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Patience. It's never been Yuri Plisetsky's strong suit. Ironically, it's a virtue he's never had the time to cultivate. Dedushka's rent is a hard deadline, and sponsorships demand results. Puberty, while technically a softer deadline, is no less pressing, or less threatening. The knowledge that his body will change, that he'll lose the grace and flexibility that have been his hallmarks, has loomed over him like a malevolent specter since he was twelve and hit his first growth spurt.
July has been a difficult month. Yuri's balls deep in his new programs, far enough along that he's perfected the step sequences, but still nailing down the jump elements and transitions. Viktor had choreographed his and Katsuki's short programs again, as well as his own, and he hadn't held back. All three programs are hellish—Yuri's has a quad Loop in combo, a jump he's still shaky on even when it's on its own. What's worse, his completion rate has actually declined over the summer. His center of gravity has shifted as his shoulders broadened, and where he was landing the Loop five times out of ten before, now he's down to three or four. And that is. Not. Acceptable.
There's only so much that practice can do, and Yuri knows it. What good is it performing the jump a hundred times only to have to do it in a completely different body a month later? Still, it's all he knows to do. If he can just push through it, force his body to obey in the instinctive way it had last year, then maybe he's got a chance at coming out of this even better.
Take things slow, Yakov and Lilia advise him when his shins start to ache, when he gets twinges in his patellar ligament, when he adds a whole 3cm to his height in under two months. But that's the thing; he doesn't have time. The 2017 season starts in October, and at the end of it is PyeongChang. Like hell is Yuri going to let puberty keep him from his first Olympics in the senior division. Osgood-Schlatter can suck his nuts.
Katsuki keeps his mouth shut when he sees how hard Yuri is pushing himself, though Yuri can tell how much he wants to say something. Yuri recalls Viktor's long-ago promise to choreograph a routine for him if he took it easy on his quads, and wonders whether he could bribe a similar favor out of Katsuki.
Ultimately, his only concessions are in the realm of self-care. He takes a page out of the Katsuki family's book and indulges in long, steamy baths, courtesy of Viktor's garden tub and seemingly infinite hot water. He does yoga stretches when he wakes up and before bed. Drinks putrid concoctions Viktor swears on his Baba's grave helped him when he was a teenager. Keeps pushing, because he has to.
And that works, until it doesn't.
"Phew, time for a break!" Katsuki says, dragging the back of his hand across his sweaty forehead. He's been practicing his quad Flip in tandem with Yuri and his Loop for the past half hour. Katsuki's stamina is impressive, but even he has his limits. Yuri himself is bone-tired, his body aching and his lungs stinging with every cold, dry breath he takes.
"Yurio, are you coming to lunch with us?"
"You should take a break," Viktor agrees from the other end of the rink, where he's been working on choreographing his free program step sequence. "Come eat with us. Your jumps will go better when you're more energized."
"You're not my coach," Yuri retorts, and stubbornly continues circling center ice.
"Do as Vitya says," Yakov grunts, and really, if there's anything he could have told Yuri to make him less inclined to obey, he doesn't know.
Katsuki and Viktor skate over to the boards, stepping off into their skate guards. "Are you sure you don't want to eat with us? I packed an extra bento."
"I don't want your shitty health food, Katsudon. Some of us actually have metabolisms."
"Ah, well, you are a growing boy!" Viktor calls back with that sharp little smile he reserves for occasions when Yuri is too rude to his precious little piggy. As if Yuri needs reminding that his body is his worst enemy. Fucker.
Rather than flipping Viktor the bird, which would earn him a scolding from Yakov, Yuri simply takes off in a glide across the ice, setting himself up for another Loop. He's only got enough energy for one more jump, so he'll be following them to lunch soon anyway, but it's the principle of the thing—if it's not on Yuri's own terms, he doesn't want to do it. He does some quick edge pulls to build up speed, turns backward, picks off the ice, and he's flying. One, two, three rotations… But he's tired. He's too tired, and so he doesn't quite have the momentum to complete the fourth rotation. He's not going to land it. Fuck, he's gonna–
Impact.
