Chapter Text
"Viktor. It's nearly time."
"The door is open," Viktor Nikiforov called without turning. He sat in an uncomfortable folding chair, hunched over protectively, fingers flying soundlessly over the strings of his violin. The door opened.
"Viktor," Yakov sighed, staring down at the musician. "The concert starts in fifteen minutes. You should be in the wings by now."
"Hm," Viktor murmured absently, fingertips sliding up the A string to hit the correct note. With the thumb of his other hand he lightly touched the strings, not quite plucking, to make the smallest possible notes.
Yakov sighed loudly. "That means now, Viktor," he said. There was something in his voice, a warning, that made Viktor get to his feet, left hand wrapped loosely around the neck of his violin.
"I'm ready, Yakov," he said.
Yakov scowled. "You had better be," he said. "Playing with the Berlin Philharmonic isn't nothing."
Viktor flashed him a smile as he picked up his bow, lightly touching the very tip to make sure he had enough rosin.
Yakov's expression softened. "You will do well, Vitya," he said. "You will give everyone in the audience a performance they will never forget."
"Is Yuri here?" Viktor asked with false nonchalance, dangling his bow from a finger on the hand still holding his violin so he could properly close and latch his case.
"He and Lilia are already in the audience," Yakov answered with a firm nod.
Viktor's smile grew more genuine. "Good. I want him to see."
"There won't be anything to see if you don't get on the damn stage," Yakov said, but there was no bite to his words.
Viktor nodded, and followed his mentor out of the small dressing room and into the hallway that led to the stage. As they walked, he switched his violin and bow to his other hand before flexing and curling the fingers of his left hand. His fingers were tired, and his pinky had been bothering him for a few weeks now, but Viktor chose to ignore it. He might be getting old, at twenty seven, but there was no way he was going to let his age get in the way of his performance. There was a reason he was widely acknowledged as one of the most talented musicians alive, definitely the most gifted violinist of his generation.
Viktor followed Yakov into the dim wings to the side of the stage. Thick velvet curtains obscured most of the view of the stage, but Viktor could hear the muted sounds of the orchestra warming up, the familiar singing of strings mixed with the low, reedy sounds of winds playing their parts.
The conductor of the orchestra met them in the wings, already sweating profusely. "Mr. Nikiforov," he said, sticking out his hand to shake.
Viktor switched his violin back to his left hand, wincing a little as most of the weight bore down on his pinky, and shook the man's hand.
"Our first chair bass was sick at the last moment, so the second chair has taken over," the conductor informed him.
Viktor nodded. "That's alright."
The conductor opened his mouth to say more but before he could get the words out, the sounds of the orchestra warming up quieted as the lights dimmed and the audience began to clap. "Lovely!" The conductor exclaimed. He hurried away, off to where ever he needed to be right before going on stage.
Viktor turned to Yakov. "I'll be fine," he said. "You can go sit with Yuri and Lilia if you want."
Yakov just gave him a look, one eyebrow raised.
Viktor shrugged. "Suit yourself." He turned half away, straightening the jacket of his tuxedo. Yakov sighed, but said nothing.
Viktor waited patiently, the only sign of his true feelings the tapping index finger on the fingerboard of his violin, until a stage hand came to get him. "This way, Mr. Nikiforov," she whispered, beckoning him. Viktor offered one last nod to Yakov before following her. He waited in the wings just off the stage until he heard his name, and then affixed a gracious, pleasant smile to his face before walking on.
The crowd reacted immediately with enthusiastic applause, and Viktor saw with amusement through the gloom that some of them were standing. He walked slowly across the wooden boards of the stage, past a few rows of first violins, before reaching the cleared open spot where he would stand to play. Viktor smiled politely and shook hands with the concertmaster and the conductor, hiding his wince as the movement jostled his left pinky. That done, he turned to face the crowd and offered them a tight smile and a small bow, doing his best not to squint into the blinding spotlights. He straightened and lifted his violin to his shoulder, trading the bow to his right hand but leaving his arm down by his side for now. The audience quieted, and Viktor heard the orchestra behind him move almost as one to get ready to play by some signal from the conductor.
