Chapter Text
Victor knew that the attention his success at his first figure skating competition was getting was owed almost entirely to his previous fame, but it still felt great to be appreciated for something he’d always dreamed of doing.
He was also surprisingly glad to see that he wasn’t just getting blind love. He was getting quite a bit of hate too. Not that he enjoyed the hate, but it served to prove that not everyone was simply unthinkingly following him because of his fame. People had watched his performance and formed opinions, good or bad, and expressed them. As much as he appreciated his fans that were happy to support his new career, he also respected those who rejected it.
Yuuri, however, had a different opinion.
Though he tried to hide how much it bothered him to see hate for Victor, he couldn’t hide it quite well enough for Victor to not eventually notice.
“I can handle it, you know,” Victor said one day as he watched Yuuri close his eyes and suppress a groan as yet another former fan left a hateful comment on Victor’s Instagram.
“I know. It’s...not that.”
Victor’s interest was peaked, so he turned to face Yuuri, determined to coax the answer out of him, even if it took a while.
“What is it then?”
Yuuri was silent for a few moments, but as Victor continued to simply stare, he knew sooner or later, he’d have to succumb to the gentle interrogation.
“It’s just so...entitled.”
“Entitled,” Victor repeated, in something between a question and a statement.
“Well, you don’t owe these people anything, do you?” Yuuri lowered his eyes as he spoke. “You had a career in music, which they liked, but now you have a different career, and they’re acting as though you betrayed them somehow, but you never gave them any promises, you didn’t sign away your life to only ever do one thing. They’re not entitled to anything from you.”
Victor lowered his head into Yuuri’s lap, looking up at him.
“Well, a lot of people believe I’m throwing away my musical talent.”
“You aren’t though. You’re composing. Maybe not what they want to hear, but that’s their problem, not yours.”
“They don’t really know that though. I haven’t released anything in a while.”
“Either way, if you didn’t stake, you’d be throwing away a different talent. Don’t they care about that?”
“Well, they don’t care about that talent.”
“Precisely my point. They want you to do what they want you to do. Which is, in short, entitled.”
Victor smiled and ran his hand against Yuuri’s cheek. He thought of how often Yuuri threw his own needs and desires out the window in order to accommodate others, and yet here he was defending Victor against people who thought he owned them something. But Victor didn’t say any of that out loud.
“Well, aren’t you deep?” he said instead.
“I have my moments.”
Yuuri returned the gesture then, touching Victor’s face gently. It was almost too sappy to just lie there, touching each other’s faces, but it felt good, comforting, domestic.
And then Victor’s eyes lit up, and he looked at Yuuri with excitement and joy.
“I should release my skate music!” he said, mobilizing, searching for his laptop. “I don’t have a record label, but I can release it on iTunes.” He started typing, searching for information on what he’d need to do to make it work. “I don’t even really need to do any advertising. I’ll just post about it on social media, and whoever wants it can buy it.”
“That’s...actually a pretty good idea,” Yuuri said, watching in amusement as Victor frantically searched for information, as though it would run away if he slowed down.
“I’ll release the whole 5-minute piece too. Not that tiny snippet with background noise that people have been stealing off the youtube video.”
“Do you think it will sell well?” Yuuri asked cautiously, afraid to hurt Victor’s feelings with any unpleasant implications.
“I don’t really care,” Victor said with a genuine smile. “I just want everyone to see that just because I’m skating now, it doesn’t mean I’ve given up on music.”
It didn’t take Victor long to figure out how to self-publish his song. As predicted, there was quite a bit of interest, both from his old fans, and a few of the new ones he’s gained since his performance.
What Victor had not quite seen coming, however, was the single hitting #1 on iTunes in it’s first week of sales. It fell off the spot quite quickly, but the fact remained. It had hit #1 once, and that would forever remain in its history.
Social media was a-buzz with new discussions, and Victor had a few thousand more notifications to look through.
Though some people remained angry, others, especially the ones who had not previously been aware that Victor’s skating program music was his own, have reconsidered, conceding that Victor’s new passion was also inspiring him musically, so, perhaps, he wasn’t wasting any talents after all.
For a while, there was a heated debate on fansites and blogs about whether this new style of music was something Victor truly enjoyed writing, and whether he’d ever go back to pop. There were those who still felt betrayed by a change in genre, but a larger section of the fandom concluded that Victor was not obligated to write the same type of music forever, especially considering that his style had fluctuated in the past.
“You really need to stop reading that,” Yuuri said, as Victor went through yet another topic on a forum.
“I know,” Victor replied, not taking his eyes off the screen.
Yuuri sat behind Victor on the bed, wrapping his arms around Victor’s waist and peppering kisses along his neck and shoulders. Yuuri was still a little self-conscious about initiating intimacy as their physical relationship was still very young, and Yuuri hadn’t had much experience in the first place. But this tactic was working, as within minutes Victor closed his laptop in favor of giving Yuuri his undivided attention.
Later, as they lay in bed, relaxed and sated, Victor rested his head on Yuuri’s shoulder, drawing circles on his chest with the tip of his finger.
“I can have both, can’t I?”
“Hmm?”
“Music and skating. I don’t have to choose. I can have both.”
Yuuri felt his chest tightening at the words, because Victor almost sounded insecure, and that wasn’t an emotion he openly showed very often.
“Of course you can have both,” Yuuri said, placing a kiss on the top of Victor’s head. “You can have everything you want.”