He doesn't feel it at first; he just hears a snap from his right knee, and a sickening crunch, feels the weightless lurch of falling. His vision whites out as his head hits the ice with tooth-rattling force, and then he's lying dazed on his back, the cold seeping up and leaching into his body. The lights overhead are too bright. His gut is a tight ball—something is wrong wrong wrong. He fucked up. People are shouting. Yakov. Viktor. And then there are hands, pressing to his temple, moving him, and the pain finally hits him. He screams with it, howling in agony as those careful hands shift him onto a stretcher, carry him off the ice. The thin material of his leggings is sheared away. Yuri fights his captors' hold, sits up to see the rapidly swelling ruin of his knee, thinks, oh fuck, and promptly turns his head to vomit. Then black spots obscure his vision, and he sinks into terrifying oblivion.
Yuri emerges from unconsciousness an indeterminate amount of time later and feels like he's still falling, endlessly, down, down, down. His skin itches. Something is… something happened to him. Although he's dizzy and confused, he has just enough presence of mind to realize he's probably concussed. He'd hit his head pretty hard when he went down.
Fuck, that's right. He went down. Fuck.
His vision is fuzzy, unfocused, but as he continues to come around, he gets a better handle on his surroundings. He's lying prone in a bed. The sheets are paper thin, and his clothes have been replaced with a scratchy gown. A hospital. At least some of his current fogginess is probably due to the beeping IV taped to his arm, with a bag that reads 'Морфий' in big black letters. The room is small, square, and painted a white so sterile and bright it hurts his eyes. He's alone—for a moment, at least, before the door in the corner of the room opens and a woman in pink scrubs walks in with a clipboard. A nurse, then.
"Ah, Mr. Plisetsky!" she chirps upon seeing him awake and alert. She bustles over to the side of the bed and presses a button, raising him into a reclining position. "How are you feeling?"
"Whu..." Drugged. Nauseated. Confused. "How long…?"
"You've been here about three hours, fading in and out of consciousness."
"Huh?" Yuri blinks in surprise. "I don't remember." He can recall vague wisps, impressions of light and sound, but nothing concrete.
"That's not surprising! You were pretty badly concussed. Do me a favor; can you tell me your name?"
"Yuri," he croaks, tongue fuzzy and parched. "Yuri Nikolaevich Plisetsky. My birthday is… the first of March? We're in Saint-Petersburg."
"Good, that's good; you seem to be coming out of it. You can expect a few days of lingering nausea and headaches, but the CT scan we did earlier didn't show any internal bleeding or significant trauma, so you should recover just fine." The nurse steps in close with a penlight and tries to shine it in his eyes, but he bats her hand away. She seems to take his coordination for a good sign and marks something down on his chart. "Do you remember what happened?"
"I fell. On the ice. I think… I'm hurt." He's certainly in pain, dulled as it is by the medication. His head is throbbing in time with his heartbeat, and his leg is immobilized by some sort of splint. "My knee."
"You ruptured your right ACL," the nurse confirms. She says it so goddamn casually, so matter-of-fact, but it's enough to make Yuri's blood turn to ice. Any skater's would.
"What? No." He almost laughs; the nurse has to have made a mistake. There's no way. It's absurd to even think about. It's probably just a sprain.
She shoots him a sympathetic and infuriatingly condescending smile, like she's accustomed to dealing with delusional optimists. "We'll have to run an MRI to confirm it, but the doctor seems sure. The way the swelling and bruising is presenting itself is a dead giveaway."
"No, you don't understand!" Yuri argues, dread lodged deep in his stomach. "The season starts in three months. I have to compete. The Olympics–"
"–Will have to wait. If a surgical graft is necessary to repair the tear, your recovery time will be a minimum of six months. I'm very sorry, Mr. Plisetsky, but this season is probably over for you."
Again, she says it like she hasn't just ended Yuri's life. A six month recovery time would keep him out of commission all the way through Worlds. Hell, if his recovery took any longer than the minimum, it could fuck him up for next season, too.
