Chapter Text
Something clicks inside Yuuri as he thinks about his presentation for the program. He looks good in the outfit with his hair slicked back, his face and body finally reflecting his true self, and going through thoughts of his daily gender presentation makes him consider how he’s incorporating that into his skating. He’s always struggled with showing femininity, but never been able to fully lean into masculinity. Now that he’s settling into himself, maybe he can incorporate more femininity into his movements. It will help with his narrative and shouldn’t stop him from passing now that his face is more angular and body more muscular thanks to testosterone. He never wanted to be a feminine woman, but a feminine man? He can do that.
Minako helps. He owes her.
After stepping off the podium in front of the crowd, Yuuri feels an emotional crash coming on. These past few weeks have been as rough as they’ve been wonderful and he knows he’s out of time. His vision narrows. The moment they’re off the ice, he tells Victor, “I have to go.”
“No time for the interview?” Victor asks. He follows behind Yuuri, but gets sidetracked by reporters.
Yuuri changes as quickly as he can. His binder is too tight and he’s been wearing it too often, not wanting to unbind around Victor, and he needs it off right now. Despite the warm weather, he wears his jacket, needing it to hide his chest and his scars. When he exits the locker room, Victor is there, ready to walk back with him.
They don’t talk on the way back. Yuuri fluctuates between being anxious as hell and enjoying the day. He accomplished something today, proving to everyone—including himself—that he can do this. Yet he’s scared.
Near home, Victor says, “I can hear you thinking. What’s on your mind? Do you need a dip in the hot springs?”
“Yeah, that might—uh, no, actually. We need to talk.” He needs to calm down first, possibly starting with a panic attack, and the springs would be good to settle him, but he doesn’t want that to be how Victor finds out. “I need to decompress first.”
“We can decompress in the springs without talking.”
“It’s a little more complicated than that.”
“Ah. Well, don’t let me interfere with your alone time,” Victor says with a wink.
It takes a moment for the implication to catch up with Yuuri, but once it does, he laughs despite how shaky he feels. “You are impossible.” They stop at the entrance to Yuuri’s room. “Don’t let me stop you from enjoying the springs, though.”
Victor hugs him. “I don’t want you to decompress in a bad way,” he says quietly.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Yuuri says quickly. Victor can’t know, can he? He’s given Yuuri privacy in the locker room and at home. Yuuri’s been careful not to pull down his sleeves far enough to show more than a couple of old, faded scars on his wrists. His family knows—hard to hide as a teenager in the onsen—but there’s no way they would say anything to a near total stranger. Nor would Minako or the Nishigoris. He wouldn’t put it past Yuri Plisetsky, but he’s not inclined to make that assumption. It’s much more likely that Yuuri must have messed up.
“Do you remember the banquet?”
The banquet. Yes, Yuuri was there, but he was in girl mode and got blackout drunk, so he doesn’t remember and doesn’t want to. He knows, though, that he cut himself and someone else bandaged him, and he gazed into gorgeous blue eyes…
The same color as Victor’s.
His heartbeat picks up and his breathing grows shallower. Not Victor, surely. Victor didn’t even know Yuuri’s past when he arrived; he would have said something if they had met before. Yuuri’s head and vision turn fuzzy. He barely registers the door closing before firm hands guide him towards his bed, making him sit down. Those same hands hold him as if they’re grounding him. He feels too hot and scrambles to take off his jacket, but the zipper gets stuck. A moment later, it’s fixed and the jacket is lifted away, letting him breathe again. He lies back on the bed, gasping for air, one hand taking his and anchoring him.
Minutes pass before he comes back down to earth. He squeezes the hand.
“Are you with me?” Victor asks. He nods. “When I asked about the banquet, I was not expecting a reenactment of the afterparty.”
Did he panic back then? It sounds about right. He was a complete mess at the end of last year. “I don’t remember. It’s all a blur. I thought you didn’t recognize me when you came here.”
“After you said you’d been competitive for years, I looked again. Turns out there’s only one competitive Katsuki. I had thought you were cousins or something. It explains a few things, like why she—why you were hostile towards me and Chris when we called you anything other than Katsuki-san, or the fact that you are relearning jumps, or that you never join me in the onsen.”
“I can’t tell if you really like the onsen or if you're trying to get me naked.”
Victor laughs. “The springs are a marvel and you are no less precious.” He runs his hand along Yuuri’s arm, littered with scars both faded and healing. “This is not something that I understand, but it is also just your arm, as any other part of you is simply part of you. I will not judge your body for existing, so don’t feel as if you need to hide from me.”
“I guess I was hiding, huh?” Yuuri murmurs.
“I know something myself about being unable to show one’s true colors. Yakov kept me on a tight leash.” He smiles thinly. “Do you need to rest?”
Yuuri considers his options. He’s worn out now, his anxiety having run its course. “I would like a soak in the springs,” he admits. He sits up and puts his jacket back on. “I’ll grab a key to one of the private baths.”