Viktor adjusted his grip on his instrument slightly, nestling it into the hollow between his neck and shoulder, sweat already beading on his brow under the hot stage lights. He lifted his bow, and the audience fell silent. Viktor closed his eyes, breathing in the hush. This moment, here- this was his favorite. Not a sound, absolutely none, met Viktor's ears. You could literally hear a pin drop in the enormous concert hall. Everyone was frozen, holding their breaths, waiting. Waiting for him.
The power was incredible.
Viktor let a small, genuine smile curls his lips before he lowered his bow to the strings and the first notes rang out into the blank, beautiful silence.
***
"How could you be so stupid?" Yakov raged.
Viktor sighed, propping his chin up with his right hand. He had gotten this speech before, or various versions of it. How could you be so stupid, so reckless, so thoughtless. This was the first time he agreed with Yakov's assessment. "I didn't think it would be this bad," Viktor admitted quietly. "I thought I could play through it, and it would be fine."
Yakov sputtered incoherently for a moment, and then managed to choke out, "Thought you could play through it?"
Viktor shrugged. “I’ve played through aches and pains before.”
Yakov gritted his teeth, clearly irritated by Viktor’s dismissal. “Viktor,” he said very slowly. “I hope you realize that this injury may prevent you from playing for at least a month.”
Viktor hung his head. “Yes, I understand that.”
Yakov pressed his lips together, but pulled up a chair next to the injured violinist. Viktor couldn’t look him in the eye, instead choosing to stare at his hands.
After playing in the concert, with a forty minute violin concerto before the intermission and a symphony after, his left pinky had been killing him. Viktor had done his utmost to ignore the shooting pain that lanced up his arm, but Yakov had noticed him wincing and forced him to admit that he was injured. So far no one in the nearby clinic to the concert hall had delivered a diagnosis, but Viktor knew his situation wasn’t good.
Yakov sighed heavily. “Yuri wants to see you,” he said in a low voice.
Viktor nodded without looking up. Yakov sighed again, but stood and opened the door to the exam room they were waiting in for a doctor to come see them.
Yuri Plisetsky bounded into the room, the worry clear on his face for a split second until he schooled it into an expression of irritation. The younger boy leaned against the wall and crossed his arms over his chest, and then informed him, “You’re fucking stupid.”
Viktor pinched the bridge of his nose with a quiet sigh. “I know.”
“Language, Yuri,” Yakov said reprovingly, but without much anger.
“What are you going to do?” Yuri asked bluntly. “Are you going to finish the concert cycle?”
“Yes,” Viktor said, looking up.
At the same time, Yakov said, “Absolutely not.”
Viktor looked up at the older man with wide eyes. “Why not?”
Yakov scowled. “And allow you to injure yourself further? Over my dead body.”
Viktor got to his feet, ready and willing to get into an argument, but before he could say anything the door to the exam room opened and a doctor walked in. “Mr. Nikiforov?” he said in accented English.
“That’s me,” Viktor said with a sigh as the anger drained out of him. Yakov made a subtle gesture and Yuri left the room without a word.
“Let’s see, Mr. Nikiforov,” the doctor said, and Viktor offered his left hand. He tried not to wince as the doctor poked and prodded at his finger, but by the concerned looks he was getting from Yakov he evidently didn’t succeed. The doctor tutted, and then said, “I can do a more in-depth examination if you like, but from what i can tell you’ve severely hyperextended your pinky. And you must have been doing something oddly, because your wrist is slightly sprained as well.”
Viktor winced. He had been accommodating a little during the concert to put a little less strain on his pinky, but it seemed like that had done more harm than good.
“We’re going to have to splint it, and brace your wrist, to make sure it heals correctly," the doctor said. "Mind telling me how this happened?”
Viktor just blinked at him, shocked the man hadn’t heard of him, and Yakov answered, “He’s a professional violinist.”