Either way, the Olympics will be completely impossible.
He must be broadcasting his distress, because the nurse adds, "There's no reason you can't make a complete recovery in time."
Her words have the opposite of their intended effect. Yuri's shock gives way to crushing despair. Time is the one commodity he doesn't have, and most needs. Six months of recovery time equals a whole year of skating lost. A whole four years until the next Winter Olympics. He'll be twenty by then. Who knows how his body will have changed? Who knows whether he'll get injured again between now and then?
This was his chance. And now it's gone.
To Yuri's utter mortification, he hiccups, then breaks down into ugly, hysterical sobs right in front of the nurse. He's panicking, his chest heaving, arms curled tight around his torso. His sponsorships. Dedushka. His whole world has just come crashing down around his ears, and he has no idea what he's supposed to do about it.
The nurse is obviously unprepared for his reaction. She makes an abortive attempt to touch his shoulder, then jerks her hand back when he snarls at her through his tears. He knows it's irrational, but this is her fault for saying the words and making it real. He wants to rage and scream, rip the clipboard out of her hands, tear his chart into pieces and shove it all down her throat. He might even try it, if he didn't think he'd throw up from moving too quickly.
She tries to placate him with logic next. "Mr. Plisetsky, I know it's upsetting, but look on the bright side. Viktor Nikiforov is back this year, so you can rest easy knowing there will still be a top skater to represent Russia."
Oh, wow. "Fuck you!" he bites. "Get the hell out!"
To her credit she does go, after tucking his chart into the slot at the foot of the bed. She turns back as she's halfway out the door, and says, expression stony, "Your MRI is scheduled for about an hour from now. The doctor and surgeon will see you when we have the results. I'll… tell your friends you're awake." The door clicks shut behind her.
Yuri dissolves back into sobs the moment he's alone. It's not fair. It's not fucking fair. He's pushed himself further, worked harder than anybody, and all it's earned him is an injury severe enough to put his career on hold. How does that follow? Where does the universe get off doing this shit to him? What did he do wrong?! His hands curl into fists, so tightly that when he opens them a moment later his nails have sliced red crescents into his palms. On top of the indignity and the injustice, he fucking hurts. His head is killing him, not to mention the dizziness and nausea. Yuri knows from shameful experience that crying won't help on that front, so he focuses on calming his mind, slowing his breathing from heaving gasps to a controlled, shuddery in-out.
Don't panic. Don't panic.
He thinks about Dedushka's pirozhkis, and the warm, homey smell of the little house in Moscow. The waterfall outside Hasetsu, and the hot springs. Otabek's motorcycle vibrating between his knees like a purring lion. There's comfort in abstraction, in escape. If he lets go and just imagines, he can almost forget where he is and why.
He's just about gotten his emotions in check when there's a knock at the door, drawing him unwillingly back to the here and now. Katsuki sticks his shaggy black head inside, just in time to catch Yuri rubbing tears from his eyes with the back of his papery sleeve. "Hey, can I come in?" Katsuki asks, but doesn't wait for an answer to slip in and shut the door behind him.
Yuri is instantly on the defensive, hackles raised. He's never been a pretty crier. He knows what he must look like. "Are you here to gloat?" he growls. "Or to say 'I told you so'?" Because if he is, Yuri has some choice words for him.
"No, never," Katsuki gasps, like something so callous is beyond him. He sits down at the foot of the bed, carefully avoiding Yuri's injured leg. "I'm just here to see how you're holding up."
Yuri stares out from under the curtain of his hair, and doesn't dignify that with a response. Katsuki grimaces at himself. Good—it was a stupid question.
"We were all so worried after what happened," Katsuki tries again, wrong-footed. "Yakov didn't stop yelling until the paramedics promised him you were stable. He and Lilia are down in the cafeteria right now, getting something to eat."
No doubt Yakov would be doing plenty of yelling later, too, but this time at Yuri. The old man, unlike Katsuki, has never been above delivering a well-deserved 'I told you so'."