Walking into the onsen feels intimate. Victor, shameless as he is, watches Yuuri as he enters. It doesn’t seem like Victor’s lost any interest in him at all. He sinks into the water with a sigh and settles in near Victor, fighting the urge to shrink away or hide his arms or chest. He doesn’t want Victor to see him differently, but neither does he want to hide when others wouldn’t. It’s part of why he said yes to this: If he doesn’t break this barrier now, it would just keep causing him more anxiety.
“We don’t have to talk while we are relaxing, but if you want to, we can,” Victor offers. “I will save further critique on your performance until next practice.”
“I was actually planning to talk about, well, me. My past. I’m surprised it didn’t come out when the video went viral, but today was bigger than that. There’s no stopping it now. I should have told you sooner—should have when I realized you didn’t know—but you figured that out on your own. Even if I hated how I looked and felt, and even if I didn’t want you to see me when I was pretending to be someone I wasn’t, my performances are still my work and I’m proud of them. Some of them, at least. I’m going to try not to let any of this get to me at competitions, but there’s going to be a spotlight on me.” Yuuri sinks a little deeper into the water. “And a whole lot more pressure to perform well alongside cis men.”
“You proved yourself today and, with more training, you will prove yourself internationally. There is much to work on, but you have a very solid starting point, especially having not landed quads in competition before now. Since we are on the topic of you…” Victor hesitates. “As your coach, it is my job to keep you in good health. As your friend, I want to you to be safe and happy. How do I keep you from hurting yourself?”
Yuuri wonders how long Victor has actually known about his transition; if Victor doesn’t realize he’s landed quads before, then he hasn’t seen some of Yuuri’s best performances. There will be time to show him later. “You can’t,” Yuuri says.
“That is not an answer that I can accept.”
“It relieves my anxiety. I can get… really bad. It feels like I’m going to die or do something terrible. Cutting lets it out.” Yuuri lifts an arm above the water and shows his mostly clear forearm. “I rarely cut lower than my elbow because it’s not that easy to hide. But managing my anxiety won’t stop this. I feel the urge other times as well. I’ve stopped trying to push it aside because it can last for weeks at a time. Weeks of distress that can be stopped with a couple of cuts.”
Victor takes his hand. “If alcoholics can put down their bottles, then you can put down your blade.”
“You can barge into my life and change everything for the better, but you can’t fix me, Victor.” Yuuri squeezes Victor’s hand. It almost feels unreal that they’re so familiar with each other after only a few short weeks. If someone had told him a month ago that he would be here today talking with Victor about his transition and his cutting, he would have brushed them off and then panicked over the realization that Victor would someday know information about him by virtue of him entering the men’s division this season. “I want to accept your help and I want you to be there for me. That has to come with the understanding that there are parts of me you can’t change no matter how badly you want to. These scars will always be here. I may never stop cutting. I might suffer panic attacks for the rest of my life. There’s a lot about me that the public doesn’t see and I’m not just some pretty skater who exists to make other people happy.” Yuuri winces and pulls back his hand, looking away. He didn’t plan to say that last part.
“You’re Yuuri Katsuki, the man who’s making a comeback on your own terms.” Victor reaches back out, but drops his hand when it’s clear Yuuri isn’t reciprocating. “If I cannot stop you, then at least tell me how I can help you.”
Yuuri thinks about the ways that Victor inspires him and how his coaching alone helps keep him on track. “Just be there for me when I ask and accept that I’m always going to be different. Everything else is up to me and my brain. And… Keep doing what you are doing. Even after you found out, you didn’t treat me any differently. You haven’t flinched away from my scars today.” He touches his own upper arm. The scars, most pale and old, are numerous enough to stand out even in dim lighting. Victor looks at them with a mix of curiosity and concern. “I want to feel like a normal man and like it’s normal to have this body. If I don’t have to hide anything, that’s already a weight off my shoulders.” He winces at the thought of having to talk about this, but says, “I’ve been wearing a binder to compress my chest when skating. It’s safe for short periods, but extended use could damage my ribs. Now that I know you know, I’ll wear it less often.”
“You do not need to wear it at all if you do not want to. You are still a man regardless.”
“I need it. I need to see myself with a flat chest and I need others to see me that way, too. It relieves my dysphoria. When I look in the mirror, I finally look the way I want to.”
“Okay,” Victor says simply.
It hasn’t been easy to come out to so many people, but the way they all seem to take it in stride makes him wonder if he should have come out sooner. As it is, he’s glad he took the leap at all. His life is so much better now.
Yuuri regrets everything.
“You were amazing! Putting on such a good performance this early in the season? You are going places, my friend.”
