Work Text:
Dear Coach Feltsman:
Thank you very much for your kind offer of training space at your rink, which Mr. Nikiforov Victor Victor Nikiforov has communicated to me. Unfortunately, I find myself unable to accept, as I
have already made arrangements to train in
have decided to stay in Japan for the time
have come to the conclusion that, maybe, actually, I should just retire after all and never show my face in figure skating again
as personal circumstances make it impossible. I apologize for the inconvenience, and …
*
Sometimes, Katsuki Mari does not understand her brother.
“So, wait,” she says. “Is this or isn’t this the guy on all your posters?”
Yuuri is making a face at her: sour, puckered, faintly embarrassed. “It is,” he mutters sullenly, as though the words are being dragged out of him, “but–”
“The one whose routines you used to make us watch over and over again?”
“Like you ever did,” Yuuri rolling his eyes at her, “and yes, but–”
“The one you keep mentioning in interviews and doodling in your notebooks, he’s so perfect, the greatest skater in the whole wide world and I want to be just like him someday, and also look how pretty his hair is in this shampoo ad, Mari? That one?”
“I never said that,” he protests, and turns bright red. Wow, and she was just ad-libbing.
“You never answered my question,” she says.
He folds his arms over his chest. Yuuri still crinkles his nose when he’s trying to get out of something, she notices. “Yes–but–but that’s not the point!”
“The point isn’t that you’ve been obsessed with him for ages and you think he’s the best skater in the universe, and you’re still turning down the opportunity to train with him?”
There’s a silence. Yuuri’s lower lip juts out in a pout, an expression which is very effective on their parents, but mostly just reminds Mari of the time he saved over her Pokemon game and she got in trouble for it. “I don’t want to spend the next three months skating alongside people who just feel sorry for me,” he says quietly.
She studies him, picking at the skin around his thumb, his eyes downcast and evasive. “What makes you think they feel sorry for you?”
He’s still looking away. “Why else would they agree to something like this?”
Mari folds her arms across her chest. “Really, Yuuri?”
She is going to eat an entire bowl of katsudon in front of him. She deserves that much for putting up with this.
He wrinkles his nose again, chin jutting out stubbornly, and says, “No, look–you don’t understand. It’s the Russian team, they never do things like this. Yakov Feltsman hasn’t taken a student from another federation in over fifteen years. He doesn’t even allow local media in the rink. They’d never invite a competitor there.”
She waits.
His voice is hushed, his shoulders hunched up around his ears, when he says, “Maybe they don’t think of the–the washed-up headcase with no coach–as one.”
Her crazy, stubborn, mixed-up little brother. “Or maybe,” she says, “they’re impressed you managed to make it this far without a coach?”
So quiet she barely hears it: “I can’t afford to assume that.”
Not impressed by what?, she notices, or don’t be ridiculous, oneechan. He’s grown up some, all those years he spent in Detroit.
Still.
“You’re not going to Russia,” she says slowly, “because you’re scared that they–no, that Victor won’t take you seriously. Is that right?”
He looks up, startled. Really, it’s not like he’s that hard to read. “I–” he says, eyes and mouth round as he stammers out the words, “that–”
Some people get normal siblings. Mari got stuck with this kid, this quiet and serious skating prodigy who used to crawl under his desk to get out of reading his book reports. He never seemed to need a lot of the big sister stuff from her: she could only needle him so much, was never better than him at math, couldn’t advise him on entering a cutthroat world she had no experience with. But she’d opened his lunchboxes when he was afraid to ask the daycare teacher, and she’d teased him about his posters, and sometimes, like when he’d first come back to Hasetsu, she asked him the questions no one else was going to.
Her parents never pressured either of them, were easygoing, accepting to a fault. Mari’s tried her best to make up for that. She doesn’t know whether that’s the right thing to do, the good big sister thing to do.
Whatever. It’s his fault for being so weird.
Yuuri has been silent all this time, teeth worrying at his lower lip. “Yeah,” he admits, at last. “I don’t want–I’ve embarrassed myself in front of him once already. I’d hate it if I showed up and he looked at me like–like–”
Like someone less than, she thinks, or maybe like I wasn’t an equal.
“So prove him wrong,” she says.
And her brother, her stubborn, uncommunicative brother, who spends more time at the dance studio than at home, who wraps his blistered feet every morning and doesn’t come back until late at night, who has been training for months on end without ever once saying I will, or I want, or anything other than I’m going to try–her brother looks past her, sad-smiling, and says, “Honestly, I don’t know whether I can.”
Mari doesn’t know much about figure skating, but she doesn’t think that’s a deflection. She thinks it’s the truth.
She sits down on the floor next to him, scoots closer until her hip knocks against his. He grins, a crooked kind of thing, and after a moment, rests his chin on her shoulder. He closes his eyes.
She gives him one long moment slumped against her before she says, “That’s not like you, you know.”
He makes a skeptical sound. “What, not being sure? Or being scared?”
“No,” she replies, because there’s no way he’d buy that. “You’ve always been scared. You’ve just never let that stop you before.”
A beat. “Mari,” he says, “no offense, but that’s the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever said.”
She raises an eyebrow.
“I–” She can feel him swallow. “I let it stop me all the time, okay? I’ve done nothing but let it stop me. I’ve been skating for years, falling for years, failing for years, all because I’m scared of not being able to–to–”
He cuts off, with a choked noise.
Mari thinks of the cabinets in the study, with all their bright and gleaming trophies. Yuuri would say, finding some excuse for every one, that those don’t count; would mean, maybe, that he could have done better.
She might resent him for it, if he weren’t so–Yuuri. “Maybe,” she says. “But you didn’t let that stop you, either. You got back up. You tried again.”
Katsuki Mari is never, ever, ever going to tell her brother that she admires him. She thinks he might hear it anyway.
They stay there for a long while, Mari’s arm around her brother’s shoulders, his head tucked into the crook of her neck. If she hears him sniffle, she politely ignores it: she can do that much for him, at least.
“Mari?” he says, at last. He takes a deep breath. “I–I’m going to miss Hasetsu.”
She pokes him in the shoulder. “Don’t be stupid,” she says, fondly. “We’ll still be here when you get back.”
*
Dear Coach Feltsman:
Thank you very much for your kind offer of training space at your rink, which Victor has communicated to me. If you are still amenable, I would like to arrange to use the facilities through the World Championships, beginning at your earliest convenience. I would of course be willing to compensate you for the time and to work around the schedules of your skaters where necessary.
Please let me know whether this is still agreeable to you, and if so, what kind of rates you would find fair for this arrangement. I am aware that this situation is somewhat without precedent, and I am incredibly grateful for the openness and generosity of you and your skaters. I wish them and you the best of luck at the upcoming European Championships.
Sincerely yours,
Yuuri Katsuki
Japanese National Team