"What about my grandpa?" Yuri asks. He tries to quash the quaver in his voice, but is only partially successful.
Katsuki doesn't comment, instead reassuring him, "Your grandpa caught the Sapsan up from Moscow as soon as we were able to get ahold of him, so he should arrive sometime tonight."
"And Viktor?" Not that Yuri wants him here, but he and Katsuki are practically joined at the hip. It's gotten unusual to see the two of them apart.
"Ah." Katsuki smiles ruefully. "I feel like I should apologize for him. He's really bad at interacting with people when they're... upset, so he decided that maybe it would be better for him to leave you be for a while."
"Fucking coward."
"Yeah, kind of," Katsuki admits with a quiet snort. Secretly Yuri is relieved that he doesn't have to deal with Viktor, and got the Katsuki Diplomatic Envoy instead, but he'll never cop to it.
"So, are you in a lot of pain?"
Yes. God, yes. "No," Yuri spits. His denial must be pretty transparent, though, because Katsuki's brows furrow in concern.
"I'm so sorry, Yurio. This has to be so terrible for you."
"Yeah, it pretty much sucks," Yuri agrees. Fuck, he'd been hoping to avoid getting into this shit with Katsuki, or at least put it off until he'd had more time to process it all. His throat tightens, and he tries to clamp down on his emotions again. So of course Katsuki has to go and ruin it.
"Viktor and your grandpa still need to work out the details, but…" he hesitates, and then smiles, "we're going to cover all your family's expenses while you're healing. We didn't want you to have to worry about it." He takes Yuri's speechlessness for concern, and adds, "There is absolutely zero expectation for you to pay us back. This is just something that Viktor and I wanted to do for you."
Yuri can understand an offer like this coming from Viktor, and even tolerate the idea of it, because he knows there's no genuine sentiment behind it. Viktor has been lavishly generous as long as Yuri's known him, throwing his wealth around like he has no idea how the other half lives, like he didn't grow up a penniless orphan before he made it big. It's his way of compensating, perhaps, for a childhood of want. Blowing money frivolously is Viktor saying, 'Look how far I've come. ' (And Yuri gets that. His designer clothing and luggage would be happy to tell you all about it. Flying to Japan after a broken promise had dealt a significant blow to his meager savings, but he'd had the money, and the desire to take what was his was too powerful to ignore.) This kind of behavior is expected of Viktor. And maybe, Yuri thinks, it's not unexpected from Katsuki either, even though he didn't grow up poor, and isn't rich now. This is after all the man who had allowed him to stay free of charge in his family's inn, who hadn't rubbed his victory at Onsen On Ice in Yuri's face, who'd wished him luck at the Rostelecom Cup and responded to Yuri's snarled smack talk with a fond, indulgent smile. Who's watching him now with a carefully neutral expression, something warm in his eyes.
Yuri can't stand it. He can't understand it, either. People aren't just nice like that for no good reason—a fact he knows from experience. Katsuki had said he hadn't come to gloat, but Yuri would bet good money (if he had any) that deep down, the other man is thinking, 'I'm glad it's not me.' A tear drops off Yuri's chin to soak into the bedsheet, which he wrings between his fists. Katsuki reaches out to lay his palm atop Yuri's hands, but he slaps him away. "You can save your fucking pity, Katsudon."
And Katsuki actually looks hurt, the corners of his mouth tugging down into a frown. "I don't pity you. I just care about you and I want to be here for you if I can."
It sounds nice, but that's all it is—pretty words. "What's the fucking difference? If you're not condescending, then you're sanctimonious. 'Look at me, Saint Katsuki, being nice to the cripple'," he says in an affected impression of the older man's precise English, hot tears rolling down his cheeks. "Go choke on a dick."
Katsuki sighs quietly. "Is that really why you think I'm here?"
Yuri recognizes it for the call-out it is, but he doesn't want to hear it, doesn't want to poke at his carefully-laid assumptions. Because if it turns out he's wrong… "Why else?" he spits, hoping, praying, as soon as the words are out his mouth, that Katsuki doesn't actually answer.