“Hm,” the doctor murmured. “Well, no playing for at least a month. From what I can tell this hyperextension has been exacerbated by repeated movement. How long had your finger been bothering you?”
Viktor flinched. “Um… A month or two?” he guessed.
The doctor stared at him. “And you didn’t say anything?”
“I had concerts to play,” Viktor replied defensively.
The doctor sighed. “Wait here,” he said. “I’ll get what I need to splint this. But Mr. Nikiforov, due to the extended stress to your finger I wouldn’t recommend playing at all for a month, or playing rigorously in any sort of formal concert setting for at least six months. Playing through this injury has made it much worse than it could have been, so it’s going to take longer to heal than it should.” With that pronouncement, he left.
“Viktor-” Yakov started.
“I know,” Viktor mumbled. He slumped back into his chair and covered his face with his hands. The door opened again and Viktor looked up, expecting the doctor to return, but instead Yuri came back in, shutting the door behind him.
“I was listening,” he said, and to Viktor’s surprise his face was ashen. “You can’t play for six months? What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know,” Viktor replied, rubbing at his mouth. He felt nauseous. Sometimes he hated playing the violin, absolutely despised it, but most of the time it was as much a part of him as his name, or his silvery hair. He had devoted his life to the violin. How would he be able to survive a week without playing, much less six months?
“You could take on students,” Yakov said softly.
Viktor looked up. “What?”
Yakov shrugged. “When I couldn’t play anymore because of the arthritis in my fingers, I took on students. You know that, you were one of my first.” Viktor nodded slowly. He remembered his early days, back when he was five, when he had first been introduced to the great violinist Yakov Feltsman, who would eventually become both his teacher and his friend.
“Viktor teaching? Please,” Yuri scoffed, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “He couldn't teach a fish to swim.”
“Enough, Yuri,” Yakov said.
Viktor shrugged. “I don't know,” he said. “I suppose it would help my musicality stay up to scratch, but it wouldn’t be fair to any students I took on. I fully intend to return to playing as soon as I’m able.”
Yakov nodded. “Just think about it.” He looked like he wanted to say something else, but before he could get any words out the doctor bustled back in to splint Viktor’s finger, and the thought of becoming a violin teacher was temporarily chased out of everyone’s thoughts.
***
It was close to two in the morning when Viktor got back to his hotel room, but he already knew he was too wired to sleep. The doctors parting words still rang in his head: “Don’t play for at least six months,” he had said. “But if you want my professional opinion, I wouldn’t play for a year to ensure that you don’t injure yourself again or worsen the existing injury."
Yakov, predictably, had agreed. Why was it that he was concerned for Viktor’s wellbeing after injuring something as stupid as his pinky finger, but not worried at all when Viktor stayed up until two AM the night before a concert practicing? But the older man was unforgiving, even when Viktor begged to play in a shorter time. After all, how hard could it be to train himself to play without his fourth finger for a little while?
Viktor gently set his violin case down by the door, and then flopped face first onto his bed. As exhausted as he was, his mind was racing. Sleep wouldn’t come easily, even though he knew perfectly well that he had an early flight back to St. Petersburg the next morning.
With a groan, Viktor sat up on his bed, wincing more with surprise than pain as his finger splint briefly caught on the duvet. After staring at the wall for a moment, Viktor got up and undressed, getting out of his now-wrinkled suit and into a t-shirt and pair of sweatpants to sleep in. That done, he grabbed his laptop before settling under the covers in bed.
Viktor unlocked his computer and opened YouTube, fully intending to look up some cute puppy videos that he could use to calm himself down, but one of the videos in the Trending section caught his eye.
Panic at the Symphony! What Could Have Been a Catastrophic Failure Wasn’t! read the label under the video. Viktor hovered over the thumbnail for a moment before shrugging and clicking. It probably wasn’t as interesting as puppies, but Viktor was tired and his judgement was questionable.
The video took a moment to load, and then the grainy image of a stage appeared on the screen. Viktor squinted, and then enlarged the screen before pressing play.