“Mm.” Yuuri sinks deeper into his pillow. He must look awful, lit by nothing but the bright screen from his laptop propped against his legs, hair askew since he has not yet gotten out of bed. He can practically feel the bags under his eyes. If it were anyone else but Phichit, he never would have accepted the call. His dearest friend has seen him much worse than half-awake in bed while sleep-deprived from anxiety, and for all that Yuuri worries about people seeing him differently, he doesn’t care that his chest is noticeable under his sleep shirt, his sleeves are short, or his face looks weird with the combination of bedhead and glasses. Phichit’s practically family at this point.
“Don’t ‘mm’ me. Your choices are to go back to sleep or talk. No social media rabbit holes. Because I know you’re not online at 5am to watch puppy videos.”
“Do you think some of them are right, though? I couldn’t land a clean quad sal even though I practiced it so many times. What if I’m trying to do something that’s impossible for my body?”
Phichit groans. “Do you remember Sochi?”
“Where I fell on my face and got so drunk I couldn’t remember—”
“Yuuri,” he chides, “I don’t mean the Finals.”
“Oh. I got bronze, and that’s only because Ekaterina sprained her ankle,” Yuuri says glumly.
“You got bronze because you’re amazing! You were the first to land a quad toe loop in an international women’s skating competition. You’ve pulled off triple axels countless times in a division where only a handful of skaters can do it. Now you’ve got more muscle and a coach who knows his quads inside and out. If anyone can figure out quads within one season, it’s a pair of Olympic medalists.” Phichit leans forward and rests his chin on his hands. “You have a real shot at the Finals this year, Yuuri. You’re a world-class athlete. Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise.”
The praise makes him feel warm inside. Not enough to assuage all his stress, though. “I really thought for a minute that people would see me. That video and my performance yesterday, it was all me, just Yuuri, but there’s a lot of people who don’t respect that. It’s hard to see my old name everywhere and people using the wrong pronouns. It shouldn’t matter, but it hurts.”
“None of those people matter, okay?”
“JJ said I was a confused woman playing dress-up. His fans are saying worse. My DMs…” Yuuri shakes his head. Over the years, he’s had his share of pseudonymous hate, but this is something else. He’s trying not to let the threats and insults of random strangers get to him. However, his heart sinks beneath the volume of them. “Even though he rarely talked to me, he acts like he’s some kind of authority because we were rinkmates a while back. I don’t know if you noticed when he was around, but he didn’t seem to care about anything outside of a narrow scope. Women’s skating falls outside of that. It was like I didn’t exist in his world until I did a coffee run.” Yuuri sighs and opens a tab to peek at JJ’s profile. There it is, still at the top: A photo of Yuuri holding a Biellmann position on the ice during a dress rehearsal. It clearly shows off the curve of his chest, the lack at his crotch, and the feminine pink-and-purple costume he wore for the short program that season. “He’s a big name since he placed at the Finals. People care what he says.”
“He’s a dick and anyone with half a brain can see that. Celestino chewed him out in the comments, by the way, so his words aren’t going to hold water outside of his fanbase.”
“Most people don’t read the comments.” Yuuri scrolls down anyway. Celestino’s comment is near the top. So is one from Christophe Giacometti telling JJ to have some respect for his fellow competitors. They’ve met a couple of times, enough for Yuuri to know he’s nice, but he wouldn’t have expected him to come to his defense. It’s at least a relief to see that someone else who’s so high profile is on his side.
He hates that there are any sides at all.
“Would it make you feel better if we made our own positive posts in response? Because I’ve got a lot of photos of us from the past few months that I could share and I always like to spread the love. We could even hashtag our support for you,” Phichit offers.
Yuuri closes the tab and rubs his eyes. “I don’t want any special attention for being trans. You can share photos, but only ones where I have a flat chest and long enough sleeves. No weird hashtags, either.”
“I can do that. Then you’ll see all the comments from your fans saying you’re amazing, and JJ will get jealous because he’s not a sex symbol being trained by a living legend.”
“...Sex symbol?”
Phichit laughs. “Dude. Your program is called Eros and that outfit looks sinful on you. Victor shared the video; you have got to read the comments. Everyone is thirsty. And Christophe—”
“No, nope, I do not need to know what Chris said,” Yuuri says, cutting him off. “It is way too early to be thinking about what goes through that man’s head.”
“Alright, well, read it when you need a pick-me-up,” Phichit says with a wink. “In any case, please stop reading negative things people say and focus more on things like the fact that you have amazing hot springs right outside your home, Victor Nikiforov is in your house, you are literally wearing Victor’s clothes onto the ice…”
Yuuri pulls his sheet up over half of his face. “I can’t believe you would word it like that.”
Phichit smiles innocently and bats his eyelashes. “Everything I’ve said is true, dear Yuuri. Now, if you’re not going to go back to sleep, I need to know everything about him.”
Yuuri lowers the sheet. Despite his stress, he’s smiling. “He’s a lot different than I thought he would be. A lot more impulsive, too. He came over here after watching that video and nothing else; he couldn’t find anything under my new name. Apparently it was enough.”
“Further evidence of how amazing you are.”
“So I’m pretty sure he brought over all his belongings from Russia…”