He doesn't, but what he does say is even worse. "I can go if you want me to, Yuri. I understand if you want to be alone." Katsuki shifts his weight like he's about to get up, and the bed creaks, and the noise catalyzes something in Yuri. Something ugly, clawing, desperate.
"That's right, you fucking coward. Walk away. Go back to your precious, perfect Viktor and skate your winning season now that your competition is out of the way. Retire, for all I care."
And that was a mistake, because Katsuki knows—everyone knows—that Yuri does care. Last year's GPF gold is proof. Katsuki's eyes go wide, and then his expression softens. He settles back down on the bed, this time a little closer. "You don't really want me to leave, do you?"
Yuri's full-on crying now, humiliated, and Katsuki won't stop looking at him. "Fuck off!" he chokes, and bizarrely, infuriatingly, Katsuki smiles. To Yuri's horror, the older man inches even closer and reaches out to lay a gentle hand on his shoulder. Yuri recoils away from the contact, tries to shove Katsuki away. "No! Don't fucking touch me, you cocksucker. Get away from me!" The invective pours from his mouth, his muscles spasming with the drive to escape. Get away from me before I hurt you again.
Katsuki doesn't even blink. He's completely undeterred, those kind brown eyes forcing Yuri to acknowledge him, to meet him where he is. "Yuri, listen to me," he says, low and gentle. "You're not going to scare me away. There's nothing you can do or say to make me want to leave you." It's frustrating, maddening, and yet it's exactly what Yuri's heart most wanted to hear.
Katsuki rests the hand on Yuri's shoulder again, and when Yuri doesn't resist beyond shuddering, scoots in and envelops him in a tight half-hug. It's… it's not as bad as Yuri was afraid of. Katsuki is warm and slightly soft, and he seems to actually know what to do with his arms and hands. Yuri can grudgingly agree with Viktor's assessment that Katsuki is the best cuddler. He doesn't relax, exactly, doesn't know how, but he allows it to happen, even if he doesn't understand it.
"I just… why?" Yuri grits from between clenched teeth. His tears are coming faster now, a steady plip-plip turning the fabric of his sheets a darker blue.
"Why what?"
"Why are you being so… so nice to me?" he demands. "I was terrible to you that time in Sochi, when I heard you cry. What I said was–" he sniffs, "it was cruel." Yuri has never been one for introspection, for regrets, for examining himself and his behavior, but this, he knows. "I don't deserve kindness. Not now, not from you."
"Yura," Katsuki says softly, the kindest admonishment he's ever heard. "Viktor and I love you. You're family."
Oh. Yuri only cries harder, the pain, the disappointment, but most of all the shame licking like flames at his insides. He tips his head forward and curls in on himself, unwilling to let Yuuri be witness to his weakness. As if that's a concern anymore. As if he doesn't already know you're a whiny, selfish little baby.
"Мне очень жаль," he chokes, so long overdue, then has to gasp because it feels like the air has been punched out of his lungs. "Прости меня." I'm sorry. Forgive me.
He hadn't thought Yuuri would understand; his Russian was still rudimentary at best. But to his surprise, Yuuri strokes a hand down his hair and murmurs, "There's nothing to forgive."
They spend the next ten minutes like this, Yuuri holding him and petting him while he sobs himself out. When his breaths even out and the tears stop coming, he pulls away, and Yuuri lets him. Yuuri's cheeks are streaked with tears, too, though he's smiling. He leans over to the workstation beside the bed and pulls a handful of tissues from a box on the counter. The two of them wipe at their faces, Yuri trumpeting an obscene amount of snot into his tissue.
"Viktor doesn't deserve you, Katsuki," he says when they're a bit more dignified. "You can tell him I said so." It's as close as he'll get to saying 'thank you', but they both understand what he means. Even admitting this much is a struggle, and an accomplishment.
Yuuri laughs thickly. "I'll let him know."
Patience is something Yuri still doesn't have, and honestly, he's not sure he ever will. But agape? That, he's got in spades.