The video was clearly taken by an amateur, probably illicitly on a cell phone; the visuals were flickery and shaky, fuzzing out along the edges, and there was the low sound of someone breathing in the background. But despite the flaws, it was clear enough what the video was: a concert of some sort, with a full orchestra already on stage, probably professional judging by the look of the venue.
As Viktor watched, the camera zoomed in on the figure of a young man standing at the forefront of the orchestra, clearly a soloist getting ready to play. Viktor pressed his lips together. He recognized the tune of the piece being played, but couldn’t figure out what it was. On screen, the soloist lifted his instrument to his shoulder and then began to play with the orchestra.
Viktor’s breath caught in his throat. The soloist’s sound was beautiful, unspeakably gorgeous and passionate beyond belief; despite playing what didn’t seem like a technically difficult piece, the notes sounded like they were alive, like they were already living and the soloist was just bringing them into sight for the rest of the world to marvel at. The music seemed to live in him, expressed by his instrument like it was just another limb.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, Viktor critiqued the soloist’s form- his elbow was a smidgen too high, his stance should be a little wider so he wouldn’t lose his balance on a particularly violent bow stroke- but most of Viktor’s conscious thought was caught up in the music.
And just as he was completely entranced, lost in the waterfall of notes and wishing it would never end, he heard the thin, unmistakable sound of a string snapping, and the soloist flinched a little.
“Oh, god,” someone near the photographer whispered, and Viktor couldn’t help but echo the sentiment. Covering his mouth with his hand in horror, Viktor watched wide-eyed as the soloist missed perhaps one note, mostly covered up by the orchestra, and then continued without faltering, fingers sliding up as high as eleventh or twelfth position in order to hit the notes he needed. As the last notes rang out, Viktor realized he had been holding this breath since the soloist’s string had snapped, and slowly let it out as the last chord faded and the audience of the concert burst into applause.
The video ended, and Viktor stared breathlessly at the screen in the sudden, empty silence of the hotel room. After a long moment, mind racing, Viktor scrolled down a little to see the video’s description: Katsuki Yuuri playing with the Boston Philharmonic! Can’t believe I saw this live! #blessed.
Viktor swallowed hard, licked his dry lips, and then opened up another window and typed in the musician’s name, Katsuki Yuuri. And then froze as the results loaded. Because Katsuki Yuuri wasn’t a talented, up-and-coming violinist like Viktor had assumed based on his playing.
He was a violist.
Viktor blinked in utter shock at the screen, and then rubbed his eyes. The information was still there.
Katsuki Yuuri. 23. Japanese by birth. Plays the viola professionally.
Viktor slowly navigated to the Wikipedia page for the young musician, reading the information numbly. That done, he returned to Youtube and searched for Katsuki Yuuri, watching clips of the violist playing both by himself, or with orchestras, for over an hour. Even when he was young, and clearly less experienced, Katsuki’s musicality was astounding… maybe even better than Viktor’s own, even though the Japanese man’s style wasn’t as neat and meticulous.
Eventually he stumbled upon a clip of an interview between Katsuki and a reporter. “What are your plans for the future, Mr. Katsuki?” the reporter asked.
Katsuki Yuuri blinked, and ruffled his fingers through his hair. He was clearly still in concert attire, in a trim black suit with his hair gelled back, and Viktor couldn’t help but absently note that he was very good looking. “To be honest, I haven’t given the future much thought,” Katsuki replied. He rubbed at his forehead, and then added, “My long-time teacher, mentor, and manager, Celestino Cialdini, is going into retirement after this concert cycle. I may decide to retire from playing professionally as well. I’ve always wanted to teach younger kids how to play the viola. I just haven’t decided yet. I plan to make a formal announcement after the last concert of my cycle, in Moscow with the Russian National Orchestra in a few weeks.”
The reporter asked another question, but Viktor didn’t register it. He sat frozen for a moment as the video continued to play, flickering bluish light over his features and the wall behind him, and then frantically opened a new tab and did a quick search. After a long minute of loading, Viktor saw the information he needed and breathed a long sigh of relief. The interview between Katsuki and the reporter was fairly recent, which meant that his last concert in Moscow hadn’t happened yet.
