yuuri almost asks, but – well.

“It seems that someone else got you a pair,” his mother says. He can hear her smile from thousands of miles away.

“Oh,” he says. “Well. Yes.”

It’s true. He does wear gloves, and they’re not his mother’s. The first day he spent in Russia, tired to his bones and feeling strangely small from the jetlag, a certain someone had taken him for a walk. Just like the one he was on phoning his mother. “I can’t have you freezing,” Yuuri had been told, and two wonderfully soft gloves had been slipped over his hands.

Yuuri doesn’t tell his mother that the gloves were only the first gift of many. He thinks she may have his suspicions after the first few twitter pictures show him on the rink, by his coach’s side or smiling nervously at a press conference, his fingers clenched together or spread out elegantly in black gloves.

A few months later, Yuuri is quite certain that she knows. It causes him a bit of anxiety and a ruined day of training, but a tiny text from his father solves that: Introduce him properly next time.

He does. After all, the media went into a frenzy when he’d stopped wearing his famous gloves. Could be because Viktor’s hand had taken on warming his fingers now, but Yuuri can’t be bothered to care, as long as nobody makes them let go.

Dear father, Viktor writes, I have become a coach. The young man is from Japan and is ordinary in all the things you once called exceptional about me, and he has a soul in himself that you thought you could train out of me. He isn’t a natural. He hasn’t conquered the ice before he learned how to read. He’s not me, and I couldn’t be happier about that, because that means that he isn’t anything like you either.

Mama, Yuuri texts, Russia is so cold! I can’t believe I’m here. Yuri is scary, but Viktor says I’ll get used to him. They’re the only ones who speak my language. I’m studying English every day after training. I miss all of you so much. Please watch me on tv in two months.

Dear mother, Viktor writes, I won’t make it to the funeral. I’m sure he wanted it this way. If you really wish to speak to me, you know where you can find me. But if you hope to find a “caring wife or at least a pretty girlfriend” by my side, don’t come at all. I have no intention, possibility or desire to change who I was born as. I skate and I don’t love women. You can’t take those parts away from me.

Papa, Yuuri says in the video chat, I’m so glad to see you. You look healthy, I’m glad. Is everyone alright? Yes, they’re treating me well, it’s incredible. Viktor is very kind. He’s beautiful on the ice, even more so in person. What? I’m not. No, it’s not like that. He doesn’t even look at me like – like that. …love you too.

My brother, Viktor says on the phone, it’s been so – I didn’t think you’d ever – yes, I heard, of course I heard. Mother called me. I wasn’t there… you neither? Ah. Congratulations. Twins, that is incredible. I’ll come see them sometime. Thank you. We… yes. I’ll clear my schedule. You can stay at my place, of course. You want to meet Yuuri? Why would you – oh. …is it that obvious? What, on tv even? I didn’t think they were filming the coaches that much during competitions. Well. It’s true. No, not yet, but I’ll go see him later. Yes, I’ll tell him. …I think so, yes.

My family, Yuuri says and turns to Viktor just as the landscape outside the train window begins to slow down, is going to be terribly curious, but you know that. My father will pat your shoulder and try to feed you all kinds of things, mama will threaten you a bit and Minako, well, she’s likely drunk already and will stare a lot. But they said they can’t wait to have you home again.

Yes, Viktor thinks, watching the light dance over Yuuri’s glasses and past his dark-wide eyes, I think I can believe that.