And Viktor was going to see it.
***
“Why are we doing this again?” Yuri asked irately, walking quickly to keep up with Viktor.
It was the night of Katsuki Yuuri’s concert in Moscow, and Viktor had travelled from St. Petersburg that morning, just in time to strong-arm Yuri into coming with him.
“Have you heard of him, Yura?” Viktor asked excitedly as they made their way into the concert hall.
Yuri rolled his eyes. “Of course I have. Everyone has. He’s only the most famous solo violist in the world right now. I don’t get why you’re so excited about this.”
Viktor blinked at him in surprise. “Wait, you’ve heard of him?”
Yuri rolled his eyes. “Yes. Unlike you, I don’t live under a mountain of sheet music. I actually pay attention.”
Viktor winced at that. Sure, it was true that for someone so adept at charming others he was awful at names and faces, but it wasn’t fair to say that he didn’t know anything about the goings on in the music world. He just wasn’t as caught up as he should be. “Well, I’m making up for my lack of attention now,” Viktor said brightly, pulling Yuri with him in the direction of their seats.
“And I’m along for the ride. Great,” Yuri muttered.
“Don’t be bitter, Yura,” Viktor scolded. “Wouldn’t you rather have a nice night at the symphony than holed up in your basement practicing?”
Yuri shrugged noncommittally. “I have to start preparing my qualifying piece for the ICC soon.”
Viktor flinched. Right. The International Concerto Competition, the most prestigious musical competition in the world. The competition Viktor had won for the last five years, and the competition he wouldn’t be able to enter this year due to his stupid. Fucking. Finger.
Viktor forced a smile. “One night won't hurt you,” he said with false cheer as he tugged Yuri into the correct row and all but shoved him into his seat. That done, he sat in his own seat and pulled out a program.
Yuri sighed heavily, but slumped down in his chair without protest and started scrolling through his phone. “I hope you’re going to put that away before the concert starts,” Viktor chided.
Yuri rolled his eyes. “Yes, dad,” he replied mockingly.
Viktor sighed and shook his head, turning his attention back to the program. He had to squint to even read the information about the pieces, the musicians, and the orchestra in the dim light. Damn. Maybe he was getting old, like Yuri always told him. The house lights flickered once, twice, and Viktor sat up straight with a gasp of excitement.
“It’s starting, Yuri!” he exclaimed in a raw whisper.
Yuri rolled his eyes so hard Viktor was half-convinced they were going to get stuck that way. “No shit,” he muttered, but Viktor didn’t miss how he immediately slipped his phone in his pocket and sat up a little straighter so he could see the stage.
The house lights flickered once more and then dimmed as the orchestra onstage quieted, echoed by the audience. Viktor glanced down at his program, struggling to read in the dim light. The first piece they were playing was the Viola Concerto in B Minor, by Casadesus. It sounded vaguely familiar, although Viktor was sure he had never played it himself.
Yuri elbowed him, and then hissed, “Pay attention, old man. You’re going to ruin your eyes, trying to read.”
Viktor just sighed, exasperated.
Satisfied, Yuri turned his attention back to the stage just as the conductor walked onstage and everyone began to clap. Viktor clapped politely, but kept his attention on the right side of the stage. Sure enough, after a moment, Katsuki Yuuri walked onstage with his viola in hand and a small smile on his face to enthusiastic applause. Viktor clapped so hard his hands hurt.
Katsuki shook hands with the conductor, with the concert master, and then faced the audience and bowed deeply. That done, he lifted his instrument to his shoulder and turned his attention to the conductor.
The conductor lifted his hand, waited a breathless moment as everyone froze in anticipation, and then Katsuki put his bow to the string and began to play.
***
Later, Viktor realized, that moment, the moment when Yuuri’s first note rang clear through the concert hall and struck a chord deep in Viktor’s soul, was when he realized that he would be taking on a student in his year off.
And that student would be violist Katsuki Yuuri.